Central American Adventure May 31-June 2

Unfortunately I hit a low point as photographer (being totally and completely pictureless) during these few days of our trip. I can take no credit for any of the pictures on this post but wanted images to help recreate the events. We traveled into Belize and stayed first in Belmopan, the capital city. There was not a lot to see there . . . the government buildings look very much like an old college campus, almost every restaurant serves Chinese food (with a little good barbecue to be found at street grills), and it poured rain. I mean it POURED. This point marked the beginning of a tropical storm in Belize that would wipe out many roads, bridges, homes, and even take several lives, making the entire southern half of the country inaccessible to us.

Despite the rain, we had an awesome adventure. We went "cave tubing." Which means that we floated through 7 miles of caves with only headlamps for lighting. We also managed to sneak in a little cliff jumping into the river (in the almost completely pitch blackness of the cave). There was a German Sheppard named Lucky (our guide's pet) who swam with us the entire length of the river. In one of the caves we left our tubes for some time and went exploring. This cave was called Crystal Cave for the quartz crystals that lined the walls. It was beautiful! Throughout the cave there were remains of Mayan pottery, with some pieces almost completely intact.

Back at the Jaguar Paw Resort there was a rescued baby howler monkey. He was sitting on a table, eating food that had been left by a guest. Knowing that he had a certain familiarity with humans, I walked over to him, and put out my arms as you would to a little child, wondering if he would let me hold him. He jumped immediately into my arms and climbed to my shoulder; he then jumped to Dustin's shoulder, and then to Joe's. He started getting friendly with Joe, nibbling on his ear, then on his nose. His nibbling started to become a little more aggressive, and Joe started to become nervous. He tried to pull the monkey away from his face, but the little monkey was very determined (maybe Joe needed to clean his nose out). I can still see Joe's profile (with a terrified look on his face) and a little monkey with all 4 limbs and his tail wrapped tightly around Joe's head. Joe was pulling away, and the monkey toward, as with as much energy as either could muster. The little monkey's teeth were bared, his mouth open and stretching toward Joe's nose. We were all helping Joe out by laughing hysterically. Joe eventually won, and therefore, still has a nose and no complaints.

Central American Adventure May 28-30

On the 28th of May we left Costa Rica :(



Most of the family flew home, while Joe, Jenni, Dustin, and myself continued on to Guatemala. We spent the next few days in Flores and Tikal. Flores is a colorful little Guatemalan town with amazing food. It is set in the middle of a lake, with only a land bridge, once a sand bar, built up to allow for passage of traffic. It is about 45 min. outside of Tikal.

Tikal is the largest of all ruined Mayan cities, with several hundred temples, pyramids, and other structures, most of which are still covered with land and trees.

Jenni was at the base of one of the tallest pyramids while we were at the top. We could here each other perfectly clearly while using a normal voice volume. King Benjamin anyone? (I am not supposing exactly at this site, but a person on top of the pyramid could easily communicate with a multitude of people.) The acoustics were amazing!

I think Joe looks awesome in this picture . . . all rugged and handsome. Actually the picture was supposed to show how HUGE those steps are (esp for people who are only 5 ft tall--e.g. the Mayans)

If you look closely at the picture above, it looks like there is mist rising from the trees. Reportedly, it is not mist but oxygen which can be seen because it was raining so heavily. Maybe we should save the rain forests.

Central American Adventure May 26-27

So, I decided to keep posting about our Central American adventure because it was so fun, Joe is out of town, and thanks to my delightful night working schedule there is absolutely no way I can fall asleep right now.



We spent a couple more days in Tortuguero, Costa Rica. We went on a zip line. Yee Haw!!

And we took an amazing boat tour of the canals in the national park in Tortuguero. We saw TONS of animals including: 3 types of monkeys (howler , white face, and spider monkeys), probably 1/2 dozen toucans, lots of other birds performing all kinds of mating rituals, an ant eater, and a sloth. Yes, I actually saw a sloth and it was just hanging out in the tree scratching his bum. Unfortunately I was not able to get a very good picture of that dang sloth. Here is my attempt.

One of the white face monkeys jumped out to a branch just away from the boat. Then he started throwing stuff at the boat. Then he jumped to another limb and grabbed a hornet's nest . . .

And he started eating it. Silly monkey.

On our way out of Tortuguero (about 45 min. into the 1 1/2 hour boat ride) our boat broke down, it started storming, the boat radio broke (and crocodiles and barracuda live in the water), and the one wooden paddle on the boat broke in half. It was the last boat out of Tortuguero and missing the boat meant missing our flights. Yikes.

Luckily after banging on the engine with who knows what, the boat started again and with only a few more sputtering moments made it back to the bus depot. Yea for hammers and stuff!!

Mt. Timpanogos on one icy night

Taking a break from all the late, late posting about the trip . . .

This weekend I met a guy at the top of Mt Timpanogos who said to me, "My friends were going for a hike, and I thought, I'm up for a little adventure--I got more adventure than I planned on."

We thought we wanted a little adventure as well. We were planning on hiking the Narrows in Zion's National Park this last weekend, but due to high flash flood warnings we decided that it was not the best weekend to take on such an hike. Because we didn't want the weekend to be a total bust we decided to do a midnight hike up Mt Timpanogos to watch the sun rise. I have made the hike twice, but neither Joe nor his friend Tim (who was hiking with us) have ever hiked the mountain before. Even though Timp. is approx 10,000 feet, it is not a particularly difficult hike (or so I remembered). We set off hiking just as planned at about 12:00 a.m., but what we didn't calculate into our scheme is that Utah had record high snow packs this year. That translated to a hiking trail still covered in snow, frequent stream crossings, and a very nervous group of 3 hikers. Had we been hiking in the day (e.g. the way down) the snow would have been slushy and not at all scary, but we were hiking at night. The 'slush' was frozen solid and many parts of the trail were absolutely covered in ice (with steep cliffs to catch us if we slipped . . . cliffs of unknown height because it was dark . . . all we knew is that it was steep and slippery). After we had hiked for awhile, we knew we couldn't turn around because that would mean hiking back across the ice in the middle of the night, so we pressed on. About 1400 ft from the top, the trail levels off into a bowl of sorts for approx. a mile before the trail continues ascending to the peak. At the end of the bowl the trail was totally and completely lost in the snow, and we could not find a reasonably safe way to continue on to the top. Plus, due to the extra time spent trying not to slip off the side of the mountain the sun was already rising. We decided to cut our losses at that point and make camp for the night (or morning).

Luckily, it was a beautiful sun rise and we all had a good 4 hours of rest before we woke up to a burning hot sun which would turn the ice back into slush for our hike back down. Even though we never made it to the summit, it was spectacularly beautiful on the way down. The mountain was covered with streams of water and waterfalls running right through the snow (and we all made it home safely). The moral of the story is this: Don't do a midnight hike up Mt Timpanogos without researching the weather conditions first, or at least bring an ice ax with you :) Oh ya . . . Joe was wearing his Keens . . .

Central American Adventure May 25

Tortuguero, Costa Rica

Tortuguero is a colorful Caribbean town were biking is the only improvement to walking. The people are laid back and friendly. The children of the town follow Jenni and Dustin around and wake them up every morning by putting their little faces in the windows of their home. While we were there, we enjoyed playing on the beach (which was practically in Jenni's yard), meeting the people that have become good friend's with Jenni and Dustin, playing with the dozens of dogs running around the town, and learning about all the work that Jenni and Dustin did over the last couple of years.

Central American Adventure May 23

On May 23 we traveled to Tortuguero, Costa Rica. Jenni and Dustin have been living there for the last 2 years as volunteers with the Peace Corps. It is an amazing little city, population approx 1200, nestled between the Caribbean Ocean and a large river system. Check out www.tortuguerovillage.com (Jenni and Dustin made this website to help increase tourism to Tortugero). Reaching the village requires a bus ride through banana plantations and then an hour and a half boat ride through crocodile infested waters.

Central American Adventure May 23

We spent a day white water rafting near Guapiles Costa Rica. The river was full of class III and VI rapids. Our guide told us before we set off that statistically 1 in 8 people might fall out of the raft during the trip (and there were 8 of us). As statistics predicted, my dad was thrown out of the raft in the middle of a class IV. He survived the rapids, but definitely had some war wounds on his shins.

Central American Adventure May 21-22

On May 21st we went swimming in La Fortuna Waterfall. It was so powerful we could not swim any closer to the waterfall than we were for this picture. It was poring rain so hard this day that we were not any more wet after jumping in the pool than before. We also stopped at a fantastic restaurant with a view of yet another waterfall, complete with this cute little creature.

My parents generously treated the family to a night's stay in Tabacon Hotel (which Joe and I thoroughly enjoyed).



Tabacon is a five star resort with access to private springs, naturally heated by the volcano. The hot springs are composed of a naturally heated river, dotted with individual pools and waterfalls.