Day 15 - Saying Good-bye to Ambergris Caye and the wonderful friends we made at Portofino's

 

Puddle Jumper from San Pedro - Cay Caulker
 - Belize City - Total Trip time: 16 Minutes

It was a sad day when the sun rose at 5am - last day in Ambergris Caye. Flight from San Pedro was at 9am. We had booked a flight with Tropic Air on a small 10 seater. It made for a remarkable flight back to Belize City. You could really get an up close view of all the smaller islands. It was a six minute flight from San Pedro to Caye Caulker where we picked up an additional passenger. From there we went skyward again for another 10 minutes to Belize City. It was a quick and enjoyable flight to the main airport.

From there we made our way to Miami and finally back to Charlotte. 

Caye Caulker Airport Terminal 

Exiting the Tropic Air plane in San Pedro

Day 14 - Last full day before departing

Thomas returning with Clinton from a
sardine run

Thomas holding a Remora fish - typically found catching a
ride on a shark

This was the last full day in Belize and we all wanted to make sure we got the most out of it. I got up at 5:20am and got ready to take the boat at 6am to San Pedro to hit the ATM one last time. Mo, Portofino’s boat captain, was heading into town to hire some temp workers and to pick-up some staff members. He was planning on departing San Pedro at 7am to return to Portofino’s. This was perfect as I had desire to waste any time in town.

Once back at the villa, I awoke Thomas and we headed down the restaurant for some breakfast. Anna was on her iPad having some coffee and Olivia was catching the last few grains of sand from the Sandman. While Thomas was eating, I made arrangements with Clinton of Action Divers to go out fishing at 11:30am.

Check out the fish - now you see the shirt?

Thomas diving for Conchs

Young master Schiffers quickly devour his breakfast and made his way down to the docks. He was to take fully advantage of every last fishing opportunity. He hung around with the Action Diver crew and was gone out on the water at around 10am. Sardines and Conchs were to be cast netted and gathered for our outing.

Anna came down to the Green Parrot, along with Olivia and we ended up having some breakfast and liquid pork chops while we waited for time to pass. Gena and Jason, a young couple from NY, joined us at the bar and we chitty chatted most of the morning away.

"A Boat Captain in the Making" along with Clinton from
Action Divers, Belize

Thomas and Clinton arrived at the docks at around 11:20am, so I walked down to them. I jumped into the boat and we were off for the afternoon. Clinton took us to several different fishing sites and our hooks were cleaned quite often. However we did manage to catch quite a bit of unique fish. The most interesting would be the Remora fish that young Thomas caught. It is a sucker/cleaner fish and is typically found catching a free ride in Belize on nurse sharks. It has a round, almost oval, sucker patch on the top of its head positioned right behind the eyes. The intriguing part here is that it usually attached to a host, so to catch it in open water was special.

Triggerfish

We fished with several different baits, each one hoping to land a specific species. I managed to wrangle in a Triggerfish with some conch. Our goal was to catch quite of few of these today, but for some reason they didn’t want to participate in our plans. We also managed to catch a Mangrove Snapper, Lane Snapper, School Master Snapper, several larger Grunt and a whole host of other fish which we didn’t keep. We did try for some Bonefish today, but the seaweed hampered those attempts. Before we knew it 4:30pm and we needed to head back.

The day ended quickly. I came back to find Anna snoozing. She had an adventure of her own at the Rojo Bar earlier in the afternoon with Gena and Jason. Olivia was lounging and listening to music in the bedroom. Anna and I had dinner later in the evening, did some packing and threw a hook in one last time.

Day 13 – Chukka – It’s Time to Play

We crested a hill in the jungle only to find an adventure station called Chukka at its bottom. This was the cave tubing mecca of Belize and this was the outfit that did it the best (so they said). Upon arrival we exited the bus and were ushered to a small building where we filled out the standard. Once we signed our first new born away, we went to get suited for caving apparel – hard hat, headlamp and life-vest.

Lastly, each of us grabbed a floating tube and made our way towards the river. It was a beautiful 20 minute walk through the jungle. Zee, one of the tour guides, pointed out various trees and plants along the way. On one occasion he picked what looked to be a nut off the ground and smashed it with a rock. He picked out a fibrous material and handed to both Anna and I. It was basically a miniature coconut, which tasted a little grainer than the normal coconut. Before long we were at the river. Some our party had not made it down with us and was a little behind, so while we waited we just played in the water.

Zee tied the tubes together for the journey down. It had rained a couple hours earlier and the water was flowing faster than normal. We were told the caves would be flooding soon, so they wanted to make sure we all stayed together and wouldn’t get carried away by the rapids. Wasn’t what the Schiffers wanted, but better safe than sorry. We heard that the Mayans sacrificed children for safe passage. We had two...no sacrifice today...but we still hoped for safe passage today.

Off we went into the darkness of the caverns. It was a thrilling ride as we rode the river through the caverns. At times we turned all the headlamps off to get the true effect of the real darkness. The sheer void of light left us totally blind we no recognition of anything even directly an inch or two away from our eyes. Amazing that Mayans would travel these caverns with the limited resources and technology that we have today. Stalagmite formations were all throughout the cavern along with the local bats which anchored themselves to the ceiling.

Soon we arrived at the cavern’s opening only to find out the tubing had ended. Thinking we would have to hike a ways, we found ourselves just 50 yards or so away from the main lodge. Everyone dried off a bit, changed and we went off to a covered area where we were feed a delicious lunch of rice, beans and chicken. Anna and I had a couple of Belikin and 30 minutes or so later we were back on the bus to heading back to Belize City. The ride took about a 1.25 hours to back before we got on the water taxi to San Pedro.

All of us were happy to get back to Portofinos. It was a long day with a lot of travel time. The rest of the evening was sprinkled with fishing, dinner and lounging. Needless to say, we all turned in early.

Day 13 - Belize Zoo

Rise and shined the kids at 6am. We were picked up by Searious Adventures at our dock at 6:45am to make the trip to Belize City where we would catch a tour bus (school name – named Faith) for the Belize Zoo. We did a couple of water taxi stops on the way to San Pedro and then had a 1.5 hour water shuttle ride to Belize City. Beautiful ride and had a great conversation with one of the tour guides. Learned a lot and he (Gus) was very informative about the island and their culture.

It didn’t take long and we were just off the coast near Belize City where it looked like we were driving the boat right into the jungle packed beach. Instead it was a very narrow split which once we broke through the vegetation, it opened up to a canopied river. It was absolutely gorgeous! While on the river the crew broke out some Johnny Cakes (biscuits with cheese & ham or chicken), along with a melody of fruits. We headed upstream for another 15 minutes and then docked to catch the bus.

James was our tour guide today. The bus ride took about 50 minutes. We were on good roads the whole way. Once we were out of the city, we wove through the savanna for the most part of the ride and them the mountainous or forest region for the last 10-15 minutes. The roads here are none descriptive and there is virtual no road signage or billboards. So when we came up to the zoo entrance it was sudden with no indication that there was a zoo here.

We only had an hour and half time to spend at the zoo so we charged through. It was small zoo only about 28 acres. They had from what I remember around 40-50 exhibits. The Belize Zoo was a great place for the kids to get an up close look at all the animals. It was a very charming place as it was all covered by forest canopy. Arches of trees, vines, palms and flowers were constantly above through all the paths and walkways. We enjoyed watching all the pumas, jaguars, ocelot and the other cats. There were plenty of bird exhibits and Thomas even manage to get a lick or two from the Tapirs. 

Next stop - Chukka where we would have the thrill of cave tubing.