Epic Easter, Part 1

As promised, it is time for the story of Dan's Epic Easter!
This year we had a basic framework of a trip planned with several goals along the way and not much else as far as detail-planning goes.
The cast of characters was similar to our Nicaragua trip from last year, with me and Will and Brittany, except this time Susie was busy traipsing around Eastern Europe so we replaced her with Leslie. Like the Nicaragua trip, our priorities were going places and doing cool stuff rather than comfort and personal hygiene.

When we started we had a bus ticket to a city in Northern Honduras and a bus ticket from Antigua, Guatemala back to Tegucigalpa at the end of the week. Everything in between was open-ended and adventurous!

We ended up going on a large bus to the Guatemalan border, after which we got on a boat and crossed the little inlet over to Southern Belize. At this point we had been traveling all day, and we just weren't ready to stop yet. So we got on a bus that used to be a school bus found a second life as cheap public transportation. We made it to Belize City and stayed the night.
The next morning, upon finding that we had already done everything to do in Belize City by walking around for twenty minutes, we got on another boat and ended up on a small island called Caye Caulker.

So Part 1 of our journey took place on the island. Now, before you go imagining Spanish-speaking hispanic-looking people like a National Geographic photo from Guatemala or something, stop - erase that image and instead think of Jamaica. That's basically what the island was like, complete with African-looking people with the "ya, mon!" accent and plenty of Bob Marley. Not exactly what we expected! Everyone spoke English (well, heavily-accented, sometimes-barely-understandable, but still English).

We stayed at the Chinatown hotel and pretty much relaxed and took advantage of the location. One of the best decisions we made was to rent bikes and ride all around the island. It was super calm and very interesting to see various ways of life even within the same small little island.

We also went on a boat trip an got to do some snorkeling, which involved swimming with sharks and rays and turtles, you know - no big deal. I don't think the sharks were about to chomp on any humans, and thankfully we didn't find out if we were right.

I swam with those. I'm not sure why.

Is this how the pros do it? Are there pros in this activity? Can I be one?

We also spent some time on the beach and exploring the island by foot, including some awesome seafood, great pizza, and a whole bunch more pictures, which can be seen here:

Google album

We left Belize and headed for Guatemala, which will be the topic of Epic Easter Part 2! Stay tuned for the continuing saga!