I'll preface with a little background:<br><br>Like you I've gone through life saying "I never win anything" well I can't say this anymore because this trip was a result of winning second place in The Moorings sweepstakes. The prize was a week in Belize on a Moorings 3800 cat. We had to pay for air, land accomodations, provisioning etc. <br><br>I must say that we are not high end travelers, when we went to the BVI we went with Pro-Valor a "third tier" charter oufit that gave us great value and a great vacation. Mypoint is that we wouldn't have even considered this vacation if we hadn't won it, but hey someone had to go......!<br><br>Okay and away we go:<br><br>Day 1- Travel Day---<br>Nothing unusual here, the usual gring Boston to Dallas Fort Worth then on to Belize city, Belize. Passports are absolutely nescessary when travelling here. From BZ city we flew Tropic Air to Placencia which is in the southern part of Belize. <br><br>Oh, some background for those that are saying Belize? Belize is in the western Carribean south of Cancun, about the size of New hampshire it has a population of less than 200,000. This country, the former British Honduorus is trying to get a bigger piece of the shrunken tourism market. While we saw only a small portion of the country we loved the relative undeveloped aspects of this beautiful place.<br><br>Our flight to Placencia was terminated at the airstrip, and I mean "strip", literally a dirt strip that runs east west and accomodates only short takeoff aircraft.....quite exciting. <br><br>Placencia was hit hard by Hurricane Iris in October of 2001, like many undeveloped areas it is taking them awhile to recover. Placencia is famous for it's mile long sidewalk that runs right through the center of town. Most of the businesses are near this landmark. <br><br>We stayed at the Seaspray hotel, nice rooms for about $45 US.....right on the beach, Daisy's restaurant right next door. <br>Many low priced rooms around but be careful some are really for the Hostel crowd, you'll find plenty of nice resorts too just look around. <br><br>Day 2...<br>Up early, breakfast then off to the Moorings Base a short cab ride away. The Moorings place their anager in Placencia in the fall of '01just before 9/11 and then the Hurricane hit. Rorrie(sp?) has done a bang up job getting this operation going. In the face of imposing odds he has dug deep and is making it work! The dock crew are great, in fact I should mention that everyone we met was fabulous in Placencia....genuine and friendly really, really nice. <br><br>If there is ever a board for Belize on TTOL you will never see the "Island atttiude" posts so frequently seen on the BVI board! These people really like the business and are nice, without exception. I can't say enough about the folks that live here, just if you go, get to know them, you'll not regret it!<br><br>Onward.....we got our chart briefing, more on that later, got gear aboard, then went to "Provision". The Moorings office in FLA was actually a bit of an annoyance in regards to this. When we were making arrangements the agent that helped me almost said you CAN"T self provision in Placencia. All supplies come from Belize city. Pure BS. All provisions come from the local market, Wallens, we faxed a request to them for produce and then did our our own shopping. They deliver and honestly they are terrific folks there,hey it ain't your local. Shaws, Stop and Shop, or whatever, but there is plenty. As a example we did order wine with the Moorings, but didn't get what we wanted in fact if we had shopped on our own we wouldda done better.... We also brought along a coller of casseroles and some frozen chick for the grill as well as a few other treats.....<br><br>So we load stuff aboard then do the boat check, by this time it's 3 too late to go anywhere so we get off the dock and drop the hock in the little harbor...swim drink rum off to bed by 7:30-8! Whew.....<br><br>Day 2....Placencia to Lime Cay/Hunting Cay<br>Pull the hook and we're underway by 0800...easy sail winds are NE at 10-15 knts. we're heading SE so a nice easy reach until the wind dies down , then we motor sail so we can get in while light is good. The unique thing about Belize is that it has the second largest barrier reef in the world the section in Belize is about 180 miles long. the Sopadillas are the southern terminus of the reef. Many small cays are sprinkled along the reef like jewels, some are oocupied only by fisherman some have very modest lodgings. For the sailors, all Moorings boats have Raymarine Chartplotters with color CRT displays...I'd never used one before but it was a snap to learn and very helpfull. The navigation is not easy but going slow is the key if you're not sure where you're going. Inside the barrier reef you can be sailing along in 80 feet of water and come upon a patch reef where the water will go to 25 feet in the blink of an eye! A bit disconcerting at first but you quickly get used to this...Another aspect of this place is anchoring with 3-4 feet under the keel! <br><br>Our chart briefing was very detailed, as it should be. Rorry was great and pointed all the hazards. Good light is essential to getting into some spots....in fact our second night I spotted a Moorings boat coming into an adjacent cay and stop in a kinda strange spot, figuring that he had anchored I forgot abouthim, looked few minutes later and he was still there stern to the wind! oops. Found areef, he was okay just abit shaken and they got off the next morning with some help from the park rangers.<br><br>Day 3....Hunting cay..<br>Hung out...snorkled, napped,relaxed,swam...drank. Just relaxed. We needed one of these.<br><br><br>Day 4 Hunting Cay to .......<br>An interesting aspect of this next of the woods is that the wind increases during the evening hours and this night a norther blew in which pinned us down for another day. We actually left thinking that we could bull our way into the 15-20 knots we had in the a.m. but when it increased to 25-30 on the nose we turned tail back to Hunting cay and shelter. Had a hell of a time picking up the mooring (one of very few in the area btw) as the wind had clocked to 30 knots steady and gusts to 35! Those twin westerbekes got a work out that day!<br><br>Day 5 Hunting cay to Ranguana cay<br>Early start motored NW about 4-5 miles then broad reached easterly to Ranguana cay, about 1100 hrs the wind freshened again, so we had to reduce sail and motor sailed up to Ranguana, really hoping that the nasties would blow through finally. Ranguana is lovely, nice coral heads around a sandy spot of about 7-8 acres, great for the kids. Things were stirred up a bit by all the rough weather we'd been having but still pretty nice. Saw some great fish and Cuda's here. <br><br>Day 6 Ranguana to Lark cay<br>This is the day we've been waiting for! Calm, beautiful seas. We head off to snorkle about 9....as we are headed back to the dinghy we see fins i the water about 100 yds away! No need to worry though it's dolphins! I swim towards them and others follow me. I get close enough so that I can see them swimming in the water in front of me, it's 4-5 adults and 2 juveniles....WOW this pretty much made our trip! Later that morning we saw spotted eagle rays swimming below the boat and turtles in the distance. We left here and motored to Lark cay which is a Mangrove cay about 2 miles off the coast. Pretty spot and it's lots of fun to take the dinghy into the mangroves and explore all the little nooks and crannies.<br><br>Day 7 Lark Cay to Placencia..<br>After an epic early morning of anchor dragging and resetting the anchor at 0400 hrs.....we motor sailed over to Placencia where we went into the dook for our last night aboard. WE had planned a tour up the Monkey River for day 8-Monday and we wanted to be off the boat early for our 9 a.m. start. had dinner at Kitty's place, great food there and everywhere we went in Placencia area. As an aside we went by the new resort that Francis Ford Coppola is building in northern Placencia...there goes the neighborhood! <br><br>Day 8---Monkey River tour<br>One of the attractions of Belize is that it has so much in the way of natural history aside from the attractions of teh reef and Cayes. The mountains and foothills are one of the largest sites for Maya ruins, the is a jaguar preserve inland about 50 miles in the jungle. <br><br>We chose to take a tour up the Monkey river which is about 12 miles south of Placencia. On this trip we saw, crocodiles, black howler monkeys, tons of birds Iguanas, and in the magroves Manatees. I think that this day long trip cost us about $40/person--US. It included lunch at our tour guides aunts house in Monkey River Town. What a day! <br><br>Day 9...Meanwhile back in Placencia....then home again.<br>After a leisurely breakfast we got on our flight home.<br><br>Some travel notes....<br>The web is full of sites about Belize.......use your fav search engine and you'll find 'em. <br><br>Belize uses BZ dollars---- US$1=BZ$2 This rate is fixed very simple! Both are accepted.<br><br>The northen cays are more touristy than the southern...if you are looking for a resort experience you'll find it in San Pedro area on Ambergris cay.......<br><br>We saw only a very small portion of this remarkable place and are hungry for more......<br><br>I'll post some pics for sure as soon as I find the time...<br><br>Sorry gotta go.....<br>e-mail me with questions or a PM <br><br><br><br>Nat
nbhowe@earthlink.net
