The alarm was set for 6 am, but I shut it off at 5:59 as not to disturb the peaceful serenity of the early morning. Today we were going to the mainland for the Lamanai Jungle River Adventure. The sun wasn’t up yet and I stepped outside to see if a sunrise photo op would present itself. I estimated where I thought it would rise from, but there were clouds on the horizon so I went back inside. Of course within minutes the sun came up slightly to the south of where I had expected. I was slightly disappointed that I had missed a clear view of the sun rise, especially because I probably wouldn’t be up that early again.

We packed up our bags, loaded ourselves with sunscreen, laced up our tennies and were out at the pier at 7 am. Eli, the activity coordinator at the dive shop, told us yesterday to be patient and stressed to only get on the purple boat with the SEAduced logo on the side. She said it wasn’t uncommon for them to be running 15 minutes behind since it picks up at northern hotels first. 7:15 rolls around and we spot a purple boat on the horizon, packed with people. We stand up and start collecting our belongings as the boat came around the pier, but it stopped at the pier south of us instead. Hmm… that’s strange, we thought maybe they’d come back for us, but it didn’t. The dive shop wasn’t open yet, but we figured it was just a different SEAduced boat. It seems like they are a big company here and they probably had different tours. At 7:25 we spotted another boat, but that one drove past us at full speed. We realized we didn’t have any sunscreen with us, and seeing the dive shop had opened up, Nick ran inside to add some to our ever tab. We waited for what seemed like eternity when Kristen spotted him summoning us inside. Woops, somehow our reservations didn’t get changed from Thursday to Wednesday (we had been present when Eli called and confirmed the change). We quickly decided to occupy our day with diving instead. We signed up for a two tank dive and went back to the room to change for breakfast at Rico’s.

While we were killing the remaining time between breakfast and our 9 am dive, Eli called to let Nick and I know that Sylvin would be coming along so we could finish up our last advanced course dive, the multilevel dive. Our first dive was to be with him and we would be joining everyone else on the second dive.

After our dives we were pretty beat. Nick left his Nintendo controller t-shirt on the boat so he took a long hike to the main dive shop to get it. Curtis, Kristen and I set up shop at the pool close to 1 pm. I finished reading my book, A Beast in the Garden, and napped until 3:45 when I a couple stray rain drops rudely interrupted my snooze.

Per Sylvin’s recommendation, we had dinner at Caliente. Sylvin said it was a Mexican restaurant, but it was a bit different than those back home. The chicken nachos were great. Nick and I both ordered chicken fajitas, and I think we both agreed they were the best fajitas ever. Kristen ordered some jumbo shrimps while Curtis branched out and ordered some sort of Cere… it looked like a chowder with fish and bananas.

After dinner we stopped at a shop across the street so Kristen could purchase treasures to redecorate their kitchen with. When we got back to the condo I went straight to bed because my belly was kind of achy. Besides, we had to be up at 6 am again for the jungle tour!!

Nick came to bed around 10:45. Shortly after the power went out. The room, normally slightly illuminated by a light outside the window, was completely dark. We couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. We decided to venture our to see if the entire hotel lost power or just our complex. We stepped outside into complete darkness. To the north the coastline was completely dark. To the south there were lights far in the distance. The night sky was completely clear and moonless so we took the opportunity to do a bit of star gazing. I have never seen that many stars in my entire life. The normal constellations were so bright and it seemed like the entire sky was covered with stars. It looked like a photo out of a magazine. We even saw a large shooting star. The power came on around 11:15. Good thing too, because it would have sucked to finish up our trip powerless. We reset the clock so we could get up on time and went to bed.

Last night we were all feeling lazy, so we ordered a pizza from Pasta La Vista. We hit the hay early since the boys needed to be at the dive shop at 5:30 to go to the Blue Hole.

I got up around 7:30 am. Kristen and I had french toast for breakfast (at Rico’s of course). Then we hung out in the lobby computing for a bit before we headed to town by golf cart for some shopping and a bit of spa treatments :D

We hit up a bunch of touristy knick knack shops before having lunch at Elvi’s where they had excellent shrimp ceviche and smoothies. Then we stopped at a few more shops and I was able to get a photo of the meat shop, although the sign was partially covered by a golf cart. I also got a picture of a medical laboratory, aptly named Mr. Krazy’s.

**PICS OF INAPPROPRIATE SIGNS COMING SOON**

At 2:00 we went to the Tropical Touch Salon. Kristen and I both tried out the ear candle treatment. It was very interesting. I was a bit nervous about it. I kept envisioning hot wax dripping onto me, or something catching on fire, or the pier it was sitting on collapsing into the ocean. But it all turned out alright. It was kind of strange. There was a crackling noise, but I couldn’t tell if it was stuff coming out of my ear or the wax stick melting. Not too much wax came out though, so as glad as I am that we tried it I probably won’t do it again. When the ear thingy was done I had a 60 minute Swedish massage. Kristen had a 30 minute massage and a banana hair treatment.

When we were done at the spa we decided to drive around the island a little more so we drove back into town. When we realized it was just a bunch of places we looked at all day, we drove south past our hotel into previously uncharted vacation territory. There were a lot of houses and housing developments being built. Kristen navigated the golf cart through the dirt road’s giant muddy potholes and large rocks quite well. She’s a golf cart superstar. We made it back to the condo at 4:30 safely and with tires no flatter than they were this morning. Curtis and Nick had just gotten back from diving the Blue Hole.

For dinner we went to the Blue Water Grill inside the Sunset Hotel, right across from the airstrip. Kristen drove the cart with me sitting shotgun while the boys occupied themselves in the backseat, turning around only to complain about the bumps. Dinner was real great for everyone… I thought it was ok. Not bad by any means. I had angel hair pasta with a variety of seafoods under a tomato sauce. The seafood was good, but the pasta itself wasn’t too flavorful, and the sauce was very watery. For dessert I ordered a coconut tart with banana infused whipped cream. I’d never had a tart before, the flavor was good, but the consistency of the coconut was kind of mushy.

After dinner we went back into town to shop at the Salty Dog again. They had the biggest selection of t-shirts of all the stores we stopped in earlier, and we knew the boys would want to get some. After purchasing our treasures we went to the Island Market to stock up on snacks and bug spray for our full day excursion tomorrow… the Lamania Jungle River Adventure!!