Bacalar Chico part 2

Here are some pictures that were requested of the antique workout system.

Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve

One of the days in Belize we ventured through a canal that splits Belize from Mexico.  We went through a maze of Mangroves, ran into a few manatees, and ended up at an old Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve site.  It was a small island in what seemed to be the middle of no where.   Obviously the only way there was by boat, and yet they had things on the island that you wouldn't expect.  There were wild cats and dogs that just roamed the island.  They were friendly, but not loyal whatsoever.  From what I remember, the island was used mainly for surveying and collecting data.  It was a perfect place for that because there was no civilization anywhere nearby.  The atmosphere was very natural and untouched by man. 

There were a few buildings on the island.  One of them was a small visitor/information center.  There was a sign in book for visitors to sign.  It showed how few people got the opportunity to visit the island.  I saw a few signatures from the US, but they really only got a few hundred visitors a year.  The rest of the visitor center just had so interesting artwork, museum type preserved artifacts, information posters, and some models/maps.  There was kind of a Mayan theme to the whole place, representing a bit of the history and culture of the area. 

It was really interesting to see how simple people lived here.  They had work out stations outside, but it was nothing like the bowflex's that we have in the states.  One of the setups was a bench, made by hand with 3 planks of wood and some nails, and a big barbel made out of a metal pole with hardened concrete on both ends.  Those two things and a spotter, and they have their very own free weight bench press. 
As always, here are some pictures.

New Pages

Hey all,
I don't have much to say today about Belize.  I just want to give a shout-out to Nerd Spiffy for making me an awesome banner, seen above.  I also wanted to let you know that I added two new pages to my blog.
Questions and Answers
Feedback
These pages are for you guys to ask me questions and make suggestions, so that I can make this blog better.  Please feel free to go to those pages and comment anything relevant that is on your mind. 

Belize Part 6

I know it's been awhile, I had a busy week.  I want to get back into the Belize Blogs, I think I have one or two more before my whole week will have been covered. The first this I want to tell you guys about are these strange holes.  One of the days in Belize we took a long boat trip up the coast, and went down this canal that separates Mexico and Belize.  Both sides were all mangroves trees. The canal was a maze too me, turns everywhere, dead ends.  I had no idea where we were.

 Anyways, we ended up in this little pool completely surrounded by a mangrove forest, and the sea water was only about 8 feet deep, so we could see the bottom.  We started seeing these crater looking things on the sea floor. We asked the boat captain about them, and couldn't really make out what he was saying, but I think they are called Blue Holes.  Basically they are these craters that go really deep, and are interconnected with other craters underwater.  We would see fish swim into the darkness in these craters and never come back.  It was the perfect combination of awesome and scary, cause we had no idea what was down there.  The boat captain told us that some people will swim down into them, follow and tunnel and try to pop-up out of a different crater somewhere.

That sounded like the stupidest thing you could do to me.  You could get stuck in those tunnels and your dead.  Some of these craters were huge, but some we just big enough to swim into. Some were close enough to one and another so that people thought about try to swim through the tunnels, but it was just too dark and we were concerned about what was hiding in those tunnels.  I don't know how no one in my group got any pictures of these holes, but I found this one on google.  Its pretty much 100% exactly what we saw and experienced.  As you can see, there is the one hole in the main view of the picture, but if you look close you can see another one in the upper right corner.  So I ask you, would you swim into the first dark hole and hop to pop out of the other one?

More Pictures

Don't have a bunch of stuff to write about today, but I gathered a handful of high resolution pictures for you guys.  I think there are way too many for me to upload to this blog, so there is a feed in the right sidebar to my photobucket album.  Here are a few to show you the quality.

Sorry

I didn't really get around to making a blog in the past day. I started up another blog and kind of forgot about this one. I have also been kinda busy.  My weekend starts on Thursday around noon so I have been out to clubs all night the past few days and sleeping all day.  I think I slept through Valentines day, I'm not entirely sure what today is or when Valentines day is/was.  Doesn't really matter though, livin' single.  Anyways, just know that I wasn't ignoring you guys or being lazy about blogging my trip, I was just preoccupied with $1 vodka-redbulls.  I'll get back on top of normal blogs when the weekend is over.  Maybe a short one with some pictures later tonight. 

Peace and Happy Valentines day.

Belize Part 5

Lets talk about drugs.  I have never been one to do drugs, but I am not against them.  I wasn't in Belize for more than 20 minutes until the guy unloading my luggage from a van tried to sell me pot.  I respectfully declined, but he was persistent.  I ended up giving him $4BZE to go away, because I didn't want to local police to get suspicious.  They love throwing tourists in jail.

Later in the week when we were in San Pedro, I was approached multiple times and offered pot.  I felt like they were asking me so often because I fit their stereotype.  Was it because I was American and they knew I had money, or do I just look like a pothead?

When we got back to our cabin the next day I went to the bar that's on the water.  These locals walked out completely wasted, saw my iPhone and tried to sell me pot.  Honestly, since when does having an iPhone mean you smoke?  It was at like 1pm in broad daylight at a bar.  They didn't even pull me aside.  When I declined, they tried to give me their cell #'s.  I told them I didn't have service in Belize, so they told me how to get to their house if I change my mind. "Walk down the beach for about an hour and its the beat up house with conch shells in front of it."  This guy must be half retarded.  There are conch shells everywhere, in front of all the houses.  All the houses are beat up, its a 3rd world country.  There are no roads, and no road signs.  As a tourist, I'm not going to walk in an unknown arbitrary direction for an hour.

When we were on our way back to the airport, the guy getting my luggage off the boat asked me if I wanted any pot to go home with.  WTF?  I got a little humor in being told to walk a for an hour for pot, but to tell me to buy pot before I get on a plane for the US?  These guys are terrible salesmen.

When I was thinking about what Belize would be like prior to the trip, I never thought that I would be targeted for the sale of Marijuana so many times.  Oh well, no harm done and its a learning experience.
Oh and here are some pix completely irrelevant to this post but relevant to the overall blog:

The Creep

I wasn't too impressed with The Lonely Island's new song.  I am however now fully creep'd out by nicki minja.

Black Ops Map Pack

I'm going to stray from the normal Belizian blog and rant about CoD for a moment.  Let me start off by saying that the new map pack is all about Stadium.  Everyone loves it, and everyone votes for it every time.  I like the map, but I don't like it every game.  If you're a baller like me, you run CoD and often get choppen gunners in shit.  I am having terrible luck using them on this map because the stadium blocks a good portion of the map when you are flying over it, and everyone fucking hides inside.  Otherwise, the map is decent, its just voted for too often. 
Berlin wall.  Fuck this map. I hate it so much.  I can't stand having to run through the center of the map and getting shit on, or having to run all the way around the map, to try and get to the other side.  The middle passage is just a fucking grenade fest and I can't stand it.  This map is also bringing back the campers who sit on the second story of a building and snipe out the window.  Pussies.
Kowloon.  I actually like this map.  It doesn't get played too often, and controlling the center building is relatively easy.  The ziplines were fun for awhile because idiots go on them just for fun and you get a free kill out of it, now they are rarely used at all.  I like art and design of this map too.  It actually captures the feeling of sneaking through a city from building to building with all the side entrances, alleys and windows. Attack dogs rape on this map too. Most of the map is fairly close quarters so randoms don't have time to shoot you dog down.
Discovery.  I haven't played this map too many times yet, so I have nothing to complain about.  It seems like more of a 2 sided objective type of map than a deathmatch map though.  The game of deathmatch I had on it wasn't very fun.
I know a ton of you guys must be CoD players.  What are your thoughts on the maps?

Belize Part 4

After a few hours in San Pedro went visited the Hol Chan Marine Reserve office and got a quick tour. From there we went and snorkeled in the reserve itself.  This area has a very high flow of tourists and the species that inhabit the region are accustomed to it. They aren't shy at all and they will often get very close in hope for food.  I remember as soon as I jumped off the boat there was a grouper almost as big as myself just chillen under the boat, 3 feet away from me.  I wanted to go after him but we were in a protected area and I didn't want to be fined, or lose a limb.  We swam in a channel that was close to 30 feet deep, the deepest we had been in all week by far.  We didn't seen any huge fish other than a few groupers and rays, but there were more schools of fish than in other places.  There were also caves in the reef that we were able to swim through if you could free dive the 20 feet down.  On the way back to the boat we ran into a turtle grazing on the seagrasses.  He didn't give a fuck.  He swam right up to us, looked at us, and kept eating like a retarded cow in a barn.

Without any break, we hoped back onto the boat and jetted over to shark ray alley.
Shark ray alley was another part of the reserve, but with slightly less traffic due to the shark aspect.  I was all over that though.  The water was fairly shallow, 7-10 feet in most places, but that didn't stop the sharks.  We mostly saw nurse sharks, they were everywhere.  Anywhere from 3-7 feet.  I grab onto a few because they were so timid, they didn't bite they just scurried off.  We saw some pretty big rays as well.  Some were missing tails and had bites taken out of them, it kind of made me second think grabbing onto the sharks.  So instead I grabbed onto a stingray.  He almost got me with his tail.  We chased nurse shark to nurse shark, and ended up a few hundred yards away from the boat in some deeper water.  All of the sudden I saw people fleeing towards the boat. I swam in the direction they were swimming from and there was a bull shark.  A FUCKING BULL SHARK.  WTF.  I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR THAT SHIT.  It was close to 10 feet long, it was fatter than Chris Farley.  I froze for a second and then swam closer because I wanted a picture really bad.  I'm a dumbass.  The bull was must have been full because he swam right by me and off into the depths.  At that point the boat captain had heard about the bull shark and called us in.  
As promised, here are some pictures:

That's all for tonight.  Thanks for reading.

No blog tonight.

too tired. ill post a long one 2maro, expect pix

Prank calls from Sarah Palin

Here are a few videos from last night.  Very entertaining evening.

Belize Part 3

A few days into the trip we ran low on water and headed to the city.  We took the boat back to San Pedro.  It was very ghetto compared to the US.  The buildings where in terrible shape, the roads were barely cobblestone, trash everywhere.  It didn't seem like a very safe place to be alone or at night.  No one had cars either.  A few people drove around on golf carts, otherwise you were on a rusty bike or walking.  I walked around in a small group and explored some of the local shops. The prices were very different from what I expected.  Alcohol was very very cheap, and food was expensive.  Well, none local food.  They had stuff we would see in the US, like coke, candy, pringles, but all of that was expensive. Alcohol and local food was extremely cheap.

Most of the restaurants tried to lure us in by offering free rum drinks.  The local cigar shop lured us in by offering free shots.  The internet cafe was the closest thing to civilization I had seen in almost a week. There were street signs sometimes to help you get around, but they weren't really helpful. 

If you asked for directions, the local would point in a direction and tell you to walk for an arbitrary amount of time. It was best to just wander until you found what you wanted.  I'll start a new blog to talk about shark ray alley.