Belize

Hopkins village

We visited this guy's wood shop, and he showed us all around. He's engraving the bowl we bought from him.

Dave getting ready to eat some of "nature's tic-tacs:" termites. I politely declined to try them.

We hiked up to this waterfall and got to swim around in the pool.

After the hike. We were so sweaty, rain-soaked and muddy, but it was one of the highlights of the trip.

Dave and I just got back from a relaxing vacation to Belize. It's one of our favorite places to visit, and this was our fourth time there. Our previous visits were to Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast, but this time we decided to try someplace new, so we went to Hopkins. We stayed at Hamanasi Resort, and decided it's probably our favorite place we've been. It was very remote and undeveloped. We dove on Saturday, and on our boat ride back to the resort we came across 5 manatees and got to snorkel with them. In all of our diving and snorkeling experiences, it was probably the coolest thing I've seen. On Monday we went on a hike/climb to a cool waterfall. It was a challenging, but very fun climb. The other days we relaxed at the resort and rode our bikes into the village.

The culture in the area is Garifuna, more Creole than Hispanic. Drumming is a major part of the culture, so one day we visited the drumming center in the village and got our own private concert.