Sunday, April 4, 2010

Angie & Pat

Angie and Pat arrived in Belize from Chicago and started their vacation right away as Tom picked them up at the airport, stopped for lunch at Cheers, and then made a beeline to the zipline at Jaguar Paw. If people want to zip line or cave tube while they stay with us, we always encourage them to do these activities on their way to or from the coast since Jaguar Paw is about 50 miles from here, and the cost of the transfer makes these activities way more expensive than they need to be. The transfer is already being paid for with the fee from Belize City, and we just have our guests pay for parking at Jaguar Paw, and then pay their own entry and guide fees for whatever activities they want to do. Angie and Pat told us that they really appreciated this, since they talked to other tourists in the area who told them that their hotels didn’t even offer the option.

The next morning, they went on the ATM tour with Gonzo. Yes, we’ve had a very adventurous series of guests here this spring, and we’ve kept Gonzo visiting the cave on a regular basis! Pat and Angie liked it as much as everybody else, although we found that arranging tours during the weeks surrounding Easter is as difficult as it is on the weeks around Christmas. Because a school group was going to the cave that afternoon, the tour guides were expected to take their guests into the cave in the morning and early afternoon, and then the guests were supposed to get another ride back to town or their hotels while the tour guides went in the cave with the students. It was a good plan, but it didn’t quite work that way since signals got crossed, the vans got full, and Angie and Pat didn’t get on the bus to head out of ATM – so they waited and waited and waited, and finally got a ride. However, Tom expected them to be back in San Ignacio around 4PM, and because of the crossed lines, they didn’t get back until almost 7:30 – a long wait for both them and Tom, who was going crazy because he didn’t know where they were, and couldn’t even contact Gonzo on his cell phone because Gonzo was in the cave where he doesn’t get cell reception. But all worked out in the end, and everybody eventually got to where they were supposed to be in one piece.

The next morning we had more changed plans, because we were just saddling the horses for a ride to Big Rock, and it started to rain. Tom and I are happy to ride in the rain, but we know that’s not everybody’s idea of fun, so he checked with Pat and Angie to see what they wanted to do. They decided that there were probably better ways to spend their morning than sitting in a wet saddle, so they took some time to relax, visited Barton Creek Cave, and then after lunch took Tinkerbell into the Mountain Pine Ridge to see the sights. They successfully saw Big Rock and Five Sisters Falls, but with the misty weather weren’t able to see 1000 Foot Falls from the lookout at the park.

The next morning they were on the road early to get to Tikal, a trip they really enjoyed, although with the increased traffic over the holiday weeks, they were delayed getting across the border to get back to Belize. However, like on the ATM day, they finally made it across all in one piece, and got back to the farm in time for dinner with our new arrivals, Jill and Chad.

They had to leave to head out to the cayes the next morning, but they left here early enough that they were able to make a stop at the Belize Zoo and have an encounter with Junior Buddy the Jaguar, completing their end-to-end adventure at Moonracer Farm!

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