Carol, Lori, and Rob

Our next visitors were a trio of traveling friends from Colorado. They had spent the first part of their vacation in San Pedro, and flew into the Municipal airport on a 9:30AM flight. I drove to Belize City with our friend Ian, who is living in San Ignacio until December, and who had spent the afternoon and evening before with us, getting out of the city. Ian and I spotted Lori, Carol, and Rob immediately when they got off the little Tropic Air flight, and we got their bags loaded in the back of the little blue truck and we all piled in and were on our way. Our first stop was a bank to get more cash, and after some quick calculations about how much money they needed and a couple of stops at a couple of different banks, we were on our way to the Zoo.

Lori, Rob, and Carol under the banana tree in front of the guest cabin.

We had an absolutely wonderful time at the Zoo. Put together five people who love animals, add a chance meeting with the Zoo director who gave us a private tour complete with feeding some of the animals that many visitors never even see, add a bit of adventure – holding a boa and petting a jaguar! – and the normally hour and a half tour turned into a three and a half hour adventure. Ian had been to the Zoo on his own before, and he said it was much more fun to visit with a group and actually take the time to watch some of the animals. We discovered that Rob is some sort of animal whisperer; he would stand and look into a cage to try to see the animals, and they would get up from where ever they were and come to the edge of the cage to look at him. It was amazing!

By the time we were done at the Zoo, we were all starving, so we made our normal stop at Cheers for lunch. After a leisurely lunch, we headed to Jaguar Paw to zip line. We arrived there at 2:45, fifteen minutes before they officially start their last zips of the day, but because nobody had been in the park since noon, all the employees had been sent home a half hour early and the park was closed. The good thing about this stop was that the park management gave me their phone number, so if we’re running close to the edge again, we can call and make sure somebody is still there before we drive the six miles off the Western Highway, especially during the slow season when some attractions are occasionally closed due to a lack of tourists.

Although they were mildly disappointed, we made the best of it and headed directly into San Ignacio from Jaguar Paw, and arrived at Cahal Pech in time for Rob, Carol, Lori, and Ian to tour the museum and the site. They left the site when it closed at 5:30, so we drove down the hill and into San Ignacio and did a little bit of gift shopping before heading to dinner at Erva’s where we had the usual magnificent service of Germo, and were joined by Shawn, an archeologist friend we met this summer when he was working with Becky at Caves Branch. We then did a little more shopping from the street vendors who are out at night in San Ignacio before heading back to the farm. We really made the most of this transfer day!

The next day Lori, Carol, and Rob toured ATM. We went through a small period of chaos because we weren’t sure if the cave was closed due to some rain we’d been having, and didn’t know until Selmo and Carlos met them in Georgeville if they were actually going to make it to the cave. But, lucky for everybody, the cave was open, so they had a great day in the Maya underworld.

They were only with us for two nights, so they were heading back to Belize City to go home the next morning. But, their flight wasn’t until mid-afternoon, so they had some time to hang around here in the morning. We had just started digging in the ground under the palapa to level the floor for the kitchen, so we showed Rob, Carol, and Lori how we were finding pieces of pottery. They grabbed knives and trowels and started digging, and we all found pieces of pots, which they thought was pretty cool – and we were glad to find someone else so fascinated by digging up thousand year old garbage!