Tom, Kate, Cara, Dustin

Our next guests were two couples, Tom & Kate and Dustin & Cara, from San Francisco and Oregon. They had all lived in San Francisco until fairly recently, and all four have been friends for a long time. They had originally inquired about staying for a longer period of time, but since we were already booked and only had two nights available, we worked with them to pick tours so that they could make the most of their time here.


The first day they were here Jake picked them up at 8AM to go to Caracol. Tom and Dustin are both engineers, so seeing the Maya’s engineering marvel of Caracol was high on their list of what they wanted to see while in Belize. They liked Caracol, but the gods’ payback for them being engineers viewing the Maya’s handiwork was that they then had to use their engineering knowledge, not to mention their muscles, to get the Kia van back on the road after it slipped off the muddy road and into a ditch on the way to Rio Frio Cave. Jake was a little frazzled with this turn of events, but the four guests just considered it part of the adventure, and it gave them a good story for the dinner table that night. Even with the mishap, they had time to stop and see the Rio On Pools, so Tom, Kate, Cara, and Dustin felt that they got more than their money’s worth on the trip.

The next day we said an early goodbye to them as Tom took them to Georgeville to meet Gonzo for their ATM tour. Because we couldn’t accommodate them for another night, we had arranged with Gonzo to deliver them to Crystal Paradise Resort after the tour, where they were spending the rest of their time in Cayo, while Tom delivered their luggage to Crystal Paradise on his way to Benque to pick up our next guests. We heard from them when they returned home, and were happy to hear that this plan worked flawlessly.

This group was the first to enjoy our new kitchen and dining room, and, as we’ve found with everybody who has since seen it, they were happy not only with the food, but with the ambiance. They appreciated things like being able to use our WiFi to surf the internet by kerosene lamp, checking in with family and friends in more civilized parts of the world who probably weren’t running off of batteries and lighting with kerosene.