Belize Outtakes

Just thought I'd share a few more photos that didn't make it into the regular Belize recap posts. We'll start it off with our gorgeous mugs:

... and the Queen's gorgeous mug.

behind the waterfall

island transportation on Ambergris Caye

I forgot to include the banana farms on my Flora and Fauna post. Belize produces a TON of bananas, and we stopped by one of the banana plantations on our way to Cockscomb Basin one day.

These are banana plants, not banana trees. So there's your first lesson in bananas. Those blue bags are covered in insecticide to protect the bananas as they grow on the bunch.

Here is an uncovered bunch. That large purple thing on the end is the flower. And that's all I can remember of our banana tutorial... Oh, except that we don't get Belizean bananas in the U.S. because a U.K. company called Fife exports all of Belize's bananas to the U.K. However, Chiquita is in talks with Fife about some kind of merger, so you may soon see Belizean bananas in your local grocery store.

Also from our Cockscomb Basin tour, here's Doyle demonstrating the strength of an ant. He has a soldier ant pinched between his fingers (which he acquired by stomping on top of a HUGE ant hill until the soldier ants began streaming out... at which point he told us to "get away fast!"). When Doyle picked up the soldier ant, it opened its pincers up, waiting to bite whatever threat it was facing. Doyle then put a stick in its pincers, and it latched on. So Doyle is not holding that stick up. A soldier ant is.

Moral of the story:  Don't mess with ants. Especially big jungle ants.

We also learned on our tour that the term jungle refers to a forest that is dense. We were definitely in a jungle:

Speaking of forests, here's our friend Forest, the cockatoo, again.

And this is when he flew down and landed on Ted. Ted is covering his ears because the bartender warned us that Forest is kind of an a-hole and likes to bite.

Last but not least, I can't believe I forgot to post our departure pictures! We were scheduled to drive 3.5 hours from Placencia to the airport in Belize City on our last day, but that is a loooong drive, and we would have had to leave very early in the morning.

And when we got to Placencia, we discovered that there is a little airport there, and plane tickets were relatively cheap to get back to Belize City.

It was totally worth forking over the extra cash to get to Belize's main airport in a matter of minutes vs. hours, even if Ted didn't exactly fit in the tiny plane seat.

Buckle up! Ready for takeoff!

It's pretty much just up to the drivers on the road to notice when a plane is taking off and stop to wait.  Seems like a good enough system to me. After all, there is a sign on the road that says, "Give planes the right of way."

OK, I think that does it! I think I've shared every part of our Spring Break vacation. Posting all these photos and writing about our trip makes me want to go back to Belize. I would highly recommend it if you're looking for something a little off the beaten path!