​Belize was an early port day (8:00am) so we again woke up this morning to room service with continental breakfast. We had the usual: bagels, yogurt, and bananas. Today's excursion in Belize is cave tubing and ziplining! The runner-up that we almost selected but opted to see Mayan ruins in Cozumel instead was the Lamanai Mayan Ruins & River Boat Safari. Our cruise friends

The tender process off of the ship was much easier today – we received stickers today for colors that were based off of when we got to the theatre for the excursion meetup . Since we were in the first half, we were able to get off the ship first. We learned that the tenders aren't from the ship but they contract through the port city. Because of all of the shallow water and coral, we had to park the ship 6-8 miles away. It took 20-25 minutes to tender to Belize City. It was a nice, windy ride in with a fresh breeze from the sea. I thought it was sort of funny, in one of the comedy shows we saw near the end of the cruise, the comedian joked at what a scary place some parts of Belize were and to think of why it was that the ship anchored so far away from land – lol.

We had a 1 hour and 15 minute-ish bus ride from the port to the site where we were cave tubing. Few observations: we saw old / peak Belize with beautiful mahogany buildings. We saw old colonial buildings. Cities first hospital (maybe turned theatre) burned down 3 weeks ago. They are very proud – we are in the country of Belize, Belize district, Belize city. 14 sq mi city. The cave tubing tour is the most popular tour in the country . Only English speaking country in the entire region (Central America) rest Spanish. Caribbean lifestyle still prevalent; "Ya mon". Tallest building (tower, 450 ft) in the entire building isn't very tall. They call Casino the contribution center (lol). They are 2-3 feet below sea level so not any sandy beaches but rock walls/beaches. Kings park area houses range from $250-500k. Belize holds the second (in conjunction with Honduras) largest reef so that's why the ship has to park so far away. A big hurricane came through in 1961 and most citizens moved from Belize city to Belmont (new capital) about 52 more miles inland. Belize city is still the commercial capital. 200 schools in the country, grade school is strictly mandatory for all children. Belize has the second highest literacy rate in Central America (Costa Rica #1). Each school has its own color code, adults are supposed to take students playing hooky back to the right school. Canada helps Belize with the treatment of their water so the fresh water is completely clean . No American fast food restaurants in the country. Mostly local vendors in stalls/huts with "real tacos". We will be traveling about halfway through the country with today's tour (country is about 67 miles wide). Passed through a cemetery featured in Guinness book of world records because only cemetery with highway passing through it. Even the median has tombstones. The tombs are partly above the ground because the ground isn't 6 feet deep without hitting water. Maybe 2 ft above 4 ft below. Tombs facing west so sunrise is on the forehead. Beds are facing east to rise with the sun.

We passed through mangrove ecosystem. The most common mangrove is red but there is black and white also. There are 62 species of snake with "only" 9 are venomous. Boa constrictor is also here. 2 species of crocodile - salt water and fresh water. Few species of manatee. Barracuda present. There are 5 species of wildcat. Tiger the largest cat, jaguar (present here) 2nd largest. Jaguar has strongest teeth though . They are avid swimmers and climbers. Belize also has pumas (aka black jaguars), ocelots, jaguarondi (mongoose like cat), and mongrel (which is apparently a jaguar that's no bigger than a house cat).

We passed through the swamp ecosystem next. On a particular type of tree nicknamed “fire tree" or “flame tree”, the leaves literally fall off and causes fire needed to refresh the ecosystem. Wildfires are common. Wildfires needed for some seeds to germinate. We saw these neat Mayan mountains that look like a person laying down - "the sleeping giant of Belize." 2 species of pine trees found here. 600 species of birds including Harpy Eagle. We also saw a swan on the way. We saw our fair share of poor villages, probably not as poor as Isla Roatan though. Still a lot of trash on side of roads, though. Gas just under $4-5 per gallon; they have oil but no refineries. They have to export the oil and then import from Venezuela, but then there’s a 10-12% sales tax on imports. Tourism is largest industry . They've reclaimed land from the sea just for the buses on the drive on the outskirts of town and not congested through city just for us tourists.

Mayan’s oldest culture is found here, allegedly. 29 (of 31?) of the Mayan dialects survived. Bordered by Mexico to the north, Guatemala to the south and west, "cruise ships" to the east. Apparently, they share some of the same African dialect and holidays as well. Hattiville was a new city formed from the survivors of hurricane Hatti. About 10-12 feet above sea level here.

One of the other tours you can do is a jungle tour where you pass through savanna, light jungle, and super dense jungle and rivers and swamps. Several different ecosystems pretty neat.

Passed through an orange grove. Export Valencia oranges to minute maid and Tropicana. Their oranges aren't actually orange believe it or not so you won't see them for sale at supermarkets . They're yellow kind of like a grapefruit. The inside is orange so they export the concentrate.

They have security checkpoints that check license and registration which is attached to the front of windshields. Also, on the way there was a tree literally in middle of highway going to cave tubing place. The road swerves around it.

Jaguar Park is where our excursions starts. No fence separating us from jaguars running in the wild – lovely. Because of the volume of people that come for the cave tubing, the jaguars don’t come out (only at night).

Cave tubing was in fresh water today, yay! The salt water was starting to burn and irritate our skin. There are Mayan ruins in the caves and it's a national preservation park. The depth in the cave ranges from 2-3 feet to 30-50 ft+. 8 people per group max. Some of our tour guides spoke Mayan. Guatemala is 87% pure blood Mayan.

For the zip line portion, the first platform is 200 feet above . Second platform is 700 ft long. Afterwards, we can buy “chicken chicken” (as opposed to bamboo chicken aka iguanas). Also, for sale were Mayan tacos (yum). The tour guide mentioned the apparently famous "Panty ripper" drink. We sampled this later and it's served as a drink but it's more of a shot like substance - super strong, oof.

The website for our cave tour is: Cavetubing.bz

Once we arrived at the park, we had to take "a ghetto bus" aka normal school bus up and down a steep 20 or so degree incline. Pretty much just like a roller coaster ride. Thank god the brakes worked!

After grabbing a tube and a hard hat, we waded across the "refreshingly cool" water with our tubes to initially cross the cave water. The water was FREEZING. We crossed right where we were going to end. Our route makes a giant loop, and the cave water actually runs to the ocean. That's why there's sometimes bull sharks in there . We walked through jungle rainforest for 20-30 minutes. Our guide was slow but that was really nice, actually. He educated us thoroughly on the rainforest and the culture and he has a true passion for it.

Trees: Prickly yellow - sap and tree good medicinal for tooth/cavity pain. Poisonwood; the sap is black and extremely poisonous like poison oak or ivy x 100. When coming in contact, your skin blisters and cracks almost immediately. You'll have these symptoms for a few weeks. Applewood is the natural treatment. Red malimba, from the Applewood tree, is the medicinal treatment. It needs to be picked fresh though, so it can't be stored for the hospitals. Huge Cohun palm trees with the huge leaves that create enormous shade. These are the most common tree. Mahogany trees. Saber tree (national tree, huge).

We saw a Pineapple plant (not naturally found, hard to get rid of bc no one preys on plant just fruit since the leaves are so sharp) . I didn’t realize, but a pineapple plan only produces 1 pineapple every 9-12 months We saw a big fat orange male iguana – they are only orange during mating season otherwise green/gray. He was found in a Balsam tree. We saw a snapping turtle. We passed several huge ant hills (they bite) and termite nest.

Right as we all just finished drying off from our jungle walk, back in the water again it is. After getting in the water, he tied all of our tubes together and he guided us into the cave. In the cave, it was beautiful. It reminded us a lot of our Rio Secreto excursion in Cancun except instead of exploring by foot we are in tubes. We love the mystery, intrigue, and natural and supernatural forces found inside of places like these. With our headlamps, we saw tons of quartz. We saw a few stalactites (only in some spots near the beginning, otherwise the rising water washes away the mineral). The cave is being formed every second of every day with the water sculpting itself through the porous limestone . We witnessed this first hand with cave rocks falling down around us (I guess that’s why we have hardhats). We saw several bat holes; the bat holes get bigger as the bats’ feces accelerates the degradation of the limestone ceiling. There are 8+ miles of cave on either side of our path that we can't see fully - an underground cave system. It's great for diving. Our instructor Walter did free dives here and has spoken to the depth of the cave from his experience and how it definitely reaches upwards of 60 feet. Not sure how free diving works or how someone can hold their breath or keep eyes open that long. He has seen some bull sharks previously at the deepest parts of the caves. No sharks for us, but we did see some small fish in the waters. The fresh water dripping from the ceiling is considered a blessing if it lands on you - virgin water. There was one part of the cave system that had completely caved in that let in outside light and created some beautiful natural waterfalls. The water was much warmer here since it was bringing in water from outside (and at this part it was kind of isolated from the main currents of the cave system). We can see the walls, but at some spots it goes down 50-60+ feet and extends beneath the sides of the cave. There were huge logs sometimes jammed in the ceiling of the cave that are supposed to remind us how rough the waters can get. Limestone of course is made iron oxide, cooper, and calcium colors and we could see all of the colors individually . Lot of clay at bottom of cave too. The inside of the cave portion of the excursions was about an hour, and it really flew by! The cave tubing is something that you could probably do a dozen times and have a different experience each time – definitely recommended.

After we made it out of the cave after an hour or so, our tour guide lead us to the zip lining portion of the excursion. The zip lining was super cool and I'm glad we did it, but our Coba zip lining was cooler :). It was set up sort of like an assembly line. After watching a brief safety demonstration in the jungle, we strapped in and put on some breaking gloves (just in case, we shouldn't need since the lines weren't very wet). The first line was the longest; we zip lined right over the cave waterfalls we saw. Pretty fricken sweet.

After zip lining, we had a few minutes before our bus was set to go. We each ordered 3 of the aforementioned Mayan tacos - so delicious! Almost on par with our Washington DC tacos with the same, floury, delicious consistency of the tortilla.

The Queen still on all currency to remember they were a British colony. After arriving back in our port, we wandered through the shops and settled on 2 Belikin beers (local Belizean beer). Super light and refreshing for a 4.8% beer.

There was another 6 .5 mile (20 minute or so windy tender ride, 24mph; I measured) back to our ship. A nice easy ride home. We talked to the front desk and the issues we had last time with the tenders not coming were because the locals decided to take the tender to the other boat because it was docking too.

For our extended lunch, we each had a freshly-made mozzarella ciabatta and roast peppers sandwich from the deli. It was served like a panini and was served warm – delicious. It was actually recommended to us by Elizabeth.

Afterwards, we took a well-deserved nap. There was no watching us leave the port today as we were already so far away from land!

After awaking from our nap, I decided to go to the excursion desk to ask about the disembarking process and why it was so flawed the other day in Grand Cayman. Additionally, at brunch before Roatan we sat next to a lady who mentioned that we had gone to a slightly different spot with the stingrays (we were supposed to be snorkeling with the stingrays, not seeing the stingrays and snorkeling separately) . Because of that, we were able to get a 50% refund from Carnival for our shore excursion that day. That came to a $83.76 refund - freakin score! That definitely helped with our Carnival drink purchases and the added gratuity. I wasn't too terribly disappointed in the itinerary switch either as from my understanding stingrays prefer shallower, sandy water so we would presumably have seen less coral and sea creatures. We learned from other excursions that the best places for diving or snorkeling are rocky as rocky = coral. Still, I'm glad we mentioned something. The lady at the desk from Carnival was very nice and was very apologetic. She also said she was able to get off the ship herself, but only on the days where we dock (as she's the one managing the tender ships). Not a bad gig!

We had almost all of our 2 bottles of wine left so we figured we should start drinking it. Before dinner, we wandered the ship with our wine, drinking it while watching us sail through the middle nowhere in the Caribbean with the sun setting on us.

Dinner time; snuck up on us quick. On the way to dinner, we took some fancy photos holding frames that were quite adorable if I have to say so myself. For entree: Seafood penne pasta dish with scallops, clams, shrimp, calamari, and salmon. Yum, scallops! Appetizer: flat jacks (cracker crisps things-Viktor joked that this was alligator when we ordered!) for us, I had snails as well (escargot) and fried shrimp . Alicia had pumpkin soup. We also fried some of our friends' marinated chicken tenders. See, by this time we learned to order more than one appetizer if something entices us. Always delicious and definitely dangerous for our waistlines. For dessert: popcorn de creme parfait that was described by Viktor as sort of like crème brûlée (which is my favorite). Alicia had cheesecake.

Tonight's entertainment for Eric's magic and comedy show. He brought several audience members up and performed tricks and messed with them. He had an old lady up there at one point, a young man, and a child. This was a family friendly show but there were definitely a lot of innuendos that made it hilarious for everyone.

This ended around 11:00pm. Sleep time- last port day tomorrow! Today's activity wasn't as strenuous as the previous days but we were still exhausted. I didn't have my Apple Watch with me on the cave tubing or our 0.5-1.0mi walk through the jungle, but we still accumulated 13k steps and 47 flights of stairs climbed.

Tonight’s animal was a dog.

The cave tubing excursion link is found here: https://www.carnival.com/shore-excursions/belize/belize-cave-tubing-and-zip-line-509075