Quick Belize Itinerary

Our current plan for Belize is to fly into Belize City on Friday, spend the weekend in Belize City and then hop on a boat to Caye Caulker. I'd like to spend a week decompressing and snorkeling. Then we will move west on to San Ignacio. There is a ton of stuff to see and do so we will probably spend a week or so in that area. From San Ignacio, its not far to the Guatemala border...That will be another post.

Moving!

This morning, Rob his wonderful friends moved out all of the big heavy furniture (besides the bed). With the couch out of the living room, our cozy, fun to hang out in, house is no more. With less than 2 weeks to go, we are in really good shape. There are still a ton of loose ends that will keep us busy but I'm feeling really organizes. I would say that I am 70% in travel mode now. The job will be wrapping up this week and the house is pretty much taken care of. Phew....this is real...really really real.

Welcome to our blog

Welcome to our blog! I've made a few posts over the last few months but have been waiting to publicize it until it gets closer to the trip and we have more interesting stuff to post. Since so many people have been asking....I'm going to go ahead and start letting people know today.

January 8...that is the day that we begin our trip so this blog will not be too interesting until then.

Check out the map at the top of the blog. I will keep up with this map adding details and correcting it as we go. You may notice that at the moment there is no detail at all in the map between March (Honduras) and July (Panama). That is the part of the trip that I am the most excited about...we have no itinerary at all...no place to be at any specific time. My planning has been isolated to the first few months of the trip when people have said that they will meet up with us.

We will start moving out of our house next weekend. I think that once we are out of the house and officially homeless, the blog posts should get more interesting.

New Camera

Some people bring big fancy cameras on an adventure like this. We are really hard on our gear. We drop things and they break...its inevitable. We honeymooned in Costa Rica in the rainy season. Haha, people said "It'll just rain for a few hours every day and the rest of the time it will be beautiful." Well, the week we were there it was torrential rain almost the entire time. We missed so many photo ops because we were afraid to take the camera out of the hotel rooms.

This trip will be different. We have 2 waterproof/shockproof cameras that should be able to survive hanging out with us.

We've had the Olympus for awhile and it is great under water but out of the water, the picture quality leaves a lot to be desired. Today we received a wonderful and generous Hanukkah gift of the new Canon D10 waterproof/shockproof camera. I've always loved the photos that I've taken with Canon's in the past so I have high hopes for this one.

Thanks Omi!

Getting closer...

We've gotten some great gear for the trip. I cant wait to find out if this stuff will come in handy or if it will be a burden. Here are some of the items that we will be traveling with:

Mosquito net - we dont want malaria or dengue fever so this will be important

sleep sheets (sleeping bag liners) - these will be nice to line a bed with if the sheets are questionable. They should also be nice in cold planes and buses.

Pacsafe safe - this is a cool bag with metal mesh running through it. It cant be cut with a knife and it can be locked to a fixture like a sink or door hinge. We can stash extra cash and passports in it when we leave a hotel. I've read great things about this online.

REI backpacks (Venus for me and Mars for Rob) - I'm a little worried that my pack will be too big and once we really start packing I may go get a smaller one. I'm worried that our packs will be too big to hold on our laps on a chicken bus leaving them open to theft.

Bought our tickets

I bought our plane tickets!!!! 1 way tickets to Belize City. We leave Friday, January 8 at 7am and will be in Belize at 3pm via an nice little stop in Miami.

It looks like along with seeing my parents in February, we may have some friends meet us in the Bay Islands in March. For those of you who arent as versed in Central American geography, thats the Bay Islands off the coast of Belize....Roatan and Utila. These are the islands that sparked this entire trip and we still plan on spending a nice bit of time there.

Oh, there are so many loose ends to tie up and its so cold and yucky outside. Its to hard to motivate to do anything. Thank god for lists. They are my best non-human friend at work and had better help me make sure to have all of our t's crossed and i's dotted.

First Official Post

This is it. There is no turning back now. The house has been rented out and notice has been put in at work. Rob and I will be leaving in early January for our big trip around Central America. Today we reached the 2 biggest milestones and I'm allowing myself to just enjoy it.

As this trip gets closer, my emotions have been wavering between excited, anxious and terrified. Of course there is a strong sense of sadness about Frannie but today with the cold she is spunky and I'm not going to think about that today on this momentous day.

Yay, Yay, Yay. 6 months of non-stop travel! I cant think of anything more exciting besides 6 months of not going to work. Sorry everyone, I dont want to gloat. I wish everyone could come with us...which brings me to another item that I am so excited about...tonight we decided that my parents will come meet us in Antigua, Guatemala. They are the best travelers I know and taught me that there is a whole world out there that is different and the same and worth seeing. The guidebook showed a cafe called the Bagel Barn and I cant wait to eat bagels in Guatemala with my parents.

Mostly, welcome to our blog.