Belize: Island Edition

After saying our goodbyes to Ron, Al and the jungle we were finally ready to begin our journey to the  caye. All it took was a car, plane (very small plane...), and boat ride to get us all to Pelican Beach Resort (which I highly recommend) on South Water Caye. All of the traveling was well worth it because the island was beyond amazing. Itis the island that is in your daydreams  or the one that the doctor asks you to picture while giving you a shot 

Yup...Thats it! Pretty spectacular. 

As soon as we put our stuff down we rented snorkeling gear and swam out to the coral reef.  It was my first time snorkeling so I was a little nervous but I soon discovered it was as easy as everyone said it would be! I then spent the afternoon exploring/photographing the island and our resort.

Our cottage

View looking out from our cottage

The cottage's dock

Osprey that hung out around the cottage

Each day we would travel by boat to explore different reefs. We saw different types of sting rays, barracudas, and tons of fish (my favorite were the parrotfish). We even spent one night snorkeling which sounds more scary then it was. We saw lobster, crab, squid, bioluminescent plankton, and an octopus in the night waters!

If I wasn't snorkeling or swimming most of my time was spent reading, tanning and "hammocking". There were hammocks everywhere- on the beach, on our porch and hidden among trees. I think most afternoons I fell asleep in the hammock having only read two pages in my book. It was perfect.

Blurry-but captures our days perfectly

The last night on the island we ate a delicious dinner of fish and coconut rice. We spent the rest of the night listening to a huge storm roll in and loosing all of our money playing poker. Unfortunately, the storm got worse through the night so we were forced to leave the island while there was a break in weather. We traveled back to the mainland and then on to the airport. 

It was sad to say goodbye to such a beautiful vacation. I was so lucky that Luke's family decided to bring me along (THANK YOU SO MUCH!). We all said our goodbyes at the airport and headed back to separate states for the summer. Luke and I flew to Portland to finish packing up his apartment and then drove back to Chicago for the summer. I'll let y'all know how our drive back to Chicago was in my next blog post!