Our first time in Belize but it won't be our last!! Adventure Life (Erin and Jessica) set up an amazing trip and wow! If you have any thought to going, these ladies will hook you up with a great experience!! I loved it so much my sister and I just might take our husbands back to visit!! maybe...or we go back ourselves!! lol. Day 1 Have you ever gotten off an airplane and felt like you were in a sauna? Well coming from the desert and landing in Belize City at 84 degrees, it felt like a sauna to me. My first adventure in Belize was to catch a flight to Ambergris Caye. Lucky for me they asked if I wanted to go on a flight one hour earlier, so yay! Off to the beach I go! Our hotel was Ramon’s Village, which was right on the beach and probably a five-minute walk from the airport. However I waited for my shuttle, which was a pretty zippy golf cart and one very friendly driver, Joe. I settled into my room and went exploring to the neighborhood grocery store. The grocery store was located back towards the airport and 30 seconds beyond it. Quite a huge trek for anyone on vacation ☺!! Ok maybe not. But I bought a few staples which I would recommend to anybody: bottled water, cookies, chips to make your sister happy, as well as diet coke, any mixer that goes well with rum. Ramon’s was awesome! When I arrived I explained I was waiting for my sister, whose flight arrived a few hours later. Boy was she surprised when they greeted her by name -both Joe with his zippy golf cart as well as the front desk staff! The hotel has property right on the beach as well as across the street (behind a retaining wall for privacy and sound reduction) which was called the Belizean Princess. The Belizean Princess rooms are backed up to the small airport and crowded in a group of bungalow stilled tiny beach houses. Not as relaxing or as open as Ramon’s Village itself, The dive shop is attached to the hotel, the entire place is in a great location, and it has very attentive employees all across the board. Ramon’s landscaping makes you feel as if you are in the jungle; it is very clean everywhere including the beachfront. Every morning we saw the staff raking seaweed and whatever else that got washed up. They had fresh, dry, clean cushions for the chairs that got put out every morning very early (and I mean very early) so any early morning loungers could be comfy. We may have been in paradise but I will take my bed over a beach chair lounge at 5am any day!! Speaking of paradise, what better to lounge in that a hammock? Well, that might be one reason I got out of bed early…to take my chance at getting a hammock before they filled up. Ahhh…such important decisions to make right? I have to say we had to try the hammocks before the beach chairs. Once I figured out how to get in, what the best positioning was, and how not to fall out, both hammock and chair were equally relaxing! On that note however, the chairs were not as entertaining to others guests who were watching my sister and I attempt the hammocks! I managed to find a wedding band or mans ring. I am blogging about it in case someone reads this and realizes their ring was lost next to a beach chair at the hotel. Our room had air conditioning and a nice balcony with chairs, but we did not spend too much time in it to really enjoy it. We enjoyed the dive shop, the pool, the restaurant, the deck, and the beach. Vacation our style is to see it all, do it all, sleep on the flight home! Hee hee. Day 2 Speaking of the dive shop, these guys are TOP NOTCH! Ramon’s is one of two dive shops that has a “big” boat (40 feet for going beyond the barrier reef into the big waves.) If you plan on diving, especially if you get motion sick from waves, I highly recommend taking the bigger boats. These people were extremely professional, polite, and attentive. I took a scuba refresher course so I could go with my sister on some of the deeper dives. My checkout dive was at the Hol Chan Marine Reserve (or as I will call it) the New York City of snorkeling and scuba places. There were so many people and other dive boats it was crazy, but it was totally worth it! Luis was my dive instructor and stayed with me the whole time while my sister went off with some other divers. Luis found critters I would have never seen by myself such as a lobster, a spider crab, a stingray, and some little worm like thing (I have no idea what was it was called.) I must say I really like this diving stuff, I can stay down way longer then holding my own breath☺! Hol Chan is at the southern edge of Ambergris Caye and not far to go to get to it. For you worriers, it is on the inside of the reef…waves were not bad at all. No monster surfing waves like in Point Break (movie). Day 3 So now I am loving this scuba diving stuff. I want more!! I love being able to relax, move slowly and look all around without needing to be up, down, up, down, up, …ok I’m getting out of breath just thinking about it. We booked a 3 tank dive to THE AMAZING Blue Hole, Turneffe Reef and to the “Aquarium”. If you love this kind of thing, it is WELL WORTH venturing away from the Caye’s near the mainland area and head out beyond the Barrier Reef to the other Atols. The Blue Hole is a mystery, how it got there and why it is. But it is so cool that a HUGE hole sinks 140 plus feet down and has a bulbous like bottom with stalagmites and nurse sharks hanging out. The entire dive is only about 25 minutes but it is a “bucket list” to do for sure. My sister went as far as deep as 130 feet into the Blue Hole. While she was diving in to the belly of his deep Blue Hole, I paddled around on top, visiting the local fish and a few Terns that were hanging out on the Elephant Coral above water. I popped my head up from snorkeling, saw the terns and all I could think of was “mine, mine, mine..” (A little Finding Nemo reference for the clueless souls out there) and so while my sister, Karen, dove into the abyss with the sharks, I was seeing colorful little creatures flitting around the beautiful coral. Win-Win situation in my book.