Dangriga

On our way from Placencia to Belize City we stopped in a town called Dangriga to attend church. It was in such a cute building, there is obviously a lot of pride taken in its upkeep! Sacrament meeting was conducted by one of the missionaries. It was a super good service and we were very impressed by the missionaries and the translation into English that took place. It was inspiring and uplifting to see these good people attend church; some having traveled quite the distances, some attending by themselves, and a young girl, whose parents aren't members, having brought her younger siblings to church. Such faith and devotion!

 All throughout Belize there are orchards. We saw a lot of banana, mango, coconut, papaya, and citrus trees. As well as some random ones.

 We purchased some mangoes from a few girls standing on the side of the road. We gave them each a "tip" (which was a small small amount) and they had grins ear to ear as we drove off. We stopped off at a school to enjoy those, as well as some chicken tamales we picked up. The tamales were delicious, but due to our geographical location, contained chicken bones, which threw me for a loop when I bit into one. I tossed the bones and savored the corn meal covering, seasonings, a leftover chicken pieces. Eric was pretty much in love with the corn meal part, and wasn't turned off by the chicken bones, since he had experienced that multiple times before.

 I went around the corner of the school and spotted this little-ish guy. Micah and Eric went and took its picture. It then ran away and, according to them, had fully extensible legs and could haul.

 I was impressed to see that lots of the little kids' graffiti on the school walls said "I love Jesus". The posts that held up the porch roof had dark rings around one general height, where we assumed the kids would hold onto when spinning themselves around the posts. I can't imagine going to school in the wet heat with no a/c. Eek!

 We stopped off at Blue Hole (not the "Blue Hole" out in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Belize), and walked down to the water to cool off and check out what it was all about. It was gorgeous! The toilets, on the other hand, not so gorgeous. The seats were set so far back on a wood bench that you felt like a little kid all over again, with the wood coming so far out that your knees can't bend and your feet are a couple feet off the floor. It was a great reminder of childhood.

 On the road we spotted this truck chock FULL of people, who looked like they'd just got done swimming. I liked how family oriented everyone seemed to be.

 Once in Belize City we had a little bit before we needed to turn in our rental car and catch the water taxi to our next destination. We found some roadside stands selling lunch. Micah got BBQ chicken, his usual choice. Eric and I went to a different stand and got what was dubbed Belize's "typical lunch". It contained stewed meat, a rice and bean mix with spices and peppers, and potato salad (containing much sweeter and all together different seasonings than American potato salad). It was different, but tasty.

We so enjoyed the A/C in the car. Ivan enjoyed driving around unconfined. I'll admit that I liked it quite a bit too because I could easily feed him, change him, and rock him to sleep. No need to pull over or strain my back trying to feed him while he is still in his car seat to avoid pulling over.

I will get the blogs done about this trip someday. There is just so much I want to remember, though sadly I'm already forgetting SO many details, so I'm going to keep pounding them out whenever I have time. And then I can get caught up on my day to day blogging that I've been putting off.