Last Day

This morning Alison hitched a ride on a turtle all the way to the much talked about Jaguar night club and I finally broke the curse of the manatee.

The Curse of the Manatees

Dear o' great and all powerful manatee god,

Yesterday I might have made some mistakes and offended you by suggesting I would ride on one of your own, or training you to leap to freedom over my head like the lovable whale in Free Willy, and quite honestly I had also written about putting you into a headlock, until you submitted and became my new pet but I thought that might be a tad over the line and deleted it.  Well friends, it was all wrong... each and every bit of it and any offense I played upon these precious and lively manatees was avenged ten fold upon me with a massive manatee curse of epic proportions.

I started the morning by trying to cook what looked like waffle mix in a waffle maker, I believe now it was some sort of coffee cream... the staff workers here were not pleased.  A bit later on the boat I went ahead and fell from the edge into the main cabin onto several people that cushioned my horrific looking fall.  The seas were angry that day my friends, and ole Jefferson's stomach along with the curse of the manatee required multiple vomits.. in the water... in snorkeling gear... with people swimming by.  But o' great mantee god you were meriful and allowed them to be secret pukes that no one noticed and I just wanted to say I really appreciated that.

In the end, I think we learned a lot about each other today, mainly I won't ever make fun of you and in turn please call off this horrible curse you placed upon my lowly human body.  Ohh I also got sunburnt.

Thanks, your new servent

jeff

Dear o' great and all powerful manatee god,

Yesterday I might have made some mistakes and offended wn

Ready to call it a day!

Today has not been my favorite day of vacation. I knew the day was not going to go well after Jeff and I poured creamer into the waffle iron instead of the waffle mix. This lead to some guy and his young daughter making fun of the Aggies (I had an A&M shirt on) not being smart enough to do anything and telling his daughter she will not be going to school there. THEN, I was yelled at by the wait staff in Spanish for making a mess. Ugh...I wanted to help clean it up, but they kept speaking Spanish and wanted nothing to do w/ me...so I decided to come back to the room and shower to get ready for our manatee adventure. THEN, the water would not turn on in our room....for a good 20 minutes. It finally came on, but it wasn't very warm and didn't have a lot of pressure. Only good note: I didn't ruin the waffle maker. It seemed to work fine the rest of the morning.

After the chaos of the AM, I thought for sure the full-day cruise would be great. Don't get me wrong our sailboat was amazing and the crew was super nice, but I don't think I'm a big fan of sailing or of snorkeling. BUT, the snorkeling we did do was very good. We also got to explore another Caye: Caye Caulker...so that was neat.

Additional bad news: No manatees. Our guide searched for at least 30 minutes while we were snorkeling, but he couldn't find them. Bummer.

However, the night ended well with a nice hot shower and a chance to blow-dry my hair! Then, we had what we would consider our best meal so far at a place called Fido's (overlooking the beach). We had a calamari appetizer, lobster (for me) and bacon wrapped shrimp (for Jeff). We topped it off w/ a slice of Key Lime Pie. All good!!

Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow. I really want to snorkel w/ some real sea creatures (turtles, sting rays, or nurse sharks), but I'm not sure I'm ready for another boating adventure....stay tuned...

Random observations from Ambergris Caye

• About 50% of people think I'm Belizian... until they hear my awesome tex-mex gringo spanish and I see them throw up in their mouths out of how badly I'm mangling their language. My bad!


• Everyone speeds around the island on golf carts, which to me seems hard to take yourself seriously in one of those, maybe we need this in the USA to avoid road rage? I haven't seeen any golf carts that are souped up with spinning rims or a wing yet though.


• Shoes are totally over rated here... no one wears them, which is fine but FYI there are dogs and there umm remnants around, if you know what I mean.


• Plantains with every meal... I think people here just can't think of anything else to do with them.


• Our vacation sleep schedule has evolved to nursing home lights out hours, 9:30 PM - 5:30 AM - No Jello though.


• I spent half of yesterday singing that damn "HUNNNNNGRYYY EYEEEES" song from Dirty Dancing, damn you Patrick Swayze.  Shout out to Justin Haworth cause I'm pretty sure I've seen him play his leg like a guitar to this one.

Tomorrow I will ride a manatee...

Are you familiar with the endangered species, manatees? You know the ones the environmentalists want to save? Well tomorrow we are going to save some, and by save I mean snorkel with, evidently you can do that sort of thing here without any problems. Actually it seems like you can do pretty much anything here without any problems, you better belize it!  Anyway my goal tomorrow is to one up everyone, seize the moment and actually ride one of these bad boys or at the very least I'm hoping I can coax one to jump over me like that killer whale in the Free Willy movie.  Alison just told me this is impossible, but I've assured her anything is possible... if you just put your mind (and in this case the manatees peanut sized brain) to it.

Anyway... if you haven't guessed, we are on the island now - far far away from the roach motel and various friends we have made along the way.  Here are some more Tikal pics for now.

Toucan Sam

Look, it's my brother Chris!

Tikal and Farewell to Five Sisters

Yesterday, we had a 12 hour adventure to Tikal, Guatemala (more stamps on the new passport...YES!). Now, I'm not a big history buff, but you can't not be impressed by the work the Mayans did on these structures dating from 600BC-900AD. It's really amazing. I've put some pictures here, but you really have to see it yourself to appreciate it.

Stairs we climbed to the top of one of the ruins.

RUINS!

Three notes about our trip yesterday:

1. Jeff claims that the view from the top of one  of the ruins can be seen in the Star Wars movie w/ the Ewoks in it. I think he's crazy. I've seen these Star Wars movies and don't remember that scene. I do however remember the Ewoks films, which Jeff says don't exist. Looks like I'll be sneaking those films on to his Netflix list.


2. The Mayans were really good at math (among other things), so I really appreciated the good job our tour guide did explaining their base 20 number system. He drew diagrams and everything! Good job Hugo, Jr!


3. We saw lots of wildlife in the JUNGLE! Spider monkeys and toucans to name a few. Pics to come later.

Finally, I wanted to post some pictures of our cabana and the view that we've been enjoying the last few days. It's been a nice stay here in the jungle, but I'm definitely excited to head to the city/beach for a little change of pace.

Cute lil BAR and serpent power SSSSSSSSSSS!

After my disastrous encounter/one night stand minus 23 hours and 59 minutes with the preying mantis the other day, my macho status was completely up in the air, strangely just like the 143 moths that seem to be circling our cabin in the air at all times. I know you are probably going to think I freaked out again, which is a pretty damn good guess, but that's in your face because I bought my self this double headed Mayan serpent carved in slate (not to be confused with my friend Slade – who has successfully made the switch from country music performer to emo cover band eye line wearing keytar player). Anyway this bad boy is known for giving people strength and “othirity” (says so – carved in the back of it) so I'm serving notice to all these buggy bastards. However, one way I've learned NOT to serve notice is desperately spraying OFF brand bug repellent in the air only seems to make them angry and beat their lil moth wings even faster as they dive bomb your face. Don't try that – unless it's that new OFF skintastic scent or something, hope you guys at the office like that smell, it's really growing on me and exudes the kind of confidence and professionalism any decent office demands . Also I would like it noted that as I typed this message I just forcibly removed a roach from Alison's toothbrush case, no joke – I can't even make this stuff up. I'm not sure why that is funny to me... it just is. Maybe just cause I will probably cry when I look what's in mine.

Anyway about roaches, today brings a new story about the latest addition to our little family here, we have named it/he/she by the name of BAR, not as in I go the bar and drink Belikin Stout, which is good, but as in Big ASSSSS Roach! We found this giant fellow on the floor waving his cute lil antler? type apparati at us, as if saying I'm here to totally and completely freak you out with my giant palm sized body, but BAR didn't know that I'm rolling with the serpents now SSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS and I had to eject him as well. You know... show my orthirity!

Random Questions:

1. Shelee – What is BAR's scientific name?
   


2. Chris - How much would I have to pay you to eat this... again we are talking 4 or 5 bites easily?
   

Also before I go, today we went to Tikal in Guatemala with the Mayan double shot tandem of Hugo and Hugo Jr. and this giant ass Bull almost rammed our flimsy tourist van. It was awesome. Tikal was cool and you might have had an interesting day but you don't have a thing on me until you are dodging fist sized roaches and angry Guatemalan Brahma Bulls. Serpententor out!!! SSSSSSSSSSSSS

Bulls on Parade

Is that a praying mantis in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

I can't think of a much better way to wake up in the morning than hearing distant birds chirping, the splashing of a nearby waterfall, and a clean mountain breeze flowing through our little cabin.   The lodge is amazing (we haven't eloped Andrea :)) and Belize in general seems really awesome.  Speaking of awesome, after I got up, I was putting on my bathing suit and I felt a little something move down there, if you know what I mean.  Naturally, being a full blooded 32 year old American man I screamed like a 12 year old girl with a skinned knee and flapped my arms around wildly. Very macho, I know. This sounds totally made up but I assure you after tearing my trunks off I felt something scurry down my leg and let me tell you, if you were wondering, seeing much less feeling anything scurry isn't pleasant.  Little did I know I had disturbed a new friend, a large preying mantis insect that had taken up residence in mis pantalones over night.  No joke. Good thing my brother Chris and his wife Miki are having a boy soon, this could have been a possible drastic end to the Noble bloodline. So I've heard some wild stories in my day but seriously you haven't lived until you've gone toe to toe with a preying mantis... in your swimsuit... in a secluded mountain paradise, wait do preying mantis' even have toes, I realize they do have large pincher type claws.... Yikes.

Creature from Jeff's pants

Today's adventures

Hi everyone!

We've enjoyed a relaxing day here in Belize. We took a tour of some of the attractions of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest (where we are staying). We went to the 1000 foot falls (which is actually 1600 ft) and got to take some pics. It was very peaceful. Then, we headed to the Rio Frio cave. It was a big open cave w/ a sandy beach on the inside! We even got to be escorted by the Belizean defense force in case any banditos came to get us!! Yikes! Then, we went on to the Rio On pools where we got to cool off from the heat and play in the waterfalls.

After we had some lunch back at the lodge we took the long hike down to the Five Sisters waterfalls here at the lodge. That's where I took a nice long nap in a hammock while Jeff worked on a blog post.

Here are some pics from today:

Angry Airport Jeff

7/21/09:

I'm not sure what it is about airports but I think something about them could be responsible for  temporarily disabling peoples' brains.... and my manners.  Giant families without a clue,  random lady complaining about taking off her shoes on the yucky floor, granny with her 17 gold chains (yes – you have to take those off), slow moving people, people walking the against the flow of traffic, loud talkers on their cellphones that I can hear over the music on my headphones (I can tell you are important), people trying to board in group 1 even though their boarding pass says group 6, and people that generally are too close and running into me.  I think I found  a solution though, what if you could just step into a giant human sized hamster wheel or zorb type thing and just roll over everything?  Step into your airport ball and start rolling folks!

Noble family fun fact: My brother's hamster once escaped and we couldn't find it for about a year, we eventually found it later – it had survived on an old bag of halloween candy that my brother had tucked away in his closet when our parent's made us clean our rooms (aka throw everything in the closet) and was like double the size it had been.

We made it!!

From 7/21/09:

We made it! After a couple of flights and a bumpy 3-hour drive, we arrived at the Five Sisters Lodge around 6:15 PM local time. After getting the tour of the property and checking out our sweet cabana, we had dinner. Now, I'm sitting in my bed surrounded by a mosquito net to keep the few bugs away that we accidentally let in while opening/closing the door. Dinner was good...chips and salsa appetizer followed by Mayan Lasagna and Mango Pie. There are a total of 6 guests at the lodge tonight, so it's very pleasant. Our view from our cabana is amazing! We have a little screened in porch and we look right out onto the waterfalls. We can hear the sound of falls right now.

Internet here is apparently slow...hopefully we'll get a chance to post each day (we're typing as we go along and may post a few at a time). Pics may have to wait until we're back in the city (on Friday).

I'm tired and we already have plans for tomorrow, so I better get to bed. More to come soon.

Never a bad time for a vacation.

If you are like most people you wait to accomplish a huge monumental goal and then reward yourself with a nice vacation as some sort of special treat for a job well done.  Well that's old news and if you believe that you should be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you.  Shame. Shame.  I mean, wait no - that's cool if you are into that sort of thing, but Alison and I don't follow that method... you see we like to just go ahead and leave during the actual goal, you know, to spice things up and make things interesting, the details, important deadlines & documents are totally over rated.  Bah humbug is what I say to that nonsense, and nonsense in general, as I'm a very serious person.

Take for example, right now I'm pretty sure this is about as busy as I have ever been and I should really be focusing on the following list:

• Building all the CSS & browser compatibility testing for the next generation software at my job at NetQoS


• Technical editing two "For Dummies" web design/programming books


• Writing a chapter in another "For Dummies" web design book


• Working on not one, but two client websites

Meanwhile Alison, she's in the middle of finishing up some sort of crazy math research (I believe she's invented a new number - Tweleven but you will have to ask her) while going though a small task, buying her first house!  See pics!

Half my bag is packed, I've burned my to-do list, let's roll.

Prepping For Belize

Our trip is only a few days away... here is where we will be staying:

Sisters Lodge - http://www.fivesisterslodge.com/

Blue Tang Inn - http://www.bluetanginn.com/

Everything below this line is from our Mexico or Alaska trips.