today is a great day in the history of the sparkler household.

after one thousand, one hundred and thirty three days of looking, we finally found a place in the united states that sells one barrel rum from belize (the rum we mixed with coke and drank like fish on our honeymoon).

after about three years of trying just about every liquor store in virginia, maryland, d.c. and texas, we tried yet another store (spec’s) near the lady sparkler’s parents.

not only did that have bottles of one barrel (they had 10!) but someone was in not 10 minutes earlier asking for a couple bottles themselves.

now we just have to buy lots of bottles, slowly, each in a different disguise — it’ll drive up demand and make them think they need to keep it in stock to meet the popular demand.

Our last excursion in Belize was to a cave system about an two-hours outside of Chaa Creek. Called Actun Tunichil Muknak (or A.T.M. for short), the caves were used by the Mayans as a place of worship.

After driving out towards the A.T.M., we parked the van and hiked 45 minutes to the mouth of the caves. Once there, we hopped into the river flowing out of the cave, and swam inside. After about 100 yards, the water was shallow enough to stand up. After hiking through the water for about half a kilometer, we climbed out of the river and spent an hour walking through the formations which 2,000 years earlier were a Mayan burial ground.

The whole day was spectacular, not just the journey, but the formations and especially the Mayan artifacts left untouched for over two millennia.

Tomorrow we are going on our last excursion, so today we did … well, pretty much everything left on our list in Chaa Creek.

We got up early and spent the morning birding with a local naturalist. After breakfast, we went mountain biking through the nature reserve next door. After lunch, we got a tour of the reserve’s butterfly farm. Finally, after dinner, we hiked the resort’s River Trail (which, up to this point, had been closed due to high water levels caused by the wet season).

Our first major excursion in the Cayo District of Belize was to Caracol, which is the largest known Mayan site in Belize. The reserve contains the largest building in Belize (the 2,000 year old “Sky Palace”) and dozens upon dozens of excavated ruins from the Mayan Classic period.

One monument here records a military victory over the army of Tikal — a larger Mayan city across the border in Guatemala — in 562CE, where Caracol’s Lord Water is shown to have captured and sacrificed Tikal’s Double Bird.

Part of the excitement was having AK-47 toting members of the Belize Defence Forces escort us from the Mountain Pine Ridge ranger station to the ruins. Apparently, about two years ago, a group of Guatemalan bandits (angry about the aforementioned defeat of Tikal, I’m sure…) crossed the border and held up a couple of tour buses. While the bandits were caught long ago (and presumably taken out back and shot) the Belizean authorities aren’t taking any chances with their tourist revenue.

The ruins themselves were just amazing, and we were two of 30 people in the park that day, so had the place largely to ourselves. Simply amazing.

As with the first day in Placencia, we spent the first day in Chaa Creek wandering around the area. The place we are staying is surrounded by a 350-acre nature preserve, and we spent the morning hiking around the resort’s seven miles of trails.

The morning of day six saw a surprisingly easy three-hour transfer from Placencia southern Belize to just outside of San Ignacio in northwestern part of the country. Outside of the 27km of dirt roads to get from the Turtle Inn to the main highway, the trip was remarkably easy.

Once in Chaa Creek, we spent the afternoon walking around the grounds of The Lodge at Chaa Creek which is where we will be spending the last half of our honeymoon.

Our second major excursion in Belize was up the Monkey River, which is one of the larger rivers in southern Belize. We took a boat up the river and saw all sorts of wildlife (Howler Monkeys, Egrets, Ospreys, Crocodiles, ect.) and had lunch in Monkey River Town on the way back through.

back at the turtle inn, after making our way through the vast majority of the happy hour special list, we finally asked the bartender what the locals drink when they don’t want bad fruity resort drinks.

he introduced us to the rum and coke, with belize’s own one barrel rum.

the rum is made with sugar cane, which gives it a bit of a vanilla taste — which makes it a lot less like drinking alcohol, and a lot more like drinking vanilla cokes.

mmmmm.

Today was our first day of rain in Belize (and it would ultimate turn out to be our last), but as we were planning on spending the day at the resort, it didn’t turn out to slow us down a bit. We realized today that we haven’t taken a single picture of our accommodations, so we spent part of the day wandering around snapping pictures of where we stayed.

we spent the bulk of the afternoon at the pool bar, which just so happened had happy hour specials that made the drinks actually mostly affordable.

Our first major outing was to Laughing Bird Caye, a National Park in Belize (where, coincidentally, The Nature Conservancy has a few marine projects). Belize is home to the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, and we spent the day snorkeling through the western fringes of it.

We spent our first full day in Belize doing what all honeymooners should, lounging around the resort … which we referred to more elegantly as “getting our bearings.” After dinner, we went out and took some pictures of the resort at night.

it turns out pretty much everyone here is on their honeymoon — which would have been funnier if it we hadn’t had the “oh my god, we got married on saturday too! what a coincidence” conversation twelve times before we figured it out.

honeymoon! we flew out of Washington’s National Airport at early, early in the morning, and arrived in Belize CIty by mid-morning.

Once in-country, we hoped on a little puddle-jumper of a plane for the trip down to Placencia. WIthin minutes of landing, we were at the Turtle Inn, a Balinese-style report put together by Francis Ford Coppola after Placencia was ravaged by Hurricane Iris in 2001.

We spent the afternoon biking into the villiage, and hanging around the pool. Beautiful.