Now, there are always people who *say* they want to see pictures from the honeymoon, but aren’t prepared for the full 526 photo onslaught. For those, we have prepared something special: the 72 picture abridged Belize.
If you are looking for the full annotated story (the hard core wedding enthusiasts, I presume) check out our more expansive “honeymoon” posts for a walk through our 10 amazing days in Belize.
We woke up this morning at 1 a.m. to the sounds of glass shattering.
Never a fun thing to wake up to, we stumbled out of bed and found that the door to our medicine cabinet had collapsed into the middle of the bathroom floor. The cabinet had glass on both sides of the door, so we got a two-for-one discount on the 7-years of bad luck offer.
About a year ago, in our previous place, we woke up to a horrifically loud crash … I woke up with such a fright that I landed (literally) on top of the lady sparkler. Our bedroom closet shelving had collapsed. To this day, we don’t know if I was trying to protect her or if I was running away and just got stuck on top of her.
Anyway, all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put that vanity back together again, and to make matters worse the collapsing medicine cabinet ruined the sink on its short trip south.
i guess it’s time for a trip to home depot.
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Now that the wedding is over, we have to figure out what to do with tashaandevan.com … do we hold it in perpetuity as a last memento of the glory days of our engagement?
Sitting on the domain just seems unfair to the legions of Evanses and Tashas sure to follow (especially as evanandtasha.com appears to taken as well).
Instead, we have decided to take merge my web site (evancparker.com) with the engagement site, to form a brand-spanking new site called theparkerfamily.org. I had bought that domain for my parents for a Christmas almost five years ago (hi mom!) but sadly, nothing came of it (sorry mom!) and my mom ended up with a computer instead.
Anyway, if you want to keep track of the Sparklers from this point forward, you have come to the right place. You might want to grab our RSS Feed 
(if you are into that sort of thing) or sign-up to be notified by email when we post something new.
p.s. If you are wondering about the picture, for the last decade — dating back to when my vanity web site was unclevanya.com — my site has featured the same picture of my face on Karl Marx’ body that you see here. The new addition is the lady sparkler’s face gracing the body of Catherine the Great, who was arguably the most powerful female ruler of the last half millenium (it seemed fitting).
UPDATE: Karl Marx and Catherine the Great are growing to be a little too obscure, even for us. I just swapped them out for The Great Gonzo (needs no explanation) and Abby Cadabby, the newish girly-girl-fairy-princess Muppet on Sesame Street (which seems to resonate the lady sparkler all over the place). I was also thinking about Shaggy and Velma — which would be funny beyond all possible understanding — so maybe that will come next.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
![[Photo]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/1786132626_b3c10f7276_m.jpg)
![[Entrance Road to Chaa Creek (Last Photograph in Belize), The Lodge at Chaa Creek, San Ignacio, Belize ]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/1648118281_40155af29d.jpg)
Honeymoon: The Abridged Belize