Hopkins Weekend

Welcome to Hopkins!
In the wee morning hours of Friday we headed to Belmopan (the capital of Belize), with a few other volunteers to get our Visas extended. All went smoothly and we headed back to the bus station in hopes of getting closer to Hopkins or Placencia.
As we sat in the bus station waiting for a bus to come, a man approached us and asked us where we were headed. We said Dagringa, so, his bus went to Dagringa. We were a little sketched out by this at first, but it ended up all well and good! From Dagringa we went to Hopkins, which is a small town of about 1000 on the ocean.
After walking through the entire town and out the other side we were feeling tired and sick of trying to find a place to stay. On our last straw, we walked down the driveway of Jeanie's Jungle by the Sea Resort. A truck pulled over and the people (Jeanie and John) offered us their only room left - a fancy one - at half the normal cost, since we were obviously budget travellers. Since we now know that North American accommodations cater best to our needs, we took it.
The first night our cabin was set back a little from the water, but still had a view, had two double beds and hot water! Big treat! It also had a big, great balcony. Which we promptly relaxed on with a book. (That's right - Lee has started to read!)

The second night there (since we were too lazy to continue on to Placencia) we stayed in this cute little cabin, still within Jeanie's Jungle Resort. It was way cheaper ($20US), pretty small, but still had hot water. It also had a way better ocean view. Saturday we took out a kayak and played around. We saw jellyfish-like things - they were rounder -, a school of blue & yellow fish jumped up all around the kayak and we saw some huge, hungry birds. Oh also, we saw a couple pretty big, orange starfish.
Apparently, you can also find manatees and dolphins in the area. We'll have to go back for that. Actually, our plan is to go back and do a day trip in the kayak. You can go down to Sittee River and there's crocs there - yikes!
Here's a shot of Nancy reading by the ocean shortly before sunset. We were the only people on the beach - very peaceful!


This is a shot of the view from the reading chairs.
We also went to a drumming thing. About 5 or 6 guys played various drums and sang Garifuna music. The boy standing is playing tortoise shells - they had a great sound! Lee practiced the beat for hours after this and wants to get some shells for himself.


We also noticed how much garbage was by the shore. There was the usual, washed in by the ocean stuff - tons of shoes and bottles - but then there's the oh-so pretty dump. This is behind one person's shop.. it just didn't seem like something you would find easily back home. The shore was not taken care of, except for private beaches like in front of hotels.
And small side note - this is Gabby, our gecko. She hangs out at our place all the time... pretty noisy little thing. :-)
Hope all is well with everyone,