Since Suya Tours is located south of town as well as all the tourists joining this tour with us, they couldn't come all the way to Grand Caribe's dock to pick us up, but they did agree to pick us up at the SunBreeze Hotel dock in San Pedro at 7 am. That's my usual waking up time, so this would be an early morning!
In order to get there on time, we had to catch the first southbound Coastal Xpress water taxi of the day at 6:25 am, then hike a short ways down the beach to the Sunbreeze dock. I set the alarm for 5:25, but we both woke up quite a bit before that. We had gotten our packs ready the night before so didn't have to do too much in the morning other than dress and take Paisley out. We also ate our usual cereal with fruit and nuts, since I'd overlooked the fact that we'd be served breakfast on the tour. Still, I am glad I ate because boat rides on an empty stomach aren't always too wise, and we weren't served breakfast until we'd been on the boat over the open waters for quite some time.
The sun was just rising as we caught the water taxi; unfortunately, the cloud cover made for a less than stellar sunrise. There was a nice pink glow on the horizon, though, and the clouds soon burned off.
The boat ride continued southwest across the open water at a high speed. It was somewhat choppy, making for a bit of a rough ride. I was glad for the food in my belly as I might have gotten a bit green otherwise.
We started out heading slowly up the river towards Lamanai. This was a beautiful part of the tour with many interesting sights along the way. We got to see some great wildlife. I'm saving the bird photos from this entire trip for a separate blog entry, as this is going to be long enough as it is, but we did get to see some wonderful birds on this trip, including several for our life lists.
To be continued in Part 2...