I'm running up a rather storied history with cave tubing in Belize, so I thought I'd share my experi

I'm running up a rather storied history hotel reservations paris with cave tubing in Belize, so I thought I'd share my experiences ... fun stuff, let me tell you. My first cave tubing story is from March of 2005, with my second occuring September 2006. ___________ March 2005 - The excitement First of all, I was on the Carnival Glory, which is of course a very large ship. Given the number of people who want to actually go to shore and the fact that this is a tender hotel reservations paris port, debarkation is definately a waiting game. I was told by the shore excursion desk that I would be allowed out on a tender with an early group (instead of waiting for a tender hotel reservations paris ticket). I showed up to the meeting place an hour and a half before we were to meet ashore for the tour and ended up waiting for over an hour in the Amber Palace until there was a smaller tour going ashore that left room for "independents." Now, I guess I could have rushed line at Deck 0 and tried my luck at getting on a tender, but I really hate line jumpers. Anyway .... Once ashore, we (a friend and I) headed to Marvin's booth to pay for our tour. First of all, evidently the telephone lines were down we found out, meaning that we had to pay with cash instead of credit as I had planned. Considering we still owed Marvin about $100, this pretty much cleared out our pockets (were trying to travel "light" hotel reservations paris moneywise). Next, there was a large number of people who booked with Wet 'n Wild this day ... 6 off of the Glory and over 20 (I think) off of RCI. My friend and I ended up in a small van, driven by Tom, that was packed hotel reservations paris with about 13 people. The rest of the group was loaded onto a bus. During the ~1 hour drive to the tubing site, Tom gave out a lot of interesting information about Belize, Belize City, and the Mayans. hotel reservations paris He set up his tour as an exploration of the religion of the Mayans, which added a bit of a mythological bent to the tubing itself. We finally arrive and wait for the rest of the group that was loaded into a bus. Evidently the bus lost a transmission on the way, so the large group was split up again into two different busses who passed the broken bus on the way (this is second hand info about the other bus, just FYI). Anyway Tom went ahead and took four of us off onto the tour since the first part of the large group that arrived wanted to wait for the rest of the members of their party. About the tubing itself ... Tom really seemed to his way around the cave and kept up his Mayan religion theme for the entirety of the tubing and was determined to show us the nine dark lords of the underworld represented within the caves. Like I said, interesting. At one point in our hike to the river, we took a different branch and ended up ahead of some of the larger groups ahead of us. We then backpaddled a little bit once in the river to go into the cave that we had cut around. In this cave, we actually got out of our tube, and Tom took us up into one of the caves where he showed us some various crystals and ledges where he said that people had found remnants of the Mayan civilization, such as pottery. The river was definately not what I would call fast. There were usually two combinations of current and depth... shallow hotel reservations paris and quick or deeper and very slow. Now I'll admit that I'm a large man, which means that when the river got shallow, I was really scraping my butt on the rocks, even when I was trying to pull it out of the water as advised. When the river was deep, I found myself constantly having to paddle to keep up the pace of the tour ... which was very tiring. Even with all the paddling, our small group was constantly being passes by very large groups who seemed to be trying to move through the caves as quickly as possible. Many a time, Tom had the four of us over along one wall showing us rock formations while the big groups scurried past. Now, since there were so many people in the caves, I was nervous about losing our small group, hotel reservations paris and I ended up with a pretty nice neck strain by the end of the day from constantly trying to look around. The caves and this part of the experience was great. hotel reservations paris Now ... the fun begins. Even though our small group left ahead of the big group, they caught up to us at the end of the river. As we got out, I talked to Tom and told him that the last tender to our ship left at 3:15 Belize time (4:15 ship time), or in about two and half hours. This point had been confused earlier as the RCI ship's last tender left at 4:15 Belize time. Tom's eyes widened a bit, and he said that they'd get cracking to get us back to the port on time. We went to the huts and changed, and by the time all 13 people in my van were ready to go, the bus for the large group had already left. Tom collected everyone, then proceded to race down the tubing "road" which might be the most uneven stretch of ground I have ever seen. We stopped at Amigos, but since we were running behind, all six people going to the Glory would be returning in Tom's van (we had been split up all day ... only my friend hotel reservations paris and I were Glory passengers in Tom's van before). Now, the other 4 had already gotten to Amigos and eaten by the time we arrive (not sure how that happened), so we waited around for about 10 minutes for our food to be packaged to go. By this time, I'm constantly looking at my watch and working myself up to saying "Forget the food. Let's go." I'm tired from tubing, however, and feel extremely dehydrated, so allow myself to not say anything and just stand next to the bar sucking on the liter of water that came with my soon-to-be-ready lunch. Food in hand, we jump into Tom's van and take off with about an hour and a half before the last tender. My friend and I are eating in Tom's van while we hear the other Glory passengers talking. This is where we heard about the transmission on their first bus. Anyway, on the route we see a broken down bus on the side of the road, so Tom pulls over to let the driver make a call to her company. No problem. I understand. We continue down the road, and about 5-10 minutes after passing the broken bus, we hear a pop, quickly followed by a lovely wubba wubba sound. The deeply spiritual Tom curses, and pulls off to the side of the road. We six passengers get out of the van and one (evidently some sort of mechanic) helps Tom get the jack set up ... about one hour until the last tender leaves. Things seem to be going smoothly hotel reservations paris until Tom has trouble getting one of the lugnuts off of the flat tire. More curses. He finally resorts to using his foot to try to lever the wrench and put enough pressure on the lugnut to get it off. TWANG! The stud breaks off of the tire (and I think takes off a part of the break) ... in other words, hotel reservations paris we are in some trouble. More cursing hotel reservations paris from Tom and silent curses from the rest of us. The other passengers mutter something hotel reservations paris about their luck with transportation hotel reservations paris that day, to which Tom replies "Ah, so you're the Jonahs." So now we have less than an hour to get to the tender and we have no way to get there. We ask Tom if he should hotel reservations paris call someone, which he declines saying that "There's always another bus." Being in the mood that we were, we asked about the last bus, which Tom replied was followed by an empty 2nd bus, just in case. After about five minutes along the side of the road, we spy a bus coming down the road and Tom flags it down. This is not a tour bus however. Instead hotel reservations paris it was evidently some sort of old school bus that was serving as Belizian public transportation from city to city. Tom begs a ride for us (not including him) and asks the driver to let us off at the first taxi stand. He then hands the oldest member of our group of six $5 American and $7 Belizian for the cab fare and tells us to tell the cab driver to take us to the tourist village. So we board the bus and find some seats amongst the passengers that were already aboard. I ended up sitting away from our main group due to the availability of empty seats and found myself in the presence of several individuals wearing camoflauge uniforms ... not exactly making me feel comfortable. I glance at my watch .... 30 minutes to go. We are dropped off at the taxi stand at about 3:00 Belize time, so with 15 minutes to spare. The entire group of six ends up in an old station wagon with no extreme rear seats, meaning that the seating arrangements were less than comfortable with two passengers and the driver in front and four passengers crammed into the lone rear bench. The driver navigates the streets of Belize City with one hand on the wheel and one hand on a Snickers Bar, darting through narrow openings between pedestrians, cars, and merchants. I'm sitting almost on top of the driver and notice that his fuel light is on and that he's essentailly riding on fumes. Oh well, I think, and procede to keep that little tidbit to myself since we were already well away from the taxi stand. Thankfully we arrive at the tourism village with 5 minutes to spare, though the driver takes the opportunity to try to charge us $5 a person for the ride instead hotel reservations paris of $5 total. The gentleman with the money gave him $20 and told him to be happy with it. I flipped him a couple of more dollars to keep him from coming after us, and we went into the village itself. OK ... happy ending. There was a very large line for a tender hotel reservations paris back to the Glory, meaning that we could have probably been 20-30 minutes later and still gotten a tender. The man who paid $20 out of pocket went to speak with Marvin and had that money refunded. I didn't want to bother with a few bucks ... I just wanted to get in line. In summary, hotel reservations paris my thoughts are: Good - The tubing itself. Definately more strenuous than I thought it would be, but a great experience. Bad - Ground transportation. I don't know whether this is a semi-usual occurance or just a really bad day for Wet 'n Wild, but on the day I used them, the reliability of their vehicles was questionable to say the least. _____________ September hotel reservations paris 2006 - Giving it another shot Working within our CC roll call, I set up a cave tubing