Belize City, Belize - 2nd Stop

This was our most anticipated stop of the whole cruise. In fact, this stop is the reason we chose this cruise itinerary. Ten years ago Scott was serving his mission in Honduras and Belize. There was no way that we could tour Honduras given the time we were in port, but Belize was a different story.

Getting off the ship was a little different this time. The ship had to stay anchored way out in the bay (because it is too shallow to have a pier) so we had to take 'tender boats' to shore. Colby was not a fan.
Once we were to shore we rented a 12 passenger van and off we went! Scott wanted to take us to the areas that he spent a collective 10 months of his mission. While it was so fun to see the land, and have Scott show us places that he had served in and such, the best part was seeing Scott. There was a twinkle in his eye. He's not a very emotional kind of guy, but you could just see his joy at being back to this place that is so dear to his heart. It was awesome. I am so thankful that we were able to finally go back to his mission area, and to share it with our boys, parents, and good friends was wonderful.We were all so excited about being there and being in the moment that we failed to take too many pictures of our day. Luckily we did come away with a few.

We stopped along the way at a gas station for some drinks. This building was across the road. We got a kick out of the Coca-Cola sign. It's amazing how far reaching their product branding is...
This is the apartment building in Santa Elena that Scott lived in for about five months. The missionaries still live there!

A guy on the street said we just missed the Elders, so we continued our drive...and guess who we found? The missionaries! Scott stopped and talked for them for a minute. They came over and met us all. We offered to take them to lunch, but they had an appointment, so Scott gave them some $ and we headed off. It was fun to see the cute boys in white shirts and ties.

Then we crossed over the river to San Ignacio, where he spent another 5 months. We were able to find a restaurant there to stretch out our legs and eat some yummy food. And since we were the only ones there, we took a bunch of pictures too!
We finished out the tour by stopping by the LDS church in San Ignacio.
An hour and a half later we were back to Belize City and back to the boat. It was a long day in the car, but so rewarding.

Now that I've had a taste of Honduras and Belize, I think we'll be going back again in the future. Next time though, we'll spend a little more than a few hours in each country!