Greetings from Belize!
Today was a long day full of travel, but it had a great payoff in the end.
Students ventured back to campus yesterday (Tuesday) and some of us met at Prof. Simon's house for a pre-trip dinner:
Our travel day started at 3AM early Wednesday, when we all met at NEC's Simon Center. We divided into 2 vans and headed for Boston:
Special thanks go to Mark Mitch and Maria Colby for driving us. We arrived at Logan around 4:30AM and boarded our 6AM flight to Atlanta. We then had a quick transfer over to our flight to Belize:
Upon landing in Belize City, we passed through immigration and customs, and then transferred to Maya Island Air for a short flight over to Ambergris Caye. This flight was on a 19-seater dual-prop plane, which was pretty cool. There were some good views of the islands:
We landed at the small airport in San Pedro, the main city on the island of Ambergis Caye. From there, we loaded ourselves and our luggage into vans for a short drive to TREC, the Tropical Research and Education Center, where we will be spending the next week:
All together, it was a relatively quick 11 hours door-to-door from NEC to TREC. The kind staff at TREC immediately won our hearts and minds by feeding us nachos and grilled cheese by the pool. You can see the student rooms (three to a room, each with a bedroom) around the pool:
Since we had some time, we wandered along the beach, settling at a local spot to enjoy the view:
A most excellent way to wind down from traveling!
At 6:30, we had a traditional Belizean meal (rice/beans, home made tortillas, and chicken with a local spice rub) followed by chocolate cake (much appreciated!). We then entered the TREC classroom for an orientation session and to plan our next day:
I can't speak for everyone, but I'm certainly ready for bed!
Tomorrow: First day of snorkeling.
Please feel free to leave comments below. (I will make sure they are received by a particular student if so addressed.)
Thanks for reading!
the Simon center at NEC?
ReplyDeleteGreetings from the Peck family in Bedford Nova Scotia, just got over 4 cm of snow last night, then saw the pics on the blog...green with envy :) Thanks for the pics and the updates, have a great time, learn lots, and wear sunscreen (that was specific to Liam, haha, he'll be so thrilled that I'm writing this) Enjoy and be safe!
ReplyDeleteI hope you are bringing home some of the local spice rub for summer BBQ sampling! Jen
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