Our big adventure for the day was about a four hour canoe ride on the Sittee River. After two hours in the canoe, we got to stop at an island in the river to go swimming. Here are the pictures from this trip. 

After lunch, Berni went out in the neighborhood and took some pictures

The owner of the cottages, Greg, wrote an autobiography that I read this afternoon. He grew up in the jungle until he was 13 years old. From that time, his family had to move twice because of environmental restrictions as the government protected more of the jungle. Up until then he spoke no English. He never went to high school, but he learned English and went to a training school for tourism.  After dinner we had a really informative chat. Belize has a parliamentary form of government with elections every five years. Boys are required to leave school at the age of 16 and girls at 15. In the Mayan communities people marry quite young. I got the impression the medical system isn’t too good.  The small village that we are staying in is Mayan.  We are 6 miles up a dirt road to the Cockscomb Basin Nature Reserve. That’s where we went last night and we will be returning there tomorrow.