As I’m on my plane flying back to North Carolina, I’m truly just registering how surreal of an experience these past two weeks have been.
We hopped on our boat back to Belize City this morning at 6:15 AM, marking the end of our stay at Glover’s Reef Research Station and subsequently Belize as well.
I caught one final picture of the view right before I left, in hopes of letting it become ingrained in my memory.
Last night, I returned to the dock to enjoy the sunset one last time. This dock has been one of my favorite places this entire trip, even though it’s not as extravagant nor as exotic as the coral reefs.
The boat ride back was not as fun, and the choppier waters were a lot worse than I remembered. However, it was just as surreal as the way out. We managed to spot a sea turtle, the first and only of our trip, as well!
It felt a little different when we returned to Belize City. Though I had so desperately missed AC and flushing toilets, I did suddenly start to miss the complete isolation of both Las Cuevas and Glover’s Reef.
The flight back was bittersweet, at least when we were awake. I was sad to leave Belize, but the early morning exhaustion fell over our entire crew and everyone was out cold through the flight.
Claire C and I, both from NC, had a flight that was supposed to depart at 6:10 PM, with boarding beginning at 5:30 PM. However, our flight from Belize got delayed heavily, and we ended up landing at 4:50 PM. Fortunately, our flight out of IAH ended up getting delayed, so we made it with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, our flight got delayed by almost 3 hours. We ended up departing around the same time we were expected to land, but at least this is better than us missing our flight completely.
That brings me to where I am now, finally on our flight back home, wrapping up our two week stay in Belize.
I’m already missing that dock.
Ian C