La Isla Bonita- Our last six days on the beautiful island of Ambergris Caye.

Have you ever heard the song "La Isla Bonita" by Madonna? In it she sings, "Last night I dreamt of San Pedro....". Well, that is exactly where we stayed on Ambergris Caye. It was beyond beautiful! This is the little 8 room hotel we stayed at. It was a good 15 minute walk to town. Perfect for working off all the great food we ate:0) Who's the chic in the red swim suit?

We did 5 scuba dives while in Belize. Amazing! Look at the bright red coral and it was that bright at 60ish ft. below the surface! We were soooo glad that we purchased an underwater camera that would let us go 130 ft. to the world beneath the sea. The camera also has video mode, so be sure to check out the underwater videos at the end of this post!

A sea turtle that we saw about 70 ft. beneath the surface:0)

On our way to one of our scuba adventures!

Here we are somewhere between 60 and 80 ft. down. Scuba diving is really peaceful. It is amazing to think that there really is a whole different world down there, complete with mountains, canyons, valleys and animals just living their life. And for just a moment we got to be part of it. WOW!

Yep, we were slightly insane and did a shark dive! These are nurse sharks. If your going to run into a shark, this is the shark that you want to run into. They are one of the most friendly sharks and will only attack if they feel threatened. I still can't believe that we were diving with sharks. At one point there were about 30 or so sharks surrounding us. CRAZY!

Matt must have taken this picture, because I never saw this. I don't know what it is. I'm just glad it kept it's distance:0)

One day Matt and I took a sea kayak and went out to the reef with our snorkel stuff tied to the boat. We tied up at a bouy and dove overboard. Here's one of those strange looking Matt whales.

We went snorkeling out at this place where fisherman clean out conch shells and throw the shells overboard. They just want the conch meat to sell to local restaurants. There were tons of stingrays out there feeding off of the conch meat. The whole bottom of the ocean was filled with these huge shells.

On the same snorkeling trip we snorkeled with the sharks. Look at the little fish that stays with the shark and eats the algae off of the sharks skin. We saw alot of that.

A huge stingray.

Do you see the moray eel?

Matt got bored one night and decided it would be fun to ride a manatee:0) We don't need no stinkin' booze to have a good time!

Our favorite restaurant was right on the beach and called Blue Water Grill. The service sucked, but the food was amazing. These were coconut shrimp sticks with a chili garlic sauce. To die for!

The girl in the yellow shirt is Anne Marie. We met her at our hotel. She was a brand new employee still in training, and we asked her if she could find out where the LDS church was and what time it started. She found a newspaper clipping for us with the information and brought it to us. She then asked if we were members and after we told her that we were, she told us that she had been baptised when she was 8, but had not been to church in a long time. She had moved to the island from the mainland 9 months prior and didn't know anybody. So, we invited her to come with us. She was very excited and after church she said that she was so glad that she had gone, and that she was so grateful that we had invited her so she could meet some of the locals and feel comfortable going there each Sunday. How easy it was for us to extend that invitation and hopefully it will be the beginning of something good for Anne Marie. She was so sweet! The other couple was from Idaho, and her Mom insisted that we were all in a picture together:0)

This is the church in San Pedro. I counted 16 visitors that day and about 25 members. It was fast and testimony meeting that Sunday and the spirit was so strong. The opening song was, "The Spirit of God", and the spirit of God was definately there in this tiny branch. It was such a treat to hear the testimonies of these sweet people, and to bear our testimonies to them. Somehow it made the world seem very small, and the reality that everybody is our brother and sister very real. By the way, golf carts are the way that almost all the locals get around. The streets are very narrow and the island so tiny, that golf carts work the best as the main mode of transportation. The only time we really saw a real vehicle is if it was a taxi driver. Matt and I walked everywhere or rode bicycles.

Look who we found in San Pedro! Matt was giddy with excitement! She was even at the place where we ate breakfast one morning:0)

As we got off of a water taxi one day we saw this boat tied up. We had to get a picture of the Sophie Mae for our very own 7 year old daughter Sophia May! She thought that was the coolest thing ever:0)

Monkey boy Matt! Isn't that the coolest looking tree?

Keep scrolling down for the videos..........








Notes for the videos

1. "The Split"- an area where a hurricane ripped through the island and divided it in two. Now a popular swimming spot! This is on a much smaller island called Caye Caulker. We had to take a 30 min. taxi ride from our island to this one.

2. Stingrays at the conch shell area.

3. Matt with the sharks. Look, he even pets one. WOAH!

4. A huge school of little blue fish. We were at about 60 ft. deep.

5. This gigantic sea turtle was swimming along and didn't see Matt and bonked right into Matts head. I saw it just after that happened and was able to get this magnificent creature on video. We were about 60 ft. deep.

6. On our last Sunday on the island we took a 14 mile bike ride and went north to explore. This area is where alot of developement is going on and the roads were very bumpy and not paved at all. I almost crashed in the video because I was trying to video while balancing on a bike on a really bumpy road. Luckily I kept it together. The area was beautiful. Further north it got pretty trashy and smelly because of all the garbage and stagnant water.