A couple of our group has come in, and we thought they would enjoy going to the National Park. It’s a ways away, so not something that we generally do with the workshop, but still, it’s fun and a beautiful feature of this part of Belize. In fact, one of the people had it on her “to do” list.

We piled into what we affectionately call The Jungle Bus, recently freshened up for our workshop. You’ll meet it in a later blog. We stopped at a main junction called, of all things, The Dump. It is actually very clean, so I’m not sure of the origin of the name. I couldn’t resist doing a photo of the gas station building. If you look carefully, you’ll see the thatched roof of a traditionally-built house out behind.

After lunch at the park headquarters, we walked the path down to Rio Blanco.

After getting up early to do some work before breakfast, Arnie and I headed off on horseback with Santiago to Santa Rosa Cave, a so-called “dry” cave. We started off on the dirt road out of Cotton Tree on Prince and Jackie who dutifully followed Stephanie.

In fact, every time I tried to get Jackie to speed up, he put on his mule shoes. It took some doing when I tried to come alongside Santiago to ask a question or just listen to his talking about the various plants and their healing powers.

I took off my flip-flops, lashed them to the saddle, and rode as close to bareback as was going to happen this round. Arnie and I are like the shoemaker’s children. We do photographs of our participants, but we don’t have that many of ourselves.

I brought up my camera. Hmmm. When was the last time you photographed from the saddle? Trying to keep everything focused and level is …

We had mixed feelings today. We love Caye Caulker and its laid-back feeling. On the other hand, we were really looking forward to returning to Cotton Tree Lodge and our friends there.

While Arnie slept in a slight bit, I went out to photograph. The sky was dark, portending a passing shower, but I decided to proceed. There were a couple of flowers I had in mind for this morning, and I spent a half hour or so before the rains came doing some macro work.

After breakfast and saying goodbye to new-found friends, Scott and Nick, the taxi took us down to the airport. I love these island airports. They tickle my fancy. Check out the luggage carts and the whole feel of the place. Across the way, where you can’t see, two eagles were in their nest high atop a telephone pole.

We hopped over to Belize City, then to the …