In June I lead another humanitarian mission to Dangriga, Belize. I had visited the location the year before as part of the pre-mission site visit. We stayed right on the beach at the Pelican Beach Resort, a small colonial style hotel with only about 30 rooms. Despite the small size it had a nice restaurant where we ate breakfast and dinner each day right on the beach about 40 feet from the water with palm trees all around and a beautiful boat dock and little cabana out on the water. The beach was covered with these crazy crabs that would come into the restaurant and even the rooms.
Our surgical team of ten included six surgeons and four technicians, but we were supported by a couple of marines who provided security. The surgical list was much smaller in Dangriga where the population was significantly less than for the Panama mission. We did a total of 77 surgeries including cataracts, pterygia, as well as some diabetic lasers.
On our down weekend in between the two weeks we went cave tubing. There are networks of rivers in Belize that go for miles underground. The St. Herman's cave was about a mile stretch of tubable river along a 28 mile underground river. We wore lights on our heads to see where we were going, but it was pretty slow and mostly shallow. We also went swimming in the adjacent Blue Hole which was a part of the river where the ceiling of the cave had collapsed and the water came briefly to the surface.
We also spent a day exploring the Caracol Mayan ruins which was a several hour drive way up in the mountains.
We also hiked to a pool below a scenic waterfall in a Jaguar preserve. We did work hard, but we also took advantage of the beautiful country.
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