Juniors and Seniors Gear Up For Belize Expedition - 3/10/2006
Hammond Juniors and Seniors will embark on an adventure to Belize, Central America this March. This is just one of the many trips students have the opportunity to experience while attending Hammond.
The focus of this trip is to provide young people with an expedition that allows them to visit another culture and have an opportunity to enter it, not as tourists, but as students learning about the richness of another part of our world.
The Belize trip has been an evolving expedition of Hammond School for the past fifteen years. The trip is now divided into four stations.
Banana Bank Lodge is the first station which is a beautiful jungle location run by Carolyn and John Carr. Carolyn is the national artist of Belize and
John is a former world champion rodeo rider. They have a beautiful ranch on the edge of the jungle. Out of Banana Bank, we visit Xunantunich, the tallest Mayan Ruin in the country. We will spend time with Margaret Juan at the Good Shepherd Clinic. We have been supporting Margaret and her work on the Guatemalan border for years. The students eat lunch at Clarissa Falls and then float through the five cave tunnels at Jaguar Paw. Also, the time there includes a horseback ride through the jungle.
The second station is Caves Branch. This is a new station for us. It will include a dormitory in the jungle and two days of activities. The first day will be caving and climbing up to waterfalls within the caves. The second day will be repelling in the black hole. In the evenings, after the activities there will be an opportunity to kayak on the Sibun River and play soccer with a nearby school.
The third station is Tobacco Caye which is twelve miles off of Dangriga. It is a small set of cabins on a five acre island. The activities on Tobacco Caye are totally relating to snorkeling both there and near Saltwater Caye. There will also be visits to Bird Island and long periods of snorkeling around the island.
The fourth station is in Belize City at the Mopan Hotel. This will include an airboat tour through a waterway onto the Almond Hill Lagoon. The students travel by boat up the coast to a Manatee preserve, Shark Ray Alley, and then eat lunch at San Pedro and return to Belize City.
Hammond Juniors and Seniors will embark on an adventure to Belize, Central America this March. This is just one of the many trips students have the opportunity to experience while attending Hammond. 
