Late last year I found a two solid weeks to travel in a country that I’ve never visited and I’m very happy to have chosen Belize. I LOVE traveling and I feel unfulfilled if I go a certain period of time without extensive travel, preferably internationally. This was my first such solo adventure since 2007-2008 when I used up my vacation days (thanks Warner/Chappell) to go to Argentina and Chile. I wanted to explore, and get in some adventure along with some quality relaxation and recharging after an exciting but jam-packed quarter running social for The X Factor (among other things).

Belize was an amazing country to visit and I had an incredible experience first near near San Pedro on Ambergris Caye and then in the jungle and at Tikal in Guatemala before rounding out my visit on the paradisical Placencia peninsula.

Read about my travels in the following photo essay (Click on a photo to view captions and scroll through as slideshow). Special thanks to Milio and Kirsten at Ak’Bol on Ambergris Caye and to Paradise Resort in Placencia.

Part One: San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Ak’Bol
[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]

View this gallery on a single page.

Part Two: San Isidro, Cha’a Creek, Tikal
[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]

View this gallery on a single page.

Part Three: Placencia
[See image gallery at andysternberg.com]

View this gallery on a single page.

Immediately after graduating from the University of Iowa I hopped a ride out to Seattle with friends who wanted a quick getaway before they began another semester of classes. I took a job for a few weeks with Aramark at one of the hotels in Denali National Park. It was an incredibly cool job — I was essentially the bellman, but all I did was sit in a little room reading Outside magazine all day, writing, and holding and distributing bags for hotel guests. Twice a day I’d walk over to the train station where the train from Anchorage came in and would collect or drop off bags marked for my hotel.

The greatest perk of working in the summer in Alaska is that — even after a 9-hour workday, there are countless hours of sunlight left to play outside, hike, explore, and photograph the natural beauty that surrounds. Which is what I did a good deal of with the Canon Rebel G SLR camera that I got for graduation. Once I took off on a solo hike to Horseshoe Lake after a shift at work — not a long hike, but i knew I had to find camp before it got too dark, which was around 11-midnight by late August. I had my tent, a flashlight, a journal, and some other essentials, including my Martin Backpacker guitar. I wrote a song inspired by what I had seen and experienced in Alaska right then and there – you can hear a version of it below.

After spending the previous Fall and Winter studying abroad in Australia and travelling for 6 weeks around Oz and New Zealand I couldn’t WAIT to get back out and continue exploring the world. Needless to say I was in paradise that August in Denali, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get back home. Turns out another college buddy – Pete Balick had purchased an old school Land Rover — with two seats and a little jump seat in the back, and I had my ride back to the States sorted and another adventure in front of me.

I recently digitized my favorite photos from these adventures. Check ’em out here or on flickr.

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I used ScanDigital and even though it took about 6 weeks, they did a great job — I sent over 200 photos separated into 6 categories (i.e. Alaska, Australia, etc) and they were digitized into six subfolders. My order was heavily subsidized by this Groupon. If you’d like to try them out you can click here and enter promo code ‘netzoo’ at checkout for 10% off.