Belize City - June 12

We anchored off the coast of Belize this morning quite a distance from land - I've heard that we are five miles from the harbor of Belize City.  Apparently, the water is rather shallow closer to shore so we would probably get stuck.  Not good, deah, not good.  Bottom line is we would be tendering into Belize City during our visit here.

Tendering from the ship

I was scheduled for a tour of a Mayan site called Lamanai so we gathered in the dining room at the appointed time of 7:45 am and then had to wait over an hour for the ship to be cleared by Belizian authorities.  What a drag.  Eventually, we were given the okey dokey sign and we thundered off to the 2nd deck where the tender was waiting for us.  It took us 1/2 hour to get to shore which kind of dissuades spur-of-the-moment trips to shops or restaurants.

Boat on the New River

Once on shore, our group shuffled off to the bus to face a 90 minute drive to the middle-of-nowhere-Belize.  We stopped at a restaurant on the bank of a river and switched over to a boat that would take us to the Lamanai temples.  Once we got going, the boat was a lot of fun.  The driver would speed through S-curves barely slowing down.  It felt like we were in the tv show, Miami Vice, that way we were zipping down the river (and yes, I realize I am dating myself with that reference.)  We would stop occasionally to gawk at animals, birds and other naturistic things.  We had a monkey join us on the boat for a little while (which really freaked people out); spotted small birds that walk from lily pad to lily pad - it's nickname is the Jesus Christ bird since it looks like it is walking on water - don't ask me the real name; and spotted other assorted birds flying away from us as quickly as possible.

Mask Temple

We reached Lamanai after about an hour on the boat.  Brief history of Lamanai - "the Mayan ruins of Lamanai once belonged to a sizable Mayan city in the Orange Walk District. "Lamanai" comes from the Maya term for "submerged crocodile." There is evidence on Mayan life that dates from about 1500 B.C. through Postclassic (A.D. 950-1544) and Spanish colonial times (A.D. 1544-1700)^"    Credit to Wikipedia for the background info.

High Temple

After a short hike, we found ourselves in front of our first Mayan ruin called the Mask Temple.  You can see the masks on each side at the bottom of the temple in the photo above.  The students in the group immediately climbed to the top but due to the heat and humidity, I stayed on terra firma and took lots of pictures.

Jaguar Temple

We then moseyed down another path to the High Temple which was indeed, high.  Again the energetic students sprinted to the top (they really did sprint) while I stayed at the base and took photos with the many cameras that had been thrust at me by the students racing to the top.  I did my photographic duty and managed to get a few shots of the temple for myself before we were urged to continue our walk to the last temple, the Jaguar Temple.  For some reason, the students stayed off of this temple even though they had the option of going to the top but perhaps the first two temples were catching up to them so they stayed with the group and listened to the history of the temple from our tour guide (which is also available on Wikipedia).

Howler monkey with baby on her back

Side note about the High Temple - while we were there we could hear howler monkeys nearby.  Egads!  The sound of those things just makes your skin crawl.  It was a surprisingly deep sound given that it was coming from monkeys.  We saw several in the trees above us including the most freaking adorable baby howler monkey.  Fortunately, they were NOT the ones making the skin-crawling noise.

After the Jaguar Temple it was 2:00 pm and time to get back on the boat for our one-hour ride back to the restaurant where we would FINALLY have lunch.  To say we were a wee bit peckish by this time would be a massive understatement.  We didn't stop to admire the wildlife on the way back and were totally focused on getting to the restaurant.  We finally arrived and dived into some delicious rice & beans and chicken - all washed down with an ice-cold Belize Beer called Belikin which was necter from the gods, at that point.  We were all sweaty, covered in sun screen and bug spray with matted hair from the boat ride so we had totally earned this beer!  Delish!

We were back in the bus for our long ride back to the harbor and everybody immediately fell asleep - including me.  It certainly makes the time fly quickly though.  We arrived at the port and Anne and I had intended to stay there rather than return to the ship to peruse the shops and perhaps get something to eat.  Unfortunately, everything closes at 5:00 and we were there five minutes after.  Boo hiss!  So we boarded the tender and headed back to the ship for the promise of showers...which felt blissful, by the way.  Afterward, it was dinner and downtime in our cabins catching up on e-mails and blogs.  This has been a fun but long day.  I go tubing through caves tomorrow which should be lots of fun.  Stay tuned.