February 19

For me, today was the highlight of the trip, the thing I was most looking forward to: a visit to a significant Maya site. Genae had done the trip planning for everything else, but today was Greg’s idea. I think he nailed it.

There is a road to Lamanai, but we’re told you’d have to be a masochist to use it. Instead, we signed on to a tour with Lamanai Eco Tours. They can be a bit difficult to find, so we were directed to look for signs for Bat’s Landing, a bar and grille, a few miles from Orange Walk. From there, we’d take a 22-mile boat ride up the New River to the site.

In our travels around Belize up to now, we’ve passed several police checkpoints but were never stopped. Today, just before we reached Orange Walk, we finally passed through an active checkpoint. We were flagged down, and I was asked where I’m from. “Colorado, USA,” I answered. He asked for my driver’s license. He inspected it closely, but I doubt he’d know a valid Colorado driver’s license from a fake one. He read out my name, and I answered that, yes, that was my name. “Go ahead,” he said.

On the trip to the site, our boat captain stopped several times to point out some of the local wildlife. I found this quite impressive. First, the river is a maze of islands and tributaries. Once we were going, the captain would open the throttle all the way, lifting the nose of the boat, throwing lots of spray, and leaving a big wake. Then he’d spot something, throttle down, and nose the boat toward one shore or the other. He’d get his laser pointer out and show us where a turtle or crocodile or iguana or tree full of bats was. I reckon we were going about 22 knots at full throttle. The crocodile he spotted had just its nostrils and eyes above the water. The turtle was just as hard to spot. I can believe that the bats rested regularly in the same tree, but I doubt he was finding the other animals in the same places. Very impressive wildlife spotting skills, for sure.

It took us a bit more than an hour to get from Bat’s Landing to Lamanai.

On shore, we were handed off to a new guide. I didn’t get his name, but he told me he’s been a guide at Lamanai for 23 years. He was most knowledgeable about the ruins. Although I didn’t spot any archaeologists working, it is an active site, with one structure being reclaimed from the jungle only in the last seven months.

We were told that “Lamanai” means “submerged crocodile.” Our guide told us that that’s a bit of a mis-translation. He said it’s actually “Lama’anayin” and means something like “squashed bug”. I don’t recall exactly what he said, so I probably have it wrong. I haven’t been able to verify it one way or another.

As is common with Mayan ruins, the structures were built up over centuries: Postclassic structures were built on top of Classic ones, which were built on Preclassic. The Preclassic structures in Lamanai may also have been built atop Archaic ones, but that wasn’t clear to me. The faces at Mask Temple all have Olmec features. The Olmecs predated the Maya, and “disappeared” about 400 BCE. I put “disappeared” in quotes because the Maya people are still here, post-Conquest, just as I’d guess the Olmec were still around when the Maya gained power.

We toured the major structures – the Jaguar Temple, the Ball Court, the High Temple (“El Castillo”, but not to be confused with El Castillo at Chichen Itza), and the Mask Temple. I was most surprised by the Ball Court. The one at Chichen Itza is the largest ball court in the Mayan empire, much bigger than a football field. The one here is… not playable? It’s only about ten feet wide and thirty feet long and has a round stone dais in the middle of it.

I was glad that we tourists are still allowed to climb on the pyramids. We were lucky enough to do this at Chichen Itza 32 years ago, but they no longer allow it. Here, the High Temple even has a modern set of stairs built on it.

Our guide at one point called out a major difference between Chichen Itza: the water situation. Chichen Itza is on the Yucatan Peninsula, which has no surface water. That is, there are no lakes or rivers there. Their water sources were “cenotes”, which are large sinkholes. In dry times, the cenotes were under threat of failing to meet the needs of the city. Lamanai is built on the shores of a lake, and water was never a problem. At Chichen Itza, they had human sacrifices to appease the gods to supply water. There were no human sacrifices at Lamanai.

Here is a little history of Lamanai, from The Maya, by Michael D. Coe:

Far up the New River, a considerable distance to the southwest of Cerros, is the important site of Lamanai (known as ‘Indian Church’ on older maps of Belize), which has been excavated by David M. Pendergast of the Royal Ontario Museum during a series of field seasons beginning in 1974. Lamanai lies on a long lake formed by the river, and its 718 mapped structures are stretched out in strip form along its shore. There is even an ancient harbor in the northern part of the site, testifying to its entrepreneurial importance in the regulation of ancient Maya trade. While it was occupied from earliest times right into the post-Conquest period, much of its importance lies in the large, imposing, Late Preclassic temple-pyramids which usually underlie Early Classic constructions, including one with a plaster-work mask closely resembling those from Cerros.

Between AD 672 and 751 (considered by many to mark the civilization’s florescence), the number of communities carving new monuments continued to increase, but new construction took place only in already established cities. Maya civilization had ceased to expand geographically. From 751 to about 790, long-standing alliances began to break down, interstate trade declined, and conflicts between neighboring city-states increased (the battle of 792 commemorated by the Bonampak murals illustrates this situation). From 790 to 830, the death rate of cities outstripped the birth rate, while after 830 construction stopped throughout the Central Area, with the exception of peripherally located sites like Lamanai. The katun ending date 10.3.0.0.0 (AD 889) was celebrated by inscriptions at only three sites. And the very last Long Count date to be recorded anywhere was the katun ending 10.4.0.0.0 (AD 909), incised on a jade from a site in southern Quintana Roo.

I can’t help but recall a conversation I had with a couple of Dutch motorcyclists in the parking lot of my hotel in Nürburg last summer. I don’t recall how it came up, but they said something to the effect that “there’s no history in America”. It’s a common misconception, I think. There is quite a bit of history here between the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca, all of whom left major monuments, many of which predate Christ. But it’s not European history, and due to several factors, not as easily understood.

The Maya never developed paper, so all their history is documented in the stone of their temples or the jade of their jewelry. The temples were consumed by the jungle, and the Europeans looted the jade, which is now in museums or private collections worldwide. Even if the Maya had come up with paper, how long would any document have lasted in this climate?

This lack of a “written word” goes hand-in-hand with some other “failures” of Mayan technology. They never came up with the wheel. How primitive! But in this tropical, swampy environment, the wheel is worse than useless. It’s much easier to move building materials on poles carried by men. Any wheeled vehicle would bog down. They certainly had the concept of the wheel, though. In other cultures, the wheel is typically associated (right or wrong) with the arch and the dome. The Maya had arches, but they weren’t curved arches. You can mock up a Mayan arch using Lego blocks. The Maya did have domes, though. There’s the Observatory at Chichen Itza, for example.

The wheel also shows up in the Mayan calendar. Compared to the Maya, the Romans were downright backward when it came to understanding the calendar. The Romans kept having to adjust their calendar every several years because the months kept drifting – months are based on the moon, years on the sun.

The Romans also never came up with the concept of zero. Without a zero, large numbers are difficult to represent, and you can’t perform advanced calculations.

I’m not going to say that the Maya, Inca, and Aztecs didn’t fight wars (the excerpts above call some of them out), but I think there’s a definite difference between American history, pre-Conquest, and the Old World. When Europeans came to America, they brought disease, enslavement, genocide, and theft on a continental scale. It would be nice if Europeans (and those of us of European descent) were less proud of that history and more curious about the indigenous people of the Americas.

The temples are connected with wide limestone gravel paths. Our guide pointed out that the path we were walking on was a narrower version of the original Mayan road. The new path was edged in stone. A few feet on either side of the new path was another set of boundary stones. The old set delineated the ancient Mayan road. I won’t say that these Mayan roads are as robust as ancient Roman roads, but the jungle is a much harsher environment than central Italy or rural England.

Early on the tour, the path took us beneath a large tree. The guide pointed to the upper branches where a group of howler monkeys was sleeping. A few steps later, we came upon a red stain on the path. Some predator had gotten one of the monkeys last night or the night before, and this was a blood stain.

After walking through the site and climbing on the pyramids, we gathered for a lunch of chicken and rice and beans, then went through the gift shops, where I found a shirt that could pass for an Aloha shirt.

A short while later, our boat came back to pick us up and return us to Bat’s Landing. The return trip was a bit quicker – not stopping to point out any wildlife, the captain kept the throttle wide open the whole time. On both the ride there and back, we were going fast enough that I had to take my cap off. If I didn’t take it off, it would have blown off. Without my cap, I managed to get a minor sunburn on my head. So it goes.

We were back to the car by 2:00 pm and had an uneventful, police-free drive back to Corozal.

I love visiting these old ruins and thought the day was a great success.

February 17

We left Consejo Shores early on our way to the Excalibur Adventure Park to enjoy the Via Ferrata and zip lines. We had 11:00 am reservations and didn’t want to get there late. It’s a bit southwest of Belize City, so we left some extra time.

As we got closer to our destination, the landscape transformed a bit, with small, steep mountains jutting above the otherwise pancake-flat terrain. This was a good sign: I was having trouble imagining zip lines without mountains.

I said earlier that the road signs look just like the ones at home. That isn’t entirely true – the signs warning drivers about the speed bumps were like none I’ve seen anywhere before. Today, we started seeing some new signs. They’re the usual amber diamond signs you’d see to warn you of deer crossing, but they weren’t for deer. Instead, we were warned to watch out for tapir and jaguar crossing the road.

It was only 10 o’clock when we pulled into the parking lot at Excalibur. It looked like we had an hour to kill, but they said we could start our adventure whenever we were ready. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

A via ferrata (“iron path”) is a protected climbing route over mountainous terrain. By “protected,” I mean strapped onto a heavy cable with a carabiner and a device called a “cookie”. The cookie is a squared C-shaped one, with the opening of the C smaller than the cable’s diameter. There’s no way to get the cookie off the cable except at the ends. The carabiner, on the other hand, can be removed from the cable at any time. The cable is attached to the rocks or bridges with a sort of plate. Orient the cookie such that the opening of the C can traverse the plate. At these connecting plates, we have to disconnect the carabiner and reconnect it on the other side. This system makes it impossible to come off the cable, which is reassuring for those of us who have problems with heights.

The original via ferrata was built by units of the Italian army during the First World War and was used to get men and supplies over difficult terrain. They’re now sprouting up all over the place.

This is my first time on one, and I didn’t really know what to expect. On this one, there are five bridges. Some thought went into the design. One bridge tends to bounce up and down when you cross it. Another bridge sways left and right, and another moves backward and forward. Yet another is simply a series of cables criss-crossed, and you need to step where the cables cross. Without the safety gear, I think I could have crossed these bridges, but it would have taken me much longer!

No photography is allowed on either the via ferrata or the zip line. Our guide, Sergio, was kind enough to take some photos. Along the way, he also pointed out some of the interesting plants in the area. One was the gumbo limbo, commonly called the “tourist tree”. The bark has a reddish tinge to it, and it peels off, much like the skin of sunburned tourists. It’s always near a black poisonwood tree. The bark of the gumbo limbo can be used to counteract the effects of the black poisonwood tree. Greg warned us of the poisonwood tree as he had a bad time with it in the jungles around his house. The effect is worse than poison ivy.

When we were putting on our harnesses, before starting off on the via ferrata, Sergio pointed out a coatimundi. The little guy moved too fast for me to get a picture. Oh, well. I’m sure we’ll get another chance to see one tomorrow at the zoo.

The start of the zip line is at the end of the via ferrata. Genae didn’t do the via ferrata with Michael and me, so she joined us here. The first platform is 275′ above sea level (and thus nearly that distance above the ground below). In all, there are five different zip lines that circle through the property, passing over the via ferrata and garden paths below, before ending not far from the start of the via ferrata. It was quite fun.

We ate at the restaurant there, delicious burgers and sandwiches (with buns branded with Excalibur’s logo), fries, and beer.

We didn’t originally sign up for any other activities, but Sergio told us a little about the caves they have there. One is a wet cave that you ride through on innertubes. The other is a short dry cave. We didn’t have our swimsuits with us, so we decided to take the tour through the dry cave.

Sergio told us all about the various formations in the cave – stalagmites, stalactites – and how water comes into the cave during the rainy season. I pointed out the bats that live there, and we even spotted a scorpion spider stalking a cricket. In the middle of the cave, Sergio asked us if we wanted to see total darkness. We turned off our headlamps for a short while. In our modern world, we rarely encounter total darkness. We literally couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces.

There are two short sections of the cave where you have to crawl on hands and knees, and one where you have to slither on your belly. I couldn’t help but wonder how they could politely tell your basic “Walmart shopper” they were too fat to make it through these sections.

Sergio was the first Belizean I’d had any sort of conversation with, more than a simple transaction at the store, anyway. I was expecting his English to be accented much like any other native Spanish speaker I’ve spoken to. But his accent had a bit of a Jamaican lilt to it. I noticed this accent when speaking to other Belizeans. I think I’ll change how I think of this accent – for me, now, it’s not so much a Jamaican accent as a Caribbean one.

Done with our great time at Excalibur, we hit the road and headed to Belize City. Tomorrow we’re heading to the zoo, and rather than drive all the way back to Consejo, then all the way back here (the zoo isn’t far from Excalibur), we traded a night in a motel for all the driving.

The Ramada Inn, where we stayed, was right on the water. I was guessing half the rooms would have an ocean view, and half would have a “city” view, but all the rooms had ocean views. We didn’t want to tour the city after dark, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant.

February 16

Breakfast was fruit and breakfast breads again.

Today we toured the town of Corozal. In the weeks before the trip, when I told people I was going to Belize, everybody asked where we’d be staying. Nobody I talked to had ever heard of Corozal, and gave me blank stares when I told them it was close to Mexico. Undoubtedly, this reaction is natural. Corozal is not at all a tourist mecca.

We’re in Consejo Shores, not Corozal town itself. Consejo is an enclave of Canadian and US expats. It’s about 11 km of bad road northeast of Corozal and only a bit over a mile as the vulture flies from Chetumal, Mexico. Chetumal and Corozal are on the shores of the Caribbean (or Corozal Bay). A peninsula and islands to the east protect the shore from the worst effects of hurricanes and tropical storms, and the water here is too shallow for anything like a cruise ship. The closest tourist attraction is Ambergris Caye. All of Belize’s tourist attractions lie to the south of Belize City, which is a 2.5-hour drive south of Corozal.

Between Belize City and Corozal, the land is pancake flat, planted with sugar cane, palm trees for palm oil, and fruit orchards.

I was surprised to learn of the large presence of Taiwanese. Most of the stores and markets in the area are owned and operated by Taiwanese. Chinese names abound – Deng Shen, for example.

The official language of Belize is English. (The place was called British Honduras until 1981.) Spanish is common, and there’s quite a lot of pidgin English/Spanish – billboards with messages such as “Di Sun Serious!” abound.

There are hundreds of Mayan ruins in the region. I struggle to convey this properly. There are hundreds of sites, with each site ranging from a single structure still overgrown by the jungle to sites spread across hundreds of acres containing dozens of structures that are active archaeological projects.

Greg knew where one of these sites is in the middle of Corozal town. It took us a couple of attempts to find it, missing it by a block this way at first, then by a block that way. When we finally stopped to ask for directions, we were just a couple of hundred feet away, on the other side of a building.

The Santa Rita Archaeological Site is not much larger than a football field. It was first settled some time around 1200 BCE by about 150 people, eventually growing to about 6,800 people and controlling trade along the Rio Hondo river (which today separates Belize from Mexico). People here traded as far south as South America.

My inner 8-year-old couldn’t resist the urge to climb to the top of the pyramid.

We finished the day at a local pizza place. Rather than have another Belikin, I opted for a Landshark, brewed by Margaritaville Caribbean Brewing Company, based in Jacksonville, Florida. It was launched in 2006 by singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett to compete against Grupo Modelo’s Corona. So, yeah, I went to a foreign country to drink a beer from Florida.

February 14

We left the house at 7:00 am for our 9:45 flight to Belize City. The fun began when we tried to check our bags. We’re all traveling on the same confirmation number. To begin the process, you need to let the kiosk know who you are. I’m using the Southwest app. You can scan the QR code, supposedly, but that didn’t work. After four or five tries, I gave up and just inserted the credit card I used to buy the tickets. Strike one against the app.

It has been a while since I flew out of concourse C. I was sort of looking forward to a bagel at Einstein Bagels, but they’re no longer there. Plan B was a breakfast burrito. Next, we headed to the gate. It was here that I discovered that the Southwest app wouldn’t bring up Michael’s boarding pass. When I went to get his boarding pass printed, I could no longer display either my or Genae’s boarding pass. Paper passes for all, then. I’m less than impressed with the Southwest app.

The flight was uneventful (as all good flights are). We didn’t notice until after beverage service was over that, it being Valentine’s Day, they were giving passengers free beer. An opportunity missed.

At the Belize City airport, they don’t have jetways – it’s old school. They drive the Arrested Development stair cars to the plane and we walk down to the tarmac. They did this at both the front and back of the plane, so deboarding was fairly quick. That was the last quick thing for the day.

A United Airlines flight from Denver landed just ahead of us. By the time we got in line for passport control, we were at the end of a line about a hundred yards long and about four people wide. After passport control, we go to customs. The guard let a bunch of people go without being queried about customs declarations, but no shortcut for us. We were asked where we were staying (“a private residence”) and who we were staying with. I gave them Greg’s name, but not an address or even the city he lives in. Just his name was good enough.

We were allowed to pass without being searched.

On to the car rental agency. I was third in line. It took about 45 minutes to complete the transaction. Basically, they were out of cars. One guy was told that his SUV had just been returned, but was having overheating problems. The next guy’s car needed to be washed – “It’ll only take 10 minutes. 10 Belizean minutes!” Our car wasn’t available either. Could we take a smaller car? Needing a car, I assented. “We’ll lower the price since it’s a smaller car.” The price given to me was $25 more than my original quote. That took another few minutes to fix.

We piled into our VW Nivus and headed out. To get out of the rental car parking lot, we had to pay $2 American (or $4 Belizean). I’ve never had to pay to get out of a rental car parking lot before.

Much of our 2.5-hour drive to Corozal would be in the dark on one of Belize’s best roads. (There’s a town called Corozal, in the district called Corozal. We’re headed to Corozal town.) This road is a two-lane highway, signed and striped just like roads here in the USA. The speed limit outside of the towns is 55 mph. But there are speed bumps on this highway. I’ve never seen speed bumps on a highway before. Most of them have warning signs. Most. I hit one of them moving at triple-digit speed. (The VW’s dashboard is set to metric.) Yes, we were going over 100 kph when I spotted the bump. I braked hard, but hit the speed bump harder. We did not catch air, but I was concerned I might have damaged the car. Good thing I got the insurance.

By now, it was getting dark. I got a dashboard warning telling me to turn on the headlights. Seems to me the car should be able to turn the headlights on automatically. It’s not new technology – I had it in a car manufactured last century. I couldn’t find the light switch while going 100 kph and keeping a watch out for speed bumps. Michael even did a quick (and fruitless) web search. I had to pull off the road to figure it out.

Back on the road, we began seeing trucks loaded with sugar cane heading the other way. The trucks were piled high with cane – far too tall to go under any US overpass or traffic signals. They all looked fairly precarious. Canes littered the road at each speed bump. The speed bumps, by the way, are called “sleeping policemen” by the locals.

The air was sometimes thick with smoke. When the cane is harvested, the fields are set afire. At one point, the horizon in front of us was orange with flame. A few minutes later, we saw the field that was burning – it came right up to the road.

Entering Corozal, we still had a bit of a journey ahead of us to get to Consejo Shores. It’s only about 7 miles, but it’s 7 miles of bad dirt road. It’s fairly heavily travelled, but punctuated by potholes small, medium, and large. I managed to miss most of the biggest holes while maintaining a more-or-less 35 kph pace: faster than perhaps I should have been driving, but too slow not to get passed.

We arrived at Greg’s a bit before 8 pm, which was earlier than Greg expected. I had a Belikin beer. This is perhaps the most popular beer in Belize, advertised at just about every cantina and restaurant between Belize City and Corozal. Compared to Colorado craft beers, it’s not great, but it was welcome after this drive. (The name “Belikin” is an amalgamation of several Mayan words meaning either “road to the east” or “road to the burning sun”.)

February 15

A lazy day today. For breakfast, Greg offered up some fresh fruit – guava, melon, pineapple, avocado – and banana bread.

In the early afternoon, it was off to the “beach” for volleyball. I didn’t play, but got into the water to float or sit on the bottom. There’s no beach here, and they play ball in the shallow water. The net is fifty feet or so from the shore, but today (even though some regulars said it was “deep” today), the water was about waist-deep. I ventured a bit farther from the shore, but never found deep water.

For dinner, Greg cooked up some sea bass and Spanish rice. We played games and chatted until after Greg’s bedtime.