D*Victoria Hotel Orange Walk

... Lizzie, yes her face is still plastered all over their currency.. ah we missed her...thirdly the accent, Carribean English is a language in itself... tougher than Spanish.

Most people come to Belize to go snorkeling in the coral reefs but Belize is not a cheap country especially in the real touristy places so we decided to just head to Orange Walk to check out the Maya ruins at Lamanai, trying to avoid all the tourists again ...

Nous avons fait un arret dans le petit village de Orange Walk.

Visite de Lamanai, site maya datant de 1500 avant J.C. situe sur une des rives de la "New River". Pour se rendre, nous avons fait 1h et demi de bateau moteur sur la riviere, dont les rives sont bordees de foret dense (crocodiles, iguanes, "spider monkeys", chauve-souris et divers especes d oiseaux inclus).

Arrives sur le site de Lamanai, nous avons visite 5 temples dont un ...

... we arrived in Lamanai, a Maya site.

The site is absolutely amazing... we climbed up the highest pyramid, to see an amazing 360 view of the jungle around. L. from Gib, you were absolutely right, awesome!!

We spent the day there, then just arrived back to the hostel.

Going tomorrow to the second biggest reef in the world, for some diving hopefully.

More news then!!

... to drive us to a local hotel while we thought about it.  The first hotel he took us to was owned by hi brother-in-law.  It was a hole.  Then he took us to his dad's place - a nice place by the river, but it only had dorms.  I'm a holidaymaker rather than a traveller this time and I wanted a room, so I turned it down.  Finally, we settled on Lance's aunt's place, which was ok. For the rest of the day, we walked around Orange Walk.  This place reminds me of Klamath Falls in ...

... they still speak German. They have no telle or raido and some only use horse and cart (but these ones had trackers and utes!) they wear overalls with chequered shirts and hats and beards.(who would have thought there were Germans in Belize!) Then we reached the ruins right in middle of no where in the jungle, very nice. There was a massive statue of a face at the front of a ...

Today we travelled 35 miles up the northen highway to the historic Mayan Temple site at Altun Ha. A clearing carved out of the primary jungle which provides a stunning back drop to this largely cleared site, te total site including the sacrifice pool and living area covers some 3 square miles ...

... for it now. Some of the products they have are stewed cashews, wines, jams, syrups, biscuits, cake, fudge and the nuts themselves. Almost every where inland you can see the fruit with the nut poking out the bottom. The fruit is used for the jams and wines. The nut is separated and then roasted before becoming edible. Decided to stay at the same place for another night.

... the walk was seeing some of the different birds, flowers and trees. We did manage to see a family of spider monkeys at the site and whilst trying to get to the site we came across several turkeys who did not want to get out of the way and we ended up driving up the road chasing them. As a result one of them even attacked the car. We are now back in the camp having a lazy afternoon, it is very hot and humid at the moment.

... electricity and dress in a very old fashioned style with all of the men in blue dungarees with big beards and straw hats. This is only part of a very diverse mix of people that Belize has for such a small country, including Mayas, Africans and many Chinese (which was very evident in Orange Walk with an abundance of Chinese restaurants). Tomorrow we head for the Mexican border!

... quiet. He had a great deal of contempt for the cruise ship people. We only saw a few buildings at Lamanai, but evidently there are many more unexcavated buildings that Belize just does not have the money to dig up. I remember virtually nothing from Wilfredo's copious lecturing, so the pictures tell the general story pretty well. The most interesting thing I do remember is finding out that the Mayan rulers in that section of the Mayan world built over their predecessors' temples, so that ...