28mile river boat ride to the Lamanai Ruins
Trip Start
Dec 12, 2006
1
44
55
Trip End
Mar 09, 2007
Lamanai,
Belize
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The boat ride took an hour and was awesome because the driver is flying down this river. Along the way he stopped for all kinds of wildlife. We saw an alligator and the largest bird in North America (can't remember the name of it, but its got a wing span of 8ft, no bad huh?).
The ruins were quite cool. Some big temples that were in pretty good condition. One temple that we climbed is the tallest point in northern Belize. Kind of funny since the temple isn't really that tall (northern Belize is damn flat). The ruins were quite interesting and we learned about how they chose the sight and how things would have looked back in the day. The sights are covered in jungle, but back in the day it was all open and clear. Its kind of interesting because most Mayan ruin sights are completely covered by jungle and there are lots of temples and structures that have not been unburied or excavated. They actually leave the ruins buried to help preserve them from the elements wearing and tearing on them. Kind of interesting how there is so much still buried and unexplored.
After our boat ride back to Orange Walk, we decided to book it over to San Ignacio in western Belize. To get there we had to go back to Belize City bus terminal to get another bus out of there that goes west. We weren't too excited about that one, but we hid everything important so that it couldn't be swiped. Jeremy had a pair of shoes hanging off of his bag and he was joking that he gave his shoes a 15% chance of making it through the bus station without getting stolen. I'm actually glad it was me that got my wallet stolen the other day, because both Jason and Jeremy had a ton of cash in their wallets that day.
Belize bus station went without a hitch and Jeremy's shoes made it out without getting stolen, hehe. Took the bus to Belmopan and then to San Ignacio. The buses here in Belize are sweet. They are all old school school buses with random paint jobs. They all have a stereo inside and blast whatever music the bus driver wants to blast. Most of the time it has been reggae or Caribbean type music. Its been pretty fun to ride the school buses, reminds me of the good old days.
San Ignacio is in the hilly jungle part of western Belize. Its a bit cooler up here because its higher up. Although we haven't seem much of it since we arrived at night, but it looks like a really cool and chill town. We grabbed a bite to eat and headed over to the popular watering hole to get some beers. We were pretty wiped from the long day and we had to get up early to do our tour of Aktun Tunichil Muknal.
