Lilly_annew's travel blogs:
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Trekking to Trek Stop
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We took a leisurely day hanging out in our room and walking the grounds here at Clarrisa's this morning. We ate breakfast up at the restaurant and had a visit by a Toucan with a broken beak. I got some good pictures of it but, most of the pictures are on a different camera. Dave and I actually got to feed it. It likes papaya.
We decided to get a couple sandwiches to pack with us for lunch and head across the pastures to the highway. Clarrisa's is actually a cattle ranch on the Mopan river. So part of the walk is along the river. We were headed to a place called the Trek Stop that have a butterfly house, and medicinal plant and interpretive center. You can also stay there so we thought we'd check out the facilities as well. The highlight was that they also have some tarantulas and Dave was hoping he could hold one. Unfortunately, the brother that doesn't the handling of the spiders was not there and no one else wanted to touch them. So, Dave took pictures of them instead. We decided we liked Clarrisa's better than this place. It was more of a backpackers hangout and the people were not a friendly. The butterflies were pretty cool. It was hard to get pictures but, I finally got a couple pictures of these blue morphs (I think that's what they were called.)
The walk to Trek Stop was a little over a mile and a good portion was through jungle alongside the river. I spotted a troop of leaf-cutter ants along the trail. They are so cute carrying there little pieces of leaf. I was really happy to spot them because I had just been telling Dave how I really wanted to see them in the wild. That's another one of those things you see on Nature or National Geographic. We quickly snapped pictures and had to move on because the mosquitoes were eating us alive. I saw a small animal about the size of a marmot, kind of dark brown but, it moved too quickly for me to make a positive identification. I think it might have been a targa (bushdog) which the guide book describes as a member of the weasel family with a dark brown body, yellowish neck and long tail. I only saw the back of the critter. I also saw a couple parrots though I couldn't identify the type. I saw a folk of Brown Jays and a Great Kiskadee.
On our way back the owner's son met us at the road with inner tubes so we could float our way down the river back to the resort. We went through 7 rapids, mostly class 1 but, there were 2 class 2 rapids, the last one being Clarrisa falls. Along the way w saw cattle egrets, an osprey carrying it's fish that it just caught, three night herons roosting in two different trees, one was a black crowned night heron and the other two were yellow crowned night herons. I also saw a kingfisher though it wasn't close enough for me to identify the type. We saw two river otters playing int he river. They were very curious about us and were only a few feet away from me. We also saw a large iguana about 3 ft long climbing in a tree. It moved pretty face jumping from branch to branch. They kind of reminded me of squirrels. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to get down to Clarrisa's/ Dave got dumped at the first class 2 rapid when he went into a hole. I had to rescue his hat down the river.
We have geckos in our cabana and it's fun to listen to them and watch them crawling around on the ledge where the walls meet the roof. The turkeys are cracking me up. The are gobbling right next to our cabana. While we were at the Trek Stop we found out that tarantulas are commonly found around this area but they usually come out at night. So we were determined to go tarantula hunting tonight. We asked the son if he knew where we might find one and he told us that there was one living under the lamp post and had been there for about 10 years. So tonight we went down there after dinner and spotted him under his rock immediately. We used a red light so we could see him without disturbing him and I coaxed him out of his hole with a piece of straw. Dave was able to get a couple of good pictures of him with his camera. He was very black. Really pretty markings.
Dave's blisters are really hurting him and he's starting to worry that he's going to get an infection. So we've decided he needs to stay at the cabana tomorrow and I'll hike over to see Xunantunich Mayan Ruins by myself tomorrow. He needs to give his feet a rest. We decided not to go to the botanical gardens because to get a shuttle over to it and back it would cost us $30 US. We opted for the Trek Stop and Xunantunich instead. More thumbnails ...
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