Orange Walk

Trip Start Jan 01, 2001

220

Trip End Ongoing

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Where I stayed

Victors Inn

(Orange Walk hotels)

Flag of Belize Orange Walk, Belize
Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Drove a bit further inland to the town of Orange Walk, the second largest town in the country. It sounds as if it is big, but when you consider there are only around 280,000 people in the country as a whole you will realize it is quite small in reality with about 25,000 people. The town has a good mix of mainly wooden buildings, most are colourful shops. To get meat for example we went into the butchers which has two large chest freezers with only beef or pork, and most of that is cut into large chunks for the buyers to cut further themselves. One thing we have been able to get is Heinz baked beans, the first time since we left Europe. We are camped at the back of a restaurant in a large field. The only ones here so very quite with the palm trees and birdsong to keep us company. We managed to book a river trip for tomorrow, luckily since they need a minimum of four to go.
3rd.- Well it ended up wrong again. We got ready to go on the tour and got to the collection area only to find that the other people on the tour were driving a borrowed car with only one number plate and had been stopped and taken to the police station

and again

. This means the trip is now cancelled until tomorrow. We then decided to go to the town museum; it should have opened at 8 am but was closed when we got there. We decided to try again after lunch and it is still closed as a result it has been a lazy day around the camp.
4th.- Today we did manage to go on the trip. We met up at Lovers lane, owned by the people who run the tours it is apparently one of the town's brothels. The guide told us of the history, his great grandmother came to the town during the caste wars in the 1870's. She bought the complete block we could see and housed her children there in five different houses over time. It seems that when the town expanded she gave four of the houses away so that they could build a street and she was able to name it. She called it Lovers Lane. From here we walked to the river and where shown the remains of one of the two British forts from the 19th Century. On arrival at the river we got on the boat for a 32 mile trip to the ruins, about one to one and a half hours away. On the way we stopped to see various birds, turtles, bromeliads and one of the sugar factories. On arrival at the lagoon we were able to see the top of one of the pyramids showing above the tree canopy, as we found out later this pyramid is now about 11 stories high but the Spanish recorded it as being 25 stories high. On arrival we had a salad lunch which was very nice and then the guide talked about what we would be seeing

The Hig Temple atLamanai

. We started at the local museum which had a few items in it. We were told that their where actually a lot of nice items found at the site but the security of the museum and site was not good enough to protect any good items from thieves, and at the moment they cannot afford to improve the security. There are only five areas that have been exposed for tourists to see, there are some 707 known other temples or buildings on the site that have not been explored as yet. Of the five there are only three of note, the one already mentioned that is 33 metres high, it was possible for us to walk up this one to see the views over the jungle. The second was a small pyramid in front of which they found a large stele, made from quartz, that was extensively carved with the image of a king plus the hieroglyphics that went with it. These told us it was Lord Smoking Shell. The final pyramid has been excavated inside and here they found that going back two layers of pyramid there where still four large mask carvings on the wall. One has been left exposed; it is about 6 ft square in size. The other three have been reburied under the layers of the new temples. This has been done to preserve the masks because exposure to the elements is slowly breaking the one mask exposed. Whilst here we were able to see a family of howler monkeys playing in the trees. After our visit to the site, about three hours it was back on the boat to return to Orange Walk, this time we were able to see a couple of crocodiles. Then it was back to the camp for the night.