Up and down the New River
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2007
1
5
12
Trip End
Jan 15, 2008
Orange Walk,
Belize
Friday, January 4, 2008
It was another grey, overcast day, but it was slightly warmer than it had been, and only drizzling occasionally, so the trip upriver to the Lamanai ruins was pretty nice. On the way, the Mayan guide, Wilfredo, pointed out river wildlife, mostly different types of plants and birds, with the occasional crocodile spotting that everyone missed but him. I can now identify the firework flower and the black-collared hawk. We puttered through the jungle and after about 45 minutes, came to the Orange Walk Tower Hill Sugar Refinery, which refines 100% of the sugarcane in Belize. Sugar is about a third of the country's exports. The bagasse (waste from the refining) is used to generate electricity in Belize. Belize seems to be very hard up for electricity for some reason, with signs in some of the hotel rooms claiming a kilowatt of electricity costs ten times more in Belize than in the U.S., and nine times more than in Mexico.
After the sugar refinery, we passed the tiny Mennonite community of Shipyard, supposedly some of the more liberal Mennonites in Belize. About forty five minutes after that, we arrived at the Lamanai ruins in the Belizean jungle. Unfortunately, we arrived at about the same time that a tour from a cruise ship had gotten there, so every time Wilfredo would see the cruise ship group coming, he would usher us quickly down some side trail to a different building so he could lecture in 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 when excavating, removing actual sections of the temple would reveal different structures and architectural designs underneath. This can be seen most clearly in the Temple of the Mask, where one of the original masks was excavated, but the matching masks on the other side and the levels above were not excavated, to protect them for future research. The masks were found to be where expected by archaelogists, but then they were covered back up.
Wilfredo was also very excited about Stela 9, but other than the sheer amount of legible glyphs on it, I can't remember why. The structure Stela 9 was found at is also known for having a cache of liquid mercury (not previously known to be in that region), and the skeletons of five children. I don't think it's known how they died, so it's unclear if they were sacrificed or not. Children's skeletons are not usually found in the sacrificial locations.
After the very long-winded tour by Wilfredo (the fellow knew his Mayan archaeology), we had the typical Belizean lunch of rice and beans, stewed chicken, and Fanta. When they say "rice and beans" in Belize, it means a different thing than "beans and rice." "Rice and beans" is mostly rice cooked in coconut milk with a few beans mixed in. "Beans and rice" is the definition I'm used to, with equal helpings of beans and rice, like in Mexico. I'm not all that keen on the rice and beans (the texture is off to me), but the stewed chicken is uniformly excellent.
The trip back down river is faster, since we're going with the current. Wilfredo doesn't stop as often to point out wildlife, but we do get to stop and finally see a small crocodile. We also passed a tugboat, like in old-fashioned picture books, towing a barge of bargasso upriver through the jungle.
After the tour, Sarah and I wandered around for Orange Walk for quite some time trying to find something decent to eat, and eventually came back to Hotel de la Fuente hungry. At the door, we met the owners, Orlando and Cyndi, who invited us and a couple of the other girls from the tour who were also staying at the hotel to go with them to dinner at El Establo, a traditional restaurant slightly farther than walking distance out of town. Sarah, Deepa, Stephanie and I all squeezed into the back seat, the de la Fuente's seven year old son, Nathaniel, was sitting back in the cargo hold, and we ended up in a small palapa building north of town. I tried the salted pork and lime ceviche (can't remember the official name of it), which was okay, though very onion heavy. During dinner, we discussed politics, as Belize's general election was coming up, and we were in the middle of the Iowa caucus.
After dinner, we ended up going back to their house for coffee. Their house...matched the hotel. It was kind of weird to see the Grecian columns in the middle of an road with shacks and very plain houses on either side. We all ended up singing our national anthems, except Stephanie, who did not remember Germany's national anthem, and Deepa only sang the British one, as she didn't know the Danish one, where she currently lives. I messed around on their keyboard, and Orlando played the guitar, including a couple of Belizean songs, while Cyndi sang. In the background, we could hear Orlando's brother, who owned a pharmacy in town, cracking coconuts next door to make coconut water (for the pharmacy, I guess). Not comparable to sitting by ourselves in yet another mediocre restaurant in Orange Walk.
