2003-11-29 Belize Zoo 2003-11-30 Rafting the Caves Branch 2003-12-01 Jungle Biking and Cave Tubing 2003-12-02 Rafting the Macal 2003-12-03 Kayaking the Sibun 2003-12-04 Island Day 1 2003-12-05 Island Day 2 2003-12-06 Island Day 3 2003-12-07 Lamanai Ruins

Day 10 (Sunday, 12/7/2003)

I loved everything about my Belize trip, but if I did it again, I would try not to have a one-day layover at the end.  Brian and I were tired and ready to get out of the jungle, but we made the best of things and booked an all-day tour on Sunday up to the Lamanai Mayan city, deep in the northern Belizean Orange Walk district.  On some tours, Slickrock is able to fit in a trip to the Xunantunich ruin, one of the larger Mayan cities near the Guatemalan border.  Since our Macal river trip had run long due to the high water, however, we had not had the opportunity to spend any significant time at any Mayan ruins during the week.  Thus, an extension trip to Lamanai was the perfect complement.

Our journey first took us and a British Columbian couple 90 minutes up the Northern Highway to the town of Orange Walk, where we boarded a boat for a two-hour river trip to Lamanai.  The boat wound its way south up the New River through the deep northern Belizean bottomland jungle, past farms and plantations (some of them Amish), and past a variety of wildlife, including crocodiles, owls, "Jesus Christ" birds (named because of their ability to walk on water), turtles, and other assorted critters.  Our guide stopped the boat to point out each of these bits of scenery in turn.  After two hours on the water, the river opened up into the 30-mile-long New River Lagoon, a natural lake that forms the headwaters of the New River, and we pulled the boat into dock at a park bordering Lamanai.

Lamanai, a name given to the Mayan city by the Spanish, was originally called "Lama'an'ain" (submerged crocodile) by the Maya and was continuously occupied for a period of over 3000 years, from about 1500 B.C. to the 17th Century A.D.  The city consists of a handful of spectacular temples, unearthed by British archaeologists beginning in the 1970's, as well as modern park facilities, a museum, and a gift shop along the New River Lagoon.  We ate a picnic lunch consisting of home-cooked Belizean delicacies (the pickled onions with habaneros were quite the thing), took a short tour of the museum, and then hiked around the city and to the top of one of the ruins.  Our guide treated us to very extensive lectures on the history of the Maya and this city in particular, the uses of the various buildings and courts, and the meaning of the various symbols and iconography.

Thus ends the account of Belize Adventure Week 2003.  We stayed another night at the Biltmore and flew back to Houston the next day to resume our normal existence, leaving behind "all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men." [Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"]