I know that the Mexico post has just gone up, but another country has been completed – you better Belize it!!
The drive into Belize was uneventful. We stopped at the border, paid the departure taxes, and walked our bags through customs. I think the whole crossing took about 20 minutes – and yes, we did get another stamp in our passports. On the way into Belize City we stopped to try some homemade wine (from a stall on the side of the road). I think that the three wines were made from Mango, Blackberry, and a flower. All of them were far too sweet for me to consider buying (more like a liquor than a wine). They were also somewhere between 12 -15% alcohol. We arrived in Belize City an hour later than anticipated – probably because of the wine. We made it to the island via a small speed boat (probably designed for 15 people which had about 30 people on it). The island itself is quite pretty. It is split in two due to a hurricane some years ago with the inhabitants widening the split so that they can take their boats through (presumably so they don’t have to drive the whole way around the island – it is only 8 km long!).
We spent our first full day in Belize out on a sailing boat. We were there to snorkel at a couple of reefs. During the snorkelling we swam with Nurse Sharks (there were a lot of them) and Sting Rays (ranging from 30 cm to a couple of meters wide – even saw a tiger Sting Ray (spots)). When I was first trying to hop into the water with the sharks I had to wait until enough of them had moved away from the boat so that I did not drop in on top of them. Laurence on the other hand waited for a small gap and jumped right in. The reefs themselves are still generating as it has been between 10 to 30 years since some of them have been fished. I think that there is a lot of fish there at the moment, however, the reef itself is still quite dull. We were looking for Manatees all day but did not manage to find any. All in all, it was a good day, even though Laurence had a bit too much rum-punch on the way back to the island.
Day two in Caye Caulker led to a relaxing day around the island. Once again we tried to locate some Manatees, but they were just not playing ball with us. Laurence had gotten pretty sun burnt on the boat (even though we put on sunscreen) and I had a couple of little burn patches as well. Also, it was pretty hot!! We left early the next morning for San Ignacio.
San Ignacio itself is the second largest city in Belize – there are 18,000 people (Belize has about 330,000 people in total) so the city centre is pretty small – maybe 2 -3 blocks. It is quite a cool little town. We spent the rest of the day having a wonder around, grabbing dinner, and having a couple of drinks. We booked in for a tour of the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave system leaving first thing in the morning. This is a cave system where the Mayan people made sacrifices to their gods, including human sacrifice. Unfortunately, we could not take our cameras in as one of the tourists had previously dropped their camera on one of the crystallised skulls and broken it. I understand that there are 14 different human remains within the cave, a number of them being babies. The skulls/bones/skeletons that we saw were all from adults (well what the Mayan people at the time considered to be adults – so over 16 years old). In order to get to the ceremonial site, we walked through the forest/jungle for 30 – 40 minutes, swam in the cave entrance, and walked for 45 minutes up an underground river. During the river walk the water was from swimming to ankles and we were crawling through, under, and over rocks. It was a pretty cool experience, and the tour guide sent us some photographs of the system since we couldn’t take our own.
With the main parts of Belize completed, we are off to Guatemala tomorrow. Perhaps we will see Dr Ropata there.