Belize

Going to the country of Belize was a very interesting experience.

We had to ride a tender from the ship to the dock because the water is too shallow for a cruise ship to make it into the port.

On the tender we heard a few little raindrops and then more and then more and then suddenly it was a complete downpour.

I guess there is a very valid reason why Belize has rain forest in the country. The skies open and rain pours out.



Boyd and I thought it would be interesting to take a tour of some Mayan ruins while in Belize. The tour we took was combined with a boat ride down the Belize river. We got two interesting tours in one.

We took a bus to the Mayan ruins. While on the bus we had a guide who explained the culture of Belize.

For example:

Belize is a very young country. It has been under self-government only since 1964.

There are 10 women to every one man.

They still practice caning. Education is so important that if you miss school they will whip you. Then when you get home, your parents will whip you. Then on Sunday when grandma and grandpa come, they will whip you also.

When you are 18 years old you are given a piece of land and given 5 years to put a structure on it. If you do so, the land is yours.

After filling our heads with Belizan facts, we arrived at the ruins.

Our guide was extremely knowledgeable about the Mayan culture. She told us so many interesting facts. It was completely fascinating.

This particular area of ruins was hidden under dirt and foliage. Someone found a structure and began clearing the land.

They found these amazing structures.


There are different levels to these pyramids. Each level is a king who has died and is buried along with his servants and earthly possessions to help him into the afterlife.

Then when the next king dies, they put a new level on top of the old one.


This structure is so interesting. Several years ago a man was standing in the center on top of the first level and fell through. When he landed he saw something green. It turned out to be a jade head.

This is the same jade head that they feature in the first movie of Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. We see it in the scene in the beginning of the movie where Harrison Ford finds the jade head and replaces it with a bag of sand.


This was also the only structure they would let us climb on. There was a staircase that took us to the top.


This is all of us at the top of the pyramid.


After learning about the Mayan culture we headed back to the bus to get some lunch and start phase two of our tour.

This is a restaurant that they have by a four-star hotel in Belize.

The entire roof is thatched.

The menus were pieces of paper copied with two lunch items offered and placed inside a sheet protector.

We had a choice of a hamburger with fries or an authentic Belizan meal.

It was similar to the meal we had in Honduras except no fried fish. We had barbequed chicken, rice and beans and fried bananas.


We walked to the rear of the hotel property and saw our boat waiting for us to take us down the river.

I felt like I was traveling down the Amazon river. You couldn't see too much in the water because it was dirty but every once in a while you would see something along the edge that had eyes and was swimming.


We stopped for a minute and saw these mango trees.

A little old man came out with a bag full of mangoes he had picked from his tree. He gave the entire bag to our guide.

She handed a mango to each one of us. We bit the outer layer with our teeth, peeled and ate the mango right there in the boat.

It was pretty cool. And the mangoes tasted really good.


If you look closely you can see two monkeys in this picture. They are howler monkeys. They were just sitting there watching us.

Apparently they can howl so loud you can hear them up to a mile away.


We also saw insect bats, the nose of a manatee and these cool nests of birds that were hanging from branches of palm trees.

The way they hang their nests make it difficult for predators to get to the eggs. There is another type of bird that also will put their eggs in the nest also and the birds that built the nest will incubate both sets of eggs.

Not a bad idea.


We saw much of the countryside through our bus rides. After listening to our guides we have a much greater appreciation for the country of Belize.

They are working hard to give every person an education so that they can improve their country a little at a time.

And they would like to invite any man who would like to live there to move on down!