BELIZE - Part 1 - Lamanai Lodge

This is a combination of the emails and travel-blogs that I wrote to my kids while on vacation January 2008. This is just a recounting of my experiences and impressions and is told in such a way as to make it a good story…

Day One- Travel
The flights were good and easy, we left from Richmond early in the morning, had a layover in Atlanta, then flew to Belize City. It was amazing flying over the countryside into Belize. Nothing but plush green canopy, thick rain forests. The airport at Belize was chaos, but since we were being met, we just had to find the person holding a sign with our names on it and then be shepherded along.

We first drove from the airport for an hour on a dubiously paved road, then hopped on a little outboard boat that took us up river and down lagoon for 1 1/2 hours til we eventually reached the Lamanai Lodge. The only challenge was that we were doing the boat thing after dusk, so the boatman had to navigate the river (which was more like a tiny stream at times) in pitch black. There was no other civilization anywhere along the river, no lights, nothing. He would stop every once and a while and shine a flashlight on a cocodile (some 11 feet long) or show us some water birds nesting in their night homes. But apart from that, it was dark and uninhabited. It was fun and exciting being all alone out there… We are the intrpid travelers!!! This photo is the entry to the lodge from the water.

The Lamanai Lodge is lovely. Totally tropical with plush foliage every where and an incredibly sweet fragrance permeating the air from the ginger plants and jasmine etc. Our hut is exotic, a palm-thatched roof creation with wooden slats for windows. It’s very dark inside, especially in the rain. But cozy enough. Lamanai Lodge is near Lamanai Temple ruins (about a mile away), in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the jungle. Because it was off-season there were only 5 other guests staying there, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. It was always so quiet and peaceful. The other guests were 2 Brits, 1 Russian, and another couple from Arkansas.

Day 2- Lamanai Mayan Temple
So on our first day, we went on an excursion to Lamanai Mayan Temple ruins. The guide was great and informative. The ruins are barely uncovered, maybe only 1 percent, but they did have 3 large temples excavated that we could climb. So Tom and I scambled up the tallest of temples (pictures to come later). The High Temple is 33 meters high, the third tallest structure from the Mayan civilization. Oh, did I mention the torrential rains??? Yup, it was absolutely pissing it down the whole time we were climbing up steep step after step of slippery mossed stairs… At the top the view would have been of the entire forest’s canopy – and we did see a bit of it, thru the rain cloud that we were presently in… We huddled at the top against a rock slab to try to stop the wind from blowing us off. And going down was even more fun, especialy if you have vertigo. January is the last month of the rainy season in Belize and you can have sudden downpours, but luckily it is so warm that the rain really isn’t a problem (except that it makes everything slippery underfoot).
If you wish to see more photos of the temples click on flickr

.

.

Anyway, the rain let up enough for us to get home to the safety of our grass hut and we stripped off, changed clothes, then ventured out again for our next excursion which was a nature walk. This time we trudged thru the tropical forest with a guide,
looking at birds and plants and ruins of mayan homes and managed to get muddier than imaginable. Luckily we both brought 3 pairs of shoes because by now the first 2 are sodden…

The food here is really yummy. It’s all mexican influenced and there is no choice. You sit down and eat whatever is put in front of you. Mostly stews and of course the ubiquitous beans and rice. But there are 3 big meals a day and very homey-good. The restaurant is a large open hut, no windows, perched on high ground so the view is amazing. This is looking out of the restaurant.
We were in bed at like 8:30 that night because we were both scheduled to go trekking at 5:30 a.m. to see the howler monkeys waking up.

.

Oh, a little about the nights.
It is pitch black and silent as the dead. You can hear a bird squawk a mile away and it will sound like right next door. And we learned the first morning at dawn about the territorialness of the howler monkey. When feeling invaded, the strongest and loudest of the pack will start braying or roaring or bellowing (or whatever description you can put to an indescribable sound!!!) Click here to listen. We were witness to this seranade the first morning and it scared the begeebers out of me. And it was relentless. This big fellow sounded like he was right outside our window screaming bloody murder for at least half and hour at dawn. Of course he probably was a mile away and only shouting for 15 minutes, but to me it sounded interminable! Apparently howler monkeys vibrate their hyoid bones and that’s how they get that sound.
.

Day 3- Jungle Walks
This morning at 5:00 I actually bailed on Tom and said I wasn’t going to see the howler monkeys waking up so off he went to photograph them alone. He’ll have to give you details of that excursion. Luckily the dawn rose sunny and clear. No more storms for a while!!!

.

.

After breakfast we went on the most informative and wonderful “medicinal plant tour” of the area, with a really skilled lecturer who not only knows all the plants and their healing qualities, but uses them himself so he’s really sure of the info. We loved learning the different uses -maybe we covered over 40 plants just in this evironment. It was really sad that the missionaries, when they came in the 17th C, tried to eradicate all indigenous knowledge. The Mayans had been using herbs and plant medicine forever and had written all their healing formulas down – and the missionaries burned all the books, forbidding them to use their native medicines. So much knowledge was lost. Religion has a lot to answer for…

That afternoon I had a nap while Tom went off exploring on is own. We met up around 4 and got ready for our sunset cruise on the lagoon on a flat-bottomed boat. It really was just an excuse to have a “booze cruise” – a little jaunt around the lagoon with lots of alcohol on board. Tom and I were drinking “pantie rippers” – a lethal concoction of local coconut rum, pineapple and some indiginous fruit juice. It was yummy. So we tootled around the lagoon looking at various water birds, and other creatures in their normal habitat, then docked in the mangrove and watched the sunset. It was pretty impressive tho I have seen better… But we did get to see the national bird of Belize in its natural habitat. It’s called the Jackeroo Stork and has a wing span of 6 feet.
Tom took some great photos of various birds. Here is a kingfisher. And I was really glad I gave Tom a pair of binoculars for xmas. They have come in very handy and we use them all the time to spot birds. Tom and I are becoming quite the bird watchers. Then we boated our way back to dinner.

After dinner, we went on a “night walk” thru the jungle. We all had to wear these caving flashlight things on our head since it was so dark (moon is in its 1st quarter) but my heavens, the stars!!!!! With practically no light pollution I almost got confused with which constellation was which because there were so many stars filling in the main bits, making them hard to figure out.
Anyway, on this trek we were looking for night creatures like owls, insects, whatever. And we also visited some old Franciscan church ruins from the 1600’s and got the whole history on the downfall of the mayan culture at the hands of the Christians – in the name of Christ…. So, what did we see on the walk? Not much, lots of bats eating bugs that were attracted to our lights. The bats seemed to dive bomb us, altho they were actually after the bugs and really couldn’t care less about us. We wandered by the missionary church that had been burnt down by the Mayans. These ruins are home to wonderful night life. We saw night wasps that only fly after dark. Tons of different toads, centipedes, and of course spiders.
Our guide found 2 tarantula holes and managed to tantalize the tarantulas out. Honking mammoth creatures the size of your fist!!! Unfortunately Tom wasn’t fast enough to get its photo, but believe me, they was huge! Not my favorite thing to meet in the jungle in the dark. We got home around 10:30 and went straight to bed because…

Day 4 More Treks
Today we got up at 5 a.m. to be at the dining hall at 5:30 to begin our “dawn in the jungle” trek. This was really great. We had a fantastic guide who told us all about the various plants that we passed and also pointed out various birds of all sorts. The birds’ dawn chorus was unbelieveable! Squawks and tweets and peeps and chirps and cackles of every kind.On the dawn walk we passed by an old sugar mill that had been abandoned in the late 1870’s altho a lot of the foundation, brickwork and iron parts still exist. It had such an eerie feel to the place, in dim dawn light, echoing the past of what life must have been like. Both Tom and I were swept away into another realm of reality there. And you can see from the photo how the jungle reclaims all that is left behind. Here is a strangler fig attaching and growing to the mill. Then we continued our trek on thru the forest to the Lamanai ruins, that we had visited the first day. On the outskirts of the forest we heard the warning calls of the howler monkey – the sound as I said, is indescribeable in its fierce intensity. I swear it sounds like a sound effect they’d use for Jurassic Park for a raptor or T-rex!!!! Why the guide was hurrying us toward this scary sound instead of running for the hills is beyond me! Click here to listen. But we found the source of the howling – a troop of howler monkeys in the trees, telling some predator off for being there. These monkeys aren’t very big for the amount of noise they make. The male only reaches 30 pounds at maturity. Still I wouldn’t want to tangle with him… After watching these guys for a while we continued our trek to some trees that had a lot of berries or fruit on them and there we were entertained by an amazing assortment of birds, from different parrots to wrens, to woodpeckers, and even a real live Toucan!!!
Then we made our way to Lamanai dock and caught a boat back to the lodge in time for breakfast.

.

At 9 we ventured off again, this time without a guide since we are begining to know the jungle pretty well, and made our way back to the Lamanai ruins to see them in the sunshine. They are quite different and very impressive when the torrential rains aren’t beating down in your eyes and obscuring your vision! We climbed up the Jaguar Temple and got some good photos, then sauntered off to the High Temple and climbed (and climbed and climbed) up the precariously steep steps all the way to the top. Over 107 feet up in the air. As I said, it is the third highest temple of all the Mayan Temples and both Tom and I, intrepid adventurers that we are, made it all the way to the top again! Here the vista was awesome!!! We were HIGH above the canopy of the jungle – in other words, high above the tops of the tallest trees of the jungle. Get the idea? We were up with the gods!!! I’m so glad we ventured back again. We moseyed around the complex a little more then headed back for lunch.

We had the afternoon off, with no scheduled treks anywhere. There is a dock that one can go swimming from, into the lagoon, which I was tempted to do, but in the end, far too lazy to attempt. Apparently the crocodiles only hunt in the morning or evening so you probably won’t be bit if you swim in the afternoon when they are all sleeping. But like the crocs, it’s also a great time to nap.

.

After dinner we were scheduled to go on an evening “spotlight search” where we go looking for crocs and snakes and night birds. It was absolutely fantastic. We weren’t too sure it would be fun, but we had a really great guide/navigator and he knew where all sorts of night critters were. We spotted sleeping birds of every variety, including the rare potoo and 3 of the 5 different kinds of kingfishers they have here (one above). We also saw flowers that only come out at night, in partcular the Provision Tree flower which was awesome (See left). Then we saw a sleeping python… yes, python, curled up in the hollow of a log jutting out into the water. (at right -You can just about see him in the photo. His eye is shining and you can see the pattern of his skin curled below the head.) The guide reckoned he was 10 feet long, but he ws resting having just devoured some small mammal a few days before. (lucky for us!) And of course we saw the ubiquitous crocodiles, one over 8 feet long swimming under he boat. Yikes! So all,in all it was quite an adventure. And of course the stars were unbelievable. The guide knew most of the major constellations and start systems so we were well instructed on the night sky.
Then returning home, the guide warned us where we stepped because right in our path was another huge tarantula that boogied into its hole. Tom got a photo of its legs warning us away from its domain… Double yikes!!!

.

Day 5 – Traveling

This morning we went back to the ruins for one last look at monkeys, birds etc and of course the ruins… We said good-bye to the Mayan rulers, who long ago dominated this region, and thanked them for their kind hospitality. It’s a gorgeous day. The air is so soft and there is a gentle breeze blowing. All in all, it’s been a superb adventure in the jungle and we loved every minute of it. Now we are off to Ambergris Caye – snorkel and lobster heaven. You know where I’ll be and what I’ll be eating!