After three days decompressing, snorkeling, kayaking, we left Ambergris Caye and headed to Caye Caulker. We stayed at a lovely place called Sea Dreams. On Caye Caulker we rented a golf cart and toured the little island, ate at all these little funky places, and took a bunch of snorkeling tours, including one swimming with nurse sharks and sting rays (we have GoPro videos but I've yet to figure out how to edit them), and the best of all tour: night snorkeling! It's an entirely different world at night when the lobsters, shrimps, sea urchins, squids and bioluminescence and be seen.
After four more days of snorkeling at Caye Caulker, we headed to the mainland where we rented a car. And made our way to our first destination, Crooked Tree. Crooked Tree is a small village (see the photo of the "Touch of Class" barber shop), home of the cashew, first founded in the 1700's. It is tiny, but the Audubon Society protects the lagoon there so it is a wonderland for birders. We stayed at a very nice place called the Crooked Tree Lodge (delicious food, too). From Crooked Tree we took a tour to our first Mayan site: Lamani. To get to Lamani we took a long boat ride up the river where we saw a lot of interesting birds and even a spider monkey. Lamani was incredible and it is hard to believe that at one time it was home to more people than currently live in the entire country of Belize today. It's also hard to imagine that only a small amount of it has actually been excavated. In fact that is true for most of Belize - practically littered with Mayan sites, but relatively few have been excavated. The tiny "black orchid" is the state flower, the beautiful Keel Billed Toucan is the state bird, and the tapir is the state animal, but unfortunately I didn't get to pull over and get a photo of the "tapir crossing" signs we saw on the highway. Did I mention the HOWLER MONKEYS?!?! They were running around in the trees at Lamani. What a racket those guys make - you can hear them up to a mile away and they sound rather more like large jungle cats than monkeys.
We were only at Crooked Tree for two nights before we headed toward the Cayo District of Belize for the rest of our visit. On the way we visited the Belize Zoo, a surprisingly nice zoo (see the photo of the amazing Harper Eagle below - and of course the jaguar, which also run around in the jungle of Belize).
The Mariposa Jungle Lodge (10 miles down a dirt road) is truly luxury in the jungle. This was the perfect base of operations for the rest of our stay in Belize. Located near the tiny Mayan village of San Antonio, and not far from the large city of San Ignacio, we hit a jackpot in this place. From here we went on several excursions. The first to the Actun Tunichal Muknal (ATM) Cave. We hiked for about 3/4 of a mile to a river and had to swim into this cave, site of ancient Mayan sacrifices. We were not allowed cameras there so check out Wikipedia for info and some cool photos. I was nervous about going because they warn you away if you are claustrophobic which I am mildly. However I didn't want to miss this experience. We were truly "spelunking" climbing over, under, wading through and around some amazing cave formations while Mayan artifacts litter the surfaces of the cave. This includes not just pottery, but skulls and in the final room we visited, a full skeleton. Just amazing. The next day we took a visit to two close Mayan sites: Xunantunich and Cahal Pech.
Our next trip was into Guatemala to visit Tikal - what an amazing site! This first photo is from our drive into Guatemala where we found that women go down the river to do their laundry. I will never complain about having to do laundry again. And yes, that is me holding a tarantula that our guide found as we were walking around Tikal. And yes, I cornered that poor coatimundi who desperately wanted me to move because once he ran up there, a bird kept dive bombing him to get him out - he was stuck between a mad bird and a tourist with a camera!
We took our last full day at the Mariposa Lodge to do absolutely nothing. We swam in the pool, lazed by the poolside, and listened to the amazing jungle sounds. That evening we went to "happy hour" at a butterfly farm down the road. It seems that male butterflies become quite active vying for the perfect spot to bed down for the night. We spent an hour watching them fly around. There were many varieties but the Blue Morpho and Owl butterflies were primary. I did get a short video but have to figure out how to share it. The following day as we drove to Belize City where we would spend the night before flying out, we went to San Ignacio and shopped at their HUGE market, then took a side trip to do cave tubing through one of Belize's huge cave systems. By the way, I should mention that Belize is home to a fairly good sized Mennonite community (since the 1950's). We saw many Mennonites as we traversed the country.
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