On Tuesday, a van retrieved us at 7 am for our day trip. Our driver and tour guide was Oz, who is incredibly knowledgeable about everything. He serenaded us with an oral history of Belize as we made the 2.5 hour, 90 mile journey to Xunantunich (Mayan ruins and archaeological site). Oz is of Mayan and Garifuna descent. In the 1600s, two Spanish ships sank off the coast of St. Vincent but many of the slaves on board survived and swam to shore. They settled alongside the existing Carib Indian people and, over the next century, intermixed and became known as the Garifuna. At the close of the 1700s, French and Britain were battling over the island of St. Vincent. The French and their Garifuna allies were forced to surrender to Britain and the British exiled the Garifuna people to Roatan, Honduras. They later found themselves at the center of yet another war and escaped to what was then known as British Honduras, which is Belize today. Lauren and I were fortunate enough to spend a half day immersing ourselves in Garifuna culture. More to come on that later.
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| Breakfast at the resort |
Throughout our drive, Oz shared a plethora of information. We saw various citrus factories, all of which housed a different part of the production process. We passed by a vocational school, where students learn a trade in lieu of attending traditional high school. Each district in Belize has such a school. We saw a Mennonite community, which has no say in the Belizean government as they do not pay taxes and operate as a separate entity. We drove through the capital, Belmopan, which has a population of about 16,000. Belmopan is a planned community that has only been the capital of Belize since 1970. The former capital was in Belize City, which was devastated by hurricane Hattie in 1961. The decision was made to move the government further inland to Belmopan, which is where it is today.
We finally reached the city of San Ignacio, which is home to Xunatunich (shu-nan-too-nich) and means "Stone Lady". We approached a small river that we had to cross via hand-cranked ferry. You read that right. We all had to exit the van and stand separately from it as we all boarded the ferry. There was once an incident where the driver accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes and everyone inside drowned. To decrease risk, all passengers and vehicles ride across as separate entities. Once we were aboard, a man started moving crank in circular motions and the ferry slowly glided across the river on a pulley system. A few minutes later, we were back in the van approaching Xunatunich.
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| Hand-cranked ferry |
The Mayan people believed the earth was four-sided with three vertical levels: the heavens, the earth and the underworld. Heaven, a place for sacred Gods, had 13 levels and the underworld, a place of death and disease, had nine. Located at the center was the sacred Ceiba tree (the tree of life), whose limbs and branches supported the heavens, whose roots descended to the underworld and whose stem was planted in the earth. The Mayans believed the sun, moon and Venus passed through the underworld when they disappeared.
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| The sacred Ceiba tree |
We walked around the site for a couple of hours, listening to Oz shower us with facts about the ancient civilization. We stood in a large, grassy square before the looming palace of El Castillo, which is the second highest structure in Belize. During Mayan times, the grassy area would have been covered by colorful plaster. As we stood there, we could clearly hear people's conversations from the top and learned the architecture was designed to project voices audibly to the people below who would have been listening to royalty. Height of the Mayan people was often indicative of class, with royalty standing 6 or more feet tall. As we started climbing up, I was amazed at how large each step was. Take it from someone who is 5'9 and always skips a step ascending normal stairs. Each step here was a stretch, even for me. We took our time climbing to the top, as it was extremely hot and humid (still sweating). There were friezes on the sides of the walls, depicting the birth of gods, the gods of creation and the Ceiba tree. As we admired the friezes, we saw three howler monkeys napping the morning away in the trees around us. The stairs leading to the top were a bit precarious, as there wasn't much protection even with a small railing to hold on to. The view from the top was incredible; we had a 360 degree view of the ancient Mayan civilization, Belize and Guatemala. The surface at the top was slick and we were standing back against the walls for fear of getting too close to the edge.
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Before climbing El Castillo
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| Vertical steps. Helps to be tall. |
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| Friezes |
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| 360 degree view from the top |
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| La Tache descends questionable steps |
After we descended, we explored other Mayan structures, some of which are actively being excavated. We saw a burial chamber where the tomb of a young male was discovered in 2016 as well as a "ball court" for Pok-ta-Pok, which was a basketball-like game played with a 7 to 8 pound rubber ball made from a rubber tree. Players were not allowed to use their hands, heads or feet and had to use their bodies and joints to maneuver the ball through a sideways hoop. They had referees presiding over more serious matches, and winners were often sacrificed to the Gods, who only would have wanted the most athletic stock. Since it was a huge honor to be sacrificed, competition was fierce. (Side note: there is a short YouTube video on how this was probably played, which is worth taking a minute to watch). As we started exiting the ruins, Oz pointed our a termite nest. The termites were crawling all over the trees. Oz said if you're ever lost in the jungle, they are great sources of protein. Three of us ended up eating a termite (yes, I was one of the three. When in Belize...) and it tasted surprisingly OK. Like a mint. If you ever need nature's breath freshener, eat a termite.
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| Pok-ta-Pok court |
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| Termite nest. Yum. |
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Mayan tomb
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| Remains of a young Mayan male |
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Our next stop was lunch, which was preordered for us from a restaurant called Hibiscus. We each received juices of our choice (legitimately juices, like fresh squeezed watermelon, orange, etc.), a salad, chicken, rice and beans. Delectable.
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We then drove to Blue Hole National Park for cave tubing. Our tour guides were Edgar and Orlin who were fantastic. Edgar also teaches jungle survival classes, so he shared a lot of interesting facts with us. We were given hard hats with headlamps and inner tubes and had to hike 15 minutes through the jungle (no really, the jungle) to get to the mouth of the cave. We ran into a string of hard-working leaf cutter ants and Edgar told us the females do all the work and carry the leaves (ahem, ahem). There is an inspector ant alongside each female checking to see if the leaf is covered in fungus or not. If it is, they will rid of the infected leaf and find another one. The male ants are the soldiers, and are significantly larger. They stay inside the colony to tend to the queen. Edgar said if you ever get cut, take a leaf cutter ant, put its head near your wound so it can pinch it shut and then rip the body off so the head remains and acts as a staple. The larger the cut, the more ant sacrifices you'll have to make. As we kept walking, I heard commotion up at the front of the group. We had run into a baby fleur de lance, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. Counter-intuitively, baby venomous snakes are much more dangerous than adults. They don't yet know how to control their venom, they usually inject all of it into you at once. Even though adult fleur de lance's can reach up to 8 feet long, they at least know how to control their venom depending on how severe the threat is. After Edgar killed the snake, we kept walking towards the cave (and started obsessively looking at the ground, where suddenly every stick and vine looked like a snake). We finally reached the cave, hot and sweaty (still).
As we descended into the depths of the cave, we turned our headlamps on and trudged forward for about a mile. We finally entered the cool, refreshing water and started our tubing tour. We stayed along the walls for safety, but sometimes the current was strong enough to move us at a pretty decent speed. One other thing? Bats. Lots. of. bats. They were above us a safe distance away, but you could hear them squeaking. At one point, everyone in the group turned their lights out and stayed silent so we could experience total darkness and hear the sounds of the cave without human voices tainting it. At some points, it was completely silent, but at others, you could hear all of the bats squeaking (and, subsequently, us screaming...). We eventually reached a part of the cave where the ceiling was so low, the bats were flying right past us. I started picturing bats smacking into my helmet and face. I asked Orlin how good their radar is and what happens if it malfunctions. He assured me they would not fly into me. After our ride, we navigated back towards the mouth of the cave and hiked through the jungle to home base. Before we headed home, we took a dip in the Blue Hole, which is exactly what it sounds like. It contains the same, cool water as the caves and was refreshing (temporarily stopped sweating). Edgar jokingly told us if we wanted the water in the Blue Hole to be warmer by the time we got there, we should all pee in the cave.
As if this wasn't enough adventure for one day, on the way home, Oz told us about a magnetic force field nearby. To demonstrate, he stopped our van going downhill and turned the vehicle off. We were immediately pulled backwards UP a hill. He said the magnetic field was discovered when a man pulled over his vehicle to relieve himself, only to see his car moving backwards up a hill. He thought it was being stolen until he realized no one was in it and the car was moving on its own.
When we got back to the resort (exhausted), we showered and got ready for the end of the season party at Driftwood where we saw our friend Georgia, ate delicious pizza and listened to a local band. We got back around 10:30 pm and prepared for the next day's adventures: jungle hiking, waterfall rappelling (which I am the most nervous about) and zip lining.
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