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Published: February 9th 2022
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Our first floor balcony in Crooked Tree village is set amongst tall green trees with huge red flowers that really stand out in this lush green jungle of palms, pines, cashew nut trees and mahogany. The air is full of bird song, of parrots' squawks and buzzing wings of passing hummingbirds. Beyond this we can hear the primeval sound of howler monkeys calling to each other. The monkeys are perhaps a mile away today, they are getting closer - their calls carry for up to four miles. In the blue sky above, vultures are circling; something may be attracting them or are they just enjoying being able to effortlessly glide in the warm air?
Getting to Belize took two full days and plenty of paperwork – much of it never looked at. When we turned onto the very quiet Belize highway in our rented Jeep we had big smiles on our faces – we really are travelling again.
Our first stop was Crooked Tree village, spread out on the shores of a lagoon. Even before we stop the car, we can see and hear birds everywhere – in our three days here we identified over
30, from tiny mangrove swallows to jabiru storks, the Americas biggest flying bird. It was tempting to extend breakfast and just watch the birds from the B&B but walking out to the lagoon edge was easy and the muddy edges were full of more birds, including pink spoonbills. We were also able to get into the edges of the jungle – a bit more challenging but we did spot our first spiny tailed iguanas.
We made a trip out to see the Mayan ruins of Altun Ha where 14 buildings, all stepped like pyramidal grandstands, are grouped around two large plazas. From the top, the view is one of jungle in every direction. We also visited a sanctuary for howler monkeys, set up by the local farming community over the last 40 years. A guide led us on a short walk along a jungle path to find a troop of 8 howler monkeys. Over the last 7 years, the guide has habituated this troop so that, on good days, one or two will cautiously come down out of the trees to be fed. Today is, luckily, a good day; we hold banana pieces in the palms of
our hands and the youngest female holds our fingers in a tight grip while she eats, ensuring we don't get away.
A little further north, we stayed in Orange Walk, a larger town on New River. From here we took a boat up the river to see the Mayan ruins at Lamanai. The trip up the river took about two hours and was a cross between the boat chase from an Indiana Jones movie, as we woosh at speed around the river's bends, and a David Attenborough documentary – flocks of snowy egrets fly ahead of us, resting crocodiles plop into the water as we pass, kingfishers look down at us. Dense jungle comes right up to the river edge, so when a giant green iguana heads off into the trees, it is instantly lost to view despite being bright orange (it's a male and has turned itself orange to impress the lady iguanas with its fabulous body).
Lamanai extends over many acres and the only practical way to get here is by boat. Stepping into the jungle from the boat, nothing is visible except a narrow path though the trees. Eventually the first
temple starts to appear through the foliage – it is huge, 40 metres tall, but the jungle hides it until we get close. All of these temples had disappeared under hills of debris and plants and it was only in the 1970s that they were rediscovered – many smaller temples are still hidden under earth mounds. Lamanai had become a town as early as 1500 BC and it was an important Mayan centre for over two thousand years; the jaguar and mask temples are particularly spectacular. The untouched rainforest is dense on every side and there are howler monkeys calling above our heads. Part of us wonders what else could be found out there; part of us is amazed that this was ever found and how long will it be before the jungle claims it back?
The roads are fairly good here but one road leads to a ferry across the river. The ferry is very old with a deck of loose planks and takes just four cars at a time. It is moved across by the two boatmen who wind a winch that pulls the ferry across on a wire. As it crosses, all the cars
have to backup a metre to change the weight distribution so that we can make it onto land on the other side!
Having breakfast outside our riverside cabin, we spot the eyes of a crocodile floating past – we decide to give kayaking a miss; in the evening a group of coati come down to feed on the opposite bank – they look something like a small brown bear crossed with a lemur - very cute.
We drive south for a day to reach the palm-fringed beaches of Palencia. We enter the village behind a motorbike ridden by two police officers, one of whom is cradling a large bottle of rum and smaller bottle of Coke in her arms. Well, we had heard this was a pretty laid back place. The village is at the southern end of a 27 mile long sandbar peninsular that is just about connected to the mainland. Along the peninsular are houses ranging from run-down wooden shacks to luxury villas but there are very few people. The beach is over 18 miles long and there is almost nobody on it.
Off shore there are many sandbar
islands, once used by pirates as their bases. When the Spanish were in control of much of the Caribbean and South America, British pirates based on these islands made a good living attacking the Spanish galleons as they set off homeward full of gold. The British were often at war with Spain and so encouraged the pirates and it was a Scottish pirate who established the first colonial city in Belize in 1638; independence was only gained in 1981
Tomorrow we will move on to visit Cockscombe Jaguar Reserve but before that there are palms to laze under, warm waters to swim in and rum cocktails to be enjoyed.
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