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Published: March 24th 2013
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We were out of wifi range for a few days. It was kind of nice though. We are back in Caye Caulker now, but I will talk about our trip to San Ignacio or as the locals like to call it, Cayo. While we were there we visited the largest ruin in Belize called Caracol. The word Caracol means snail in Mayan. This is a fairly newly discovered ruin and only a small percentage has been uncovered. The city of Caracol defeated the city of Tikal to eventually become the most powerful Mayan empire of its time. On the way there, we stopped at a beautiful huge cave called Rio Frio. It's a dry cave and we had a few minutes to walk around and take photos. On the way back from the ruins we stopped at some gorgeous mountain pools called the Rio On ponds and enjoyed a refreshing swim.
On the second day we went on a cave canoeing trip. We drove out to a cave system on Barton Creek passing some Mennonite colonies along the way. Some of the Mennonites still stick to their oldest traditions and use no electricity and no vehicles except their horses to
perform their work. Others have embraced more mechanized farming methods and use large equipment to get their food to market. The cave canoeing in Barton was pretty neat but it was a short trip so if you are looking for an all day trip you might want to look into cave tubing. You can throw in some zip lining if you like. The caves did have some Mayan ruins that were great but to really see some interesting stuff you want to visit Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) caves Which is also near there.
This was our second trip to San Ignacio and we noticed a big change within one year. The government has invested in some infrastructure, putting in a new bus depot, and a very nice Central Park complete with a water fountain has been added to the downtown. We quite liked it and would consider purchasing property there over Caye Caulker, which we were hell bent on.
We hired a taxi driver to take us from San Ignacio to Belize City. It cost us $100 American but it was well worth it. We could have taken the bus for alot cheaper,
but we've been there and done that and didn't want to deal with an overcrowded bus in this heat. if you want to go this direction, ask for a driver by the name of Douglas Moody. He's a really great guy. He even stopped at the Belize Zoo, which I have been waiting for 5 years to see. The Belize Zoo was born out of an effort to rescue 17 animals that had been abandoned after the filming of a wildlife documentary and now houses animals that have been injured or abandoned or have been gifted to the zoo. None of these animals were caught for the sole purpose of populating the zoo. It was definitely worth the wait and it is probably your best bet to getting up close to Belize's amazing biodiversity of wildlife.
It has been very hot this past week so we are not moving around too much. Just trying to enjoy the last days of our trip before we have to head home. We're trying not to think about going back to work.
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