Blogs from Cayo District, Belize, Central America Caribbean - page 2

My first journey outside of Trump's America has gone very well so far. The day has been another long one, and it's not ever very late at the moment. I'm in my bed, writing this blog post for you fine people, and the large dogs are barking outside my windows. Welcome to Belize! First off, I would not recommend flying into Belize Airport on Saturday. At all. There are planes arriving every 30-45 minutes, which means that they never get through getting one group through immigration control before another group is already here. We found this out the hard way. From the time we deplaned - on the tarmac, mind you - to the time I picked up my bag after immigration control and then went through customs was about 75 minutes. And they had 8 ... read more

After the four of us catch an early taxi to the Roatan airport, we head through security for a brief wait, before walking outside and boarding our 12-person puddle jumper to Belize City. We've never been on such a small plane, but sitting directly behind the pilot and looking at all the instrumentation and watching the co-pilot nod off for an hour was a bit unnerving. Luckily the skies were blue and the ride was smooth, it was almost like being on a tour as the plane flies quite low, although you certainly feel every bit of turbulence in every cloud as you fly through. We land in Belize City, meet up with the 2nd half of our crew, Steve, Anya, and Mel's brother Trevor. Make it through customs, pick up our minivan rental car, and ... read more

The Egyptians built Pyramids, Christians/Muslims built daunting castles and Mayans built Temple/Pyramids… all of them, inevitably to influence and rule respective populations. Over the past week I visited three progressively bigger Mayan ruins. Staring with Cahel Pech, dating from 800 to 400 BC; it’s small but beautifully mossed over. Then Xunanunich bigger and taller built from 700 to 850 AD, impressive and dauntingly grey. Finally, giant Tikal which was occupied and progressively built from 400BC through 800AD – all six of Tikal’s massive temple/pyramids were built in the latter Classical Period – all six are higher than their surrounding jungle forest. Around 800AD Tikal spread over 10 square miles, had a population well over 100,000, a hieroglyphic historical script, big enemies and no horses, steel, nor wheels. Finally when the Spanish arrived they contributed European germs ... read more

We went to see the Mayan ruins at Caracol. It's pretty well off the beaten track, and there were only an handful of other people there. It was a 3 hour drive from San Ignacio, time consuming not because of the distance, but the unpaved road. We stopped on the way at the Rio Frio cave which was impressively large. At Caracol, we explored the site with our guide, who explained the various buildings that have been excavated in the last couple of decades. The site was quite large, and surrounded by jungle, and we stopped to watch some howler monkeys for a while. We climbed up the tallest building, thought to have been home to the Mayan nobility in the heat - it felt like a long way up, and there was a good view ... read more