Belize - Orange Walk & Lamanai

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From Playa del Carmen I took a bus down to the Mexican border and changed onto a Belizean bus to take me across the border, which was a completely painless experience. The change from Mexico to Belize was immediately noticeable - Belize was certainly more rustic and had a Carribean feel to it (not that I've ever been there!). The racial mix was also noticeable too, it is a complete melting pot, with the largest racial group being Creole (decendents of British pirates and African slaves) who speak a strange (and indeciphable) dialect of English, blacks and then amongst others - Chinese (not many, but there were a few Chinese restaurants around!) and Mennonites.

My first port of call was a town called Orange Walk so i could visit some Maya ruins at Lamanai. There wasn't much to the town itself and I checked into a horrible little hotel for the two nights I was there and the door to my room had a very charming 'No smoking - death' message written on it! The ruins themselves were reached by taking a spectacular boat trip along the 'New River' (only the British could call a river used for thousands of years 'New'!), although being hurricane season it did rain rather a lot. The ruins at Lamani were impressive, one of the longest Mayan sites in continuous use, almost 3000 years until the Spanish arrived in the 16th century.

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