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Published: November 4th 2012
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And then it was time for our first little adventure - crossing the border to Belize! Despite all the internet research we'd done, there seemed to be no clarity around what the official rules were around paying exit and entrance fees, and whether they'd be included in the flight price or not. Being very persistent seemed to be at least worth a shot though, and indeed, with some crappy Spanish (es incluido en el precio del vuelo, estoy seguro!!) we were in the end made to sign the back of the supposed to be official receipt, and the 15 gbp fee per person was waved. Victory! No clue what we'll need to do on the way back, but we'll figure it out. We also managed to avoid the overpriced insurance scams, thanks to the information provided on other travelblogs, and to convince the customs guy that copies of the car papers (rather than the originals) were good enough. The charge for fumigation of the car is unfortunately inescapable, but clearly another 'trick' to make more money of tourists. And after having paid the official insurance fee, we could enter Belize!
Given that we now only had about a week left,
we decided to limit ourselves to a few days in Northern Belize, and then fly to Ambergris Caye for another 2 days. So altogether, it was a pretty quick drive to our next stop, Orange Walk Town.
Orange Walk Town is a somewhat smaller town in Northern Belize, with only 16,000 inhabitants (keep in mind that Belize in total only has around 300k inhabitants, so it's all relative..) The town itself is mostly agricultural, sugar canes being one of the main sorts of produce. 2 out of the 3 Belizean rums are produced around here too. To western standards the town looks quite poor, with low quality roads, no street lights, poorly constructed and/or maintained buildings, and shops with low end and second hand goods. Our hotel (de la Fuente, seems to be the center of tourism in the town, and recommended by pretty much every guide book) was by far the nicest building in town. But it's quite a pleasant and laidback town actually, with a few nice restaurants and bars. And it offers a good base to explore two great Mayan ruins, Altun Ha, and the famous Lamanai (apparently originally called Laman Aien, submerged crocodile, by the
Mayans. So that was our schedule for the first two days..
Altun Ha is located right next to the Old Northern highway, so relatively easy to get to. Driving in Belize is an interesting experience altogether though. There are 4 major highways only, named very aptly - Northern highway, Western highway, Southern highway, and the Hummingbird highway. Most other roads are either unpaved, or paved but of doubtful quality. You can really notice the difference with Mexico.. That being said, the Old Northen highway (more of a back road by now, but the name already indicates its prior function) did offer us a nice tour across some local villages in exchange for the somewhat bumpy conditions.
Lamanai would have been harder to reach by car, so most people take a river boat tour to get there. We decided to do the same, and really enjoyed the trip. We were accompanied by a guide who pointed out all the flora and fauna we encountered on the way, including a very cute spider monkey that the guide tempted with bananas (I know, I know, it´s not good to let animals get used to such things, but it was really cute
nevertheless..). Lamanai itself is also very impressive - both because of its architecture and its location, in the middle of the dense jungle. The 'town' had been strategically located to control the same river we had arrived over. Apparently, as for most Mayan cities, only the elite (about 15% of the population) actually lived in the city, the rest lived in the surrounding area. Interestingly enough, the demise of the Mayan civilisation seems to have at least partially been caused by its own version of global warming. The desire to build ever more impressive structures led to more and more trees disappearing, as the leftover material of the burnt trees apparently was an important building material (kind of cement). Given that many of the cities had already been located on pretty middle of nowhere locations (everything to make the city seem even more impressive), this caused draughts and other problems. So we´re not being very original, in nowadays society.. 😉Of the over 700 structures that apparently are located in the town, only about a dozen have been fully excavated and restored so far. But those that are fully accessible now did give us some amazing views over the jungle..
On the way back, some rum punch (local golden rum plus some juice) loosened up the spirit, and we had some interesting chats with the other people on our boat. They included another international couple both in consulting too (small world), an American girl working in Belize in a small village with Peace corps and her visiting friend, and an Alaskan family with 3 kids (4th coming up, and the youngest was still a baby- don't say Alaskans aren't adventurous!). So quite the interesting bunch..
One of the other things both Stephen and I were very keen on was cave tubing. Given that we didn't want to pay any over the top rates, we decided to drive over to the Nochuch che'em park ourselves and get a tour directly there. We had booked the night before with Vitalino, owner of cavetubing.bz. I must say - despite the relatively high expectations because of the good tripadvisor reviews, we were not disappointed! His brother took the two of us around, and turned the 30 mins walk up the river into an hour long eco-tour. He told us about the different plants and herbs (apparently his dad is a bush doctor) and
the animals. I even held a tarantula (well, and so did Steve, for much longer, obviously, but I thought it was pretty cool of myself!). Going through the caves in our tubes was fun! The explanation of our guide made it even more interesting (although some interpretations of the stones required more imagination than we seemed to have, but that shouldn't spoil the fun..).
To be fair, I enjoyed his stories about life in Belize even more than the Mayan interpretations. Some snippets - for every 1 man in Belize, there apparently are 7 women (not sure if I can believe that!). Belize is quite international, with people from all over Central America (his girlfriend was from Honduras, and one of the competing cave companies was from Jamaica). Our guide was also considering to move to Honduras, as they didn't have many English speaking guides there with the experience he has. The guys at cavetubing.bz take the cave tubing namely very seriously and pride themselves on all the training they do in rescue swimming and alike. Moving to Guatemala would apparently be a bad choice, and our guide clearly explained the salary differences, and the fact that he'd have
to work much harder there, and that his current job was so much more fun.
After the cave tubing through the underworld (how the Mayans would call the underground cenotes, where they, by the way, also loved to perform human sacrifices.. In particular kids between 9-13, whose tongues and testicles they'd cut off first!), we had our 3rd consecutive rice, beans, chicken and potato salad lunch. This is a typical Belizean meal, quite hearty and filling, but it does get dull... The Belize Zoo, only 10 minutes away from the caves, made for a good hour and a half stroll, and then, back to Orange walk town it was.. Because tomorrow morning,we will be heading out to 'la isla bonita', Ambergris caye/San Pedro!
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