Belize: Day Seven

This morning we left at 7:30 for a full-day Mayan history tour of two major temple complexes, Xunantunich and Cahal Pech. Both sites are near the Guatemalan border, over 2 hours away. Something like 30 people signed up for this tour, so we had to pile into three vans. We didn’t time it right, and all the vans were nearly full by the time we got to the loading area. Doug and Nish climbed into one of the vans, and Kat and Brett followed us to one of the others. There was room for all four of us, but they spied Tom sitting in the front seat and they turned and hauled ass towards the third van, where there was room for only two. So Doc and I lost the battle and had to take another Tom bullet for the team.

Surprisingly, Tom made little comment the entire trip, although I feared we were off to a bad start when he asked Lorenzo, the driver, as soon we got on the highway, “So, what kind of engine you got in here?”

The morning was very misty with lots of thick white low clouds, especially as we headed into the hills in Central Belize. We saw at least a dozen rainbows, very vivid and close to us. Some of them ended right in the roadway directly ahead of us. Lorenzo told us that in Belize, rather than finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, legend has it that you’ll find a boa constrictor.

We stopped at a citrus factory along the way (and by “stopped” I mean “pulled over to the side of the road for 2 minutes so we could look out the van windows”) and a tourist trap gift shop that I guess the resort has some sort of affiliation with. It almost felt expected that we buy something. They did have some interesting things, so I bought myself a necklace – a simple iridescent green cylinder on a leather cord – and a few small gifts for people. The prices were fair, though overpriced compared to other places, I discovered later.

To get to Xunantunich, we crossed the Mopan River via hand-cranked ferry, which prominently featured guards sporting automatic rifles. This, apparently, is because the site is very close to the Guatemalan border, and the two countries historically have been embroiled in a nasty border dispute. Guatemala feels that large chunks of Belize is actually their land, dating back to when Belize was a British colony known as British Honduras. I wonder how the Belizean military men feel about protecting stupid white tourists like us.

Xunantunich, which means “Stone Maiden” in Mayan, is a complex of 6 plazas and more than 20 buildings and temples. We climbed to the top of El Castillo, the second tallest structure in Belize. From the top we could see Guatemala. The carved friezes around the sides of El Castillo are actually made of fiberglass; the original friezes are buried about a meter behind them, and not exposed to prevent erosion and defacement. While we were at the top, it began to rain pretty hard, and the slippery stone steps seemed much narrower on the way down than on the way up. We were very worried about falling to a painful head-bashing death. We also visited one of the ball courts, where the ancient Mayans played a game with an 8 pound rubber ball. The losing team was killed, while the winning team was sacrificed (there is a difference). It was an honor to be chosen for the game, which was watched by the elite and royalty.

The second site, Cahal Pech or “City of Ticks”, was so named because the archaeological site was a cow pasture when it was originally discovered in the 1950s. Parts of this site were much older than Xunantunich, by about 1200 years. The temples were not as high and did not have as grand a view, but were still very interesting.

The drive back to Hamanasi seemed much longer than the drive to the temples this morning. I guess that’s always how it goes, though. Once we got back, we rested in our room for a little while, then went to the bar and hung out with our friends before dinner. Tonight, each of the three couples ate dinner at our own little two-top tables. The menu tonight was “manatee bread” (which we had a lot of fun joking about — does it contain real manatee?!), cream of garlic soup, cheese-stuffed chicken with sweet guava glaze, and key lime pie with coffee. The manatee bread was delicious: a soft wheat bread stuffed with cheese and bacon (but wait, was it manatee bacon?! Or manatee jerky?!), and named (so the waitress said) because the large unsliced loaf was shaped like a manatee.

After dinner, we went to Nish and Doug’s room for a while to chat and have drinks. Kat and Brett said they’d join us a little later, but Kathryn later said that they fell asleep almost immediately after dinner and woke up in the morning wearing the same clothes they’d had on the night before. We had a nice time on our last night, talking with Nish and Doug, Kurt and Meegan, and a new couple named Dennis and Melissa. I had one rum and coke, which was about all I could take after a week of having one or two drinks every single day, and we eventually called it a night and went to bed.

[click here for pictures]