On day five we arrived at Belize City in Belize. Sort of. There is no dock so we anchored off the coast a ways out and had to be taxied to the shore by tenders. Our excursion was touring the Lamanai temple ruins!!! This is what I was looking forward to the most and it didn't disappoint at all. We took a 1.5 hour bus ride to some body of water where we took a 30 minute speedboat ride to arrive at the ruins. Quite a journey just to get there.
Here are a few vans with no sides or roof so they built a roof over the top, haha.
I have to start by saying these grounds are just incredible. Once there, we walked about 15 minutes through the most beautiful jungle! The jungle was just as impressive as the temple ruins were. Of course it was hot (85* and very humid and this is their cold season), but the jungle was just incredible! I could have explored it for hours on end.
We saw a family of howler monkeys
Then all of a sudden we arrived at the ruins. Simply breathtaking!
It's interesting to me how they used these round rock to build but then covered the rock so everything was precise and linear.
View from the top of the temple
The backside of the temple has not been excavated. Of all the ruins on this site, only 2% has been excavated and they estimate that an additional 600 buildings are still uncovered. Wow.
We walked another 5 minutes and came upon the second temple. We were not allowed to climb or touch this one but it was taller and bigger than the first temple.
Some kids in our group stumbled upon a fire ant colony and got bit a few times. Then we came across this guy - a boa constrictor! He was really fat.
About 100 yards from the second temple is this ball court, identical on both sides with this round rock in the middle. The loser of the game was sacrificed.
The center of the court lines up perfectly with the stairs of the second temple, you can see it through the palm trees.
The third temple, we were not allowed to touch or climb this one either.
You can see to the left, below the guy standing there is a little mound. This lines up with the center of the temple and in the mound was found jaquar skulls and human skulls from sacrifices.
A Mayan calendar rock that fell from the temple.
Taking our 30 minute speedboat ride back to the tour building. We had another authentic meal of rice and beans with fried plantains. It was all really dry and not nearly as good as our Honduran lunch. Then the 1.5 hour bus ride back to our ship. We attended a concert that night which was a tribute to Adele, it was so good!
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