Scotts RTW Adventure in Belize By: Scott Robertson On: 14/06/2010 Average Rating: 0.00 YOUR RATING Rated 0 times 0 Comments 98 Views Caption Week 6 - Belize Arriving in Belize City from the welcoming golden sands of Los Cabos is a shock. We feel like someone has woken us from a sweet dream by throwing a bucket of ice water at us. The city is crumbling, dirty, and noisy and right in your face. It’s like a cleaner version of Paisley (joke). The main tourist draw in this English-speaking country is the Caye region. We’re talking palm-fringed, Caribbean islands with constant sunshine, white sands and turquoise waters. So we scramble onto the first ferry outta Belize City to the beautiful Ambergris Caye. This is a world-class diving area, and our very first dive doesn’t disappoint - we swim with 12 nurse sharks and an array of other wildlife. It’s absolutely stunning. Besides diving, another cool thing to do here is cycle around the island. You can actually ride on the beach around the island, which is fantastic - and stop off for ice creams and snorkelling dips. After a long day’s cycling, we hit downtown for beers and street food. The quality of grub here is fantastic - a perfect blend of Central American and Caribbean. From the Cayes we head to Sarteneja, the country’s most northerly town. According to our guidebook, this is an up and coming eco tourism hotspot. When we get there, turns out the book has been a little, uh, optimistic. So we blast out after one night and head south to Crooked Tree nature reserve, where we get a canoe to try to find crocodiles. We hear some properly scary horror stories about croc attacks here which keeps us on red alert the whole time. Good fun. Then it’s off to the jungle for a major Mayan history fix. San Pedro in south-east Belize, is our base, right next to the Guatamalan border. An intensely hot and humid place, it’s absolutely littered with incredible Mayan ruins - you‘re literally tripping over one to see another one. We have Stonehenge, these guys have entire cities from AD700. Amazing. Easily the most unique Mayan sites is Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM), a cave that’s a living museum, littered with Mayan artefacts and, somewhat darkly, human skeletons. Mayans believed that caves led to the underworld, a place ruled by the Jaguar God, god of the night - and shamans and the ruling classes ventured there to make sacrifices - including blood ones, of course. To avoid becoming the latest human sacrifice, we pull on hard helmets, strap on head lights, and swim, climb, walk and even crawl up and into the vast depths of the cave. Having never done caving before, it’s a hugely exhilarating experience - combine it with the Mayan history, which is so well preserved it’s like actually being there hundreds of years ago - and it’s double the fun. Joining us on the tour is an American surgeon and his wife. They’re a nice couple but the white, freckled ginger fella’s wearing nothing but tiny emerald green satin shorts (and sandals) that make him look like a failed cheerleader - which gives the whole adventure an even more surreal edge. The next day, though we planned to head across the Guatemalan border to famous Mayan site, Tikal, we stay in Belize and head to a relatively new site, Caracol. It’s a work in progress, with archaeologists uncovering and restoring the site. It’s massive and deserted - so we have the huge site, with pyramids, temples and wildlife galore to ourselves. Toucans and macaws buzz the skies, whilst tarantulas and scorpions emerge from cracks. It all starts to feel a bit Indiana Jones, and I wonder if I shouldn‘t have brought a whip and some kind of foreign, teenage sidekick along. Naturally, the only way to end the day is with cold, Belizian beers happily drowned with our fantastic local guide. This part of Belize is really fantastic - good people, decent infrastructure, and off not crawling with tourists and clichés. But we can’t stay here forever - Honduras beckons! Images Total Images: 4
Week 6 - Belize Arriving in Belize City from the welcoming golden sands of Los Cabos is a shock. We feel like someone has woken us from a sweet dream by throwing a bucket of ice water at us. The city is crumbling, dirty, and noisy and right in your face. It’s like a cleaner version of Paisley (joke). The main tourist draw in this English-speaking country is the Caye region. We’re talking palm-fringed, Caribbean islands with constant sunshine, white sands and turquoise waters. So we scramble onto the first ferry outta Belize City to the beautiful Ambergris Caye. This is a world-class diving area, and our very first dive doesn’t disappoint - we swim with 12 nurse sharks and an array of other wildlife. It’s absolutely stunning. Besides diving, another cool thing to do here is cycle around the island. You can actually ride on the beach around the island, which is fantastic - and stop off for ice creams and snorkelling dips. After a long day’s cycling, we hit downtown for beers and street food. The quality of grub here is fantastic - a perfect blend of Central American and Caribbean. From the Cayes we head to Sarteneja, the country’s most northerly town. According to our guidebook, this is an up and coming eco tourism hotspot. When we get there, turns out the book has been a little, uh, optimistic. So we blast out after one night and head south to Crooked Tree nature reserve, where we get a canoe to try to find crocodiles. We hear some properly scary horror stories about croc attacks here which keeps us on red alert the whole time. Good fun. Then it’s off to the jungle for a major Mayan history fix. San Pedro in south-east Belize, is our base, right next to the Guatamalan border. An intensely hot and humid place, it’s absolutely littered with incredible Mayan ruins - you‘re literally tripping over one to see another one. We have Stonehenge, these guys have entire cities from AD700. Amazing. Easily the most unique Mayan sites is Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM), a cave that’s a living museum, littered with Mayan artefacts and, somewhat darkly, human skeletons. Mayans believed that caves led to the underworld, a place ruled by the Jaguar God, god of the night - and shamans and the ruling classes ventured there to make sacrifices - including blood ones, of course. To avoid becoming the latest human sacrifice, we pull on hard helmets, strap on head lights, and swim, climb, walk and even crawl up and into the vast depths of the cave. Having never done caving before, it’s a hugely exhilarating experience - combine it with the Mayan history, which is so well preserved it’s like actually being there hundreds of years ago - and it’s double the fun. Joining us on the tour is an American surgeon and his wife. They’re a nice couple but the white, freckled ginger fella’s wearing nothing but tiny emerald green satin shorts (and sandals) that make him look like a failed cheerleader - which gives the whole adventure an even more surreal edge. The next day, though we planned to head across the Guatemalan border to famous Mayan site, Tikal, we stay in Belize and head to a relatively new site, Caracol. It’s a work in progress, with archaeologists uncovering and restoring the site. It’s massive and deserted - so we have the huge site, with pyramids, temples and wildlife galore to ourselves. Toucans and macaws buzz the skies, whilst tarantulas and scorpions emerge from cracks. It all starts to feel a bit Indiana Jones, and I wonder if I shouldn‘t have brought a whip and some kind of foreign, teenage sidekick along. Naturally, the only way to end the day is with cold, Belizian beers happily drowned with our fantastic local guide. This part of Belize is really fantastic - good people, decent infrastructure, and off not crawling with tourists and clichés. But we can’t stay here forever - Honduras beckons!
Total Images: 4
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