Thursday, January 23
After our afternoon expedition we went back to the hotel for a while. We just lazed around. I took a shower and a little after 5 we walked down to our reservation for dinner, Pasta La Casa. It’s a very popular Italian restaurant that gets very good reviews. They have two seatings, 5:30 and 7:30. The tables are communal and we sat next to another couple, Susie and Bob. They live in Oregon and have done a lot of traveling in their old age. We compared notes on places we have been, what we like to do. We have similar hobbies, Susie also crochets, bakes, and gardens; Bob plays guitar but is also an artist, pen and ink. So we had plenty to talk about.
The food was very good, as was the wine. But something strange happened with our main course and it took a long time to arrive, like an hour! It’s like they forgot us, but that seems impossible, we were all there for the same reason and there were only two items on the menu! It did eventually show up and it was delicious, although I think I enjoyed it more than Lee; he said there was an awful lot of cheese on the pasta. That was ok by me!
I slept a lot better last night, although I did wake up with some mosquito bites. We’ve done our usual morning routine, coffee in our room then down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Today I got two scrambled eggs and banana bread. I almost got the banana pancakes again!
It’s actually chilly today, low 70’s for the high. I think even Belize is being affected by the polar vortex! We’ve kept the bikes for another day and in a while we’ll go down to the brewery for lunch and a beer flight.
Later:
The brewery was fun. Lee was finally able to get an IPA and I got a coconut porter. We got food as well, but the burger and nachos were pretty mediocre. They have good TV’s though; we may go back to watch the Chiefs vs the Bills on Sunday.
The afternoon was a little TOO lazy for me; Lee took a nap; I finally went for a walk, all the way down to the Split and back. It was just as well that things were slow, Friday was busy!
Friday, January 24
Well we’re sitting waiting for the ferry back to Caye Caulker and I’m on my phone so we’ll see how this goes.
I woke up at 4:30 am this morning to get ready to go on our guided tour of the Mayan ruins at Lamania. We needed to meet our taxi at 5:50 to make it to the 6:30 ferry on time. This is the earliest we’ve been up in a while.
It’s dark and rainy out but Max our driver is prompt and his golf cart taxi has clear plastic shades so we get to the ferry on time and dry.
The ferry is full and it leaves a few minutes late but soon we’re on our way to Belize City. There we meet Juan who helps us find our driver, boat captain and guide for the day, Julian. We pile into J’s ancient van and soon we are tooling around Belize City picking up the other people on our tour.
Finally we are on our way to Orange Walk, from where we will take a boat to the ruins. Along the way we learn interesting factoids from J, and sampling of which are below:
a) Belize City is no longer the capital. They moved it inland to Belmopan after a hurricane hit Belize in the ‘80’s and Belize City flooded badly.
b) Lamania was just discovered in the 70’s which explains why I don’t remember hearing of it 50 years ago.
c) J is Mestizo, Mayan and Spanish mixed. His grandparents are full Mayan and still wear traditional clothing.
It takes an hour to get to the boat. I’m very impressed by the highway, mostly smooth paved 2 lane the entire way. J says there are no speed limits in Belize, just periodic speed bumps and police checkpoints to keep people in line. It seems to work pretty well too. You wouldn’t want to hit one of those bumps going 50 that’s for sure!
After about an hour we transferred to a large speed boat and away we went up the New River. By now it has stopped raining, and it stayed dry for the entire boat ride and the tour of the ruins. I have no idea how he found his way through that curvy many channeled mess but I guess he does it all the time. We sped along taking the curves at an angle and me with my eyes shut half the time.
 |
| Pelican Outside a Mennonite Village |
Periodically he’d screech to a halt and point out something of interest, a bird, a crocodile, a Mennonite village. The river got very wide and became a lake, and then we were finally there.
So Lamania was pretty spectacular. We climbed one of the temples and walked around a lot of them. When we were finished with the tour we had a picnic lunch cooked by J’s mom. And I had a Mexican coke too! I was starving!
We checked out the little museum and then it was time to reverse the process. Hour long speed boat ride back to Orange Walk. Ancient van ride back to Belize City. We were the first one’s dropped off, which was nice, but we missed the 3:00 PM ferry by about 20 minutes, which meant we had to wait about an hour for the 4:30 ferry.
While we were waiting for the ferry it started pouring again. After all of J’s stories about Belize City flooding the copious amount of water coming down started to make me nervous. It was still raining hard when we got on the ferry, but somewhere along the way the rain stopped and the clouds actually parted a little.
We were very glad to get back to Caye Caulker. No Max waiting for us but that was ok; we didn’t mind walking back to Weezies. A couple of showers and soon we were down in the restaurant once again, drinking wine and eating pasta. We’re both really tired and we’re glad we don’t have any big plans for tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment