Rivers and Roads

This morning (yesterday now) I started off early on an adventure I have been looking forward to for some time now - the ancient ruins of Lamanai.

Now, the ruins are incredible, and we'll get to those - but you can't just get up and walk over to Lamanai, since getting there is half the adventure.

The boat picked us up at the dock at just after 7am and we headed south, past the tip of Ambergris Caye and then headed north/west towards the mainland, which is approximately 13 miles away.

But it's not just open ocean, oh no, we wound our way through a mangrove forest in the open sea - sometimes in open passages, sometimes with the mangroves within reach, and almost always at top speed. Our guide talked non-stop, and was a veritable encyclopedia of information, in the mangroves we stopped only a couple times so he could point out things of interest - like two of the smallest bats in the world, various details of the forest, and a small saltwater crocodile that, unlike his elders, was not yet aware that he should be hiding, and so simply watched us as we floated near him, and then eventually slipped below the waterline and disappeared.

We broke clear of the mangroves (I could fill a page on just what he told us about them alone) and after a quick spread of open sea we cut into the mainland through a river of brackish water that brought us to a small village, where after some breakfast and some souvenir shopping (these folks are the real artisans of Belize) we jumped in a bright green school bus and headed for the highway.

The highway . . . that may give you the wrong impression - according to our guide, the previous government of Belize sold all it's assets and allowed them to become monopolized - which meant there was one phone company, one electricity supplier, one water company and so forth. What this means for the highway is that in order to pave anything the government must hire a paving company (since it no longer owns any government services of it's own) and therefor pay a staggering 1 million dollars per mile to pave the road, this means that except for the main stretch of the intercontinental (which would have taken me back home if I followed it long enough) the road is a pothole covered, axle snapping grind that eliminates any possibility of speed and must be negotiated by an experience driver if you ever plan on getting anywhere without breaking down.

The countryside was mostly farms and small villages, as well as the occasional swamp or forest. The farms here are mainly sugar cane and/or cattle - everyone has their own supply of fruit from the mango, plantain, banana and avocado trees that are everywhere here - and the villages are small, mostly scattered little houses with the main buildings being the school and the church.

Here's an interesting detail -attending school here is mandatory, as in required by law. If a child is not attending school, the child themselves may get a bit of a scolding, but their parents may actually get arrested and/or fined. The parents are especially at risk of arrest if they do not make an effort to have their children attending school - and they are responsible for providing book, materials and the school uniform all kids are required to wear. As a result of all this, Belize has a literacy rate of 95-95 percent, and because of the diversity of the population children learn a variety of languages at a young age. Our guide mentioned that while he spoke 7 languages, he had a three year old at home who could already speak five.

So, after bumping our way along the road for the better part of an hour, we jumped on the mercifully paved Intercontinental Highway for a few minutes before arriving at our next boat launch - this one to carry us up a river to the actual site of the ancient city of Lamanai.

This second river ride was a high speed journey through the thick jungle that covers most of Belize, we stopped again for the wildlife, which consisted of more birds than I can remember the names of - although one was called a Jesus Christ bird, so named for it's ability to walk on top of the lily pads, and appear to be walking on water. We also saw a kingfisher (the largest of that breed) and a Night Hawk, as well as another crocodile and an Iguana high in trees.

Along the side of the river we came across the occasional house or farm, as well as two Mennonite villages that were founded when their inhabitants fled the Mexican government that was trying to force them into it's army.

Eventually we came to a large lagoon (as lakes here are called) and tried to imagine the way it would have looked all those years ago, when a city of some 700 buildings was here along with the hundreds of thousands of Mayans who populated it. We had arrived at the great Mayan city of Lamanai