Miscellaneous Belize Photos

Here are a few more pictures from Belize that don't fit into any categories. It was such a wonderful place and we had an amazing vacation!

Animals in Belize!

We saw a lot of different animals in Belize- especially birds! Here are a few of my favourite pictures :)

Glover's Reef

The last 6 days of our trip were spent on Southwest Caye on Glover's Reef Atoll. We travelled with a tour group called Island Expeditions, and they provided everything for us on the island including unlimited snorkeling, kayaking and fishing :) The island itself is so tiny, I could walk across the whole thing in under 10 minutes! Half of the island is dedicated to the Island Expeditions camp, and the other half has a very nice looking diver resort called Isla Marisol (who we dove with while we were there). Isla Marisol was almost empty the whole time we were on the island, so there were only the 9 of us on the trip and 4 staff members with the island to ourselves. We had incredible weather the whole time with bright sunny skies and just enough wind to keep the bugs off. Although, at night the wind would pick up and rattle the tent a lot so that kept us awake a bit (plus the roaring and crashing of the waves on the reef about 200 feet away is a little scary to a prairie girl in the middle of the night!). We went on several kayaking trips and snorkeled the patch reefs in the atoll lagoon. The fish life was amazing and so abundant! We even went fishing and caught some mutton snapper, red hines, and Dustin even caught two barracuda (that they made us for dinner that night!). We even got to snorkel the mangroves on the island to go on a seahorse hunt (which we didn't find) but I thought the mangrove snorkel was one of the best we did because it was so different. It was such a unique part of the trip, and it was perfect for anyone of all ages to participate. Definitely something I would do again with kids!

Actun Tunichil Muknal

Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave was one of our very favourite things in Belize. It was such an amazing experience and something we could never have done here (due to the danger and the potential damage to the artifacts). It was a guided trip. We started out with a one hour hike through the jungle to the mouth of the cave, traversing one river 3 times to get there (so we were pretty wet even before we started, lol!). Then we entered the cave by swimming through a large pool at the mouth of the cave. From there, we were able to wade through knee-deep to neck deep water in the cave, climbing over rocks, for about 45 minutes. At one point, the guide had us turn off our head lamps and hold the shoulder of the person in front of us and go through a couple hundred feet of the cave in complete darkness! That was totally crazy, but a very memorable part of it. Eventually we reached the dry chamber which we climbed up a few rocks to get to. Shoes aren't allowed in the chamber, so we wore only socks. The guide took us through several parts of the chamber, showing us broken and intact Mayan pottery used for the sacrifices they made in the cave. Everything was in exactly the same place as it had been found, and you needed to be very careful not to step on anything! One part of the chamber held the bones of at least 14 sacrificed individuals of varying ages, including a very well preserved skull. We also climbed (a very scary) ladder into a smaller upper chamber where the entirely intact skeleton of a 14 year old girl was laying. She had been posed like she was dancing and they were fairly certain her bones had not been moved since they had been placed there in around 800 AD. The whole cave itself was such an amazing experience, and a definite must-do if you ever go to Belize.

The mouth of the cave:






The Crystal Maiden

Caracol

Caracol is the biggest Maya city in Belize, and it was bigger than Tikal at it's most powerful (it also defeated Tikal on a couple of occasions and sacrificed Tikal's leader). However, not a lot of the site has been excavated and restored, in part because of finances and also because it was only discovered more recently in the 1950's. It is located not far from Tikal and close to the Guatemala border. As such, there have been problems with people from Guatemala coming to the site and robbing tourists. So we had a military escort that accompanied all of the vehicles going to the site, and armed guards sat on the pyramids to watch over us. It was a bit unnerving, but the site was beautiful.



Interestingly, the Maya in this area built big reservoirs to collect and store water instead of relying on rivers and lakes. The reservoir pictured here still holds water and it is used the provide water for the toilet facilities on site and also for the archaeology students to do laundry and shower.