Lamanai

Today is a visit to Lamanai, one of the oldest Mayan archeological sites in central America. Lamanai means submerged crocodile in the regional Maya dialect.

We took a bus about an hour north to the New River near Carmelita. There we boarded a boat to go back south to Lamani. It’s on the west side of the river which is west of Crooked Tree Wildlife Reserve.

The boat ride took about an hour and a half. We stopped for wildlife and to learn about the native culture along the river.

The Mennonites do a sizeable portion of the farming in Belize. According to our guide, Eddie, they do not always follow best farming practices near the river, clear cutting the forest and not controlling the run off of ag chemicals.

We could see the main pyramid peeking above the trees from the river as we approached Lamonai.

You walk through the jungle as you tour Lamanai.

You’ll find some plants here that you wouldn’t expect in the jungle, like this cactus growing in front of the museum.

As we passed it, Eddie pointed out an Allspice tree. The tree has eugenol in it that can act as a pain reliever.

There are three main pyramids or temples at Lamanai. The first is the Jaguar temple.

We spotted some Black Howler Monkeys as we left the Jaguar temple and made our way towards the High Temple.

The last temple we saw is the mask temple.

We were able to climb all the temples and look around over the jungle in the area. Unfortunately, I didn’t see many birds from the temple tops. The steps can be quite large and are uneven between sections.

We then had lunch of stewed chicken and rice before getting on the boat to return to our bus. There was time to look through the museum and do a little birding before heading back to the boat.

We stopped for a wine tasting on the bus ride back to the hotel. We liked the sorrel (Hibiscus) wine.