San Ignacio is located in the west of Belize, and is a much nicer and safer
city. As it was both the rainy season and the having no tourists about season, I even had the whole hostel to myself,
which was great except when it come to making any pals (apart from the friendly cockroach in my room).
Speaking of making pals, San Ignacio has an iguana sanctuary at the top
of a very steep hill. Green iguanas are actually endangered because people
keep eating them (despite the fact they live in tops of trees), so similar to
Belize Zoo, the sanctuary tries to give the green iguanas a safe home and
reintroduce them to the wild (the ones that haven't become too
domesticated).
The baby ones took a keen interest in my baseball cap
One of these guys is missing an arm :(
Size of this guy. (The iguana, not me).
They also have black iguanas, but they're shite (and not tasty, and therefore not endangered).
The Actun Tunichil Muknal cave, shortened to the ATM cave, is
probably the most dangerous thing I've done on this trip. After fording
rivers and trekking through the jungle, you need to swim into a cave
complex and you are guided through a series of caverns and tunnels, some
of which are barely wide enough to fit through. The scope for snapping an
ankle is huge, as even with a head torch, you can't see very much and the
terrain constantly changes.
After about an hour of clambering, you start climbing. After doing this
for another 20 minutes, you're instructed to remove your shoes to protect
the Mayan artefacts that you find dotted about. And then even higher, you
then see the skeletons belonging to the humans sacrificed to the gods. The
tour guide was fascinating, although if anything had happened to him at
this point, I doubt we'd have found our way out.
One thing I don't have is any photos or videos. Electronic devices are
banned from the cave complex since a tourist dropped her camera on a skull
and broke it. But this video gives you an idea about what's involved ...
My cave buddies. Nothing like a near-death experience to bring you
closer together.
There are also several Mayan sites dotted about which are worth a visit.
They loved a temple and a pyramid back in the day.
Me at Capal Pech
Goalposts of the Mayan Ball Game at Capal Pech :)
At the bottom of Xunantunich (pronounced a bit like tuna sandwich)
Me at the top of Xunantunich, the 2nd tallest building in Belize.
The hand-cranked ferry to take to Xunantunich. The guy even gives you a shot of it.
The 21st September is also Belize's Independence Day (from the Brits!), which everyone celebrates by getting hammered and driving large floats round the town.
This hospital float will come in handy given the amount of drinking involved
I actually had a couple of weeks in Belize, so I thought I'd nip over the border into Guatemala, which is the sight of another Mayan city, Tikal.
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