You Better Belize It!

Tikal spider monkey

Dawn at Tikal

Enormous turquoise jungle bug with a missing wing.

Tikal, the jungle ruins...

Cabana a Placencia

A piece of paradise

Writing from an internet cafe in a cabana by the beach. Spent the day walking the beaches, swimming, talking with Mayan kids who tried to sell me crafts, drank coconut juice from a cocunut that a kid climbed a tree to fetch for us, ate fantastic shrimp, drank delicious pina colada. Placencia, a synonym for paradise.

Ah, but how did I come to be in Belize. I believe I left off at the Mayan ruins of Tikal. I'll give the rundown.
- Got up at 3:30am for a sunrise tour of the ruins. Sleepy! Had a hike through the dark and up a temple side where we sat and watched the sky lighten to where levels of mist came in an out of view. The world awaking. Birds calling, howler monkeys screaming like resonating symbols, a temple poking through the fog and the rain forest canopy. Didn't actually see any animals, but cool to greet the day from the side of a temple and hear everything come alive.
- Walked through the main plazas and around to other temples. Amazing and so high and steep and more to be excavated and discovered it sounds like. Made all the more pleasurable b/c we hiked around and allowed all our senses to awaken to the place in the morning. Can't say better or worse than Machi Picchu but more engaging, yes.
- Hiked around the park and saw a family of monkeys several times swinging overhead and across our path. Spider monkeys! Also spotted a gray jungle fox twice, once with what looked like a bird in its mouth. Saw an ant totally chomp down on a catepillar. Also several path-blazing lines of leaf-cutter ants carrying sails of leaves in their jaws.
- Took a canopy tour, which really consisted of doing 11 high up zip lines through the tree tops. Fast and fun! Then got eated alive by mosquitoes towards the end and dusk. Oh those jungle bugs!
- Basically an amazing action packed day of nature, physical activity, and good ole recreational fun.

Next day got up at 5 to catch bus for Belize. Missed the first stop and had to pay our last bit of Guatemalan quetzals that we had been saving to pay the border tax. Turned out ok though and we caught the bus we needed. Rode 5 hours to Belize and had to pile out of the bus at the border check. Somehow we made it from Guat to Belmopan in Belize, then to Dangriga and Mango Creek where we took a boat to Placencia. (Oh, had great soy milk made by a Chinese couple in Belmopan. Many Chinere people in Belize!) Schlepped our heavy bags as we looked for a place to live and settled on a turquoise cabana right on the beach. Quiet because the tourist season seems mostly over.

Have spent the days in eating ice creams from Daisy's, Daisy being the proprietress who makes the ice cream herself every night. So yummy. And walking in the sand and the sea water. One our long beach walk we also popped into hotel pools and had to hedge suspicious lodgers who kept asking us what room we were staying in and where we heard about this place. Room 16, from a mother. Anyway, skidaddling along the beach avoiding random rainshowers. Drinking juice of a coconut fetched down a tree by an obliging kid. The people in Belize are so welcoming and friendly. Can't help thinking what is the catch? Why are you being so nice? Do you want me to buy something of help you gain a commission? Maybe residual reactions from Peru. But enjoying it. Kept running into a group of Mayan adolescents who were trying to sell crafts in order to get money for their school registration. Got to talk and joke with them, learned about school in Belize, and ducked with them under our cabana in the rain. Conclusion, kids are fantastic pretty much where ever you go. Not right that so many of them have to earn livings and have to constantly proposition people that they meet.

On to a caye hopefully tomorrow. Everyday will just simply have to be better than the last.