Thursday morning we'd given ourselves a little bit more time to sleep. We've been on a very hectic schedule since we've been here, and have been waking up very early most morning. Since today most of our activities were within 30 minutes of the house we were staying in, and we had a fairly leisurely schedule, that there was no reason to rush things We woke up around 8:00am and walked over for breakfast. As every meal has been so far, it was a huge meal and all very good. Afterwards the girls showered, and we headed out for today's first site. X'unantunich. This is an impressive Mayan sight only a few miles from our guest house, and only a few miles from the Guatemalan border.
Looking at my Google Maps, it looked like the most direct route was to cut through from the road our guest house was on to the Western Highway on the first road of central San Ignacio. As I came up to this road, it was a very rough dirt road. I didn't have to go too far on it, so I thought why not. Well as we began driving down it bouncing around through potholes and rocks, carefully trying to not destry our SUV and careful to not get stuck in a hole. The dirt road was looking less and less like a road the further we went. We were getting close to the junction with Western Highway, and I figured if google maps says it connects, and has it listed as any old road, we should be able to make it. We could now see Western Highway somewhat along side us, and our road would eventually merge onto it, but currently we were separated by a large drainage culvert. All of a sudden however, the road in front of me dipped a bit, and there was a huge mess of dried up mud where clearly a large vehicle (or many at different times) had gotten stuck. There were very deep ruts, with large ridges in the middle of the road. I was fairly certain that would not be passable in our little SUV. I stopped the car, and just said, thoughtfully, "Huh."
As I sat thinking for a bit, I noticed there was another path that had been carved going around this mess and a tree. However that new path also had a bit of a deep hole, and the path around that was at a very steep angle that made me worry about tipping the car over. I didn't want that to happen either. As I sat contemplating it, I figured we could somewhat split the difference with the hole and the angled path, and try and go through quickly. Allie and Kalyssa started chanting a little cheer of some sort, I hit the gas, an we made it to the other side! From here it was a straight shot back to the main highway. This did leave me somewhat amazed at Google maps and the fact that in countries like this where "road" is a very relative term, that a "road" such as this is still able to be mapped and stored in its database.
While we had successfully made it passed this challenge, my guide book had me somewhat curious as to how the next step was going to work, as it said we needed to cross a "free hand-crank ferry". Well, that was a new one to me.
As we got near the point where we'd be getting on the ferry, we suddenly noticed a large bus along
the side of the road a long line of people, and a few cars, all in front of several tents of souvenir vendors. As I passed a couple of the cars, I realized they were probably in line for the ferry, and that I needed to go back and get in line. There was a man with a lanyard and some sort of ID card hanging from his neck, so I figured he must be someone official, and rolled down my window to talk to him. He confirmed, I needed to get back in line, and said, don't worry, there is a cruise ship crowd in front of you, the mosquitos will all be full.
Ugh. In talking to some of the guides, they had said that this is the off season in Belize, due to the risk of hurricanes, and relatively rainy weather. They said over the winter, that sometimes there could be as many as 5 cruise ships docked in town with thousands of people coming out for some of the most popular tours. I was really excited to not be here during that time, as most of the sites we've been to have been virtually empty. Today would clearly not be the case.
I turned around and pulled my car in the back of the line. The girls wanted to shop at the souvenir stands, so I stayed with the car while they browsed. After about 10 minutes it was my turn to get on the ferry (it held up to 4 cars at once). I was a little caught off guard as I didn't realize I was close enough to be in the next group that boarded. The men manning the very began to beckon to me to pull onto the ferry, meanwhile, I had to find the girls. I quick jumped out of the car and looked around and couldn't see them. I called loudly but blindly hoping they'd here, and sure enough their heads popped out of one of the stalls. They couldn't ride across in the car, so they followed me as I pulled on, and after boarding, one Belizean started cranking away at a large handle, and we slowly floated over the river.
Once on the other side, the girls jumped in the car, and we drove up to the parking lot, and then walked into the park. There was a short uphill hike and as we were walking up, there was what appeared to be a mound of dirt along the side of the road with a small canopy over it. Underneath, was a single person with a shovel. He was excavating another structure in the ruins complex! How cool.
We hiked further up the hill and turned a corner and were suddenly in the main complex. The highest temple of X'unantunich (which means Stone Woman) called El Castillo was directly in front of us it was absolutely immense. There was a long line of people climbing it and on top were tiny little dots that were people that had complted there ascent. This temple was by far the tallest of any we'd been
to yet, at over 40 meters! (130 feet). Just as exciting was that the long structure to our left, was littered with canopies, archeologists and excavators working on it right in front of us! Different parts of the structure where in various stages of excavation and all around were excavation tools, piles of rock that had been removed and would be replaced once restored, sifting tables etc. It was really cool to see. One group was shoveling out disintegrated limestone morter with a spade. You could hear the spade hitting rock as it was shoveling the limestone dust. Allie commented that the process was making her so tense that she wanted to go over and ask him to please be very careful with the priceless ruin.
Since El Castillo was overrun with cruise ship tourists we decided to tour some of the other structures in the complex and went opposite of El Castillo to the Royal dwelling. This was a much lower building, but still awe inspiring. The information center we walked through before the hike explained that this area was initially settled in 3000BC, and continued until around 900AD. Most of the buildings that we would see were from 200-900 AD. As subsequent generations of Mayans grew their temples taller, they would do so using the older structures as the foundations for the newer ones. As we came around a corner of the royal residence, there was a group of about 6 tourists listening to their tourguide talk about the complex. As I walked by, the tourguide glanced our way, and our eyes met---it was Ricky, the onsite manager of our guest house!!!! We both kind of smiled and laughed, and I went over and said hello quickly, so as to not interrupt his tour. That was a very unexpected encounter!
At this point it looked like El Castillo was clearing out a bit from the cruise ship tourists. We started to make our way over there. The girls asked me if I planned on climbing this one. ...."Duh....of course! Go big or go home!" They said they'd wait at the bottom for me. I attempted to make a quick ascent, however, there was now a long line of the cruise ship crowd descending, and I had to wait for them to clear a path for me. Finally, there was room that I could use one of the staircases up the back of the higher section of the temple. From the top of the temple, as expected, the view was spectacular.
I took it in for a few minutes and then quickly descended.
We made our way back to the car, and crossed the ferry to the other side of the river. After doing a little more shopping in the stalls we checked our guide book for a good place to eat, and it recommended Benny's Kitchen. A sign on the main road right across from the ferry directed us down a side street to get to Benny's. Ultimately, there were several twists and turns on dirt roads throughout the residential area before we found Benny's. From all the other buildings around, I was starting to think we may be having lunch in the home of some guy named Benny, in his kitchen. However as we approached the restaurant, the entire dirt road, barely big enough for two cars to pass was lined with parked cars. Behind them all was what appeared to be a pretty crowded restaurant.
We grabbed a table, and looked at the menu. The special for the day was something called Pibil. This was a pork dish cooked underground that was seasoned and had rice and pico de gallo as a side, served with tortillas. Allie and I both ordered that one. While we were deciding, I looked up, and who walks in? None other than Ricky and his tour group. We called to get his attention and we again smiled and waved. After getting them situated and ordering, he came over to sit and talk with us. He asked what we ordered, and I told him that Allie and I were having the Pibil. He said that it was absolutely excellent, and explained how it is slow roasted in the ground over night. I told him it sounded very similar to traditional pulled pork in the south. When the meal came, it definitely reminded me of some good old smoked pork in the south....but with a little bit of a Hispanic flair to it. Regardless, it was tremendously tasty.
The four of us talked a lot about the various temples that we'd seen so far and Mayan civilization, pretty much picking up where he and I had left off the night before. One of the interesting things he told us was that the Mayans didn't base their sites solely on water sources. Instead many of them were further away from water than they needed to be, but they used dowsing rods to determine where the appropriate site should be built. Very interesting.
We rushed to finish up lunch, as our next appointment was only about 4 miles away, but we only had 10 minutes to get there. All through lunch we'd been hearing thunder in the distance. It still had not rained on us, but the sky did look a bit unhappy. Our next site was a place called the Poustinia Land Art park. This was not an ancient site, but an outdoor art exhibit of some sort. Its location was some what obscure, a couple miles outside of Benque Viejo del Carmen. I had called the day before to make an appointment and was given directions, and my guidebook as well provided a decent summary how to get there. It included travelling a poorly maintained gravel road (which is most of Belize, so that wasn't too surprising) for 2.5 miles. However, it did seem this dirt road was just over grown getting narrower, and not getting anywhere in particular. Suddenly however I did see a small sign on a dirt "driveway" that said Poustinia. As luck would have it as soon as I pulled in, it started pouring rain. We drove aways down the driveway about half a mile, and found a covered picnic spot with a couple men standing there. I asked one if he was there to meet me (as when I made the appointment they said someone would be meeting me.) He seemed somewhat confused, so I go the impression the answer was no. He said someone had been there earlier but they left because of the rain. I thought about it for a few moments, and figured even if it did stop raining, it sounded like this would have been a very muddy and buggy hike through the park, so I figured we'd skip it and move on to our next activity.
From here we about a 15 mile drive to go to an obscure site called Sak-Tunich. Ricky had told me about this place the night before. It is a family that really loves their Mayan ancestry and 25 years
ago decided to attempt to recreate a Mayan temple on their property. They did such a good job, that at some point the Belizean government and archeologists took notice, that there were ancient ruins on their land and demanded they register it as an ancient Mayan temple. The owner's had to convince the government and experts that no, this wasn't ancient they were building it! Ultimately the were able to convince them.
My guide book had a reference to this place on a map, but no explanation at all of what it was. I did a little bit of internet research, and was able to contact them via Facebook to find their hours (they responded within seconds). We headed over that way. This site is on what appears from maps to be a fairly main road between two Belizean towns: Cristo Rey and San Antonio. Once we turned onto this road however, the entire thing was gravel and seemed like it was snaking through almost entirely residential areas, with the exception of a couple resorts. We did see quite a few attractive neighborhoods as we travelled this street, and the road was extremely hilly in this part of Belize, which certainly kept me attentive. At one point I was coming around a bend, as was a large oncoming truck. As soon as I saw the truck though, I also realized we were both about to go over a small bridge over a creek. There was only a raised edge of the bridge that was 3-4 inches high, and then a drop of 6-8 feet into a small ravine. I suddenly had the split second realization that I had extremely little room to spare on my side, very little room to spare due to the oncoming truck, and that we were both timed to perfectly hit the bridge at the same time, and no time to slam on the breaks. It was one of those do your best to stay on the road and not hit the vehicle, and hope that it is possible to do both, AND you're able to achieve it. I did this, though not without making a very nervous "meeaahhhhhhh" sound. Which then was echoed by the girls as we all saw the very tight squeeze ahead of us. Fortunately both vehicles made it across and neither touched the other.
We continued quite aways down this road and at a very slow pace. We finally came up to the Sak-Tunich, which was impossible to miss as it was right up against the road. It certainly did look like an ancient temple, carved into the mountainside. We got out and immediately the owner's son, who was Allie's age came out to greet us. He offered a tour, and we spent 20 minutes or so seeing the alters, stelas and other carvings all around this temple that was all 25 years old or younger. He then showed us one of the newer sections of the temple. His dad at one point was building a cubby hole to display some artifacts, and decided why not just keep digging and see if we can build a tunnel into the limestone. This tunnel enters about 6-8 feet, and then takes a 90 degree right turn and continues another 10-15 feet. Just amazing.
After the tunnel tour, our guide asked if we were interested in hiking or driving up to the lookout tower. (I had completely forgotten, but Ricky had told me about this too.) I said we'd definitely be interested. So he brought us over to his truck, and we started a slow ascent up to the top of the large mill/mountain across the street from Sak Tunich. We weaved back and forth and around through a small path in the jungle at about 5 -10 miles per hour, and after 10 minutes or so arrived at the top. We got out, and I saw a square metal tower with stairs that simply went up and up and up forever. Ugh. I'm afraid of heights. And here I've got to trust some structure on the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. The construction certainly looked strong enough, and seemed to be engineered solidly, none the less... as I said I'm afraid of heights, and this thing had to be 6-8 stories high.
The girls of course simply wanted to get to the top. As we started ascending, I kept my eyes on the bottom of the platform above me, thinking we're almost there its not that far. Finally we reached it. I realized we weren't in the open air yet, looked up, and realized, there was still another 3-4 stories that we had to climb to get to the TOP platform... Uggh. When I got up there, my knees were weak. However, the view was unparalleled even against the views from the Mayan temples, as we were much higher than any of those by far. Our guide brought up binoculars for us to look at a few things in the distance. There was a Macaw in a tree a few hundred feet away, and quite a distance lower than us. All of a sudden on the other side of us was a very bizarre bird sound that I was not familiar with. One of us asked, "what is that?" "Oh, those are just parrots."
The sounds were echoing through the hilltops, and we couldn't see where they were coming from , but there were clearly a lot. It sounded as if they were getting closer, and we sat transfixed waiting to see what a flock of parrots looks like. Finally they emerged, and it was 30-50 parrots flying in a flock. From the distance all we could see was that they were green, but nonetheless what a sight to see, as that many parrots flying together in the wild.
At this point, while I appreciated the sites, I was about done with the heights, and we descended the tower.
After a little bit of time in the gift shop (where our guide's father had carved all the items), we got in the car, and made our way back to Casa del Caballo Blanco
We got there just in time to freshen up for dinner, and have ourselves another huge meal. After dinner was done the girls were stuffed, and got up to leave. I called them back and said, "I believe
dessert is still coming." "Ooohhhhh." They sat down, and almost immediately, Grace, the cook, brought out Banana flambé for each of us. Allie looked at it, took a taste, and had a sudden look of shock and delight on her face. She then described it to us as "Its warm bananas and ice cream in a pool of yumminess!" Somehow we were even able to shove this into our stomachs, and left very full and satisfied for the night, both from the food, as well as from viewing 5 millennia of Mayan creations, all in one day.
Looking at my Google Maps, it looked like the most direct route was to cut through from the road our guest house was on to the Western Highway on the first road of central San Ignacio. As I came up to this road, it was a very rough dirt road. I didn't have to go too far on it, so I thought why not. Well as we began driving down it bouncing around through potholes and rocks, carefully trying to not destry our SUV and careful to not get stuck in a hole. The dirt road was looking less and less like a road the further we went. We were getting close to the junction with Western Highway, and I figured if google maps says it connects, and has it listed as any old road, we should be able to make it. We could now see Western Highway somewhat along side us, and our road would eventually merge onto it, but currently we were separated by a large drainage culvert. All of a sudden however, the road in front of me dipped a bit, and there was a huge mess of dried up mud where clearly a large vehicle (or many at different times) had gotten stuck. There were very deep ruts, with large ridges in the middle of the road. I was fairly certain that would not be passable in our little SUV. I stopped the car, and just said, thoughtfully, "Huh."
As I sat thinking for a bit, I noticed there was another path that had been carved going around this mess and a tree. However that new path also had a bit of a deep hole, and the path around that was at a very steep angle that made me worry about tipping the car over. I didn't want that to happen either. As I sat contemplating it, I figured we could somewhat split the difference with the hole and the angled path, and try and go through quickly. Allie and Kalyssa started chanting a little cheer of some sort, I hit the gas, an we made it to the other side! From here it was a straight shot back to the main highway. This did leave me somewhat amazed at Google maps and the fact that in countries like this where "road" is a very relative term, that a "road" such as this is still able to be mapped and stored in its database.
While we had successfully made it passed this challenge, my guide book had me somewhat curious as to how the next step was going to work, as it said we needed to cross a "free hand-crank ferry". Well, that was a new one to me.
As we got near the point where we'd be getting on the ferry, we suddenly noticed a large bus along
the side of the road a long line of people, and a few cars, all in front of several tents of souvenir vendors. As I passed a couple of the cars, I realized they were probably in line for the ferry, and that I needed to go back and get in line. There was a man with a lanyard and some sort of ID card hanging from his neck, so I figured he must be someone official, and rolled down my window to talk to him. He confirmed, I needed to get back in line, and said, don't worry, there is a cruise ship crowd in front of you, the mosquitos will all be full.
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| The Hand Crank Ferry |
I turned around and pulled my car in the back of the line. The girls wanted to shop at the souvenir stands, so I stayed with the car while they browsed. After about 10 minutes it was my turn to get on the ferry (it held up to 4 cars at once). I was a little caught off guard as I didn't realize I was close enough to be in the next group that boarded. The men manning the very began to beckon to me to pull onto the ferry, meanwhile, I had to find the girls. I quick jumped out of the car and looked around and couldn't see them. I called loudly but blindly hoping they'd here, and sure enough their heads popped out of one of the stalls. They couldn't ride across in the car, so they followed me as I pulled on, and after boarding, one Belizean started cranking away at a large handle, and we slowly floated over the river. Once on the other side, the girls jumped in the car, and we drove up to the parking lot, and then walked into the park. There was a short uphill hike and as we were walking up, there was what appeared to be a mound of dirt along the side of the road with a small canopy over it. Underneath, was a single person with a shovel. He was excavating another structure in the ruins complex! How cool.
We hiked further up the hill and turned a corner and were suddenly in the main complex. The highest temple of X'unantunich (which means Stone Woman) called El Castillo was directly in front of us it was absolutely immense. There was a long line of people climbing it and on top were tiny little dots that were people that had complted there ascent. This temple was by far the tallest of any we'd been
Since El Castillo was overrun with cruise ship tourists we decided to tour some of the other structures in the complex and went opposite of El Castillo to the Royal dwelling. This was a much lower building, but still awe inspiring. The information center we walked through before the hike explained that this area was initially settled in 3000BC, and continued until around 900AD. Most of the buildings that we would see were from 200-900 AD. As subsequent generations of Mayans grew their temples taller, they would do so using the older structures as the foundations for the newer ones. As we came around a corner of the royal residence, there was a group of about 6 tourists listening to their tourguide talk about the complex. As I walked by, the tourguide glanced our way, and our eyes met---it was Ricky, the onsite manager of our guest house!!!! We both kind of smiled and laughed, and I went over and said hello quickly, so as to not interrupt his tour. That was a very unexpected encounter!
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| El Castillo at Xunantunich |
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| Atop El Castillo |
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| Street packed with Cars for Benny's |
We grabbed a table, and looked at the menu. The special for the day was something called Pibil. This was a pork dish cooked underground that was seasoned and had rice and pico de gallo as a side, served with tortillas. Allie and I both ordered that one. While we were deciding, I looked up, and who walks in? None other than Ricky and his tour group. We called to get his attention and we again smiled and waved. After getting them situated and ordering, he came over to sit and talk with us. He asked what we ordered, and I told him that Allie and I were having the Pibil. He said that it was absolutely excellent, and explained how it is slow roasted in the ground over night. I told him it sounded very similar to traditional pulled pork in the south. When the meal came, it definitely reminded me of some good old smoked pork in the south....but with a little bit of a Hispanic flair to it. Regardless, it was tremendously tasty.
The four of us talked a lot about the various temples that we'd seen so far and Mayan civilization, pretty much picking up where he and I had left off the night before. One of the interesting things he told us was that the Mayans didn't base their sites solely on water sources. Instead many of them were further away from water than they needed to be, but they used dowsing rods to determine where the appropriate site should be built. Very interesting.
We rushed to finish up lunch, as our next appointment was only about 4 miles away, but we only had 10 minutes to get there. All through lunch we'd been hearing thunder in the distance. It still had not rained on us, but the sky did look a bit unhappy. Our next site was a place called the Poustinia Land Art park. This was not an ancient site, but an outdoor art exhibit of some sort. Its location was some what obscure, a couple miles outside of Benque Viejo del Carmen. I had called the day before to make an appointment and was given directions, and my guidebook as well provided a decent summary how to get there. It included travelling a poorly maintained gravel road (which is most of Belize, so that wasn't too surprising) for 2.5 miles. However, it did seem this dirt road was just over grown getting narrower, and not getting anywhere in particular. Suddenly however I did see a small sign on a dirt "driveway" that said Poustinia. As luck would have it as soon as I pulled in, it started pouring rain. We drove aways down the driveway about half a mile, and found a covered picnic spot with a couple men standing there. I asked one if he was there to meet me (as when I made the appointment they said someone would be meeting me.) He seemed somewhat confused, so I go the impression the answer was no. He said someone had been there earlier but they left because of the rain. I thought about it for a few moments, and figured even if it did stop raining, it sounded like this would have been a very muddy and buggy hike through the park, so I figured we'd skip it and move on to our next activity.
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| San Ignacio Building (on the way to Sak Tunich) |
From here we about a 15 mile drive to go to an obscure site called Sak-Tunich. Ricky had told me about this place the night before. It is a family that really loves their Mayan ancestry and 25 years
ago decided to attempt to recreate a Mayan temple on their property. They did such a good job, that at some point the Belizean government and archeologists took notice, that there were ancient ruins on their land and demanded they register it as an ancient Mayan temple. The owner's had to convince the government and experts that no, this wasn't ancient they were building it! Ultimately the were able to convince them.
My guide book had a reference to this place on a map, but no explanation at all of what it was. I did a little bit of internet research, and was able to contact them via Facebook to find their hours (they responded within seconds). We headed over that way. This site is on what appears from maps to be a fairly main road between two Belizean towns: Cristo Rey and San Antonio. Once we turned onto this road however, the entire thing was gravel and seemed like it was snaking through almost entirely residential areas, with the exception of a couple resorts. We did see quite a few attractive neighborhoods as we travelled this street, and the road was extremely hilly in this part of Belize, which certainly kept me attentive. At one point I was coming around a bend, as was a large oncoming truck. As soon as I saw the truck though, I also realized we were both about to go over a small bridge over a creek. There was only a raised edge of the bridge that was 3-4 inches high, and then a drop of 6-8 feet into a small ravine. I suddenly had the split second realization that I had extremely little room to spare on my side, very little room to spare due to the oncoming truck, and that we were both timed to perfectly hit the bridge at the same time, and no time to slam on the breaks. It was one of those do your best to stay on the road and not hit the vehicle, and hope that it is possible to do both, AND you're able to achieve it. I did this, though not without making a very nervous "meeaahhhhhhh" sound. Which then was echoed by the girls as we all saw the very tight squeeze ahead of us. Fortunately both vehicles made it across and neither touched the other.
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| Sak Tunich |
We continued quite aways down this road and at a very slow pace. We finally came up to the Sak-Tunich, which was impossible to miss as it was right up against the road. It certainly did look like an ancient temple, carved into the mountainside. We got out and immediately the owner's son, who was Allie's age came out to greet us. He offered a tour, and we spent 20 minutes or so seeing the alters, stelas and other carvings all around this temple that was all 25 years old or younger. He then showed us one of the newer sections of the temple. His dad at one point was building a cubby hole to display some artifacts, and decided why not just keep digging and see if we can build a tunnel into the limestone. This tunnel enters about 6-8 feet, and then takes a 90 degree right turn and continues another 10-15 feet. Just amazing.
The girls of course simply wanted to get to the top. As we started ascending, I kept my eyes on the bottom of the platform above me, thinking we're almost there its not that far. Finally we reached it. I realized we weren't in the open air yet, looked up, and realized, there was still another 3-4 stories that we had to climb to get to the TOP platform... Uggh. When I got up there, my knees were weak. However, the view was unparalleled even against the views from the Mayan temples, as we were much higher than any of those by far. Our guide brought up binoculars for us to look at a few things in the distance. There was a Macaw in a tree a few hundred feet away, and quite a distance lower than us. All of a sudden on the other side of us was a very bizarre bird sound that I was not familiar with. One of us asked, "what is that?" "Oh, those are just parrots."
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| Atop the Tall Tower |
At this point, while I appreciated the sites, I was about done with the heights, and we descended the tower.
After a little bit of time in the gift shop (where our guide's father had carved all the items), we got in the car, and made our way back to Casa del Caballo Blanco
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| Bananas Flambé with Ice Cream |
dessert is still coming." "Ooohhhhh." They sat down, and almost immediately, Grace, the cook, brought out Banana flambé for each of us. Allie looked at it, took a taste, and had a sudden look of shock and delight on her face. She then described it to us as "Its warm bananas and ice cream in a pool of yumminess!" Somehow we were even able to shove this into our stomachs, and left very full and satisfied for the night, both from the food, as well as from viewing 5 millennia of Mayan creations, all in one day.
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