Belize

On November 17th we arrived to Belize.  The excursion we were taking was a seven hour excursion so we had to be up very early. A ferry took us from the cruise ship to the port, then we got on a bus. It was a 2 hour ride to the Mayan ruins of Xunantunich (pronounced zshoo-NAN-too-NEECH), so we saw a lot of Belize.

The port where we docked Belize City, Belize

In Belize they only have one phone line company

The Yarborough Cemetery has graves dating as far back as 1781. There are headstones in the middle divide that is in between the highway....dead people everywhere!

The sleeping man..do you see him???

Belize's flag

Belize currency: BZ$2.05 for U.S.1.00 Dollar

Cashew trees :) according to Lee (our tour guide)...Belize grows most of their own produces

They build their houses on stilts because of the amount of rain they get in the winter

After the two hour long bus ride that felt more like five hours and Lee talked the whole way. I can't complain though because we learned  some very interesting things about Belize.

The river that we had to cross in a ferry to then get into a van that would take us a mile to the site.

A model of Xunantunich..what it looked like before it was abandon which archaeologist believe was in 900 AD after an earthquake damaged most of the structures.

Not sure if you can tell but it started raining just a little, but we embraced the rain because we didn't want it to let it get in the way of enjoying our excursion. However ten minutes later it stopped completely and the sun came out.

Us just a somewhat wet from the rain

What use to be an alter

Sam finding his inner Mayan..lol

Yes we climbed it...

Me going up the stairs

Up on the top

Next to El Castillo...the girl in the yellow was our tour guide Lee!!

El Castillo rises 130 feet above the main plaza and is the tallest pyramid at Xunantunich..which we also climbed

It was spectacular!!!

On the very left is Belize and the very right is Guatemala

At the very top of El Castillo looking over the entire plaza

La Plaza

Sam was having a little trouble going down the stairs...well I should not say trouble..he was scared because the stairs were very narrow, no rails to hold onto and we were very high up.

The inside of El Castillo

The back of El Castillo

As we walked down from El Castillo

As we were leaving..one of the smaller pyramids

We saw a monkey as we were walking back to the van..Do you see the monkey?

On our way back we stopped in San Ignacio to have lunch...a authentic Belizean lunch. It was very yummy, I hesitated to eat the chicken at first because it looked like it might have been alive a few hours before..lol. After we ate we purchased some hot sauces which are made in Belize and tried their beer. We were informed by our tour guide Lee that in Belize there are no American franchises because it is to expensive to import the products. They had a subway at one time and it cost $19 for a 6 inch sandwich...crazy huh

On the ferry back to the cruise ship...goodbye Belize..it was amazing experience!!!