Belize - day 3

 These are our lovely huts that we stayed in at the Parrot Nest Lodge.  These two had bathrooms and showers in them.  Other than the boys having a couple scorpions to deal with in their shower, they were great.  We also had the breakfast and dinners here and they were great.

 Troy, our driver.  Bit distracted as he was on a conference call while driving.  We headed back into San Ignacia to meet our guides for the cave tubing expedition.  We followed them in our van so that we could head on down the highway after tubing and the zip line.  I don't have any pictures of us tubing because I didn't want to risk getting my camera or phone wet again.  So we did go through these really cool caves, no rapids and a bit of a slow float.  We did have head lamps so we could look at the stalagtights.  We came out and floated the rest of the way in the warm sunshine.  It was lovely (it was a 45 min walk up the river, then we ended back where we parked the car).

Ethan, yes the child in the cast, really wanted to go zip lining.  Grant talked Troy into it when they went in to pay for the trip.  I think everyone liked the zip lines as much or even more than the tubing.  Fun times.

 After floating the river and going on the zip line we headed South to the town of Hopkins.  We stopped at the blue hole on the way.  It was a sink hole that has filled with mineral water or spring.  Then we continued on down to Hopkins.  The kids got about an hour in at the beach while I unpacked some things.  Then we had dinner, just spaghetti, in the kitchen at the villa. Then once again we were all beat and headed to bed...  till tomorrow.

belize - day 2

 Up by 6:30 to have breakfast and hit the road by 7am to go into Guatamala to see the ruins of Tikal.  We switched vans at the boarder and were sprayed by holy water to get rid of all of the evil spirits (that reside in Belize?).  We stopped at one of the three large lakes we passed on the way.  They have different types of rocks for different types of cloth at the washing stations.  I thought that was interesting.

 We were able to see a triantula and some spider monkeys on our hike up to the ruins.  Ana was thrilled, that is all she really wanted to see on this trip.  The guide even showed her how to call a monkey.  She practiced the rest of the day and had it down pretty well by the time we left.

 The first ruin we came to was part of their calendar.  There was one to the N, S, E and W of this one and depending on where the shadow landed they knew what time of year it was.  Grant was showing off sprinting up and down this one.  He was videoing himself.

 This bark smelled good.  This is the tree that they use to make insense out of that they burn in churches.  Then we rounded the corner and saw the 4th tallest temple in the park.  You can't climb it because people have fallen off and someone died a few years ago.  It's temple 2 in the Grand Plaza.  This was the king/royalty's court.

 Here we are ontop of temple 1, the Grand Jaguar, in the Grand Plaza, looking at temple 2.

 In the background here is temple 3, which just happens to be the 3rd tallest in the park.  They think their is still one taller than all the rest but it is still buried, so no one really knows.  Grant on top of temple one.

 The leaves of this tree smelled like black pepper.  And there was a type of cilantro growing on the steps of these ruins.  Doesn't look at all like the cilantro we grow at home, but smelled and tasted the same.

 This is the oldest building in the area, it's called Mundo Perdido or Lost world.  It has a different type of archetecture than the other pyramids.  It was built level by level, so you can see 5 different phases of the building type.  There were also no rooms or tombs inside of it.  Below Victor is looking into one of the 230 storage areas that have been uncovered underground.  Roots and food would have been stored here and there were rocks fitted to the different enterences so rodents couldn't get in.

 Here we are on top of temple 4, it is the tallest of the temples.  It's also called the two headed snake temple.  It was built around 740 AD and is 64.6 m tall.  Below is the view of the other temples, the mound to the right is what they think is another and possibly the tallest temple.  To the left of that is temple 3, then 1 and then 2.

 We weren't back to our huts long and Ethan was fishing and hooked a small sardine in the eye and Ana was swimming and playing with the dogs.  Another good dinner and off to bed.