Belize

Thursday-September 17- Belize

The stop in Belize is where we planned to tour the Lamanai Ruins. Everybody in the family ended up going on this tour. 25 of us had to be up and ready to go early early. There was a 20 minute tender to the shore AND you could only get off the ship early if you had proof of an excursion. We met at 7:45am and we all had everything we needed for the day, a record for the McBrides. We met up with our tour guide, Ivar, and began our jouney for the day. It was a 1 hour bus ride and 45 minute boat ride to the ruins. Thankfully the bus had A/C and the boat ride was fast so it had built-in A/C. Once we arrived at the ruins the A/C was long gone. We hiked through thick jungle and boy was it hot! Click here to see a video of the boat ride.

This is where my memory fails me and I can really only recall hiking through beautifully hot jungle and finally getting to the temples. The guide had a lot of interesting things to point out and say about the history but I can't remember much of it. The one thing that I do remember was that he had had LDS members on his tours before and researchers belive that the site of Lamanai is a good candidate for the land of Gershon. It was neat being in an area that I've only seen in pictures and imagning what their life, whoever lived there, might have been like.

There were three temples, Mask Temple, High Temple and Jaguar Temple. The Mask temple was quaint and showed examples of symmetry and a beautifully carved mask. The High temple lived up to its name and we were able to climb to the top. The climb up was physical and then climb down was mental. No one fell and all who attempted, succeeded. I'm glad I did it but it was a little trippy up at the top, plus we all had sea-legs! The Jaguar Temple was pretty big too and had jaguars carved into the sides, but at that point it was in the bright bright sun and we were all hot and tired and on our way back to the boat.

Next came what Dan argues as the best meal he had on the entire cruise. Mind you we hadn't eaten since before we even met together at 7:45 and it was now 2:00, but after the boat ride back we were fed by the 'locals' there and it was really good. Rice and Beans with a habanera sauce that was spicy but full of flavor, chicken falling off the bone, salad, fried bananas, delicious watermelon, papaya and local fruity beverages. It was really good.

Then came the bus ride and this time we weren't as near to an air conditioner as we had been the last time so it was a long ride home. We were all tired and sweaty, but some genius on the ship decided that it was going to be formal night for dinner again instead of Saturday. This time we had time to get ready but still had no nice pants for Dan. I regret not getting any pictures taken of us all dressed up and it's something we plan to do on our next cruise!