Orange Walk to San Ignacio, Belize

Day 1: San Diego Airport to Belize City
So here I am at the SAN airport waiting to get away from it all. I am so excited to be heading out on this trip where my blackberry doesn't beep and there are no battles to be fought in the East Village. I board the plane, only to sit on there for 2 1/2 hours due to a "fuel" problem; I arrived to my connecting flight in Charlotte with an hour to spare. The guy next to me was also going to Orange City to conduct sugar research at the sugarcane factory and he and his partner offered me a ride into town. The first ride I have ever "hitched" in my life.

Day 2: Orange Walk
I arrive in Orange Walk and score a $10 room at the Akihoto Hotel. The whole town is closed for Baron Bliss day, and to be honest Orange Walk is only one step below Tijuana (all it needs is a Revolution). I can not believe I am paying to sleep in "TJ," but it's the only place in the whole country of Belize where I can take the tour up to Lamanai. Orange Walk is a mixture of Chinese and Mennonites (do your research people), and is one of the weirdest towns I've ever been in. After watching an episode of 'Sex and the City' on my $10 satellite TV, I go to bed promptly at 8:30 pm.

Day 3: Orange Walk/Lamanai River Tour/to San Ignacio
This is where it really starts to get good. Thank goodness I wore the Ironman TIMEX watch Katie gave me, because it has an alarm on it, which works out handy for waking me up to go on all the tours I have signed up for. Although, I really didn't need it, due to the wonderful trash trucks in Orange Walk that woke me up at 6 am (it's just like the East Village). I head over to Jungle River Tours to take the boat up New River to Lamanai. After a quick 10 minute tour of the town, our guide leads us to the boat. I meet a new friend named Jorge, who is from Monterrey, Mexico. Immediately on the boat we spot a crocodile, so close to my side I think I am Steve Irwin. Soon there are iguanas and birds, too. More crocs follow and so do boats with little boys catching fish. Another tour boat pulls up and buys the boys fish. Once at Lamanai we are treated to a wonderful lunch of chicken, rice, potato salad, and fried plantains before hiking the ruins. Once we returned to town Jorge and I were joined by a Canadian couple who all hightailed it out of there on the next bus to Belize City. 3 hours later I arrived in San Ignacio where there was no room left at the inn for me, so I called the guy from couchsurfing.com who I made contact with a few weeks back. Turns out his girlfriend owns one of the nicest resorts in town and put me up in a tiki cabana at the Parrot's Nest for the last few nights at no cost. I was so tired after arriving I fell right asleep.

Day 4: ATM (Actun tunichil Muknal)
This morning I left Parrot's Nest (after waking up to birds chirping in paradise) and caught a $2 Belizian/$1 US cab ride into town. Once in town I tried to buy fruit from a street vendor, but she wouldn't accept my American money...obviously she has caught on to the recession as well. So, I bought a huge fruit and granola plate at Eva's restaurant, which I ate on the way to ATM. It was one of the most incredible sights I have ever experienced. On the way to ATM, I sat next to one of the tour guides who told me all aobut his family-his brother used to be a BZ Senator (everyone here is WAY more interested in the US election then Americans). At ATM, our tour guide Martin gave us more information then I could ever process. He was like Wikipedia himself. Once at the caves you swim into limestone and we spent 4 hours inside donning headlamps and hardhats...so cool! We were wet the whole time and saw the remains of a Mayan princess who had been offered to the gods as well as pottery. After we came out we had a bad lunch of tuna sandwiches before heading back to San Ignacio. When I came back to Parrot's Nest last night I got moved to an even nicer room; they are awesome!

Day 5: Caracol
This morning I got up early and made my own breakfast of items I backpacked down to Belize. Then I came into town early to see a little bit of it (which only took 10 minutes). Our rickety old van was 20 minutes late as he needed a police escort to take us to Caracol. It is aout 56 miles south of San Ignacio, through a vast jungle on a rugged unpaved road. This is the largest Mayan site in Belize and it's estimated that at one time around 150,000 Mayans lived there. We climbed all around and even into the tombs! Afterwards, we headed back and stopped for an hour at Thousand Foot Falls and took in a refreshing dip. The water felt so good and the waterfalls were beautiful as well. As I backstroked I thought how great it is to be here. Tomorrow I will continue towards Tikal and Flores, before heading down to Copan in Honduras and back up to Antigua for Semana Santa celebrations. Finally, I'll go towards Caye Caulker. Talk to you later!