Lamanai Outpost

Another 4:45am wake up to do an Early bird walk in the jungle. Aside from many many birds we saw a deer, a grey fox, an agooti and something else that was grey, larger than a squirrel with a long tail running up the trunck of a nearby tree.

This part of Belize is where the English buccaneers used to come a chase Spanish merchant ships as well as chop logwood for dye for the textile industry. The Hornblower series has some references to this area especially about cutting the logwood. It would be very unpleasant work as the need to be up to your waist in water to cut the trees.
This ruined sugar mill was begun in the 1800's but it only was in operation for 15 years. The area around it had all been sugar cane, even though some of the sugar was grown over the top of the Lamanai Mayan ruins.

Later in the day I went with Abdul to his village, Spanish Church Village, to make tortillas and tomales, Belise style.

Mine is the lumpy and not very professional looking one! I had to grind the maize on a traditional Mayan basalt grinding stone and the form the round tortilla by hand. It takes many grinds to get it fine enough for cooking. First the dried maize is boiled for about three hours. Then lime is added to the mixture and sits for somebtime to remove the hard outer membrane from the maize. It is rinsed several times with fresh water to remove the lime and then it is ground with fresh water to make a maize dough. This is what is used to create tortillas.

The cooking lessons were at a local restaurant in the village. It is run by a group of fourteen women as a cooperative and is very popular with the villagers. They make 250 tamales every day for sale. These ones contained a delicious red salsa sauc.e and chicken folded into a large tortilla and the folded in the banana leaf for cooking on to of a hot plate.
The food at Lamanai Outpost was outstanding, but far too mch for us. My tamales came back to the hotel for dinner on top of the already giant portions of delicious food prepared by Janet at the lodge.

View from the dining room. Incidently we were the only visitors at this time, so had the whole place to ourselves. We were thoroughly spoilt!

In the afternoon we given a ride on the airboat through the water reeds. It was fast and very thrilling. Unfortunately I did not take my camera, so there are no pictures. We went because the boat was going out anyway for a maintenance check.
Then Mark, the owner of Lamanai Outpost asked if we wanted to try a new activity that they were thinking of offering the guests.
So we became the very first visitors to ridebout into the reed bed by argo. An argo is an amphibious craft that will drive on land as well as water. It worke best in shallow water, where its wheels can grio the bittom of the reed bed. We were so lucky.

Abdul driving the argo. At only 21, this young man is incredibly accomplished. He is an outstanding bird and animal guide, competent in everything water related. The lovely thing about Lamanai, was that the same guide did all of the activities with you as well as driving the boat, car, argo etc.
Swimming in the lagoon was a delight. Not cold but sufficiently rewarding to get cool and comfortable after a sweaty walk in the jungle.
One afternoon after a swim, I noticed the howler monkeys in the trees near our cabana were a little lower than they had been. So I stopped to look at them. They in turn came down a little closer to look at me. How lovely I thought. But they has other ideas. The male leader, was by now just above my head and with that aimed his urine right at my face. I was so taken aback that I took a step backwards and promptly fell backwards over the parapet. Now he was throwing his poop at me! Expletives flew! Getting back out of the herbage below was interesting, and several cuts and bruises later, proves that the monkeys won the day!
Sadly we had to leave this magnificent place. Abdul drove us to the Belize City airport by road through the settlements run and farmed by the Manonites. It amused us to see that the rubber tractor tyres had all be removed and replaced with steel, but the buggy pulled by horses all had rubber tyres. Their relgion is very strict, much like the Amish, but they seem to be able to get aroind many if the rules!