After traveling through the night from YVR to SFO to IAH to BZE, we finally arrived at Belize City yesterday afternoon. Although we slept a bit on the flights and got upgraded to First Class on the last leg, it is still taxing on your body but we are ready to hit the road right away. We picked up our rental car at the airport and first thing we noticed is that Belize is still a developing country. The "highways" are like our country back roads. Many potholes and broken pavement. The killers are the sometimes unannounced speed bumps along a perfectly fine straight stretch of the highways. If you are not careful, they would easily send your car airborne!
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| Lemon butter shrimp |
We first went to a local shrimp farm to have a very relaxing lunch. Their restaurant was located right in the middle of the shrimp ponds. The food was delicious and we learnt that the shrimps were all organic raised. Here in Belize, they used Belize dollars which is pegged to USD at 2 BZD to 1 USD so we don't have to exchange any currency. The only drawback is you will get local currency back as change. After lunch, we drove to our first destination which also happens to be our lodging for the night, Rock Farm Guest House which operates the volunteer organization, Belize Bird Rescue. They operate the guest house portion to generate funds for their bird rescue operation. The owners Gerry and Nicki were super friendly and they started this operation 15 years ago. Their mission is to care for and try to rehabilitate all kinds of birds (mostly parrots it happens) which are rescued as pets, illegal trades, injuried, or abandoned. As expected, the whole place is filled with noisy bird calls. We have never seen so many parrots in our lives. Many birds are now wild and free to fly anywhere but they still stick around for the free food every morning in the feeders. Another amazing sight we saw after dark is all the fire bugs flying around in the field around our cabin. It is just awesome to see all the little twinkles all over.
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| Our cabin at the Rock Farm Bird Rescue |
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| Owner Nikki and her scarlet macaw |
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| This parrot is crippled and won't be able to live in the wild any more |
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| It has bonded with human also |
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| Parrots being rehabilitated |
This morning we were served a big breakfast on the terrace in the main house. We saw 4 toucans in the trees!! Again the bird calls and songs were almost deafening! I never thought parrots can be this noisy! We then drove 1.5h to visit a spectacular Mayan ruin, Xunantunich. To get there, you have to cross a small river on a hand-cranked car ferry! What a concept! Wish all BC Ferry boats are operated this efficiently! Even on a Saturday, we almost had the whole place to ourselves. This is the first Mayan ruin that we have ever visited and we are impressed. El Castillo, the tallest building of this archaeological complex, is beautiful with detailed stucco friezes with carved symbols representing the Sun god, Moon god, and others. We were allowed to climb all the way up to most pyramids, including El Castillo. The view of the surrounding area from the summit is breathtaking. There was even an iguana sunbathing right at the top as well! Xunantunich is so close to the border that we could see Guatemala from the top of the pyramid. This is where we are going tomorrow to visit the most famous Mayan ruin of all in Tikal.
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| All hand powered! |
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| Beautiful stucco friezes on El Castillo |
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| Iguana sharing the best spot on top of El Castillo! |
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| This place is so quiet that we have the whole site to ourselves! |
We then drove through 30 km of rugged back country roads to visit two waterfalls in the Pine Ridge Mountain area of Belize. It is totally unexpected to see such a familiar flora in Belize, a pine tree forest! The Five Sister Falls are located near a upscale lodge but the staff now won't allow non-guests to use their facilities so we could only admire the waterfalls from afar instead of swimming in the natural pools. Not too sure about the legality of this policy but we don't want to argue. We kept driving to our next destination, Rio On Pools, which are a series of pools formed by various waterfalls cascading down the mountain. I am surprised that not many people were there to enjoy this scenery and the water. We only saw two people swimming and two other tourists there.
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| Five Sisters Falls |
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| Rio On Pools |
The parrots are so cute .... did you offer them beer ?
ReplyDeleteThey would have drunk it if we had offered. They were aggressive.
ReplyDelete