Monday, Oct 27(Belize City, Belize)

Well, had quite a different tour today, to Mayan Ruins. It started with the seven of us getting a tender to shore and getting to the tour operator's booth. No problem so far. Off we went in a mini-van, on the "North Highway." Highway here means a paved road, kind of. It was described by our tour guide as one of the four main highways in the country. It was paved, OK, it also had more pot holes than I could count. I think the mini-van had a suspension system, once upon a time. We had to slow down three or four times, as the road was flooded, nothing but river on both sides of the road. In a few places we saw people walking in the water. The guide said the rains had flooded the tilapia farms, and all the fish got out. The people were looking for fish. We made it to the boat dock for the river ride to the ruins, but it seemed the boat dock area was flooded also. The van just pulled off to the side of the road, and we got into a boat that was used to move us out to where the 'real' boat was docked. We got out of the first boat and walked across a line of cinder blocks across the water, to the dock and the 'real' boat. Then off we went down the river towards the ruins.

How the guide finds his way around we could not tell. There were numerous turns and branches off the river. After lunch, we started off into the forest. The path was either very rocky, with rocks covered with moss, or leaves, or both, or the path was very slick mud. We saw the most unusual mushrooms, at least I think they were mushrooms. They were a bright orange color, and their ‘mushroom’ shape was upside down.

People slid often, but no one fell on the path. One guy did fall later when trying to climb up the moss covered steps at one of the temple ruins. While walking on the path, you had to be careful what you reached out for. Some of the trees were completely covered in thorns, about 1 ½ inch long. The palm trees had nice strong branches, but the leaves had serrated edges (like a bread knife). Everyone's shoes slowly became covered in mud. We saw three different temples. The tallest was about 100 feet tall.

There was a small 'ball court' where the Mayans played a ball game, trying to get a rubber ball into a stone container. This I don't think I fully understand: The captain of the WINNING team was sacrificed. There were numerous flying bugs around. Most of out group had bug repellant with 25% DEET. They were reapplying it several times. My repellant has 98% DEET. It seemed to work quite well. I had to apply some additional spray on one area I seemed to miss the first time.

Then we reversed out travels: 'real' boat, shuttle boat, mini-van, ship tender back to cruise ship. The hole thing was about seven hours. We did not have any rain on us while on the tour, but we could see numerous rain showers in different places around us. As I type (Monday, 9:15 PM Mountain time) heavy rain shower on the ship.