Nerd and Healthnut: Belize Part II

After Caye Caulker, we hopped a water-taxi back to Belize City, then took a bus from Belize City to San Ignacio. San Ignacio is located a few miles from the Guatemalan border, so we traveled all the way across the country! The bus ride was about 2.5 hours long, and we met some really interesting people on the bus. When we got to San Ignacio, it was market day, so we spent a while looking at all the things at the market.

After we checked in to our guesthouse, we went to Cahal Pech, a Mayan ruin site about a 10 minute walk away. It was our first ruin site of the trip, and really interesting. The Mayans were really advanced people, and it was interesting to explore their cities. Almost all of the Mayan ruins in Belize were covered by jungle after the Mayan left (most still are), and its amazing to see how much of their structures remain in spite of nature.

Next we went to Xunantunich, a ruin site located 2 miles away from the Guatemalan border. It was a lot bigger than Cahal Pech, and had a temple that was 130 feet tall. The Mayans were really short (4-5 feet tall) and their temples have the steepest steps EVER. Its almost like doing lunges when you're hiking up, each step is about 2 feet high, so you can't really move very fast up them.

We found a wild avocado tree!

A few days later, we went to Caracol, one of the biggest Mayan sites in the world. In order to get there, its about a 2.5 hour drive on crazy roads. However, its worth it! Caracol has 15,000 buildings, but it is only about 2% uncovered. Most of the Mayan buildings just look like large grass/tree/ covered hills, and once you realize that most of the hills you see are buildings, you start to get a sense of just how big Caracol was! It had twice as many people as the largest city in Belize today, and had a 60 km radius. We climbed the tallest building in Belize right after it rained and we got to sit at the top and watch parrots fly around, it was a great experience.