After bumming around for two days in San Ignacio I was more than happy to see Trish walk up in the bus station Saturday morning. We thought it would only take a day and that we would be able to meet on Friday but we misinterpreted the distance from Guatemala City to San Ignacio, Belize. From what I read it sounded like you could make it to the border in one day---how wrong I was. Trish ended up taking two different buses for a total of 14 hours. Ouch. Luckily (and amazingly) she was in good spirits Saturday morning which was in my favor since I forced her back on to a bus again.
We ate a quick breakfast in town before I convinced her that we had to go to Northern Belize to see Lamanai. She merely shrugged and said she was flexible and fine with any plan. That's lucky for me since I take great pride in my planning and organization skills. Anyway..after my huevos rancheros for breakfast (Inez~ yours are definitely better) we got on the next bus out of town to Belize City. Three windy hours later with the reggae music still ringing in our ears we quickly jumped on to a connecting bus to Orange Town Walk...another two hours away by bus (yes, one of those old beaten up US school buses--but no chicken buses here).
Orange Town Walk is....well, not really built for tourists to say the least. Foreigners only come here to arrange to see Lamanai, no other reason from what I could tell. The cheapest bed in town was by the lake according to our guidebook and once we arrived we saw why. In fact, upon walking up to Jane's House you wouldn't think anyone lived or stayed here. The paper thin walls looked like they were going to come crumbling down any minute and I swear I could see the mosquitoes just waiting for me to crawl into one of those musty beds. We gracefully declined to stay with "Jane" and moved on to stay at a genuine hotel room for only $3 more than the ramshackle we came from. Note: This means that for $15 US dollars we comfortably slept in a clean room with our very own bathroom. For those of you that are backpackers you will understand the true beauty of this price.
After arranging to see Lamanai we walked around town and browsed the local grocery store. At about this time I couldn't ignore something that I was growing interested in: there are A LOT of Amish people in Belize! Why didn't I know about that?? And how is it that no one ever mentioned anything about this fact? My first encounter was on my first bus as we dropped off an Amish man 2 hours outside of Belize City in the middle of nowhere with his purchases to pick up his horse and buggy. Then in Orange Walk Trish and I were amazed by Amish crowd in the grocery store and in the local restaurants. We looked at each other and asked the same thing, "What's with the Amish?" Today we got our answer. During our lovely riverboat cruise along the New River to Lamanai we came upon a sizable Amish community. Our guide began to tell us how this one community comprised of about 2,000 or so Amish and there is another large community outside San Ignacio. I had no idea that certain Beachy groups of the Amish were relocating to Central America. They seem to share the same qualities as the Amish elsewhere, here they just speak Spanish.
Anyway, other than my new fascination with the local Amish we had an amazing day exploring Lamanai. Since I would do a terrible job in explaining in depth the significance of this site look up Lamanai in Wikipedia. (I was going to hyperlink it here but this computer is not cooperating with me.) I climbed the high temple (66 meters tall I believe) for an amazing view of the New River and the jungle. I even tried to hold a little Swiss girl's hand as she climbed but as always, I made the small child cry just by extending my hand. Even foreign children don't like me. I was hoping it was just American kids but I was wrong. Hopefully I won't have this affect on Japanese children.
Our jungle tour took us through the river where we spotted quite a few American crocodiles, many birds and the smallest cutest bats I've ever seen! I tried to take a photo of them but they just look like the tree bark. They were about the size of the length of my forefinger. After 1 1/2 hours on the river we came to Lamanai for a guided tour of the temples and a lovely Belizean buffet lunch consisting of rice, beans, chicken (I obviously passed), fried plantains, potato salad and cole slaw. It was quite delicious and filling. Hopefully it will fuel me through the night as nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing is open on Sunday in Belize. So it's cookies and crackers for me tonight since that is all I have in my bag.
Tomorrow we are heading to Caye Caulker for a day or two in the sun. My arms are finally turning a very light tan color which is a welcome change from my normal translucent color (if you can call it a color).
Total mosquito bite count:17...but trust me, that's not bad...I saw what some of the mossies have done to the European tourists here and I've got nothing on them (I met a woman today with bright red legs and I don't think they are like that naturally)
Oh and for those as curious as I was...
I finally read a local paper that answered my question: Who IS Ralph?Ralph Fonesca is a politician and a member of the Peoples United Party. The newspaper dubbed him as “the architect of growth economics in Belize” but I haven't had a chance to ask Belizean people how they feel about Ralph. Just like anywhere you don't want to jump into political discussions too quickly. That's dangerous territory. But sooner or later I will know if Ralph works for the people. Something tells me it might only be a select few.
