WCC Day 5 - Belize

I was really excited to go to Belize, it is a country that has always sounded so exotic to me - plus it's a nonextradition country so I knew there was no need to worry about being whisked back to Colorado to stand trial. lol Just one of the many snippets of trivia that I get from all my reading. :)  One thing that I didn't know that I found interesting was that Belize is the only country in Central America that's official language is English. AWESOME! I can totally retire on a beach there! They also speak a dialect called Creole English - made me feel like I was back on my mission in inner city Atlanta. haha. In Belize we decided to forego the beach for a day and take a river boat tour with lunch and afterwards went to see the Mayan ruins in Altun Ha.

Here we begin our excursion on a river boat. It had a canopy so we were protected from the sun and it was quite a comfortable ride.

There is a 3-day canoe race. La Ruta Maya, each year that goes around the island and ends at this lighthouse. The driver of our boat was last years winner. :)  (Jerry.Jerry.Jerry- we chanted).

This croc is catching some rays. His mouth is open to cool himself down. We also saw Mantee noses here but they never came out of the water far enough to get a decent picture.

 

Some kind of bird.

Gigantic terminte nest. (gross!)

  

Can you find the cute turtle?

Another kind of bird.

And yet another strange bird. They had lots of strange birds there.

One little monkey jumpin on the bed tree... :)

Check out this big bad boy! Our tour guide was getting very nervous because Jerry kept moving the boat closer and closer to it and it was getting very unhappy!  

We also saw the cute little "Jesus Lizards" here by the croc but they were so tiny and fast that we didn't really get a good picture of them.

Here we have 2 dolphins that we chased around the river for a while, again, the camera was too slow to catch the quick jumping dophins in action. I have to say it was extremely cool to see all of these diffferent creatures in/on the same river. I honestly didn't know that crocs and dophins could reside in the same water...

Cute little yellow-belly bird.

Check out the neck on this guy - giraffe bird?? lol j/k

Leaping Lizards!

One seriously big Iguana. I would not like to be walking under this tree when he had to go potty... just saying. lol

  

More monkeys in a tree. Apparently they NEVER come down from the trees because of the jaguars. They get all of the water they need from the fruits and leaves of the trees.

This guy was sitting in the tree right over our heads where we ate lunch!

  This is where we had lunch. We had red beans and rice, BBQ chicken and green salad (sound familiar) with our choice of Fanta or Coke in bottles to drink.

After lunch we boarded our buses and head to Altun Ha to check out the ruins. 

These ruins were discovered in 1963. The city itself was occupied from about 900 BC to 1000 AD. Because Belize is such a poor country they do not have enough money to excavate all of the ruins. The largest structure here is the Temple of the Sun God. We were able to climb to the top of it. The large grassy hill on the left of the pic above is another structure that has not been excavated yet.

Us on the top of the Sun God Temple. (Love my honey's sexy goatee!)

Here you can see just how much still needs to be uncovered.

Us looking down the back side of the Temple.

The steep steps going down.

The ruins were so amazing to see in person. It really brings the Book of Mormon to life when you see these places where the Lamanites and Nephites dwelled. We had such a great time here and I hope we get to go back someday with our kids. I have also heard that the snorkling is THE BEST in Belize so maybe one day we'll have to go check it out. :)