Day 5
July 31 - Tuesday: San Ignacio: Tour of Mayan Ruins & San Ignacio
Figure 1: Our first stop was the Xunantunich Maya Site in San Jose Succotz Village. The locals sold various homemade and handcrafted souvenirs at the entry to the site and the ferry we had to ride across the Mopan River on was powered by a hand crank.
1a: The entrance to the site where there were local markets
1b: The ferry we used to cross the river
1c: The hand crank on the ferry
Figure 2: The ancient Mayan civilization of Xunantunich was comprised of six major plazas surrounded by more than twenty-five unexcavated temples and palaces.
2a: The view from one of the temples
2b: The group on the largest palace of the site
2c: Some of the group with the side of the largest palace of the site
Figure 3: After a picnic lunch, we continued to another ruin, called Cahal Pech Maya, which was home to an elite Mayan family and is one of the oldest archeological sites in Belize. Even though these structures are extremely old, some of the original Mayan paint was still present on the stone.
3a: One of the temples
3b: Original Mayan paint in the palace
3c: A hallway in the palace
3d: One of the temples
Figure 4: Our hotel was involved in a program called the Iguana Project, which was an effort to conserve the endangered green iguana population in Belize.
4a: One of the iguanas
4b: A picture of me holding a couple of the iguanas
Figure 5: Ice cream with downtown San Ignacio in the background
We returned to San Ignacio in the afternoon and were able to explore the downtown shops on our own.