Belize, Sustainability, and Auburn Abroad

Today we had the best breakfast of the trip because we got a wide array of choices, one of which was French toast so of course that was what I got. After this delicious meal, we met back up with Shen-li and rode for about ten minutes to the Xunantunich (Stone Lady) Archeological Reserve, where the Mayans had lived in 600 BC. That was mind boggling to me because it was such a long time ago. As Americans, our country is such a baby, at a mere 242 years old, compared to other civilizations around the world who are 2000+ years old, including these Mayans. The site had buildings that were thought to be temples, bedrooms, ball courts, and royal quarters, etc. From the top of the royal palace, we had panoramic views of Belize and Guatemala, which was only a few miles away. All around, there were rainforests after rainforests, broken up only by small pastures. A major difference between the United States and Belize was that we would had had some kind of railing or safety measure put in place on the palace so people could not hang over or sit on the edge but I liked that there were no railings because I got to experience what the Mayans did all those years ago. In the near trees, we could hear howler monkeys screaming at the top of their lungs. Their noises would have been bloodcurdling if we were any closer to them. We visited the small museum at the site, then ate lunch, and traveled back down the hill to cross a green river on a ferry. When we were eating lunch, I noticed how many plastic bottles we were going through and thought about how many we had gone through on the entire trip. Even if they recycled the bottles, it would had been more ecofriendly to use purified water contained a water jug to fill up our reusable bottles. The ferry was actually powered by human power, not a motor; the operator was turning a crank connected to various gears to move it across the river. That was another thing that would have been different in the United States. When we got back across the river, we shopped at a Mayan market, then went to another Mayan ruin, Cahal Pech (Land of Ticks), where the oldest pottery artifact was found to be from 300 BC. When the Mayan people were actually living there, the atmosphere must had been so different and to think about what their lifestyles were like in the ancient times was extremely interesting. It would be pretty fun to live a day like a Mayan (king and common person) while practicing all their traditions and customs. Soon after, we had to make a speedy exit so we could make it in time to the hourly iguana house tour at our hotel, the San Ignacio Resort. All of the iguanas there were being rehabilitated to be released back into the wild, with the exception of three who could not survive on their own because of their severe problems. After we played with the iguanas and took pictures, we put our stuff down and went to downtown San Ignacio, where there were cute and colorful shops. It was very obvious we were tourists so one man stopped and extremely enthusiastically said, “Welcome to Belize! Enjoying paradise?” which basically demonstrated what every Belizean we encountered was like. Every person I looked at smiled at me or said hello and asked me how I or my day was. They were all so laid back and just seemed to be living life as it happened which is a really nice lifestyle. In the United States, people do not go out of their way to smile or ask how you are like they do here and sometimes, our culture is not the friendliest. When we got back to the hotel, we went to the pool, played Dutch Blitz again, ate dinner, then played killer Uno. After completely reorganizing our suitcases, Emma and I went to bed after another fun filled day.