Last stop in Belize
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2010
1
323
366
Trip End
Jul 13, 2012
Where I stayed
Hotel Acropolis Maya
San Ignacio, Cayo, Belize
Saturday, March 24, 2012
It wasn't a bad journey and after about 2 and a half hours we arrived into San Ignacio. As we didn't have anywhere booked, I went looking for somewhere to stay while Cat waited at the bus station chatting to the local taxi drivers whilst looking after the bags. Hotel found, we walked up the hill to a hotel just out of the noise of the centre and exhaustedly dropped our bags in our room. After a quick rest, we had a wander round and enjoyed a strawberry milkshake, "each" (as we were so thirsty) then set about the task of getting some groceries for dinner. The hotel has a two ring stove and fridge freezer which is adequate enough for us to cook in as we have our own pots and pans. At 7.30pm we cooked a mild chilli (just testing out the local chilli powder) and then headed back to our room to relax and settle in for the night. Not long in a cockroch decided to pay us a visit, but we soon caught it and got rid of it out the window. After that excitement, we watched an episode of Merlin and then got off to bed.
Sun 25th Mar.
Got woken at 7.15am with a knock on the door to tell us our breakfast was ready! So much for breakfast between 7 and 10am! I wandered down to the kitchen area and found 4 slices of cold toast with peanut butter on 2 and jam on the others and 2 cups with tea bags in. We decided to take them back to the room to have later around 8am. About 8.30am, we headed out to find a bus to go to the mayan ruins Xunantunich (pronounced Shoo-nan-two-nich). http://www.belizex.com/xunantunich.htm As there is no timetable of sorts it was a job to know when the next one would be and all the taxi drivers were saying that it would be quicker to take a taxi. They would, as it's their livelyhood. After chatting to a local (that was born in the UK) we started looking for a Benque shared taxi driver on his way back as they were cheaper. We managed to find one but he wanted to charge us BNZ$10. Luckily, we were told it should only be 6 so we haggled him down and then got on our way. We did pick up two more people on the way, but here that's normal as it's a shared taxi and not like the dodgy ones in South America where you shouldn't. 20mins later we reached the river and waited for the free hand cranked ferry to come back over. It's not a wide river and doesn't take long or much to crank it and it seems like the guy on it gets the taxi drivers to crank it for him. Once on the other side, we walked 1 mile up a hill to the site entrance where we paid our fee and walked up another hill to the visitor centre. After looking at the model of the site, we wandered in and had a look round. It's a small site but very impressive. All the way up we could here Howler Monkeys in the distance calling and fighting each other and once at the top of the main pyramid we got an amazing view of the surrounding land and every now and then the top of a tree would move when a monkey lept from one to another or stood there shaking it. On the east and west side of the main pyramid are some very impressive freezes and from the top is an amazing view of the whole site and nearby Guatemala. There were a few small tour groups around but nothing compared to the bigger sites. One of which was a group of students from Chicago that we kept bumping into and one of the girls came up to me and said that she liked my t-shirt and could she take a photo of it. I was wearing my 'I Love Boobies' t-shirt, so I didn't mind. Once we'd finshed there, we walked back down the hill to the ferry just in time to see a bus go by! So we waited for another shared to taxi (they're only a dollar more than the bus) to take us back. When we got back we bought a very nice grilled chicken sandwich and chips and then headed back to our room for a well earned rest. Not long after hitting the pillow, I was out like a light. An hour or so later, we relaxed in our room looking up somewhere to stay in Guatemala for tomorrow, then cooked some dinner around 7pm. After dinner, we showered, packed our bags ready for the morning and then got off to bed.
Mon 26th Mar.
Got up at 8am, had breakfast, checked out by 9, then loaded up and looked for a taxi to the border. Within 5mins we found a cab that would take us to the boarder for BNZ$10 and then 30mins later we'd arrived and were swamped with money changers. Just inside the building we managed to exchange our Belize dollars to Guatemalan Quetzales and were soon getting stamped out of Belize (with an exit fee of BNZ$37.50 each).
