Caye Caulker

This is tropical paradise! Caye Caulker island is a sand bar with no cars on the white sand streets. I got a room from Tropical Paradise Hotel, it has even Wi-Fi and good views to Caribbean palm beach.

I'm going to hang-out here couple of days just relaxing and loading my photos to Picasaweb. You can do kite surfing, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing, sailing, kayaking, swimming, etc... pretty much everything you can do in the water in addition of laying on the beach and taking sun. There are plenty of small hotels, hostels, lodges, guest houses and restaurants, which offer the services for mainly North American tourists.

Let the sun shine!

Crocodiles, monkeys, maya ruins & circus

The big surprise was that circus has been coming to town! It was Russian circus, which I could believed to see in Helsinki, but not in Orange Walk town in Belize. However it's not my thing and I just skip it. Instead I was having a Lamanai tour today...

 

Boat trip to Lamanai Maya ruins were amazing. Carlos was a really experienced guide. He could see and point out the animals from the boat so far away. On the way to ruins we saw Crocodiles, Spider Monkeys, which we feed with the bananas. They were coming all the way down to the boat.

We saw some giant orange Iguanas, and lots of different birds, like black vultures and Jesus Christ birds. There are four different species of vultures in Belize and black ones are most common. King vulture is rare and is as big as condor. Jesus Christ female bird is going from male to male and giving eggs to each of the male to nest and raise baby birds.

Local fisherman on the river had bunch of fishes and there were even a rifle on his boat. Carlos was explaining that hunting is allowed as well and the locals take the guns with them when doing fishing and hunting.

On the site saw some howler monkeys, which were howling like a wolfs. Lamatai Maya site is quite remarkable, only 2% of it's buildings has been restored. There are over 1000 buildings and the area is large, where they have been living. There were couple of nicely restored temples, mask temple and jaguar temple. the highest temple reached 33m high.

When coming back to lodge there were this 4 meter long crocodile on the shore just 10 meters away the terrace of the lodge and the local guy was feeding it.

So I had to do it myself as well...

Orange walk, Belize

Welcome to Belize. Walk slower, take your time, smile, be friendly. Don't worry, be happy. I found Belize a great place to visit. People are friendly, athmosphere is laid-back, great places to see, weather is perfect, food is excellent... Orange walk is a small town and I will be doing tomorrow Lamanai boat trip to Maya ruins in the jungle. Orange walk name comes from the fact that people were walking through orange plants when going to the center of town.

I was surprised for another thing as well. English is the official language of Belize and people do speak fluent American english in addition of spanish. I think I'll spend here a little bit more time than was planning to.

There are Amish settlements around Orange walk and you can see lots of them here. Tomorrow when doing the boat trip we are passing some Amish settlements along the river.

I'm staying at Riverside Lamanai Retreat. I can recommend this place for everybody, it has only three rooms, but what a location!!! Friendly stuff and great service. It looks like this:

Chichen Itza

Maya ruins were impressive, but still I was more amazed Macchu Picchu years ago. Anyhow last evening there were light show over the ruins and I managed to get few photos, even I have only my small pocket size Canon Ixus and 10 cm tripod with me. This morning I entered the ruins again, when there were not many people. The very same "building" in daylight:

All tourist buses are coming after 10AM, but I was staying in a Villas Archeologicas just few minutes by walking from the ruins. I recommend :) There were even pool at the front of my room...

Now I'm at Valladolid and waiting the bus on the way to Belize.

As a summary Mexico has a very good bus network, you can get anywhere very cheap. Cancun is like Canary islands, spoiled in 70's when all the hotels were built there. It is not beautiful city at all. Visit Isla Mujeres instead.

At first night on the island I realized I forgot my earplugs at home. Hopefully I'm able to find and buy them on the way. The noise level is something else I have used to in my apartment. On the way to Maya ruins I met a couple from the USA, Alaska. Their family name was Vainio, which was funny coincidence, cause their grandfathers have been coming from Finland. They gave me some good hints for the rest of the trip.

On Chichen Itza I met Swiss guy, who has been sailing now over 1 year in Mediterranean, Atlantic and in Caribbean, and is planning now to continue to Cuba and then via the Panama channel to Pacific Ocean and Polynesia. Great stories and interesting people...

Turtles, beaches, sunshine, ice cream

Rent a bike and did a visit to the southern tip of the island (which is by the way the most eastern point of whole Mexico). Didn't see Cuba over the Caribbean sea, though. On the way went to see some turtles (green or white turtles) on the incubation farm. The smallest ones were 10 days old and the biggest ones 25 years, weighing about 120 kg.

Sun has been shining and temperature has been above the comfort zone occasionally. Therefore I had to :) go to swim on Playa de la Norte. White nice sand beaches from which to choose one...

Check today's views from here.

Cancun

6 hours flight from Chicago to Cancun, Mexico is over. Flight was not non-stop, but I had to change the plane in Mexico City. Tropical weather was hitting my face when stepping out from the plane at Cancun airport. I headed straight to Isla Mujeres island, 15 minutes by ferry from Puerto Juarez. Found a decent hostel and planning to stay in the island two nights, before heading to Chichen Itza maya ruins. It was already dark when I get to the islandm so it's nice to see tomorrow on the sunlight what kind of place this is. Need to dig out suncream and sunglasses from the backbag and head to the beach. I wonder how cold water there are in Caribbean sea...

Chicago

Sears tower was renovated from the previous visit 10 years ago. This June on the skydeck level, they have been building glass "boxes", where visitors can go to see how much space there are under your feet, if you dare to look at down to the street. These glass boxes are over 400m above the street level and you can get quite impressive photos (I would say quite airy).