Lamanai

[Clay Clayton]

The following is an excerpt from my MUCH longer review which can be found on the NCL Boards...but here is the Belize portion:

 

The Sun was tendered as are all ships in Belize and the Port operates various high speed tenders for the long ride (15 minutes?) to the dock. We had gone back and fourth on whether to privately book a cave tubing trip or to go to Lamanai with the ships excursion to see the Ruins there. We eventually decided to go to Lamanai. While it was a great trip and I am glad we did it, I was somewhat disappointed in how the ship handled it all. For some inexplicable reason, they didn’t make sure all of us on this excursion were on the same tender which meant those of us on the first one sat on the bus for 15 minutes or more waiting on the second part of the group to arrive. After we were underway, we traveled for nearly an hour to the river, where after a potty break, we were loaded up on three boats. As we were now running late, we didn’t stop as much on the way up the river to look at wildlife as others on the Boards have discussed. We stopped once to see a baby crocodile and one other time I think to see an egret. The ride up the river was fun though. Upon arrival at the ruin site, we were told to “go have lunch up there” Up there was a pavilion with picnic tables and a two line buffet serving chicken, yellow rice, black beans & rice, cole slaw, really tasty salsa, chips and a coconut tart for dessert. After lunch we were herded up to the ruins – unfortuanately no time to go through the museum which appeared to have some nice exhibits. There were several other groups at the site the day we were there and each group tried to stay out of the other’ s way but there was some confusion on who was with which group. The tour guide who led our two busloads took us all together through three sites and told us some basic information at each. However, between language difficulties and I think a basic lack of real knowledge I was left wanting to know more about the ruins. Several of us said we wished rather than a guide that there was a CD or MP3 system that you could use with headphones. The ruins are incredible. You can climb up one of them for a great view out to the river. We also heard howler monkeys and caught a glimpse of them through the canopy, though it was impossible to snap a picture. After seeing the monkeys, we headed back towards the dock to reboard our boats. Since we had been returned to two groups for the tours and had been separated there was lots of confusion on how to break back into three boats worth of folks particularly after it rained. The trip back down the river was very fast due to the rain without any stops. We then transferred back to the busses after a reststop and time to buy a coke or a beer from the VERY smart lady at the dock who had both on sale at reasonable prices. The trip back into town was uneventful, most folks dozed. We arrived back at the dock about an hour before the last tender so we had time to make a quick stop at the Pharmacy for some purchases and then got in the long line to board the tenders.