Mayan ruins excursions

[Forensicmom]

We will be on a RC ship in November and are looking at excursions. After looking at all of the ones the ship offers, most are 5-7 hours long. Unfortunately we don't even arrive until 9am and leave by 6:00. Since we will be tendered, I'm assuming it will take a little longer to get off the ship and on land. Plus, we have the 6pm dinner, so we want to be back to the ship by 4:30 or so.

 

Is there anyway to do a good excursion in that amount of time? I really want to do the mayan ruins (Lamanai) and a jungle tour of some type. My girls have veto'd cave tubing and we're saving the beach activities for Cozumel.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Forensicmom

[jaasb0808]

We have done both Altun Ha and Lamanai. They are both wonderful.

 

If you are looking for something shorter Altun Ha is a lot shorter, we booked it through Coral Breeze Tours and it was wonderful. However, when you don't book with the cruise line you do not get priority tendering and depending on the weather it can take a long time. When we were on Carnival it took us 2 hours to get off the boat, making us an hour and a half late for our tour. Luckily, Coral Breeze was still there waiting for us and assured us we still had plenty of time to complete the Altun Ha tour, it is a smaller site than Lamanai but still great.

 

Lamanai we did through NCL because of the distance and not wanting to get left by the boat in case there were any delays. We made the right choice. The tour was not as intimate, 1 guide for an entire bus load of people so we did not get the same experience as we did with our private guide with Altun Ha, but this site is amazing. It is about a 1 hour bus ride, then a 1 hour boat ride up the river to the site in the middle of the rain forest. We did not see much wildlife on the river but once we got to the site there were lots of howler monkeys in the trees and a jaguar footprint in the mud. It was like another world. I am not sure if all the cruise lines set it up the same way but with ours we were supposed to get lunch on our way back at the place we got back on the buses. Our boat broke down on the way back and it took them a bit to get it fixed so our guide called the lunch place and had them prepare us a box lunch that we had to eat on the bus instead. It was decent food and we got back to the port about a half hour before the last tender at 4:30. A long day considering we were the first people off the boat in the morning at about 7:30 :)

[fbricks70]

Altun Ha is our favorite...not as long of a tour as other mayan ruins.

[disgirl]

Thanks for the insight into the 2 ruins! We are also looking at either Altun Ha or Lamanai to tour. We will be booking through PCL as last time we were in Belize on a tour we were 2 hours late getting back. Thank goodness the ship had to wait for us as we were booked through them!

[JimAOk1945]

We did the RC sponsored excursion to Lamanai. It was a long day but worth it. You might like to see the pictures my wife took and made into a slide show for her website. Click on the link below to see it.

 

Belize Lamanai Mayan Ruins

 

Happy Cruising! It's a great way to explore the world!

Edited March 8, 2014 by JimAOk1945