Day 5: Belize City, Belize

Tuesday, June 27

Tuesday was our 2nd port of call, Belize City, Belize! A new country for me. (As was Honduras.) I feel like 2023 is the “Year of Central America” for our family, between Costa Rica in March and now Honduras, Belize, and Mexico. 🙂

Early morning on balcony again:

Then off to our planned excursion! This was an earlier one… (People who know us know we don’t always love having to rush places early on trips, but sometimes it works out that way, and that’s fine, too.) We had to meet up around 7:30 a.m. to check in for our tour.

At this port the ship had to stop WAY out in the water and could not dock up on shore, so we had to take tender boats in (15-20 minute ride).

Approaching shore on the little boat:

Made it to Belize!

This was going to be a longer tour. It seems that there must not be too much of interest right in Belize City, because most excursion options seemed to involve a 1.5 hour bus ride to get to them. Oh well!

Actually, I surprisingly enjoyed the bus ride because our tour guide talked much of the way about Belize history, culture and more- which was actually super interesting. I knew literally nothing about Belize before this, and now I feel like I know a lot! She was great.

(Also, I did not know that they speak English as the primary language in Belize!! The only non-Spanish speaking country in Central America. I feel like I should have known this already, but I didn’t. Some people speak Spanish too just due to the proximity of other Spanish speaking countries, but all the signage, etc is in only English.)

We drove through a lot of back country area. It was… interesting? I can’t say overly beautiful in my opinion, at least not the areas we were in. But I am sure there are many other areas we obviously did not see, too! Pretty rustic/rural and seemed rather poor overall. 😦

We arrived eventually to the next stop, where we had to board a boat to get out to the Mayan Ruins (which were the main point of this tour).

It was HOT, so while we waited to board the speedboat we tried a Belizean beer. It was really good!

Then we had a ~30 minute speed boat ride. Lots of long transport on this tour… I was worried the little ones would get super antsy/bored, but they did great overall! Apparently my nephew had a meltdown at one point, but fortunately the boat noise was so loud I don’t think anyone even heard him! Hahaha!!! That was convenient. 🙂

Finally made it to Lamanai where the Mayan ruins are located. We had a short walk/hike.

Made it to our first stop, a huge Mayan temple!! Soooo cool.

Our guide told us some info about the temple and the area before moving on to another site. Crazy to think how they built this stuff SO many years ago before any modern technology existed. Also, I feel like mosquitoes have to be a huge problem here given the heat, climate, nearby rivers and all the vegetation – I can’t figure out how people survived before Off!! (It has been dry they said so we didn’t have any mosquitoes on our tour luckily.)

Walking to the next site:

This one was very impressive:

Snagged a couple good pics before people started climbing (they only allowed us to climb on one specific ruin and in certain areas).

We had to climb up the back side where some stairs had been constructed.

From the top!

Ethan:

Love this one of me and my dad:

My dad was super interested in the Mayan ruins and a primary reason we chose this specific excursion. He was excited to climb them.

I took a few cool photos- he said maybe he’d print one for their basement rec room.

My dad and I were lingering until the end, just trying to get some cool photos and also it’s just neat to stand there in silence and think about what it would have been like long ago.

After the boat ride back, they served us a very tasty Belizean lunch.

Then, another 1.5 hour bus ride back to the port. This time they didn’t talk much and many people just rested or napped. (The kids mostly played on phones or watched iPads.)

We had to take the return tender back to the shop. Then we didn’t have too too long until dinner! Kind of felt like we’d just had lunch. 😆But we didn’t want to miss one of our nice dinners, so I think we just cleaned up and were there by 5:30.

Our nightly photos…. 😉

Dinner shots:

After dinner the boys went off to the teen area for an after-dark session on the Flow Rider boogie board surfing thing.

While the boys did that, my sister and the girls, Ivan, me and my parents went to the “family karaoke”. My younger niece loves to sing and if she were just a tad older/could follow along a little better with only the instrumental track, I think she would have loved to get up there!! 🙂

After that ended and they headed to bed, my parents, Ivan and I went to the 9:30 show. (They run the same show at either 7:30 or 9:30 pm- I love that there are SO many entertainment options on the ship! And the multiple show times is very convenient, depending on what else we want to do.)

This show was with a lead from Broadway’s Jersey Boys and he sang all the great songs from that show plus many others. Really, really good!!! We honestly loved every show we went to- and Ivan and I made all 7 shows on the 7 night cruise!

After the show I think we all stopped for another drink somewhere and just listened to more music and talked! It had been a long day but I REALLY enjoy the evenings on the cruise. So much variety and between the multi-course dinner, dress clothes, entertainment and so many nice lounge/venues, the whole thing feels like a real treat. 🙂