The Tourist

Our room has no ac but has two standing fans that are rather loud. We slept with them on last night and were somewhat concerned that we would not hear our alarms over the noise of the fans. As a result I woke up every hour to see what time it was, so as not to miss the tour that we paid for in advance. 

A speed boat picked us up from our hotel dock at 6:45 am. You know those super intense hand dryers that are sometimes in public bathrooms instead of paper towels? The kind where it is hard to hold your hands under because of the force of the air? Combine that with never-ending massive stomach-dropping roller coaster waves. That is what our boat ride was like for an hour and a half. (Dear mom, you would have hated it).  We rode through the Caribbean to a river and up it. As you can imagine, it was already not a good hair day for anyone involved.

We got off at a small town called Bomba. So small that it has no electricity and around 70 people living there. The people there cut down wood from the trees that are overgrown in the river with machetes and carve them into souvenirs that they sell to tourists. We walked around for a few minutes and then took a big blue bus on a dirt road, dodging potholes for an hour. Once we reached our destination we transferred into another boat, our final mode of transportation. This boat sped through a winding narrow river alongside Mangroves and baby crocodiles. At one point, we drove over to a tree and a monkey casually hopped on board! She strutted across the boat on her two feet and walked up to each of us looking for food. When she was satisfied she casually turned around and strutted right back off into the tree that she had come from. Pretty awesome. 

We then reached Lamanai (finally). Lunched was served, which for us was a protein bar and papaya. We then walked over to the site where thousands of Mayans once lived. We saw ancient temples and climbed to the top of the tallest one which was built 2,100 years ago. We were there for some time and then took our boat to our bus to our boat to our hotel again. We had some fresh squeezed juice and called it a night after our many hours of traveling and hiking. 

Fun fact: There is a tree here that they call "the tourist". When the sun hits it for extended periods of time, the bark turns red and peels off. Hence, the tourist.  (It is also an antidote for poison ivy)

The slogan of tomorrows hotel (since when do hotels have slogans?) is "where THE interesting people meet!" Should be interesting indeed...