I’ve been getting flyers in the mail from the Roaming Buffs, an alumni-associated travel group, for ages. I almost always glance at them in a “where am I not going to go next?” sort of way. Pretty pictures of exotic places with prices that are out of our reach. I would love to go to any number of those places, but I don’t think I’m a If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium kind of traveler.

I did take that sort of trip when I went to the Soviet Union when I was in high school with my Russian language teacher. There were 38 of us kids, wrangled by 4 adults. The only way to manage such a group is on a guided tour. On the other hand, my Belgium trip was pretty much the exact opposite of a guided tour, no real plan, figuring out restaurants and subways on my own.

When I got back home from my Belgium trip last year, the latest Roaming Buffs brochure was on the counter. “Hey, Dave, let’s go to France next year.”

So, here we are. It’s a 9-day guided tour of Normandy. We fly round-trip direct from Denver to Paris on Air France. Since we fly out of Paris, why not spend a couple of nights there? We bought the airline tickets, then Air France sent me an email telling me that they’d canceled our return flight and booked us for the next day, so we’ll be there a third night.

Saturday, June 27, and Sunday, June 28 (Days 1 and 2)

Our flight is scheduled to depart at 5:40. Genae wants to follow the rules and get to the airport three hours early. That’s the kind of rule I historically tended to violate, as I’m not a big fan of hanging out in airports. But I complied (without protest), and Michael dropped us off at 2:40.

Before we even found where to drop off our checked bags, we stopped to get our passports and boarding passes out. I was shocked to see that the backpack compartment where I stowed my passport was unzipped. And the passport was not there. I had no doubt it was in that compartment, but I searched all the compartments three times. No joy. This is a great start to the trip.

I retraced my steps to where Michael dropped us off. Still no joy. So I phoned Michael. Hopefully, it fell out in the back of the car. Michael was being a good driver and not answering his phone when behind the wheel. I called him three times and sent him a text. Genae called him, and he still wasn’t answering.

I went to the Air France desk to see if our flight was on time. They said it was. I asked them how late we could check in, but over the course of the conversation got three different answers.

When I got back to the chairs where Genae was waiting, she said that she’d called Michael again and he’d finally answered. The passport was not in the car. So he had to go all the way home. He found it lying on the floor where I’d set our bags before we loaded the car. An hour after my initial panic, he was back at the airport to save the day. The only wrinkle was that I was waiting where he had dropped us off, but he made a wrong turn and was two levels down, so I had to run down to meet him before he was forced to make another lap.

Disaster averted, we went to the gate and waited to board. For some unknown reason, we did not board on time. Also, the PA system wasn’t working, so everybody piled up together at the same time rather than grouping by boarding zone. Chaos.

It was well after 6:00 before we took our seats. And waited. And waited. Finally, they pushed us away from the gate, and we taxied out to the runway, where we joined the queue for takeoff. Next, the pilot announced that the wind had changed and we needed to taxi to a different runway. Where we waited for some emergency vehicles to do something. In the end, it was after 7:15 before we took off.

Although I don’t fly much anymore, I have enough experience that my expectations for beverage and meal service aren’t very high. Still, Air France failed to meet my low expectations. I’m used to being able to get a whole can of soda to myself, but they were serving from 2-liter bottles, giving each passenger a tiny Dixie cup of about 3 ounces without a refill for a couple of hours. Yeesh. The dinner wasn’t bad – typical for airline food. The breakfast was disappointing. So it goes.

On my trip to Belgium last year, we departed a few minutes late, but the pilot burned some extra fuel to get us back on schedule. No such luck this time, and it looked like we weren’t taking the fastest route. A great circle route between Denver and Paris should have us going nearly to Hudson Bay, just south of Greenland, and over Ireland and England. Instead, we were flying almost due east. We later heard that, perhaps, we had avoided some bad weather along the shorter route.

My Fitbit tracks my sleep. When we got off the plane, I looked at what it had logged: a score of 40, whatever that means. Usually, my score is in the 80s. Whatever that means. I’m having a bit of trouble reconciling this. If sleeping 7 hours and 2 minutes gives me an 87 score, how did I score 40 by sleeping a whopping 2 minutes? Frankly, I’d have said I didn’t sleep at all.

We made our way through customs without incident, but we are disappointed that we didn’t get our passports stamped. Oh, well.

It was a three-hour drive from CDG to our hotel in Honfleur, including a stop at a highway rest stop. The toilets were free (nice surprise), and the vending machines were much more sophisticated than anything I’ve seen at home.

At the hotel, we had a meet-and-greet over beverages. This trip wasn’t put together by the Roaming Buffs, but by AHI, which, I believe, stands for Alumni Hospitality, Inc., or something to that effect. Our group was comprised of Roaming Buffs and Traveling Wildcats (Kansas State). Our tour coordinator was Rainer (pronounced “Rhine-er” rather than “rain-er”). He was born in the Netherlands but has lived in the south of France for quite some time. He speaks six languages. I wonder if he has a German accent in all of them.

The other travelers were, by and large, well-educated and successful. One couple brought their college-aged granddaughter along, and one woman was traveling solo; the rest were couples. We had a couple of doctors, a pilot, a farmer, and a private equity guy. Two of the guys were Vietnam vets. One guy was an avid birder; except when we were out for dinner, he wore binoculars strapped to his chest.

After our little get-together, we headed out to the restaurant. When feeding a large group like this, everybody gets the same meal. Tonight it was a salad (camembert cheese on toast, with strips of salmon and some greens) and what one of the other travelers called a “salmon burrito”. Dessert was half a dozen little treats. I don’t know what any of them were. Each was only a couple of bites, but all were delicious.

Genae’s not a big fan of salmon or cheese, so it was a less-than-ideal meal. We had limited control over menu selection. At all the group meals, everybody would be served the same dish.

Honfleur is at nearly 50° north latitude, so the sun doesn’t set until after 10, which is about when we returned to the hotel. I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

Here’s a group photo we took later in the week. Rainer is at the far left, giving us a thumbs-up.

February 20

When we planned our activities for this trip, we thought it was a good idea to have a rest day after we arrived in Belize and another rest day before we returned home. I’m not going to say it wasn’t a good plan, but in retrospect, I’d rather have visited another Mayan ruin: Cerros than hung around Consejo. Cerros isn’t far from Corozal, although I’m guessing the roads are not very good.

In any event, Friday was a day of relaxation. This was not a bad thing. You see, I managed to take a trip to the Caribbean and catch a cold. Our second night here, we had a fan running in the bedroom to serve as white noise. I awoke in the early morning with the fan blowing on me. I had a bit of a scratchy throat. I was thinking this was because the fan had dried me out. I was thinking incorrectly.

Half a lifetime ago, every time I flew on a plane, I caught a cold. I’d take vacations in Phoenix and spend the whole time sitting in the sun in my parents’ backyard, sniffling and sneezing. Sometimes, I’d get back home after the vacation and take a couple of sick days. I flew to Louisville, KY, for work once and had a miserable cold. The hotel was full of military personnel for some reason. It was when Operation Desert Shield turned into Operation Desert Storm. I slept through most of the war, although I could occasionally hear the cheering of the military guests. Catching a cold every time I flew was beyond annoying.

Luckily, when I started travelling every week for work, I was no longer catching colds on every flight. I don’t know why the godz decided to remind me of that history and knock me down with a cold on this trip, but so it goes. I was mostly functional during the day, although some days I could hardly talk. When we’d get back to Greg’s, though, I’d relax and try to take a nap.

So a relaxing Friday wasn’t a bad thing.

A cold isn’t the only thing I picked up in Belize. By Friday, I had a rash of some sort on both forearms. Nowhere else, and not under my watch. If it was from the sun, why only on my arms? If it was from the sunscreen, again, why only on my arms? I never did figure it out; the rash was gone a couple of days after returning home, before I recovered from the cold.

February 21

When we bought our tickets, the original return flight was to change planes in Houston Hobby. It was a nice surprise that, a few weeks before we left, Southwest notified us that they’d changed us to a direct flight. It makes for an easier day for us, but I’d never been to Hobby before, and that would have been the 57th airport I’ve travelled to/from/through.

Greg said somebody told him that there were 85 speed bumps between his place and the airport. That seemed like a reasonable number, but it didn’t stop us from counting them. Our tally could be off by one in either direction, but we counted 74.

Returning the rental car was quick and easy compared to picking it up. We were quite early, probably could have waited another hour before leaving Greg’s, but it’s better to be early and have time to kill than to be late and miss our flight.

After we got checked in and dropped off our baggage, we went to the restaurant for lunch. We all had grilled ham and cheese – not exactly traditional Belizean fare. This was one of the few places I could find a sugar-free soft drink. Nobody had “diet” anything; a couple of places had Coke Zero, and a couple of places had unsweetened iced tea. I don’t normally consume alcohol when I’m feeling poorly, but when I couldn’t get a sugar-free soft drink, I resorted to beer. Done with lunch, we headed to our gate.

I hadn’t given much thought to how the gates work in an airport with no jetways. We were at gate 6, way at the end. (One tactic Southwest uses to keep costs low is to rent the gates and baggage carousels that are the farthest away. The rent on those is lower.) We weren’t the only people who were early. There are maybe 80 seats at gate 6, with similar numbers at the other gates. A 737 has something like 180 seats, so if the only people waiting here were for our flight, there’d be a bunch of people standing around.

From the flight status monitors, I saw that there was a flight leaving from gate 6 before ours, and there looked to be two flights’ worth of people at gate 5, too. Out the door at gate 6, we could see a plane. It was a different airline than any of the flights leaving from gates 5 and 6. It was then that I realized that the planes just come in and park at any gate, and departing passengers are led out the doors at their gate and ushered to wherever they need to go. So the folks getting on the plane at gate 6 could be coming from any gate, and when we walked out, we’d be marched to a plane anywhere in the line.

Our flight was on time and uneventful.

It was a good trip. We hadn’t seen Greg for ages, and it might be some time before we see him again. We thoroughly enjoyed all of our excursions, and the weather was nice.

That said, I found Belize a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’m a desert boy. Denver isn’t exactly desert, but it’s dry here, and I’m not a big fan of high humidity. The temperature in Belize was within a degree or two of 80 for our entire stay, with high humidity. I looked forward to a shower each day, but within minutes of getting out of the shower, I found myself thinking, “I’d really like a shower!” I lived in South Florida for a bit less than a year and never did get accustomed to the humidity.

February 19

For me, today was the highlight of the trip, the thing I was most looking forward to: a visit to a significant Maya site. Genae had done the trip planning for everything else, but today was Greg’s idea. I think he nailed it.

There is a road to Lamanai, but we’re told you’d have to be a masochist to use it. Instead, we signed on to a tour with Lamanai Eco Tours. They can be a bit difficult to find, so we were directed to look for signs for Bat’s Landing, a bar and grille, a few miles from Orange Walk. From there, we’d take a 22-mile boat ride up the New River to the site.

In our travels around Belize up to now, we’ve passed several police checkpoints but were never stopped. Today, just before we reached Orange Walk, we finally passed through an active checkpoint. We were flagged down, and I was asked where I’m from. “Colorado, USA,” I answered. He asked for my driver’s license. He inspected it closely, but I doubt he’d know a valid Colorado driver’s license from a fake one. He read out my name, and I answered that, yes, that was my name. “Go ahead,” he said.

On the trip to the site, our boat captain stopped several times to point out some of the local wildlife. I found this quite impressive. First, the river is a maze of islands and tributaries. Once we were going, the captain would open the throttle all the way, lifting the nose of the boat, throwing lots of spray, and leaving a big wake. Then he’d spot something, throttle down, and nose the boat toward one shore or the other. He’d get his laser pointer out and show us where a turtle or crocodile or iguana or tree full of bats was. I reckon we were going about 22 knots at full throttle. The crocodile he spotted had just its nostrils and eyes above the water. The turtle was just as hard to spot. I can believe that the bats rested regularly in the same tree, but I doubt he was finding the other animals in the same places. Very impressive wildlife spotting skills, for sure.

It took us a bit more than an hour to get from Bat’s Landing to Lamanai.

On shore, we were handed off to a new guide. I didn’t get his name, but he told me he’s been a guide at Lamanai for 23 years. He was most knowledgeable about the ruins. Although I didn’t spot any archaeologists working, it is an active site, with one structure being reclaimed from the jungle only in the last seven months.

We were told that “Lamanai” means “submerged crocodile.” Our guide told us that that’s a bit of a mis-translation. He said it’s actually “Lama’anayin” and means something like “squashed bug”. I don’t recall exactly what he said, so I probably have it wrong. I haven’t been able to verify it one way or another.

As is common with Mayan ruins, the structures were built up over centuries: Postclassic structures were built on top of Classic ones, which were built on Preclassic. The Preclassic structures in Lamanai may also have been built atop Archaic ones, but that wasn’t clear to me. The faces at Mask Temple all have Olmec features. The Olmecs predated the Maya, and “disappeared” about 400 BCE. I put “disappeared” in quotes because the Maya people are still here, post-Conquest, just as I’d guess the Olmec were still around when the Maya gained power.

We toured the major structures – the Jaguar Temple, the Ball Court, the High Temple (“El Castillo”, but not to be confused with El Castillo at Chichen Itza), and the Mask Temple. I was most surprised by the Ball Court. The one at Chichen Itza is the largest ball court in the Mayan empire, much bigger than a football field. The one here is… not playable? It’s only about ten feet wide and thirty feet long and has a round stone dais in the middle of it.

I was glad that we tourists are still allowed to climb on the pyramids. We were lucky enough to do this at Chichen Itza 32 years ago, but they no longer allow it. Here, the High Temple even has a modern set of stairs built on it.

Our guide at one point called out a major difference between Chichen Itza: the water situation. Chichen Itza is on the Yucatan Peninsula, which has no surface water. That is, there are no lakes or rivers there. Their water sources were “cenotes”, which are large sinkholes. In dry times, the cenotes were under threat of failing to meet the needs of the city. Lamanai is built on the shores of a lake, and water was never a problem. At Chichen Itza, they had human sacrifices to appease the gods to supply water. There were no human sacrifices at Lamanai.

Here is a little history of Lamanai, from The Maya, by Michael D. Coe:

Far up the New River, a considerable distance to the southwest of Cerros, is the important site of Lamanai (known as ‘Indian Church’ on older maps of Belize), which has been excavated by David M. Pendergast of the Royal Ontario Museum during a series of field seasons beginning in 1974. Lamanai lies on a long lake formed by the river, and its 718 mapped structures are stretched out in strip form along its shore. There is even an ancient harbor in the northern part of the site, testifying to its entrepreneurial importance in the regulation of ancient Maya trade. While it was occupied from earliest times right into the post-Conquest period, much of its importance lies in the large, imposing, Late Preclassic temple-pyramids which usually underlie Early Classic constructions, including one with a plaster-work mask closely resembling those from Cerros.

Between AD 672 and 751 (considered by many to mark the civilization’s florescence), the number of communities carving new monuments continued to increase, but new construction took place only in already established cities. Maya civilization had ceased to expand geographically. From 751 to about 790, long-standing alliances began to break down, interstate trade declined, and conflicts between neighboring city-states increased (the battle of 792 commemorated by the Bonampak murals illustrates this situation). From 790 to 830, the death rate of cities outstripped the birth rate, while after 830 construction stopped throughout the Central Area, with the exception of peripherally located sites like Lamanai. The katun ending date 10.3.0.0.0 (AD 889) was celebrated by inscriptions at only three sites. And the very last Long Count date to be recorded anywhere was the katun ending 10.4.0.0.0 (AD 909), incised on a jade from a site in southern Quintana Roo.

I can’t help but recall a conversation I had with a couple of Dutch motorcyclists in the parking lot of my hotel in Nürburg last summer. I don’t recall how it came up, but they said something to the effect that “there’s no history in America”. It’s a common misconception, I think. There is quite a bit of history here between the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca, all of whom left major monuments, many of which predate Christ. But it’s not European history, and due to several factors, not as easily understood.

The Maya never developed paper, so all their history is documented in the stone of their temples or the jade of their jewelry. The temples were consumed by the jungle, and the Europeans looted the jade, which is now in museums or private collections worldwide. Even if the Maya had come up with paper, how long would any document have lasted in this climate?

This lack of a “written word” goes hand-in-hand with some other “failures” of Mayan technology. They never came up with the wheel. How primitive! But in this tropical, swampy environment, the wheel is worse than useless. It’s much easier to move building materials on poles carried by men. Any wheeled vehicle would bog down. They certainly had the concept of the wheel, though. In other cultures, the wheel is typically associated (right or wrong) with the arch and the dome. The Maya had arches, but they weren’t curved arches. You can mock up a Mayan arch using Lego blocks. The Maya did have domes, though. There’s the Observatory at Chichen Itza, for example.

The wheel also shows up in the Mayan calendar. Compared to the Maya, the Romans were downright backward when it came to understanding the calendar. The Romans kept having to adjust their calendar every several years because the months kept drifting – months are based on the moon, years on the sun.

The Romans also never came up with the concept of zero. Without a zero, large numbers are difficult to represent, and you can’t perform advanced calculations.

I’m not going to say that the Maya, Inca, and Aztecs didn’t fight wars (the excerpts above call some of them out), but I think there’s a definite difference between American history, pre-Conquest, and the Old World. When Europeans came to America, they brought disease, enslavement, genocide, and theft on a continental scale. It would be nice if Europeans (and those of us of European descent) were less proud of that history and more curious about the indigenous people of the Americas.

The temples are connected with wide limestone gravel paths. Our guide pointed out that the path we were walking on was a narrower version of the original Mayan road. The new path was edged in stone. A few feet on either side of the new path was another set of boundary stones. The old set delineated the ancient Mayan road. I won’t say that these Mayan roads are as robust as ancient Roman roads, but the jungle is a much harsher environment than central Italy or rural England.

Early on the tour, the path took us beneath a large tree. The guide pointed to the upper branches where a group of howler monkeys was sleeping. A few steps later, we came upon a red stain on the path. Some predator had gotten one of the monkeys last night or the night before, and this was a blood stain.

After walking through the site and climbing on the pyramids, we gathered for a lunch of chicken and rice and beans, then went through the gift shops, where I found a shirt that could pass for an Aloha shirt.

A short while later, our boat came back to pick us up and return us to Bat’s Landing. The return trip was a bit quicker – not stopping to point out any wildlife, the captain kept the throttle wide open the whole time. On both the ride there and back, we were going fast enough that I had to take my cap off. If I didn’t take it off, it would have blown off. Without my cap, I managed to get a minor sunburn on my head. So it goes.

We were back to the car by 2:00 pm and had an uneventful, police-free drive back to Corozal.

I love visiting these old ruins and thought the day was a great success.

February 17

We left Consejo Shores early on our way to the Excalibur Adventure Park to enjoy the Via Ferrata and zip lines. We had 11:00 am reservations and didn’t want to get there late. It’s a bit southwest of Belize City, so we left some extra time.

As we got closer to our destination, the landscape transformed a bit, with small, steep mountains jutting above the otherwise pancake-flat terrain. This was a good sign: I was having trouble imagining zip lines without mountains.

I said earlier that the road signs look just like the ones at home. That isn’t entirely true – the signs warning drivers about the speed bumps were like none I’ve seen anywhere before. Today, we started seeing some new signs. They’re the usual amber diamond signs you’d see to warn you of deer crossing, but they weren’t for deer. Instead, we were warned to watch out for tapir and jaguar crossing the road.

It was only 10 o’clock when we pulled into the parking lot at Excalibur. It looked like we had an hour to kill, but they said we could start our adventure whenever we were ready. We pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.

A via ferrata (“iron path”) is a protected climbing route over mountainous terrain. By “protected,” I mean strapped onto a heavy cable with a carabiner and a device called a “cookie”. The cookie is a squared C-shaped one, with the opening of the C smaller than the cable’s diameter. There’s no way to get the cookie off the cable except at the ends. The carabiner, on the other hand, can be removed from the cable at any time. The cable is attached to the rocks or bridges with a sort of plate. Orient the cookie such that the opening of the C can traverse the plate. At these connecting plates, we have to disconnect the carabiner and reconnect it on the other side. This system makes it impossible to come off the cable, which is reassuring for those of us who have problems with heights.

The original via ferrata was built by units of the Italian army during the First World War and was used to get men and supplies over difficult terrain. They’re now sprouting up all over the place.

This is my first time on one, and I didn’t really know what to expect. On this one, there are five bridges. Some thought went into the design. One bridge tends to bounce up and down when you cross it. Another bridge sways left and right, and another moves backward and forward. Yet another is simply a series of cables criss-crossed, and you need to step where the cables cross. Without the safety gear, I think I could have crossed these bridges, but it would have taken me much longer!

No photography is allowed on either the via ferrata or the zip line. Our guide, Sergio, was kind enough to take some photos. Along the way, he also pointed out some of the interesting plants in the area. One was the gumbo limbo, commonly called the “tourist tree”. The bark has a reddish tinge to it, and it peels off, much like the skin of sunburned tourists. It’s always near a black poisonwood tree. The bark of the gumbo limbo can be used to counteract the effects of the black poisonwood tree. Greg warned us of the poisonwood tree as he had a bad time with it in the jungles around his house. The effect is worse than poison ivy.

When we were putting on our harnesses, before starting off on the via ferrata, Sergio pointed out a coatimundi. The little guy moved too fast for me to get a picture. Oh, well. I’m sure we’ll get another chance to see one tomorrow at the zoo.

The start of the zip line is at the end of the via ferrata. Genae didn’t do the via ferrata with Michael and me, so she joined us here. The first platform is 275′ above sea level (and thus nearly that distance above the ground below). In all, there are five different zip lines that circle through the property, passing over the via ferrata and garden paths below, before ending not far from the start of the via ferrata. It was quite fun.

We ate at the restaurant there, delicious burgers and sandwiches (with buns branded with Excalibur’s logo), fries, and beer.

We didn’t originally sign up for any other activities, but Sergio told us a little about the caves they have there. One is a wet cave that you ride through on innertubes. The other is a short dry cave. We didn’t have our swimsuits with us, so we decided to take the tour through the dry cave.

Sergio told us all about the various formations in the cave – stalagmites, stalactites – and how water comes into the cave during the rainy season. I pointed out the bats that live there, and we even spotted a scorpion spider stalking a cricket. In the middle of the cave, Sergio asked us if we wanted to see total darkness. We turned off our headlamps for a short while. In our modern world, we rarely encounter total darkness. We literally couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces.

There are two short sections of the cave where you have to crawl on hands and knees, and one where you have to slither on your belly. I couldn’t help but wonder how they could politely tell your basic “Walmart shopper” they were too fat to make it through these sections.

Sergio was the first Belizean I’d had any sort of conversation with, more than a simple transaction at the store, anyway. I was expecting his English to be accented much like any other native Spanish speaker I’ve spoken to. But his accent had a bit of a Jamaican lilt to it. I noticed this accent when speaking to other Belizeans. I think I’ll change how I think of this accent – for me, now, it’s not so much a Jamaican accent as a Caribbean one.

Done with our great time at Excalibur, we hit the road and headed to Belize City. Tomorrow we’re heading to the zoo, and rather than drive all the way back to Consejo, then all the way back here (the zoo isn’t far from Excalibur), we traded a night in a motel for all the driving.

The Ramada Inn, where we stayed, was right on the water. I was guessing half the rooms would have an ocean view, and half would have a “city” view, but all the rooms had ocean views. We didn’t want to tour the city after dark, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant.

February 16

Breakfast was fruit and breakfast breads again.

Today we toured the town of Corozal. In the weeks before the trip, when I told people I was going to Belize, everybody asked where we’d be staying. Nobody I talked to had ever heard of Corozal, and gave me blank stares when I told them it was close to Mexico. Undoubtedly, this reaction is natural. Corozal is not at all a tourist mecca.

We’re in Consejo Shores, not Corozal town itself. Consejo is an enclave of Canadian and US expats. It’s about 11 km of bad road northeast of Corozal and only a bit over a mile as the vulture flies from Chetumal, Mexico. Chetumal and Corozal are on the shores of the Caribbean (or Corozal Bay). A peninsula and islands to the east protect the shore from the worst effects of hurricanes and tropical storms, and the water here is too shallow for anything like a cruise ship. The closest tourist attraction is Ambergris Caye. All of Belize’s tourist attractions lie to the south of Belize City, which is a 2.5-hour drive south of Corozal.

Between Belize City and Corozal, the land is pancake flat, planted with sugar cane, palm trees for palm oil, and fruit orchards.

I was surprised to learn of the large presence of Taiwanese. Most of the stores and markets in the area are owned and operated by Taiwanese. Chinese names abound – Deng Shen, for example.

The official language of Belize is English. (The place was called British Honduras until 1981.) Spanish is common, and there’s quite a lot of pidgin English/Spanish – billboards with messages such as “Di Sun Serious!” abound.

There are hundreds of Mayan ruins in the region. I struggle to convey this properly. There are hundreds of sites, with each site ranging from a single structure still overgrown by the jungle to sites spread across hundreds of acres containing dozens of structures that are active archaeological projects.

Greg knew where one of these sites is in the middle of Corozal town. It took us a couple of attempts to find it, missing it by a block this way at first, then by a block that way. When we finally stopped to ask for directions, we were just a couple of hundred feet away, on the other side of a building.

The Santa Rita Archaeological Site is not much larger than a football field. It was first settled some time around 1200 BCE by about 150 people, eventually growing to about 6,800 people and controlling trade along the Rio Hondo river (which today separates Belize from Mexico). People here traded as far south as South America.

My inner 8-year-old couldn’t resist the urge to climb to the top of the pyramid.

We finished the day at a local pizza place. Rather than have another Belikin, I opted for a Landshark, brewed by Margaritaville Caribbean Brewing Company, based in Jacksonville, Florida. It was launched in 2006 by singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett to compete against Grupo Modelo’s Corona. So, yeah, I went to a foreign country to drink a beer from Florida.