February 18

Breakfast at the hotel was much like you’d expect breakfast to be at any Ramada Inn stateside, but with a slightly different selection of fruit. The sausage was different – instead of patties or links, it looked like sliced-up hot dogs. I sampled it; it wasn’t hot dogs, but I can’t say for sure exactly what it was.

Genae found out that the Museum of Belize was nearby. We didn’t know if it was open yet, so we asked the hotel’s concierge. She said it was open and that we could get there on foot or by taxi. Instead, we drove. Yes, we could have walked it, but the roads are narrow and not particularly well set up for pedestrians.

The building the museum is in was built more than a century and a half ago by the British colonial government as a prison. The prison was shut down not long after independence, and in about 2002 was made into a museum chronicling about 3,000 years of history. It hosts a rich assembly of Mayan ceremonial objects, carvings, paintings, and other cultural artifacts. The story of slavery is told – loggers who braved malarial swamps and often tried to find freedom in Guatemala – and emancipation 15 years before our Civil War.

There are exhibits of the region’s animals. Each stuffed animal is accompanied by a sign telling visitors how the animal came to be here: killed by a vehicle, or died of old age. Animals aren’t represented only through taxidermy; there are some beautiful paintings and photographs. One exhibit tells about the destruction caused by Hurricane Hattie, which struck Belize in 1961. It was this hurricane that caused the capital to be moved inland to Belmopan.

Our museum craving satisfied, we hit the road and headed to the zoo.

I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of zoos. They always feel a bit wrong to me. Yes, it’s nice to be able to see these creatures, but they’re in jail! The Belize Zoo is a not-for-profit organization founded by Sharon Matola in 1983, who was caring for a handful of wild animals that had been part of a natural history documentary. When filming was completed, she was left with these animals and decided to start a zoo. The animals here are rescued, confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade, or transferred from other rehab facilities. Most of the exhibits have signs telling visitors how they came to be here.

When we were looking at the spider monkeys, a tour guide came up onto the platform leading a small group. Once the monkeys spotted her, they came running up to the fence. She tossed them bits of food, at first on their side of the fence, then on our side of the fence, which they could grab with their prehensile tails.

The howler monkeys were all asleep at the top of their tree. A sign said. “Please don’t howl at us, it causes us stress.” I don’t know if they’re nocturnal, but it was fairly hot out, and even many of the diurnal animals were sleeping in the shade.

We had lunch at the restaurant at the zoo, bought some T-shirts, and then headed back to Corozal.