More updates from Belize

December 3, 2009

This morning we met with Belize Natural Energy and got a tour of the first company to find oil in Belize. In the afternoon we drove to the Belize Zoo. It was the coolest zoo. Ever. I got to hold a boa constrictor! She was very nice and only a little creepy. It was 9000 degrees and I was sweating my ass off. Again. I actually felt sweat rolling down my legs during the tour. We got the VIP tour of the zoo with the director. She let us feed the animals and pet some of them. I got to feed a tapir and macaws. The zoo is small but really cool. The animals are very happy there. We met a jaguar that would do tricks for food. Another jaguar would roll over and give you a high-five on command. I got to tell him to roll over! And he did!

December 4, 2009

Best. Day. So. Far.

We survived the 6 hours in the car today but it was rough! We drove on a dirt/rock/pocketed road for 1/2 of it. Lot's of jostling around. But the drive was worth it! We arrived at Caracol, the Maya "center of the universe" and got a tour from one of the park rangers. Halfway through, Rafael, an archeologist joined us and started telling even more neat facts.

The ruins are in the Chiquibul National Forest and Reserve. They've only excavated about 2-5% of the ruins. The reserve is about 260K acres, the forest is about 140K acres, and the site of the ruins used to be home to about 100-150,000 Maya during the height of the Maya period. There are currently 300K people in Belize today, so the Maya used to equal half that. These ruins were so cool! I got to climb to the top of the biggest one -- it took several puffs of my inhaler to get all the way up. I was sweating buckets, out of breath and my legs were killing me from all the stairs. And these weren't regular stairs. They are larger that average stairs. Giant stairs. Made for Maya Giants.

The two awesome things that happened today were:
1. We got to see howler monkeys in wild. I took pictures, but the monkeys were about 200 feet up, so we'll see how they turn out.
2. A dog joined us on our hike and stayed with us the whole time. I named him Pedro. Soon the whole group was calling him Pedro. At one point, one of the other students asked me how I knew his name. Ha!

December 5, 2009

We went cave tubing today. It was amazing. I tried to capture it on camera but it was really dark in there! Afterwards, we got to jump off a cliff into the river below. I jumped twice.

I'll post December 6 in a separate post. It's a long one. (That's what she said.)