Introduction
For our truly wonderful visit to Belize we again worked with Caligo Ventures to set up our itinerary. We told them we wanted to photograph birds in Belize, but were not interested in the Cays (the Belizean Cays form the second largest coral barrier reef in the world, second only to Australia's Great Barrier Reef). Even the fantastic snorkeling and diving available on the Cays was not a draw for us. But the bird photography! Wow!
Our itinerary was perfect for our purposes. We were met at the Belize City airport by people from Lamanai Outpost Lodge, where we stayed for five nights (and four full days of great bird photography). To get there from the airport was a 90-minute drive followed by a 90-minute boat ride with interesting sights along the way. The guides at Lamanai were good; we stuck with Mauricio Aguilar who did an excellent job for us. We always asked for the same thing: up close and personal with birds in good lighting. We also were very pleased with the photos we were able to take of two-thousand-year-old Mayan temples, three of which are available on the Lamanai site. These temples have been excavated, so despite thousands of years erosion of the soft stone used, one can get a small taste of their original magnificance.
We were next picked up by people from Chan Chich Lodge who took us there (via a two-hour tour) not just for great photography, but also for six nights and five days of "rustic luxury." A couple shots from our room are included in our "Scenic Views of Belize" section, as well as on the Chan Chich Lodge website. Our primary guide at Chan Chich was Ruben Blanco who consistently went out of his way to get us exactly what we wanted. At Chan Chich Ruben also used a golf cart for us, saving us a lot of walking with our heavy camera equipmeent (Joan and I each carry about forty pounds of camera equipment when out photographing birds). At Chan Chich the Mayan temples were not excavated like those at Lamanai, but did give us the opportunity to see what the Lamanai temples looked like before excavation: like mounds completely covered by jungle.
A few words on Belize. Belize is just south of Mexico and east of Guatemala. Nearly everyone speaks English, but where we went the language spoken at home was almost universally Spanish (which meant, to my delight, that I got to practice a bit of Spanish). Belize is roughly the size of Massachusetts, and has a population of just under 300,000 people; it is 80% tropical rain forest. By way of contrast, El Salvador has one-half the land area, yet has a population of 13 million! The currency of Belize is the Belezean dollar, which costs $0.50 US. However, while the US dollar is almost universally accepted in Belize, the Belezean dollar is not readily accepted outside of Belize. We changed just two dollars to have some souveniers. Although Belize City is not the safest during the night, in the country it is quite safe, sort of like going back to the US suberbs in the 1940's. At Chan Chich we did not even have a lock on the door to our room, yet NOTHING was ever taken, including the tips we left out (until we learned to leave a note in Spanish).
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