New River Cruise and Lamanai

About an hour's drive up the Northern Highway from Belize City brings you to the New River where you pick up the boat for your 31-mile cruise down the New River to the ancient Mayan City of Lamanai. The cruise there takes about 90 minutes, as your knowledgeable guide will stop at every crocodile, rare hawk, exotic bird and line of sleeping bats he can find. The scenery is idyllic: a wide, winding river fringed with impenetrable riverine forest thronging with life, and for most of the journey little or no sign of human interference with the landscape. One exception is a wide bend in the river where you glimpse the Mennonite community of Shipyard. Amongst themselves the Mennonites of Belize speak Plattdeutsch (Low German). They make up around 5% of the population, yet they produce more than 75% of the food. It is generally agreed that Belize has been good for the Mennonites, and in return the Mennonites have been good to Belize.

Along the river you will almost certainly come across a troop of spider monkeys. They have even been known to drop from the trees into the boat and walk up and down looking for melon, pineapple and banana! When that happens, the boat driver has to take the boat back to the same tree before they will deign to get off again!

When the river broadens into a lagoon you know you are approaching your destination, and as you get off the boat at Lamanai, you will be struck by the peaceful beauty of the place. Dozens of cormorants may line the jetty, and river swallows will almost certainly be swooping and darting above its surface taking insects in flight. The rainforest had reclaimed the area, and every hill or mound you see there has an ancient Mayan building under it. Those that have been excavated testify to the power and influence this city must have had, built as it was on this main trading route - known as "The River of Many Faces" because of the different colors of skin and facial characteristics of the many different races of people travelling along it.

The site has an impressive museum, which traces the timelines and provides you with many key dates, as well as historical facts and key deductions about the Mayan Civilization. Your guide too is a mine of information, as he takes you from temple to temple, explaining some of the ancient customs and rituals. You may be lucky enough to spot a Violaceous Trogon AND a Toucan (the National Bird of Belize) in the same tree. You are also quite likely to be treated to the territorial claiming calls of competing male howler monkeys, which is deafening. You cannot believe such a small animal can make such a loud noise. It sounds much more as though it is coming from an overlarge predatory feline, and that somehow you have been magically transported into Jurassic Park! Some visitors have been genuinely frightened, and said they should have been warned beforehand - so take this as your warning!

Laman'ai is thought to be a corruption of Lama'an/ayin - Yucatecan for submerged crocodile - and the city was continuously occupied for almost three thousand years. Founded by or before 1500 BCE, Lamanai somehow survived the decline that devastated most of the southern lowland sites in the 9th and 10th centuries CE, maintaining its political and religious structures and the level of its population. Throughout the post-classic period the community continued to flourish and remain active while most neighboring sites were abandoned and fell into decay.

However, by the time the Spaniards arrived - around A.D. 1540 - Lamanai's ancient ceremonial centre had long been abandoned and the Maya settlement concentrated in the southern third of the site, with a small satellite community near the northern boundary. In accordance with the practice widely in use elsewhere in the Americas, the Spaniards began the process of superimposing Christianity on an indigenous ceremonial structure and a small church was built. The process went on for almost a hundred years, with varying degrees of success; and a second, larger mission church was erected, but whatever Spanish hopes for Lamanai may have been, they were disintegrating by the early years of the 17th century, and by A.D. 1638 had come entirely to pieces when the community joined a widespread Maya revolt. In A.D. 1641 Franciscan Fathers found the church and other buildings burnt and abandoned.

This uprising signaled the end of Spanish influence at Lamanai as it did throughout most of Belize.

The tallest excavated structure is the High Temple, which you are allowed to climb for a wonderful view over the canopy towards Mexico in the north and Guatemala to the west. They say that going up the challenge is physical and coming down it's psychological - the angle of ascent/descent is dizzyingly steep - and the story circulates of a traveler who froze up there and needed sedation before they could get her down.

If in doubt, don't do it. Sit on a bench in the shade and watch the others do it. However, you will miss out on that amazing view, and it really isn't that hard to come down. Some people favor the butt-bump technique, others the "look at the steps by your feet rather than the ground all that way below and go down sideways" technique (my personal favorite). There is a rope up the middle which you can hold on to but if other people are grabbing at it it moves, which doesn't add to your sense of stability!

Once safely down you will want to pause in the shade for a while, and marvel again at the sheer scale of achievement all that time ago: to have built something of that size without any of the equipment we take for granted - like excavators, cranes and power saws.

By now, however, you will be ready for a good lunch (provided by the tour company), and perhaps a chance to browse through the on-site stalls selling locally produced crafts. Around 2.30pm your guide will indicate it's time to return to the boat and the ride back will take approximately half the time it took to get there. This is because he opens up that big engine, the front of the boat comes up out of the water and you cream those bends at around 40 mph - hold on to your hat!!

Your transport will be waiting at the other end, ready to get you back to your resort in plenty of time for a shower before dinner.