A couple of months ago, we made a trip to Lamanai, a famous local destination.  I intended to write up the trip, but never did.  My former friend Ed Van Riper was on the trip and did a wonderful job of writing it up, and I will share that with you now.  Janet, to whom he refers, is Janet Lohmeyer, a C-Springs horse-riding buddy of Charlotte’s, who was here for a week.  (Our first visitor.)

SUBMERGED CROCODILE  by Ed Van Riper

Yesterday Rick, Charlotte, Janet and I took a day trip to Lamanai, a Maya ruins South of Corozal on the Lagoon which is the headwaters of the “New River”.

Janet is a friend of Rick and Charlotte’s who is visiting from Colorado and is here for only a few days.  They have many tour plans that if followed will be exhausting.  Anyway Janet is a comely wench, of Irish descent, to say she is fair of skin is a definite understatement.  She is witty, soft spoken, but quick with a comeback on any subject, would probably argue with a post and often does in the form of “Rick”.  She wears a straw hat, which she badly needs, but the hat itself lends itself to a multitude of descriptions.  My first thought is that it is quite similar to the hats one sees mules wearing, the one with holes cut on either side to allow the mules ears to poke through and indeed this hat has the holes, but they are poked through with a white scarf that the wearer then ties under her chin.  I will not say the hat is unattractive, but it does not lend itself to the beauty of the wearer and would more properly be worn by the mule.

Anyway, a friend drove us to the New River immediately South of Orange Walk and we hired a boat with Captain to take us to Lamanai “Submerged Crocodile”.  I think the one way trip was about 30 miles and took us a couple of hours to get there as we made frequent stops to spot different birds.  All total we hit on about 17 or 18 different birds and only two were ones I had identified before, Whistling Ducks and the Northern Cardinal.  We also stopped at a small animal preserve where Spider Monkeys abound and were told by our Captain that they were wild.  At about the same moment he said this one of them crawled from his tree limb onto our craft, looked us over and even allowed us to touch and pet him, I use the gender loosely since I do not know for sure what its sex might have been or be.

Upon our arrival at the site, the Captain “Roany” unloaded coolers of Soda pop and prepared lunches.  There was some discussion as to whether we should eat then or wait until after the walking tour of the ruins.  I am so glad the decision to eat immediately was agreed too as the tour would have left us weak and famished had we not had the repast.  Lunch consisted of the usual rice and beans, baked chicken and a great potato salad.

Roany, who is a licensed guide then began the walking tour which first led us to the on-site museum with a commendable variety of artifacts dug from the ruins and we were treated to a discourse on them from each of several epochal periods.  The sad part of the exhibit is its scarcity which came about because Canadian archeologist discovered, dug the site and probably took over 99 % of the artifacts back to Canada.  In addition, they broke obelisks and a truly beautiful carved limestone stele.

The entire site covers a 4.5 square  kilometer area and may have over 700 unearthed structures.  We visited seven of the largest that have been partially excavated and like other ruins I have visited left me deeply impressed with history and the industry of the people who made it.

As we were about to finish the walking tour, we were startled out of our wits by the loudest and most enervating set of roars imaginable.  My first thought was that Jaguars were in the area and might be protecting their young.  Rick’s thought was that the guides had set up some sound equipment and were using it to enlighten another large group of visitors we had passed a short while before.

Roany tried to set our minds at ease, explaining that it was “Howler Monkeys” warning off other groups of the same as they are very territorial.  We trekked back to where the clamor continued and were able to view them in their tree top domain where they kept up the howling.  Roany also said that if the two groups were to do battle over the territory, one of the major participants would definitely die.  I had my micro cassette recorder with me and taped the noise.  When I started to play it back for the Monkeys, Roany and my companions made a strong suggestion that we should vacate the area.

We then returned to our boat and the ride back to the Orange Walk landing took about an hour and twenty minutes.  We then waited along side the road for nearly any hour before a bus stopped to pick us up and bring us back to dear old Corozal.

It was a long and tiring day, but one of beauty and the wonder of seeing something new, but still very,very old.  They believe the ruins may have been built at least 200 years before Christ was born.

-- Luvaduck and other small animals.