In the fast lane with the 5 T's: Vacation Day 6

Today's port of call, Belize. Belize, formally known as British Honduras, is a country in Central America that was once governed by England but who gained their independence in the 1960's.

The waters around the country were two shallow to allow the cruise ship to dock, so we had to be tendered in. This is actually kind of fun. A tender is a smaller boat that pulls up alongside the cruise ship and brings us, in this case 5 miles, to Belize's port.

Our excursion today is a combination of boat ride down the river Wallace and a visit to a Mayan ruins site. For our group we boarded another boat, speed boat, at the port that brought us into the ocean, before getting to the mouth of the river. While speeding through the ocean we stopped a few times to look at sights along the way. Once our captain spotted a dolphin playing in the water nearby and then at the mouth of the river we stopped to watch manatees. These were actually hard to spot, because they don't actually come above the water you have to watch for their noses to pop up out of the water.

Once we got into the river we were on the hunt for wildlife. This was to include iguanas, monkeys, and whatever else we saw. I tried to use this country as a learning experience for my kids. They don't realize how much more they have then others all around them, but as we traveled around Belize you can see the differences in our lives versus theirs. I tried to point out the differences in the houses and lives. As we traveled down the river we saw a women standing in the river washing her clothes while her children stood by and watched.

This tree was very interesting...those ball sacks hanging from the palms are actually birds nest. The male bird builds these nest and the female lays the eggs in the sacks. Then its the males job to watch the eggs, but another type of bird sometimes sneaks into these nests and lays their own eggs. At this point when the original bird comes back it becomes their job to care for both sets of eggs!

These birds end of raising the others and then their own often end up not surviving because the 2nd type of bird is more dominant and out survives the originals...crazy bird story!

Once we got off the river we stopped for lunch at a little restaurant before boarding a bus to the ruins. Our guide talked a lot at the ruins, I wished he would have allowed us more time to just explore. Although, there aren't a lot of signs that tell you what is around and the guide helped explain that to us. The kids did get bored standing around waiting to go.

When looking at these mounds its hard to believe these use to be buildings!

This was a temple where the leaders were buried as they died. Each of the levels represented a dead leader and their burial level. In all I believe there were 8 leaders buried here! We were able to hike to the top of this temple.

Here we are on the top of the temple...if you look next to us you will see a couple of the blind people that were on the excursion with us. Yes, they hiked to the top also and I took their picture at the top for them!

KG, being the goofball that he is, talked about needing to sacrifice for the gods and Tapanga played along for him!

Mom didn't want to climb to the top, but she took our pictures for us!

I think one of the reasons our guide stayed with us and didn't let us wander to much for ourselves was because of these kids that were hanging around. They had crocodiles and other creatures wanting the tourists to take pictures with for money. That was one warning the guide gave us, for us NOT to touch the wildlife!

After, the ruins we rode the bus back and grabbed a tender back to the boat. Tyler was really cute on the boat ride back. The plastic was beating against a girls back he was sitting next to so the whole ride he held it away from her as he watched the boat get closer and closer to the cruise ship.