Merida, capital of Yucatan state

Many historians consider Merida to be the oldest continuously occupied city in the Americas. The colonial city was begun in 1542, but it was built on the site of a Mayan city and many of the buildings were erected using stones taken from the earlier Mayan edifices.

Today it is a bustling city of some 750,000 people. The roads are busy with cars and buses all day long and the sidewalks were built in a time of horse and cart, that is to say they are very narrow, so it is often hard to walk along the street without needing to hop into the road to get past a thong of people. There are some interesting museums here, especially the Anthropology museum, housed in a mansion built in the turn of the century for a hennaquin (sisal) baron and designed by an Italian architect in classical style.

The museum itself houses a good array of artifacts, including many jade and other pieces recovered from cenotes, or fresh water ponds that dot the region. Except for the very south, the Yucatan has no natural surface level rivers. This being a limestone area, there are however many subterranean caverns and these were the principal fresh water sources for the Maya (along with artificial reservoirs they dug and lined themselves). The cenotes were also places of veneration and sacrifice and so archaeologists have recovered human bones, jade pieces, pottery, and even carbonized fabric scraps from them. Much of this was on display for us to see along with good explanations in English of the way of life and day to day activities of the Maya.

One of my favorite pieces was a mask (pictured here) that was made from some large seashells and reminded me somewhat of a hockey mask.

We've now visited several Mayan museums and they have all been different, each adding to our understanding of the Maya way of life.

The Mayans had surprisingly large trading networks and even warehouses and remote agents, not too dissimilar from modern import/export business. Essentially trading networks were broken down into relatively local trading which was well established between communities, and long distance networks that might pass through several hands and reach as far as the southwest of today's United States for turquoise, or as far south as Honduras and El Salvador.

Merida has a very large market which we explored over several hours. The variety of goods on sale is huge. We enjoyed watching the making of fresh corn tortillas starting from large bags of fresh corn, then milling it into masa, rolling it into balls, feeding it into a machine which flattened them and dropped them on a rotating hot plate from which they made one circuit then popped off in a stack. Elsewhere we say them selling large balls of masa dough which looked like giant matzo balls (maybe them sell them as masa balls?)

Habanero peppers are a stable of the diet here and virutally ubiquitous. Every restaurant has a bottle of hot sauce made with habanero, one of the hottest peppers in the world. At one stall, a vendor offered me one to try (obviously wanting to have some fun with a gringo), but thankfully I knew better! Not sure I'd want to shake the hand of this guy in the market bagging all those habaneros!

Campeche, Mexico, Kabah & Uxmal

The Yucatan Peninsula is comprised of three Mexican states - Yucatan in the north, Quintana Roo in the east, and Campeche in the west. Chetumal, our first stop in Mexico is the state capital of Quintana Roo. The capital of Campeche is, believe it or not, Campeche. This is an old colonial town and it was the subject of numerous pirate raids for many years until the Spanish decided to wall it in, making it one of only a handful of completely barricaded American cities.

As with most Latin American towns, the cathedral marks the city center
fronted by a plaza called the zoloco. The old city walls are mostly still in place, as are the city gates and many of the garrison towers. We stayed in the heart of the old city which has a lot of charm to it - the buildings are painted in a multitude of colors and many have been turned into hotels with open courtyards in their center.

Out hotel, the Hotel America was one such place. Unfortunately the rain poured down the afternoon we arrived and copious amounts of water came into our room. They mopped it up, but when it rained again later, we had another small flood. Also our room faced onto the street, so it was pretty noisy, especially when some car alarms went off at 2 a.m.

We love to visit markets when we travel. There is lots going on and you get to see the local people, what they eat, what they buy, etc. Often there are great bargains to be had and unique foods to try. Campeche has a good sized, bustling market and we enjoyed walking around it for a while and picked up some fruits for lunch. We bought a mamey sapote fruit and some saramoyo (custard apples). We also bought some of the Mexican cinnamon that Kelly really likes. What you may not know is that in the US (and probably Europe too), what is sold as cinnamon is actually cassia, a closely related, but different spice. True cinnamon is lighter in color and has a sweeter more floral scent. Although you can get true cinnamon in the US, it is hard to find and much more expensive.

I also like markets because there are usually some interesting images to be had. I decided to leave out the photo of the cow's head (might be a bit too gruesome for some readers!) but the nearby butcher was an interesting study. Also where else are you going to find the chicken vendors setup right next to the flower sellers? Requiem for a pullet, maybe.

We left Campeche and drove for about an hour and a half to Kabah, a small Mayan ruins site which has some wonderfully intricate decorations and long wall of masks, many of them of Chac, the long nosed god of rain, lightning and thunder.

We had a picnic lunch outside the ruins and tried our fruit. The mamey is supposed to be very sweet with the flavors of sweet potato, pumpkin, and cherry. I don't think ours was fully ripe as it really didn't taste sweet at all. However, the saramoyos have a beautiful floral flavor and sweet custardy flesh, but they are full of hard seeds that you need to spit out.

Once we had finished lunch it was on to the main stop of the day, the major Mayan site of Uxmal, which has a number of splendid ruins, including the Governor's Palace, over 100M long and considered perhaps the finest pre-Coloumbian building in Mesoamerica, the nunnery, a quadrangle of buildings with cell like openings, the sorcerer's pyramid, a very tall and unusual rounded temple, the cemetery and several others. There were lots of interesting carvings including many animal forms such as birds, turtles, and jaguar. The cemetery carvings looked very similar to some 16th century gravestones we had seen in Malacca, Malaysia two years ago.

From Uxmal, we drove on to the capital of Yucatan state, Merida, where we are staying for three nights.

Palenque, Mexico

As James Taylor (Kelly's favorite artist) sang, "Mexico - I never really been but I'd sure like to go."  Aside from a quick hop over the border to Tijuana when I was in San Diego on business about 18 months ago, this is my first real visit to Mexico.  And in one day we managed to cross into four of Mexico's 31 states - Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas.  Sunday was a loooong drive - some 495 KM (or more than 300 miles) from Chetumal to Palenque, the town next to some famous Mexican Mayan ruins.

The drive was mostly uneventful and the roads were surprisingly good-excellent, except for one patch which is under construction.  The drive was quite picturesque as we passed through a number of different landscapes.   We did the drive in about 6 1/2 hours and might have been a tad quicker except for a wrong turn we made looking for a road that did not seem to exist.

Had dinner at Don Muchos, an interesting joint just outside the Palenque park.  It was a very busy restaurant outside in the jungle, and they had really good live music.   Most of the place is covered by thatch or awning, but we had a table in the open, which was fine until the heavens opened (there is a reason they call it the rain forest!).  Luckily we were able to move our table under cover and continue our meal.   I had chicken with a fantastic mole sauce.

The next day we had a slow start and headed over to the Palenque ruins mid morning.  First you pay a small entry fee to get into the ecological park and then drive up to the ruins and buy a ticket to see them.  There were so many cars and buses that we ended up parking at the side of the road and could have had our car washed while we toured the ruins, but since it's a rental, that seemed unnecessary.

The ruins of Palenque were perhaps the best and worst experience we've had at a Mayan site so far.  The best, in that the ruins themselves are spectacular.  Perhaps not as large a site as some of the others like Tikal, but the buildings were in a much better state of preservation and restoration.  There were lots of places with glyphs, stucco, and carvings still to be seen and it was perhaps a bit easier to understand how the buildings must have looked and functioned in their heyday.  But the place is incredibly popular - tons of visitors, mostly Mexican, but also foreign tourists.   A number of times we had to stop in order to go with the flow of people and it is impossible to get a photo of any of the key buildings without people in the way.  Visiting the more remote ruins of Belize and Guatemala was really a very different, quieter, and even occasionally, solitary experience.

We stopped by the museum on our way out, but it turned out to be closed on Mondays.  We decided to come back the next day and headed over to the town where we had a great late lunch (superb mole enchiladas) and walked around and bought a few gifts and souvenirs.

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and drove back to the museum.  Frankly I had half thought of giving it a skip so we could get on our way as we had another fairly lengthy day of driving.   I am so glad we did not.  The museum has been the highlight of our Mayan experiences so far.  Although we have seen a few original pieces, much of what has been on display in the other museums are replicas, photos, etc. 

The collection in the Palenque museum is all original pieces from the site and they are spectacular.  The explanations were all in Spanish and English and had first rate illustrations making the information very user friendly.   Firstly one sees the incense censers which are about 3' tall pottery pieces and are incredibly detailed and colorful.  Next there are funerary pieces such as jewelry and jade masks.  Several thrones and other stone pieces have carvings that are so detailed and fresh looking you might think they had just been created.

But the piece-de-resistance is the tomb of King Pakal which was discovered in 1952 buried in a perfectly intact crypt deep inside one of the pyramids.  The exhibit included several short movies that not only explained the tomb, its iconography, architecture, etc. but also gave a strong sense of the experience the archaeologist must have had when he made the discovery.

This was absolutely first rate and it is not possible to look at these Mayan ziggurats, hieroglyphs, jewelry, etc. and not make comparisons to the Egyptians.  The level of detail and artistry in the carvings makes contemporary European stonework seem crude by comparison.

The Belize Zoo and heading to Mexico.

For our last night in Belize, we chose to visit the Belize Zoo.  The zoo was started about 25 years ago when a documentarian found herself with a number of semi domesticated animals following the completion of her movie.  She decided to care for them and this ultimately became the Belize Zoo, a private institution which is considered a model for other zoos around the world. 

It has a relatively small collection, all Belizean animals which for one reason or another cannot be in the wild.  They may have been sick, or were illegal pets.  Some of the cats were trapped when they harassed wildlife and others were born in the zoo.  All the animals have large enclosures and the signposting around the zoo is quirky and fun.   The zoo puts a strong emphasis on education and has its own Tropical Education Center (TEC), across the road from the zoo where groups can stay and get involved in various projects.  We met a Dutch Masters student who is doing field research on the prey animals of the jaguar, a Sonoma State student who is doing a summer internship at the zoo, a mature student from Portsmouth UK who is working as a zoo administrator for a few months, a girl scout group from the US (high schoolers) and a group of university students from the UK.

We chose to stay at the TEC overnight so we could participate in a nighttime tour of the zoo.  I had done something kind of like this before in Singapore and knew that one of the great things about going to a zoo at night is that some 70% or more of the animals are nocturnal, which means when you see them in a typical zoo during the daytime, they are usually asleep.  By coming at night you get to see the animals alert and in action.   We actually had a private tour of the zoo, which was just the 3 of us and two of the zookeepers. 

Starting in the snake house, we saw Fer-de-lance (this time thankfully behind glass!), rattlesnake, and a python which Aaron and I got to have around our necks.  Then we spent about an hour wandering around the various enclosures and feeding the animals including tapir (the Belizean national animal), margay (pictured - the smallest of the spotted cats), ocelot, jaguar, howler monkeys, pacas, peccaries, coatamundis, puma, spectacled owls, and kinkajous.  Lots of fun and educational.   Aaron was thrilled that he got to touch the jaguar's paw, which now means he had the chance to pet a number of big cats as he had close encounters with lions, cheetah and leopards in Africa.

As we finished up, we ended up back with the snakes and this time the rattlesnake was alert and angry - shaking this rattle and curled into a tight S shape ready to strike.  Actually I thought this was kind of useful - if we ever run into a rattlesnake in the wilds of Texas we'll know exactly what they sound like.

The cabin we had at the TEC was large with several beds, lots of space, a small kitchen and a bathroom.  It kind of looked like the cabins you might find at a summer camp, which screened in windows and a porch set right above a swamp (which apparently has its own crocodiles, but we didn't see them).  Unfortunately a number of mosquitoes made it into the cabin and despite wearing DEET to bed, we each ended up with a few bites in the morning.  Also, early in the morning the power went out, meaning the fans stopped working, so it started to get pretty warm.  We decided to get up and going when the power stayed off,  but unfortunately there was no water in the shower.  Just as we finished getting changed, the power came on again.  We later found out that when they have a power outage, the water pumps need to get reset, but no one had told us this. 

After breakfast, we drove back to Belize City where we returned our car.  The vehicle (and Crystal Car Rental) were great.  Kelly says she is ready to do a commercial for Suzuki SUVs.  The car rental folks drove us into town so we could board a bus for Chetumal, Mexico which is just over the border to the north of Belize and takes about 3 hours in a reasonably comfortable coach.  When we got to the border, we paid the Belizean exit tax again and then went to Mexican immigration which took forever.  Apparently they had recently put in new procedures, which requires some people who could previously just walk through immigration to now need to fill out paperwork.  Futhermore when we arrived only one person was working, so we probably spent best part of 45 minutes getting through Mexican immigration.

Once we got to Chetumal we took a quick taxi ride to our hotel, the Holiday Inn.  We needed to choose a 2nd taxi as the first one wanted twice the going rate - always know how much a cab ride should cost!  We chose the Holiday Inn as we were only staying one night, it was centrally located and we got a good rate.

Across the street from the hotel was the excellent Museum of Mayan Culture.  It has very few original pieces - most were reproductions, but did a great job of explaining Mayan architecture, customs and culture through the use of models and interactive computer systems.

Five Sisters Lodge

Belize's Cayo district is in the west of the country, bordering Guatemala.   We wanted to spend some time there exploring the Pine Mountain Reserve area, which is a highland area of pine forest and jungle.  When we were considering where to stay, we had looked at a number of places in our guides and then the brother-in-law of a friend, who spends a lot of time in Belize, recommended the Five Sisters Lodge, so that's what we chose.

It is a beautiful place, set above a series of small waterfalls (The Five Sisters) in the middle of a large swath of pine forest.  The grounds are beautifully landscaped and the cabanas are rustic, yet comfortable.   We had a family cabana which gave Kelly and me a private room with king sized bed and our own bathroom downstairs, while Aaron slept upstairs in his own double bed.  He has his own bathroom and there was a small living area and lovely screened in balcony overlooking the forest.

Since this is up in the mountains, it was a little cooler than the heat of the lowland jungle.  Nights were pleasantly cool and we only needed fans in our rooms rather than a/c.  Daytime temperatures were warm, but not oppressive, although apparently it gets very hot here in April - up to 107.  The coolest is in December when it can drop to 40.

The staff was wonderful - extremely friendly and very helpful.  We ate all our meals there (realistically the only option unless we wanted to drive a long way over a very bumpy road) and although the food was relatively simple, it was very tasty and filling.

Around the lodge itself there are a ton of birds.  I got up early on our last morning to greet the dawn around 5:30am and before breakfast I had seen more than 20 different varieties of birds, some amazingly colorful.  Unfortunately without a field guide, I could not identify most of the birds, but Fermin, our waiter, was a good bird spotter and helped me identify some.   Luckily I had brought my Nikon compact binoculars so we got a good view of many of the birds.   Some of the birds I saw included red legged honeycreepers, parrots, acorn woodpecker, crimson collared tanagers, laughing falcons, montezuma oropendula, and many others.  We also found a very large toad outside our cabin as we went to bed one night.  I showed Fermin a picture in the morning and told him this was probably the biggest toad I had seen.  He said it actually wasn't very big - they see them twice as large as this!  A few days before we arrived one of the cleaning staff had seen a jaguar early in the morning near the property but we had no such luck.  We did see a creature dash into the bush on our drive out of the Pine Mountain area, which was probably a jaguarundi.

Below the lodge one can go swimming in the cool water underneath the waterfalls.  The lodge has its own hyrdoelectic generator upstream to supply their power needs.  Just down the road from the lodge is Big Rock, another, much taller waterfall and deep pools that Aaron and I visited on our last day (Kelly was still sore from her fall) using the lodge's mountain bikes.  It was a lovely place to swim and Aaron built a kind of castle from drift wood pieces and sand.  Before leaving, Aaron was able to take a big leap off one of the rocks into the deep pools.

If you ever find yourself in Belize, and want a great outdoor experience, I recommend a visit to the Five Sisters Lodge.

The best travel camera

I often get asked "what camera should I get?", which is sort of like asking "what car should I drive?", but I thought I'd take a few minutes to record my thoughts about cameras and travel.  When it comes to taking pictures while on the road, in the words of Crosby, Stills, and Nash "if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with".

I am very fortunate that I have access to a lot of my own equipment.  For most professional gigs, I shoot with a Digital SLR such as the Canon 5Dii with top quality L series lenses, external battery grip, high powered external flash, etc. etc.   While there is always more gear that I have my eye on, in reality I have most of what I want, which is great, but causes a real conundrum when I travel - haul a ton of gear and be ready to shoot almost anything, or travel light?

I also have a Canon Powershot G9 (the latest version in this series is the G11).  When I travel "heavy", the G9 is my last line of defense, the backup to my backup.  But when I travel light, this is my go to camera.

What I love about the Powershot G series, having owned a G1 (my very first digital camera), a G5, and a G9 is that although these are small and relatively light, they pack in a lot of features not found on most compact cameras.  Foremost amongst these is the ability to shoot in the RAW format, which renders the best quality, and provides the most flexibility to later edit the image.  The camera also includes a hot shoe which permits the use of most of my high end Canon flash and flash accessories.  A lesser known function is that it also has a built in ND filter, which means that you can effectively lower the amount of light getting into the camera - what may sound like the opposite of what most photographers need, but this is very useful when you want to use a slow shutter speed to show motion blur, but the environment isn't really dark enough.  The G9 did away with the rear swivel screen, but that's back in the G11 and very useful for taking low angle images or shooting with the camera held above your head (e.g. when shooting over a crowd).

The key thing about any travel camera is that is it no use if you don't have it with you, so the cardinal rule of travel photography for me is to always have your camera available.  This is much easier to do if you can put it in your pocket or on your waistbelt.   With DSLRs and even so called ZLR or bridge cameras (the all in-one-cameras with longer length built in zoom lenses), the problem is that you have to make a conscious decision whether or not to haul out the camera, and usually for at least some part of the trip, it stays in the bag or even the hotel room.

So what to do?  When traveling through Africa a couple of years ago, I hauled two DSLR bodies, a 100-400mm lens, 2x converter, 28-70mm lens, 17-55mm lens, flash gear and a number of accessories, including specialized mounts to steady the camera. And of course my G9 backup gear.  I used a large LowePro backpack camera bag, which also incorporates a laptop computer.  All this gear is HEAVY. I would guess at least 50lbs, and of course bulky and valuable.   I knew that for most of the trip we would be on the same vehicle and that I could store and have pretty ready access to it, so for me the problem was mostly getting it there.   When Air Namibia has a 7Kg (about 17lb) limit on hand  luggage, this in a bit of a problem.

Conversely for our travels through Central America this summer (and some of our previous trips elsewhere), I decided to go "lightweight".  This means the G9, spare battery, charger, 580EXii external flash and diffuser, AA rechargeable batteries and charger (which we use for other devices such as flashlights) and a Gorilliapod GP3 with a ball head attached.  Despite the photo with a large zoom lens, this isn't really up to holding a DSLR with such a large lens in the real world, but it is fantastic for a DSLR with smaller lenses, and ideal for the G9.  In addition to acting like any normal tabletop tripod, the flexible legs can be made to wrap around objects such as tree branches or railings, and can conform to odd shapes such as rock surfaces.

So, if you are considering purchasing a new compact travel camera, here are some things I suggest you consider:
a.  Size.  The camera is one you should be able to take with you everywhere you go.  If you have to decide whether to bring it with you when you go to dinner, etc., then you will inevitably leave it behind and miss some shots.
b. Usefulness in low light situations.  Every traveler will come across many situations where the quantity of light isn't ideal.  There are a number of things that affect how useful a camera is in low light situations, so keep these in mind:
- The lens' maximum aperture.  The smaller the F number, the more light the camera can let in and consequently the more useful it is in dimmer situations.  Note that most compact cameras do not have a constant maximum aperture, which means that at the widest angle setting of the lens, the maximum aperture is usually one or more stops brighter than at the maximum telephoto setting.   All things equal, a camera with a brighter maximum aperture is much more useful.
- The quality of the image processing chip and ISO settings.  You can boost the ISO setting on your camera to increase the effective sensitivity of the sensor thus allowing photography in dimmer light, but this comes at the cost of increased digital noise in your images.   Almost all cameras include (and market) ISO settings that are way beyond what is usable in reality.  For instance, my G9 can be set for ISO 1600 and even boosted beyond that, but in reality, images taken at over ISO 200 are too noisy.  Each successive generation of the image processing chip (for Canon, this is their DIGIC processor) makes a HUGE leap in quality of the higher ISO settings.  On my DSLRs, going from Digic III to Digic IV based models boosted the usable ISO by about 3 or more stops.  In English, this means that the newer models with better image processing chips are much better at low light photography.  Always investigate (online or ask a knowledgeable sales rep) what the highest ISO setting is that will yield a quality image and if your wondering why two seemingly similar 12MP cameras from the same manufacturer seem to be at significantly different costs, probably the more expensive one has a newer (and better) image processor.
- Flash power and flexibility.   Sooner or later you will need to add light to a low light scene and this means flash.  The build in flash in most compact cameras is very restrictive and is usually only helpful over very short distances.  Also, the flash may get blocked by the lens barrel at some focal lengths.  If the camera can take an external flash you have a lot of flexibility in using external flashguns and accessories providing many more options than a built-in flash only, but this feature is available only on the most expensive compact cameras and the external flash gear can be more expensive than the camera.   If you have to rely on built-in flash, look for models with more powerful flash and the ability to get the flash as far away from the lens as possible.  Some models have pop up flash, which do a better job of avoiding cutoff from the lens barrel and somewhat lessen the occurrence of red eye. Two downsides to pop up flash units are that they are susceptible to mechanical breakage and if you plan to use your camera in a waterproof housing, you may not be able to use the flash at all.
c. Lens capability and quality.  Better glass will always get you a better picture.  Look for models with better ratings on their optical characteristics.  Also, the optical  zoom length for most compact cameras is limited. Forget about "digital zoom" - this is just a gimmick that makes the camera specs seem better, but actually just discards pixels.  Optical zoom lengths are limited for most compact cameras, but some models have longer ranges than others.  Keep in mind if you shoot indoors or take landscape images that it is often possible to get closer to a subject, so even a moderate telephoto length can suffice, but it is perhaps more common to run into the problem that your camera is on its widest angle setting and you can't get further back to include everything you want in the frame.  In other words, it isn't just the zoom ratio (3x, 6x, 10x, etc.) that matters, but what the focal length of the lens is.  I would prefer a camera with a wider wide angle setting if I had a choice.  Some models can accept accessory wide angle and telephoto adapters to expand the native capability of the build in lens, but these are of limited value - they are expensive, bulky, inconvenient and sometimes of dubious optical quality.
d. Megapixel madness. Cameras are marketed with the idea that more megapixels means the camera must be better.   In fact once your camera has at least a minimum megapixel rating of about 8MP for most people anything beyond that is a waste.   A 4x6 print at maximum quality requires only 2MP.  An 8x10 at maximum quality only needs about 8MP. so unless you are creating a huge poster or cropping your image a lot (which has other issues anyway), a higher megapixel count isn't buying you anything.  What IS important is the quality of the built in image processor in the camera and the quality of the lens.  I would rather have a camera with a high quality, newer image processor and good glass with a small megapixel count, than something with tons of megapixels but mediocre image processing quality.   This is where I think Canon and Nikon have the edge as they are the leaders in image processing hardware.   Sony and Olympus and perhaps Samsung I would rate close behind, at least for compact cameras.
e. Useful features build into the camera.   New and sometimes unique features are surfacing all the time and it is often fun to see what the manufacturers come up with next.  But ask yourself if the features are really useful to YOU.  For example, Nikon make a camera with a build in projector, the idea being that you can share your images more easily with others.  But it is low resolution and not very bright, so effectively almost worthless.  However, many cameras allow you to connect a cable to a TV and see your pictures at high quality on a larger screen - great for sharing and the feature adds little or no cost to the camera.   BTW, be on the lookout over the next year or so for models that will have this type of capability wirelessly. Another specialized feature is having a 2nd small LCD on the front of the camera.  If you take a lot of images where you want to get in the shot, this allows you to make sure you have framed the image correctly.   Cameras with a rear swivel screen can do the same thing.

There is obviously lots more one could talk about, but I'll end it here.  

If you are in the market for a new camera, do your research first - the manufacturer's own websites will have a lot of good info, but the excellent dpreview website should be your destination for impartial third party reviews, testing, and feedback.  Then go to a good camera store and try the models that most interest you.  Very few places allow cameras to be returned without at least a restocking fee, so it is important to choose wisely.  Take your time, find something you like, and BRING IT WITH YOU WHEREVER YOU TRAVEL!

Happy trails.

The Belizean Mayan site of Caracol

Today we went to Caracol (Spanish for snail), perhaps the best Mayan site in Belize.  Set deep in the jungle, it took about an hour and half of driving over very rough roads from our lodge, which itself is more than an hour from the main road, or about 2.5 hours from Belize City.

You really have to want to go to Caracol to get there!  This is literally the end of the road, and as the site is close the Guatemalan border, you caravan in with other vehicles along with a Belizean army escort.  They had problems in the past with Guatemalans coming over the border and stealing flora and fauna, poaching, and even committing armed robbery on tourists, so they started the escorts and haven't had any problems for many years.  Since we had our own rented SUV we decided to drive there ourselves rather than take a tour and so only had to pay the park entry fee (about US$7.50 each).  Given how bumpy the road is and that I can get motion sickness when I'm a passenger, I was glad to drive.  Very challenging, but fun.

Each of the Mayan sites we have visited has its own character, but to me, Caracol really feels remote - I half expected to see Indiana Jones make an appearance!  Because it is so remote, there aren't a ton of visitors, so it is easy to explore the site and only occasionally run into other people.  The main temple here is still the tallest building in Belize and like all the ruins we've visited, it has similar architecture and great views.

What is particularly neat about Caracol is that there are some small segments of better preserved inscriptions and carvings so you get a little more sense of what an awesome place the Mayan ruins must have been in their heyday.  It is still being excavated and current estimates are that it supported many thousands of inhabitants.  From stellae inscriptions at Tikal it is known that at one point Caracol joined with the city of Calakmul (currently in So. Mexico) and defeated Tikal, but later Tikal regained its independence.

In between the various buildings is dense jungle and this is a fun part of the experience too as you walk along the trails.  Lots of leaf cutter ants and other insects.  We also heard howler monkeys again (very well named!)  Apparently the park staff spotted a tapir before we arrived, but we did not see it.  On the way in we saw a very striking bird of prey but unfortunately without a bird guide we could not identify it.

Caracol provided a few injuries - Kelly slipped on mossy steps and landed hard on her tush.  She was sore, but has since seemed to improve with rest.  Both Aaron and Kelly got ant bites, but I was mercifully spared.

When we were at Yaxha one of the locals showed Aaron how to "fish" for a tarantula.  You take a long thin stick and gently poke it down its burrow.  With luck the spider grabs on to it with its fangs and you can gently lift it out.   As we finished up our walk around Caracol Aaron spotted some spider leg movement from a hole under a big tree and put his training to use.  After some effort, the largest spider we have ever seen came out.  To get some idea of scale, we photographed it with my penknife, which is 6" long with the ruler.  The angle here is a little deceptive (the metal part is as long as the red handle, so both the spider and the knife are at a bit of an angle). End to end best estimate is that he was at least as long as the knife.  We left him (her?) in peace, had some snacks, and drove the journey back again in caravan with an escort, tired but very happy