05.09.2012 – 05.09.2012  32 °C

Ok so woke up this morning with a sore neck.. A bit tight but nothing major.. Brekky was a really tasty affair in the main dining room before the three of us headed down to the bilges of the boat to get ourselves on the tender boat for the shore of Belize.

Today, all three of us were heading up a river towards one of the innumerable Mayan ruins here on the Yucatan peninsula, the Alta Ha. Today was a real highlight for M… I remember as a kid getting the Nat Geo’s in the mail and M poring over the magazines and dreaming about seeing the pyramids at some point in the future. She wasn’t alone in wanting to see these amazing structures… I’ve always wanted to see them and climb them! (In fact, I’m coming back down here in another month or so to see them properly I’m that keen!)

The tender dropped us off at the quay in Belize City. The town (or what we could see of it from the quay) looks like a really quaint, Caribbean style town… Plenty of colourful, two storied buildings built right up on the shore, with a backdrop of tropical jungle.. Very Caribbean-esk! Once we had booked in etc, we boarded another boat for our trip up the river towards the ruins. The water here in the Caribbean is just a brilliant blue colour.. think brilliant sapphire blue and you’re pretty close to it.. so our drive in the motor boat to the river was just beautiful. Interesting fact, Belize is a part of the Commonwealth and is still a constitutional monarchy with the Queen of England as head of state. First language is English (so nice and easy to communicate) with second language being Spanish… So it’s a mixture of Caribbean and Latin America all thrown in together!

At the entry to the river we slowed right down and actually stopped to look for Manatees. This part of Belize is a protected Manatee habitat and we were fortunate enough to see a couple of their heads sticking out of the water! They look just like our Dugong’s–  they aren’t quite the same but very similar. Once we had all glimpsed the big grey guys (no chance for a photo—you only see the nose sticking out—hippo style) our driver continued us up the river.

Our river cruise was pretty nice.. The river is flanked by jungle, interspersed with the occasional house. At one of these little settlements our driver stopped the boat so that we could see some iguanas. I’ve never seen these beasties before and I was very impressed with their beauty. The place we had stopped at is an iguana habitat so we were fortunate to see a couple of the very large lizards doing what lizards do best, lazing around! Fortunately for me, we could get nice and close (without being too close) so I got some good shots of the beasts.. I was amazed how well they blend in with their surrounds… if the guide hadn’t pointed them out I probably wouldn’t have seen them.

We were also fortunate and saw some black monkeys (don’t ask me what type cause I can’t recall), some big crocodiles and plenty of birds. Lunch was at this local restaurant (I’m sure it’s the guides mum cooking or something to that effect) and sadly it was pretty ordinary. We all ordered the bean dish and it was way too bland for my tastes.. really needed some spice to give it something.  By the time lunch had rolled around my neck was really starting to feel sore.. I took myself a couple of panadol hoping to ward off the worst. Sadly, this didn’t work.

As the afternoon wore on my neck went downhill. Every other minute it would spasm and lock into a very painful (and uncomfortable) position which I was only able to release by wrenching my neck in the opposite direction. So the rest of my afternoon was pretty miserable…

Off the neck (for a minute) and I’ll briefly tell you about the ruins of Alta Ha. The ruin complex was actually quite small (which was good for me) but was also very empty which meant we got a good chance to have a look at the different buildings. The complex was made up of at least seven different buildings all for some sort of religious purpose… I tuned out for most of the discussions for two reasons; 1 I wanted to get some photos and 2 the guide was so boring (we had a different guide to the one who took us up the river)……

I couldn’t climb to the top of the temple so I had to be happy with wandering around the bottom. I was pretty thankful when we finally left and made our way back to the ship. Once aboard I headed straight to see the ships doctor……… OH MY GOSH! I went from having a spasm-ing (but sort of controllable) neck to a non-stop spasm in my neck… I’ve never felt the sort of pain I felt today! The doctor started to probe my neck (to find out what was wrong) and set it off in a really bad way… So bad that I couldn’t stop tears from flowing freely down my face, eventually it was so bad that the doctor ordered the nurse to inject me with pain killers and something to stop my neck from spasm-ing… MY GOSH IT WAS PAINFUL..

That’s all I can really remember about the day! I spent the rest of the evening in my bed dosed to the eyeballs, blissfully asleep… I’m now regretting the decision to go ATV-ing yesterday as I now have a bad case of whiplash!

Song of the Day– Harry Belafonte, Day-O