Alex Cantatore
My mind races to Indiana Jones, circa “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” exploring ancient temples with booby traps awaiting at every turn. I catch a mental glimpse of “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” flipping her way through Egyptian and Cambodian ruins. Heck, I even think of Ben Gates, barely escaping the flooding lost city of Cibola with his life in “National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets.”
And then my heart-which is doing some racing of its own-makes me think that perhaps I’d best pay some attention to the reality before me. Or, perhaps, I should say below me.
As I climb the final foot-high step of the 110-foot tall High Temple of Lamanai, Belize, I say a little word of thanks that the Mayans didn’t actually employ the sort of booby traps and skeleton warriors that you see in the movies. I’d probably be caught out by a swinging axe, invisible bridge, and a poison blow dart or two already.
You see, despite the incredible view, a vantage point from which it seems I can see the whole of the tiny nation of Belize, I simply can’t believe that any of this is real. Have I really just climbed a Mayan pyramid?
The wonder of it all kind of sneaks up on you. It’s such an undertaking just to get to Lamanai that actually being there seems impossible at first.
You see, in the fourth century BC, the Mayans had very different priorities for what would make a good site for a town than modern man does today, leaving the ruins almost inaccessible.
For the Mayans a site like Lamanai, located in the interior of Belize along the New River, would have been extremely convenient to access by canoe or foot. For modern man who enjoys cars, however, Lamanai is about as remote as you can get.
From our landing in Belize City, Belize, we hopped on an hour and a half long bus ride that took us along a dilapidated two-lane road, the asphalt worn down to little more than gravel for long stretches. Our tour guide informed us that this was the northern highway, one of the largest roads in Belize.
There’s little to see as you sit in a bus that 1960s American school children might have once used. The ramshackle huts and converted shipping containers that the 320,000 residents of Belize call home are the only scenery in the marshy landscape, save for the occasional religious school or pretentious mansion that probably even I could afford in this impoverished nation.
As our bus drops us at the outskirts of Orange Walk Town, the second largest town in Belize with 18,000 residents, our tour guide informs us that Belizeans earn, on average, between $4,000 and $7,000 a year. In tough times, the populace subsists mainly on 3-cent bananas.
We stepped on to a motorboat at our guide’s urging. The only other option to reach Lamanai is a muddy, usually impassable road. The boat trip down the New River is the most reliable way of visiting the site.
The tour book described it as a leisurely cruise. Personally, I do not consider an hour of travel at the breakneck pace provided by two Yamaha 200 horsepower engines, gunning us down a tight, twisty jungle river, to be leisurely.
This did not, by any means, resemble the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland.
While the guide said we would see howler monkeys and crocodiles, we really only saw the spray from the river and an Everglades-like landscape flying by as we grew increasingly deaf from the incessant drone of the engines.
Until, finally, the engine stopped.
I looked up, as if in a daze, and, crowning the tops of the highest trees of the Belizean jungle, I saw the High Temple, its stonework standing tall above the best nature had been able to achieve.
After two and a half hours of traveling through jungle and slums, I was now standing among the ruins of one of the greatest civilizations of all time. It was a bit much to believe.
The remote location is a huge boon to Lamanai. Less than 50 people were at the site the day I visited, giving you a chance to explore the ruins on your own terms, without anyone rushing you or getting in your way with frequent photography.
And, because there are so few people, visitors are basically given free run of the site.
The day before, I had visited Tolum in Mexico, another Mayan site with some amazing buildings. However, with thousands of people crowding the site, standing a safe distance away from any relics in carefully cordoned off areas, I felt more like I was in the “Indiana Jones Adventure” line at Disneyland than doing any exploring of my own.
Here, you get the sense that you might-quite literally-trip over a new groundbreaking archeological find.
Just a few weeks before we came to Lamanai, a visitor was waiting for his family just in front of the small, one-room museum on site. He looked to the ground and saw a bone sticking out.
The Mayan skeleton he found, skull and femur protruding from the ground, still sits just where he found it with no ropes to keep other visitors from getting right up close and personal. You could touch it, if you like.
The Belizean government doesn’t have the money to properly excavate the site. It comes as both a blessing and a curse.
We noticed chunks of pottery littered all around the site during our visit, but among the 20-foot tall, 6-feet wide palm fronds were what appeared to be small hills. Our guide informed us that these were other Mayan structures that simply hadn’t been unearthed yet.
As we climbed to the top of the High Temple (And, yes, climbing the ruins is encouraged at Lamanai), we saw that the rear of the building was still entirely covered with jungle debris. And, yet, somehow that made it seem more real.
Lamanai has its rough edges, to be sure. But it somehow seems like an ancient ruin should; a remote site which bears witness as much to the passage of time as to the majesty of the civilization.
As we carefully descended the High Temple steps, going on to see other amazing works like the Temple of the Jaguar Masks, the Mask Temple, a Mayan ballfield, and what was once a Mayan residential district, I begin to slip back into my adventure movie daydreams.
I kept my eyes peeled for crystal skulls, but there were none to be found. Just amazing relics, carvings, and sculptures of a once great civilization, one that knew the secrets of astronomy, math, architecture, and written language.
No, there were no movie props that could see into my thoughts. But as I looked deep into a huge, carved Mayan mask I felt that, for just a second, I could see into the thoughts of the people that once lived in Lamanai.
To contact Alex Cantatore, e-mail acantatore@turlockjournal.com or call 634-9141 ext. 2005.
Originally published in the Turlock Journal 12/24/2009.
Retrieved from the Turlock Journal Web site.