August 25- Ruined again-Lamanai, Our Last Ruins to Visit

The drive to OrangeWalk was nice, and we got on a boat to travel the river to Lamanai, the last Mayan ruins of the trip. We stopped many times to view the wildlife along the shores of the river, such as bats, onhuinga, storks, 'Jesus' birds, and crocodiles. We also passed a Mennonite community along the way.

Lamanai, or 'submerged crocodile', had about 700 temples and pyramids in its heyday. It was one of the longest occupied Mayan cities. One of its nicest temples is the Jaguar temple with jaguar heads, where incense was burned in the statue's ears. The temples in most Mayan cities were like onions, with layers and layers, of new building over the old. Many stela which were nicely carved, do not remain standing, as later rulers used them for building materials of their newer temples. Under one stela, they found 5 skeletons of children, but no one is sure of the purpose of those.Under a round stone in the ball court, they found liquid mercury and cinnabar-also, purpose unknown. The high temple can only be climbed using a rope to help pull yourself up. From the top you can see 20 miles to Mexico. On the mask temple, they found Olmec carved heads (the Olmec were much earlier people who did huge stone carvings) as part of the building. These were added later, but their origin is a mystery as the Olmec did their carvings near Vera Cruz, Mexico. We saw a gumbolimbo tree whose resin is medicinal, and it is also called the 'tourist tree' as its bark peels like sunburned tourists.