Harvest Caye and Costa Maya

No cruise nowadays seems to be complete without a visit to a 'private island' of some sort, and Regent is no different. Being part of the Norwegian Cruise Holdings family gives Regent ships access to one private area in the western Caribbean and another one in the eastern Caribbean, which we will visit on the second leg of the cruise.

The area here in Belize is called Harvest Caye and is very nicely set up with lots and lots of lounges and umbrellas on the beach, a huge pool, ziplining and water sports all available. That's because the average ship coming in to this private port carries about 4,000 people, not the 760 that we have on Grandeur.

We took a walk to look around, for 'professional curiosity' on Larry's part. They offer private villas for up to 10 people for a relatively high price, but they also come with their own private beach area and air conditioning (very important!).

One of the private villas

Amongst the activities was a small walk-through displaying some of the local indigenous wildlife. We weren't sure if we'd have to pay for access (just about every other activity required some kind of a ticket) but it seemed not, so we headed into the little rainforest.

First up was the Butterfly Enclosure, where we found these beautiful Blue Morpho butterflies with iridescent blue on the backs of their wings. The undersides are camouflaged to look like owls so they can't be easily spotted in the jungle.

Next up we came across a couple of Toucans in their large enclosure:

And finally, after looking at the enclosure for the Green Iguanas, we came across a rather large male snacking on the top of a bush! Either these bushes are very strong, or he's a lot lighter than we thought!

That was pretty much it for Harvest Caye, and we headed back to the ship where it was cool and the drinks, of all kinds, had no additional cost.

On Saturday we had our long tour of the trip, to the Mayan ruins at Kohunlich, which were a 2 1/2 hour drive from Costa Maya. As we waited for the group to gather before heading to the bus, the welcome committee of dancers in Mayan costumes were encouraging visitors to have their photos taken. They certainly were colourful!

Our bus ride took us through a number of small towns, many of which had roadside stalls selling everything from leather goods to fruit to tacos. Agriculture is big in this area, with pineapple and sugar cane being some of the most prevalent crops.

Once we finally reached the site of Kohunlich, we thought we were done with construction vehicles. The government is building a major rail line to link Mexico City and the Mayan Penninsula, and there's lots of road construction, railway construction and bridge building going on. More than half of the way we kept coming across some kind of related activity. So when we got to the parking lot at Kohunlich, what did we find but more construction! The park administrative building (which included the washrooms) had been razed, the parking lot was nothing but sand, and workers were building a small stone wall to line the pathway into the site. Once everything is rebuilt, it should look nice, but we were wondering what we had gotten ourselves into! By the way, for those who needed facilities there was a nice line of Port-a-Potties.

The background explanation of what Kohunlich is
and how it may have looked in its prime.

Kohunlich was a large active settlement for the Mayans which was in use from around 100 B.C. to about 1100 A.D. The whole site encompasses something like 50 square miles, but only a fairly small number of buildings have been excavated. The ruins site was probably one of the more important areas of the town. Our tour guide, Pablo, was very knowledgeable about Mayan history and the various buildings we were seeing. He explained that there probably would not be much more excavation activity because there weren't many more buildings of cultural significance to be found if this was like the other settlements such as Chacchoben and Chichen-Itza.

Pablo also told us the story of how Kohunlich was discovered in the first place, how it was abandoned for about 40 years, and how the ruins came to be found again, leading to the site we have now. The ruins were first found in 1912 by Raymond Merwin, who was flying over the area. There wasn't very much archaeology done there for a number of years, and it seems even the location details were lost. The story as Pablo tells it was that, in 1968, a farmer found a couple of men digging around on his land, and caught them in the act of cutting some large carved stones in order to take them away. He could see they were probably ruins, and he took the two into custody and marched them to the closest town and the police. On the way, they tried to bribe him with a share of the 'take', but he didn't budge. The men were arrested, and the farmer became the unknown hero that saved Kohunlich.

One of this farmer's friends was training as an archaeologist, so he became involved in identifying the ruins. Victor Segovia Pinta spent his entire career, about 30 years, working on the site. It is hard to imagine that all of these stone buildings were no more than huge mounds of rubble covered with vegetation when they were first discovered.

This is a small part of the Acropolis, the main building on the site.

The Temple of the Queen, probably only a administrative building, but it was found with a carving of a woman seated on a large chair on the top, so it got the name.

One of the things Kohunlich is best known for is the Temple of the Masks. It is a large temple on a rise, and there are some large human faces carved into the walls. There is still active work going on on the two largest ones so there's scaffolding (hey, scaffolding!!) in front of them. The thatched areas were not part of the building, but were placed there to preserve the masks and protect the archaeologists from the weather.

This tablet has the profile of a Mayan in ceremonial dress, with the big headdress, facing to the left as we look at it. The cut through the middle was made by those ruins robbers so they could carry it out of the site. They had already managed to make off with other sections of it.

The Temple of the King on one side of the main square.

One of the more interesting trees with roots wound around it. This was in the area that would have been used for ceremonial fighting.

 

These are a part of a group of structures known as The Palace.

After leaving Kohunlich we drove more than half the way back to the restaurant where we had lunch. It was on the Seven Colour Lagoon at the town of Bacalar. The 'lagoon' is actually the largest lake in Mexico, stretching over 80 miles in length. This part of Mexico is where the asteroid hit the earth 66 million years ago to lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Lake Bacalar is biologically important because the microbes and the rock formations are evidence of some of the oldest life on earth. These rock formations you can see are called stromatolites and are produced by these microbes. They certainly look extremely interesting!

Our lunch was fajitas with fresh made corn tortillas. Not huge, but it tasted good!

Another photo of the lagoon and more stromatolites.

There are also lots of these deep pools called cenotes around the lagoon. Our driver stopped the bus so we could take a quick look at this one. It is apparently 200 feet deep, and many of them also harbour some age-old microbial life forms in their depths.

So, that was it for our long day, but we were treated to a private viewing of a major find of Mayan ruins and the gorgeous views of the lagoon. All in all worth the time we spent on the bus. 

We had two more ports on this first itinerary - Cozumel and Key West. Cozumel is just a port for water activities and shopping, neither of which we are doing, and we've been all over Key West when we were there a few years ago. We stayed on the ship. Next post will show some photos of Regent Grandeur.