Yesterday I spent my first whole day in San Ignacio, a small mountain town in Belize. So as it's in the mountain and also because of some meteorological phenomena (that I don't know the name of it), the temperature quite dropped and I have to say, I am cold. It's only 16-20° in the morning, it must reach 25-30° during the day but then back to 10-15° during the night so I need a blanket and to be honest wouldn't mind at all a big fat duvet.
The town is really quiet and nice and compared to San Pedro, it's really cheap. I can finally enjoy eating local food on the street and I have to say it's quite good. So for me it's lot of tacos, garmaches, burritos, salbutes and of course the famous Rice and Beans with chicken. I also bought on the market a pineapple and some pitayas.
There is a river, the Macal river that actually separate two towns : San Ignacio and Santa Elena, called the twin sisters....
On the top of a hill, here in San Ignacio, I have visited the ruins of Cahal Pech, a preclassic town. It was really nice to visit this site. First I was the only tourist and the only other people I saw were the gardeners. Secondly it was again a bit in the middle of the jungle, so lots of plants and I even saw a kind of woodpecker.
The site is formed several squares and you can go from one to the other, using stairs as the Mayan was doing maybe a thousand years ago.
A small video of one of the squares of Cahal Pech :
On the afternoon, I have been to see a protection centre for Iguanas and Garrobos. So the iguana is the female and the garrobo is the male. Here in Belize people used to hunt (and probably still do) the female for their eggs and their flesh that they were eating. However now the iguanas are protected and it's hence forbidden to hunt them. This centre tries to protect mainly females and then release them in the nature.
At this time of the year (from November to April), they are in mating season. Therefore the male change colour and are orange-brown, while usually they are green-brown. The male can be up to 6 feet long from nose to tail (for those that have no idea what 6 feet is, it must be around 2 meters). As all lezard they can lose their tales if they feel threaten or for any reason and it's grow back but usually not to full length and then the tail doesn't bear the same colour. Males are bigger than females.
Obviously, as it has been made also for tourists, I have been able to hold the iguanas and pet them. It was not as bad as I could have imagined and it was kind of soft (they do have soft spots).
Before arriving to the Iguana exhibit with the guide, we walked through a medicinal herb trail. When I think about it, why have I taken medicines with me while I could have found everything in the nature? And also we have tried to eat termites that are supposed to have 5 different flavours : celery, carrotty, minty, spicy and woody. I had a celery, then woody and then spicy one.
Overall it was really nice and really really fun.
