Hi!

Day two took us to Rio on Pools, Caracol, and Las Cuevas!

Rio on Pools was my favorite part of today. It’s a river that runs over the granite in the Mountain Pine Ridge and pools in calm sections with little waterfalls running between them. The water was nice and cool; some pools were deep enough to swim in, and some were shallower and super slippery from algae growing on rocks (but honestly it was kind of fun to slide around on them). Also! The slippery rocks combined with mini waterfalls made for a surprisingly fun natural waterslide.

It was also at Rio on Pools where we saw most of our reptiles for the day! We saw two Striped Basilisks (Basiliscus basiliscus) and one lizard that we think is a Teiid lizard. The basilisks were easier to identify because of the bright stripes and the distinctive way that basilisks run on their hind legs. We’ve narrowed the other lizard to a Teiid lizard because of the shape of its head/body, but the color pattern didn’t quite look like the Teiid lizard we’re familiar with for the area, so I’ll be consulting some field guides. Later in the day we also saw what’s likely a Morelet’s Crocodile (Crocodylus moreletii) while crossing over a river into the Chiquibul region.

After Rio on Pools we drove for a while, making our way out of the Mountain Pine Ridge and into the Chiquibul, and found our way to Caracol, a site of Mayan ruins. We learned a general timeline of the Mayan civilization and very detailed information about how the city was structured: an epicenter where the royal family lived, then roads out from there to plazas were wealthy elites lived with middle class structures around them, all extending 5 miles in radius. The plazas were set up with four structures around a clearing, usually three houses and a temple, and those structures were continually built upon to make the tiered pyramid type things we’re familiar with (not like building a super tall step pyramid at once). We even got to climb the tallest structure (the tallest in Belize) which was a palace associated with queen Batz Ek (“bright monkey lady”) and her son Lord Kan II.

Learning about Mayan history was really cool, but my favorite part of visiting Caracol was learning about the Montezuma Oro Pendula birds. Montezuma for the emperor, Oro for the gold tail, and Pendula for the way they build their nests. They’re very loud birds and they build weird hanging nests really high up in trees. We saw a whole flock with there nests in a ceiba tree. The birds mate for life and once paired the male builds the nest for the female; if the female doesn’t like the nest she throws it to the ground and he tries again. Once he gets it right, he then has to build two or three more nests as decoys because the cow blackbird preys on their eggs.

We made it to Las Cuevas (where we’ll be staying for the rest of our rainforest adventure) in the early evening and got to enjoy the cool air that comes with a nice heavy rain. After the rain we saw a scarlet macaw up in a tree too! Then we learned about Trees, Birds, and the Soil Paradox from Amy, Keegan, and Cassia respectively.

Time for bed, don’t want to be drowsy for birding tomorrow!

-Kelsey