Today we drove for a few hours through a pine ridge ecosystem into the Chiquibil National Forest! We stopped at Caracol, Maya ruins deep in the rainforest 3/4 of the way through our drive where we learned about Maya civilizations. We walked around the large site seeing bases of what used to be homes and temples in a sprawling city from 200-1200 CE/AD. There were huge palm trees with parasitic fig trees suffocating them and some very fragrant wild cilantro plants. I saw a small brown anole on one of the trees in the middle of one of the family housing areas. It was about 6ft up the trunk of the tree.

(Brown anole)

The largest ruin was in a wide expanse of sunny fields. It is the tallest structure in Belize, and we climbed all the way to the top! At the top we could see miles upon miles of mountains. Archaeologists suspect was the home of a local king, and at the top of the ruin was a temple to the sun god. We spent a good amount of time exploring the ruin, and though I was sweating through every layer of clothes, I loved every moment. I also saw a small brown lizard on the outside of the sun temple. Before we left the site, we saw a baby grey fox in the rubble of a partially excavated ruin.

(the view from the top of the tallest ruin)

(Rose bellied lizard)

We continued our day by driving to Las Cuevas Research Station, our home for the next few days. The jungle got consistently denser the further we drove; we even saw a toucan and some howler monkeys on a tree on the side of the road.

At Las Cuevas we took a short walk through the rainforest where I saw a blue tailed skink in the hole of a tree. Now we have started wearing boots anytime we go outside of the research station fields just in case we come across any venomous snakes. Hopefully we see some but not too close.

All in all, today was a super fun day and I successfully ended our sunniest day of the week without a sunburn!

See you later!

Claire C