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| From Belize10 |
During the one hour trip along the river, we saw plenty of wildlife – “Jesus Christ birds”, bats, storks, egrets, kingfishers, “and more”.
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| From Belize10 |
Once we arrived at Lamanai everyone was running on adrenaline. Quentin and Annick took a canoe and started exploring the lagoon. Papa and Isaac followed them in their own canoe – leaving two children on their own to explore in a canoe around a lagoon with crocodiles didn’t seem like a good idea. The paddle to the other side of the lagoon and back was relaxing and killed about an hour. It was then time for dinner – shrimp in a curry sauce.
After dinner we did an evening walk with Mauricio. At our first stop we discovered that ants are very active at night and can crawl up your leg and bite you. Xavier and Isaac seemed the most unlucky in this respect. And if the ants didn’t get you, the heat did – the wind had died down and it was sweltering. We couldn’t tell if we were itchy due to insect bites or heat rash. Throw on top of this the inevitable decline in adrenaline and it is amazing that we managed to have a very good time, thanks to Mauricio’s animal finding skills. On our first stop he found a red-eyed tree frog and basilisk lizards. This was followed by a tarantula which he managed to coax out of its burrow using a twig and his spit. As if that wasn’t brave enough, Mauricio then blocked the spider’s burrow with his hand – so the spider couldn’t get back home – and then picked up the not-to-happy spider to bring it over to us. In particular, while holding the spider upside down, Mauricio poked her until she revealed her ½ inch fangs. Very cool, but not for a million bucks would any of us do what Mauricio did!
The creepy creature tour was not over with. Unbeknownst to any of us, scorpions glow under a black light! So Mauricio used his black light to find a scorpion in a rock wall and again, he coaxed the scorpion out in the open. But this time Mauricio did not attempt to pick up the scorpion.
