Lamainai

 Yesterday we all went to Lamainai, a Ruin that has over 800 “buildings” on it.  As the tour guide, Mr. Reyes explained, most Mayan Civilizations started with 13 buildings, one for each of the Gods within their beliefs, the son of the King was responsible for doing one building for each of their Gods and to beautify the buildings built by their fathers and grandfathers…till finally, at the location there is over 800 buildings, one of the biggest ruins there…It was taken over by vegetation and eventually the Spider Monkeys settled there.  It was amazing to look at the mostly covered mounds and realize underneath the mounds were buildings, some of them, the Jaguar Temple and the Ball court had been excavated and could be seen and even climbed upon…

This trip was one of the most amazing trips I had ever been on, the tour started on what the “English” named the New River but the Mayans had originally called “The River of Many Faces” which made sense since it runs 80 miles through Belize and actually goes up into parts of Guatemala….it was used as a means of transportation for the Mahogany wood Britain exported by floating the logs down the New River…The Mayan name for the river was more righteous since the people living here, Mexicans, Mayans, Garafuna, and the mixed races all used the river for transportation.  England in it’s typical fashion always decided what was best. They had landed on the country thinking they were going to Honduras and found out it wasn’t and named the small country the British Honduras and took the land away from the Mexicans.  He (Mr. Reyes) doesn’t say these things to you as he takes you down this river, he simply says the English did this, the Mayans did that and you can come up with your own conclusions if your mind is into it.

As you travel down the River to get to the ruins you slide along water that at times looks like glass, its shiny surface so smooth and tranquil, there are parts that are rough and you can see the flow of the river and feel the bumps as the boat hits them.  There are so many different types of vegetation, the Gumbo-limbo tree, the jackass bitters, the palms of Coconut, banana, and the flora of the country and the birds…the birds were wonderful.  The white heron as it takes off from the tree and flies silently by with its wings making small adjustments to glide so gracefully, a truly inspiring sight.  The blue heron, the Kingfisher with it’s bright red chest, the boat billed duck, and the most amazing birds with their beautiful noises.  And the Vultures..I thought about Shawn as the tour guide was telling us the Vulture was one of the top 10 in the world of Stench because of the acid within their stomachs.  They can eat things with diphtheria, typhoid and other diseases and because of the acid within their stomach can digest them without getting sick.  One of the birds we saw was over 5 feet tall and a huge wingspan, we were told it was bigger than an American Candor…It stood in the base of the bed and was graceful and tall.  There are these birds that are native to Belize that live on the Lily pads and sea grass that grows along side of the bank and you can see them walking along the pads like they are walking on water…..

Another Amazing thing about the ruins is that the stone isn’t native to the sight, it is brought in from other parts and put together with stucco made from the forest..Mr. Reyes explained that it took acres and acres of forest land to create the buildings that were there in order to make the stucco that held it together, and that didn’t count into how much it took just to build the foundation the buildings were on, that they didn’t believe in building on the forest floor but would build their streets and buildings up on a foundation to walk upon..Some of the information this descendant of a Mayan could give us was amazing.

After the tour through the ball court a family that had been on the tour with us came down to where Mr. Reyes and I had been talking and the father in a typical American tourist way was asking why the rest of the ruins had not been excavated and was told it was because the Belizean Government was Bankrupt..He then went on to question why the Belizean’s had not approached others such as colleges in the States to do this and I got into an argument with him….

Can you believe someone not seeing that they had had to fight to free themselves from the cruelties the British had put on them?  Britain had bleed the country dry and took their one major export and sucked it into its empire, this country is young, why would they want another country to come in and tell them how to do it? He then argued that it should be done and that money given for excavation wasn’t giving another country control and I responded by saying that any time money is involved there is always an issue of control.  But I was also thinking to myself why would you ask  the United States to do this thing? They are almost bankrupt themselves, spending way beyond their means to aid other countries that don’t appreciate it as it is….but are We any better than Britain?  We come in and demand that the country does things the way we want them to be….Maybe it’s just having been here a few months looking around and outside of myself I have seen other things that most Americans, in their eagerness to aid, don’t see.  That there is such a thing as God willed, if it was God’s will that the site was excavated completely, it would have happened by now and it’s such a good place to go see.  A place of peace and tranquility and Spider monkeys that howl like pre-historic creatures.  If you excavated this site, where would these wonderful monkeys go?  Where would these beautiful birds migrate to? 

The father said something to me about how I can’t equate what Great Britain had done to what the Americans could do and I calmly looked at him and said, “sorry, but you’re not projecting an image of security to them” and he asked me what I meant and I said “I’m not the one wearing a GB Cap on my head” and his son sniggered.   He took his hat off and looked at it, on the brim was the British flag and in typical American fashion he had the brand label on his clothes and it was a Great Britain cap on it…proving anyone can be brought…….