PicsFromTrips

Another Day trip to another Mayan ruin site The day after visiting Caracol, we took mostly a rest day, hanging around the Black Rock lodge reading, writing, and snoozing in the hammock. In the afternoon we drove further out from San Ignacio to the pull off for Xunantunich, located just on the other side of the river. To get to the Mayan ruin site at Xunantunich you start by boarding the hand-cranked ferry. This poor ferry pilot spends the day cranking back and forth on the one-car capacity ferry taking passengers and their vehicles across the river. After the ferry ride we drove the mile up the hill to the ruins site. We spent the afternoon walking around the grounds, in a similar fashion to Caracol - again without a guide. There were a few folks milling about near the ferry who offered to guide us, but we decided to wander around on our own again. The grounds were smaller, but as they're closer to the main road and therefore better-visited, more crowded. Since we visited late in the afternoon though, the crowds thinned out until we were among the last there. We were sitting on one of the walls, enjoying the peaceful surroundings when some ungodly sound erupted from the surrounding jungle. It sounded somewhere between large earth-moving machinery and some large wailing mammal. We didn't know what to make of it but it sufficiently spooked us to the point that we decided to leave. Apparently we wore our spooked out looks well because one of the guides with a couple of tourists joked to us, and filled us in that the sound was that of a howler monkey. We continued back to the car (and later regretted not getting a sound clip of the monkey) and after the hand-cranked ferry ride back across the river we enjoyed an ice cream while watching the water flow.