The Beaurs: Belize: Xunantunich Ruins

In Belize, two of the most popular shore excursions for cruisers are either cave tubing or visiting a Mayan ruin site. We chose the latter thinking that it would be a nice change of pace to do something more "historical" and out of the water. We also liked the fact that we would be able to climb the ruins in Belize, unlike our experience at Chichen Itza in Mexico where everything was roped off... we would soon realize that there is probably a good reason why tourists shouldn't be allowed to climb ruins, but more on that later...

There were a couple of Mayan ruin sites and I picked Xunantunich primarily based on the fact that the site looked more impressive than the other options. We decided to book this through Carnival even though I normally shy away from booking any excursions directly through the cruise line because it would be such a long day. The site was a two hour drive one way, almost reaching the border of Guatamala, and so we wanted to play it safe and take the ship tour, which would ensure that the ship would wait for us if we were running late.

We woke up pretty early that morning (woke up around 7am EDT, which was about 5am Belize time) to a very strange burning smell and some smoke outside on our balcony. Ben went sniffing around our cabin wondering whether we were somehow setting something on fire but we realized we had nothing that could possibly be burning. A couple minutes later, we find out from the cruise director that the smell was from a "controlled" fire in the forests of Belize, whatever that means... I think that was meant to be reassuring.

Because we booked a Carnival excursion, we were able to get priority tender tickets which means we were on one of the first tenders. The tender ride to Belize was a much longer ride than the one to Grand Cayman, which is probably why we needed tickets for this port.

Once in port, we were greeted by the Carnival photographers (surprise, surprise!!)... at this port, they used particularly aggressive tactics such as corralling passengers using a pole into designated locations (what are we, sheep??). We had come to expect this by now and the boys were no longer trying to hide from the photographers anymore - they were now actively seeking them out to take all sorts of improper photos, hoping that the photographers would post them in the Carnival photo gallery. Sadly, the photographers caught onto the Ben and Jeff shenanigans and we never did see these indecent photos available for purchase in the photo gallery.

After that brief diversion, we were guided to our tour bus and Kendra, our local Belize "expert". Upon leaving the port gates in the tour bus, we noticed that Belize City was probably not someplace you wanted to just casually wander around in. Much of the city was poverty stricken and we noticed that the port gates and traffic checkpoints were guarded by men with machine guns. Once the bus left the gates, Kendra picked up the microphone and started to give us some "fun facts" about Belize... this continued for the ENTIRE two hour bus ride, without even a minute of a break. I think I might know more about Belize now than I do about the United States... The man sitting in front of me kept rubbing his temples and plugging his fingers in his ears - poor guy. When I wasn't in the mood to listen to Kendra anymore, I would put on my noise-canceling headphones (which evidently are not powerful enough to cancel out the sound of Kendra's voice) and look out the window. It was particularly heartbreaking to see some of the poverty in the country. We passed numerous school houses along the way and I noticed that most of the kids looked extremely happy in spite of the conditions that they live in.


Here we are right after boarding the tour bus in the morning... all smiles without any knowledge of the rough day that would be lying ahead of us

Finally, as we neared the site, our Xunantunich guide, Jake took over. We got off the bus and loaded onto a hand-cranked ferry and from there were shuttled to the main site. Jake was an extremely knowledgeable guide but we did find him to be almost too detailed and he lost most of us after about 30 minutes.

Xunantunich Mayan Ruins

Hand-cranked ferry

first look at some of the ruins - it was much quieter and less crowded than Chichen Itza

our guide, Jake

Eastern view of El Castillo - this is what we would be climbing a little later

detailed carving in El Castillo

Ben ran up the steps at the first chance he got to break away from the rest of the group

el Castillo


the climb up to the top - climbing up wasn't bad at all; coming back down was another story though

We made it to the top! You probably can't tell by looking at the picture but it was extremely hot and humid with no shade up there.. not to mention a little unnerving to be that high up without so much as a guardrail

view of the rest of the site from the top of el Castillo

view of Guatamala in the distance from top of el Castillo

After climbing up to the top and enduring the heat, we were all looking forward to getting back down and into some shade. Coming down the ruins was probably the worst part of the day. We needed to be extremely cautious when coming back down because each step was narrow and tall and there was nothing that could prevent us from falling over if we slipped. I had a particularly traumatizing experience when the woman coming down behind me nearly slipped and slid down a step while I was on the step one below her... in that moment, I really thought she was about to take me down with her. I was so freaked out I asked her to stay up there until I made my way to the bottom of the steps. Now I know why they make you sign those liability waiver forms before the trip starts...

Once we made our way to the bottom, our guide continued his lecture at which point we had all already tuned out. We made our way back to the shuttle buses which took us back to the ferry that would bring us back to the bus. We were really looking forward to lunch at this point. Lunch was at a nice restaurant with shaded outdoor seating and was surprisingly good.

lunch after our tour of Xunantunich

group picture

We were running a little behind schedule and so the bus driver started to drive faster and faster. Unfortunately, the roads were not kind to us and there were numerous times we didn't think the bus was going to make it.. sure enough, we heard a loud popping sound, followed by the bus jerking around before it came to a stop at the side of the road. We had a flat! Thank goodness we were on a Carnival sponsored excursion. Somehow, there was an empty "backup" bus directly behind us and so we boarded the second bus and were on our way as if nothing had happened. I am not sure if it is normal protocol to have a backup bus follow the tour bus in Belize, but if it is, I am sure flats are a frequent occurrence.

our flat tire and the backup bus

We made it back to port without anymore incidents but were cutting it really close to the last tender time. However, once we saw the line, we knew that even if we had come back 30 minutes later, we would still be able to make it back to the ship in time given how long the line was. We waited for at least another 30-45 minutes before we were boarded one of the last tenders of the day.