At the end of my last blog I said “Can’t wait to see what next week holds, it’s always something interesting”. Well, something interesting did happen.
A friend of ours invited us and a few friends to go spend the day on his pontoon boat on Chalillo Reservoir in the Maya Mountains up past our place. We headed up to Chalillo Reservoir, the largest man-made lake in Belize, which backs up the Macal River for nearly 9 miles. Our friend Amin is in charge of the forest management there and has the only private boat on the entire lake. Of course we accepted his offer, so snacks were packed, ice chests were filled and we were on our way. With the road being mostly paved now, it was only about an 1½ hour drive, with the worst part being the last few miles down to the lake where 4×4 was required.
It’s an interesting lake, where the north side is mostly a pine tree forest and the south side is a jungle with lots of palm trees and dense bush. It’s still strange to me (being from the western U.S.) to be on a freshwater lake and have palm trees all along the shoreline.
Some of the shoreline is flat and grassy, with big trees sticking up from when they filled the reservoir. Yet back in some of the creeks, there are cliffs of shale, granite and limestone with spring waterfalls flowing into the lake. Beautiful plants and wildlife are everywhere and the best part of all is that you will not see another person anywhere on the lake.
Kelley and I were up on this lake six years ago, where we saw some Tapir lounging in the water. No Tapir this time, but we did see a lot of deer. We saw two of the three types of deer that live in Belize, the White-tailed and the Brown Brocket. The only one we didn’t see was the Red Brocket deer, but maybe next time.
The deer we saw didn’t seem to mind us pulling the boat up to the shoreline for some pictures, then again, they have probably never seen a boat or people before. The deer all looked very healthy and seem to be staying away from the jaguars, so far.
We were lucky enough to spot some big Red Scarlet Macaws up in a tree. There were five of them around, but three flew off when we stopped the boat. Two of them stayed on the tree, taking turns poaking their heads into a hole; we assume they were feeding their young. That would have really been awesome if the babies had stuck their heads out for a picture.
Kelley must have taken a couple hundred pictures of these Scarlet Macaws. Here are a couple pictures where you can see how colorful and beautiful these birds really are. We were very lucky to spot some Scarlet Macaws, as they are not a very common sight in Belize.
We cruised up into one of the arms of the lake and it came to a dead end. As we stopped, just five feet in front of the boat was a Morelet’s Crocodile. This one was only about four feet long, but they can grow to over eight feet when fully grown. He dove under the water before Kelley could get any pictures, but he was leaving a bubble trail as he swam away. About twenty feet later he popped his head back up to the surface and Kelley was able to get some pictures of him.
In the shallows, there are lots of dead tree tops sticking up from the lake, and they make perfect places for birds to build a nest. A lot of the nests had Herons sitting on them, and they just looked at us as we slowly cruised by. There was one Heron that flew off the nest, and as soon as she did, up popped a little white fuzzy head, probably wondering where mom went. We cruised by and got a couple pictures, and then mom went back to sitting on the nest.
Besides all the different types of birds around the lake, we also saw a small cave of bats that flew out towards us, heard monkeys close by, saw a snake cross the road and Ocellated Turkeys. Look up Ocellated Turkey, they are a very colorful, beautiful bird. We have a lot of wildlife around where we are, but just a short drive up into the jungle, there are lots of other animals that we just don’t see around our place.
It was a great day on the lake with friends and no other people around. There was a lot of wildlife everywhere, and the scenery was awesome. On the drive back home, the sky turned orange as the sun was setting, which is something we usually don’t get to see. It was the end to a perfect day.