Thought we would take a break from everything and just have some fun. We started the day off with a good breakfast at a small little place in town. Kelley ordered the banana waffle which came with fresh and caramelized  bananas all topped with ice cream. I went with the chicken and waffles, plus we each had a glass of fresh squeezed OJ all for about $8 and worth every penny.

Now that we had a good base in us we headed to Cahal  Pech, which means “Place of Ticks” it’s a small Mayan Ruin that is pretty much in the middle of the town of San Ignacio. We had been to a couple of the other bigger ruins before but never this one, I guess because we thought it was smaller and in town. As it turned out this small little ruin was just as interesting as some of the larger ones. Cahal Pech was occupied from about 1500BC to around 600AD where as many as 20,000 people lived and thrived as a community along with a king as their leader. Our mayan guide (Marcos) who showed us around was actually one on the archeologists who worked on a lot of the ruins in the area including this one.

Marcos was a wealth of information explaining and showing us the ball courts, market places and all the kings special protective passages that took him to different areas of his empire. All the kings passages had big peaked ceilings so that his headdress would fit through when he went out to address his people. Even though all the kings passages we extra tall for his headrest I still had to duck when going through them.

Our guide tells us that the entire ruins were once all covered in a plaster and were beautifully painted. One of the kings bedroom still contained some plaster and some red paint on the walls. Marcos told us that usually every summer they do some more excavating with university students. We asked him if the public ever helps and he told us that if we applied that there is a good chance we could help for a couple weeks. We now have something else to look forward to once we move to Belize.

After hiking around the ruins all morning I thought I would give fishing a try. We found a nice secluded spot where the Mopan and the Macal rivers come together. I have not fished in fresh water in a long time, I’m used to the salt water either on a boat or a nice empty shoreline. One thing that I’m not use to when fishing is trees, lots of trees. It was on my first cast that I hook a big one, it was probably 70′ tall and firmly rooted to the bank. Hanging out of it’s big branch was my $8 lure, you could see that he had been hooked before, as there was already another lure hanging from it’s big branches. Obviously some other saltwater angler thought he could also master the art of river fishing. I guess this will just take some time for me to remaster my fishing techniques. No fish were actually caught during this fishing adventure.