Lamanai Archaeological Reserve — Attraction in Orange Walk District

Lamanai is a wonderfully photogenic Mayan site to visit. Being essentially on one level the site walkabout is easy too. We arrived by boat and started with the nice small museum before seeing the ruins. From there we walked to the Jaguar Temple and royal residential complex, the ballcourt, High Temple (with time to climb the modern wooden steps), Temple of the Masks, and the temple with Stelae 9 for Lord Smoking Shell. The Temple of the Masks has an interesting developmental history revealed by the archaeological investigations. During the Early Classic period a Lamanai site lord (with a big ego?) placed four identical larger than life sized portraits of himself on an existing temple. A subsequent Early Classic period site lord covered the upper two portraits during a temple renovation. During the Late Classic period another site lord covered the last two portraits when expanding the temple. Our knowledge for this sequence of events is the result of careful and controlled archaeological excavations. Today the bottom two portraits are exposed for visitors. The visible portraits are replicas that cover and protect the...

Wentworth was our guide! He was so informative and we really connected with him. We were really rushed to get through our tour, but he was very professional and made sure that we were able to get back to our ship on time. Our bus driver was awesome also. He was very informative and was able to answer all our questions and was funny. He knew his country better than I know mine!!! The river boat ride was awesome too. How does the driver of the boat have a GPS in his head? We made so many turns and curves!! It was so much fun. We had to take our lunch on the road because we were behind on schedule. It didn't matter because the "authentic" food was so good. I hope the girl that sat beside me and my son remembers me because she was so cute. She and I ate our "TO GO" food together in the middle seat of the van and I believe both of us ate our whole plate. We had beans and rice, that had some kind of "special something" in it, some kind of special chicken, plantains, and slaw!! It was so good! Thank you for a special time!! I am sorry that I don't remember the van driver because he...

We stopped in Belize one day on our carnival cruise. We bought a trip to Lamanai on Costco for our excursion. Once we made it to shore, it's a short walk to meet the tour.

The tour was a van ride to the river of about an hour, with an amazing guide telling us all about Belize. The river ride was about an hour and a half up the Crocodile River (which is full of crocs, but we only saw a few) in a speedboat. Then a tour of lamanai. It was amazing! So many pyramids and so much amazing history. Lumanai was not crowded like tulum in Cozumel. There are a few tiny shops at the ending.

This is a large circle walking to various restored sites on well maintained paths. There are quite a few unrestored area as well. You are able to climb to the top of the largest pyramid, but we did not do this. The walk isn't hard and it's super worth it.

This was a full day excursion, we had little time to shop or do anything else once we returned to the shore. But it was an...