Wednesday was supposed to be a good day. We had an extra hour and a half to sleep in and the weather was turning out well. Breakfast was even pretty delicious and I didn't have a cold shower. We were going to have a talk about ethnobotany, a tour of a botanical gardens, followed by a hike to Xunantunich, a Maya ruin. That isn't to say that the day turned to rotten tomatoes -- in fact, it turned into one of the funniest days I've had (ironically enough). Then again, I am pretty weird.
We got to the botanical gardens with a Californian nursing group, as they were also part of ProWorld. The talk was pretty interesting, and it was held by one the host family's moms. We learned about a lot of different plants and what they can do. Then we had a few hours in before lunch, so we decided to go to Xunantunich to explore.The adventure started before we even got to Xunantunich -- we had to cross a water ferry and hike up one of the steepest hills in the history of the world; of course two people in our group wanted extra exercise, so they RAN up said hill, while the rest of us practically crawled up the hill. Finally, after 20 mins, we got there.
In this first picture, we see Dr. Hickey's favorite hobby -- bird watching. It was good to get a picture of him in his natural habitat.
The ruins were just as magnificent and breathtaking as Tikal, maybe even more so, because you could actually see everything below and ahead of you, since there was little greenery.
After our mini-photo session atop the 130-foot building, we went back to the garden and had a delicious lunch, with some of the most delicious watermelon juice I have ever had in my life -- well no, this was some of the best juice I have ever had.
We the made our way to a botanical garden, with our most favorite people in the world -- the Californians While waiting for our tour to begin, we spotted a hungry butterfly on a tree.
We then went on a tour and tasted some cinnamon and saw some pretty cool flowers.
On the way back, we found a termite 'hive' or what not, and we got a chance to try termites. There were four volunteers (counting me), who decided to have a snack. They were surprisingly very tasty -- wood and mint all in one.
Now I'm going to go on a small aside so that I can explain to you the weather situation. Ever since we got to Belize, it has been raining like someone turned on a shower faucet, and because of this, the roads were considerably muddy. Our bus this year was pretty good this year, but apparently not good, because we got stuck on a small hill.
After a few failed attempts at trying to get the bus up, a few people went to the back in order to provide some more traction for the wheels. Again, no go. Now even more people came towards the back, and then we started jumping. Jumping like we were jack rabbits. Jumping like we were in a mosh pit. Jumping as if there was bubble wrap under our feet. After a bit of jumping, there was no success so we all (aside from a few ninjas) got off the bus and someone called a tractor to pull us out.
HUZAH! Our bus got through and the tractor went back to tractoring at its home base. We all get on the bus and then, out of nowhere, we feel that we are not moving straight. Guess what -- we are stuck again. At this point, because we are professionals, half get out of the bus, while half stay on the bus. The half that is out side the bus start pushing, while the people in the bus jump. Slowly but surely our bus started moving...but not in the direction that we wanted it to -- it was moving closer and closer to the cliff. At this point, more people got off the bus, while the remaining 6 of us stayed on the bus and jumped for our lives. After five more mins, we all got out of the bus, because it was a bit to dangerous and a bit too anxious to jump on a bus that keeps moving off to the side.
Here's a small video of one of our attempts to push the bus.
Finally, after 15 more mins, we managed to get the little bus out!!!! We were so happy and ecstatic I can't even begin to tell you.
As we drove farther away from the botanical garden, we saw a magical rainbow, with our bus right in the middle. We did a mandatory jumping picture, which is sitting in someone's memory card as we speak and then got back to Proworld.
Needless to day, we all crashed (in our beds) around 7pm.
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