The bus ride to San Ignacio near the Guatemalan border from
Belize City on the coast took about three hours . The distance isn’t great, but
it was kind of a local chicken bus that stopped every couple miles to drop
people off or let them on rather than an express bus. It also stopped for a few
minutes at a station in Belmopan, the capital city of Belize, but a town that
looked like any other small Central American town. The landscape gradually
changed from pancake-flat plains with brackish mangrove estuaries to hilly pine
tree country and farmland, especially orange groves.

San Ignacio is a small city in western Belize about 15 miles
from the Guatemalan border that’s the tourism base for natural and
archaeological sites in the west-central part of the country. These sites include
several ruined Mayan cities, river rafting and tubing through caverns, the Actun
Tunichil Muknal (ATM) Mayan cave site, and activities like zip-lining. San
Ignacio is really quite pleasant with some nice accommodation and restaurants
and tourism-oriented businesses in its center but all on a very small scale.
After lunch and settling in to our little huts at the Midas Resort, we received
a tour-company orientation for optional activities for our full free day from
San Ignacio. Okay, I think I decided on what I’m doing!

In the late afternoon we walked uphill to the nearby Mayan
site of Cahal Pech, considered to be a relatively minor Mayan city but one that
had some importance between about 900 B.C. and 800 A.D. I found it to be quite
impressive, nonetheless, with 34 buildings spread around seven plazas.