Postcard from Belize: Blancaneaux Lodge/Cayo District
Since I wrote my last blog post, by an incredible stroke of luck, I became a professional travel advisor. So now, I get to travel and plan trips all the time and there’s nothing better! Sometimes, you’re just doing your job and you win stuff, and that’s how I came to be at one of the Coppola Family Hideaways…Blancaneaux Lodge, in the Belizean highlands. I won 4 nights accommodations: 2 here and 2 at Turtle Inn, down in Placencia.
Delta has an easy 3-hour daily nonstop from Atlanta, which makes Belize an easy getaway spot from all over the Southeast US. From Belize City, you can hop on a small commuter plane and in 15 minutes you can be on Ambergris Caye or in 35 minutes you’re in Placencia, on Belize’s southern coast.
Our driver picked us up outside the terminal for our 3-hour drive to Blancaneaux, which is carved out of the jungle in the Cayo District of Western Belize. Located alongside a grassy airstrip, down 20 miles of dirt (soon-to-be-paved) road, Blancaneaux is made up of 20 thatch-roofed villas set beside lazy Privassion Creek. Francis Ford Coppola bought the property in 1981, about a. year after the release of “Apocalypse Now”. He and his family still come down every year and you can understand why. It’s lush, and quiet, and completely relaxing. We stayed in an open villa/palapa with outdoor living space, just above the creek. The only sounds are the water over the energy-producing dam and the birds and insects that live here.
Yesterday, my travel partner, Janie, and I rode with our guide, Jose, to see the Mayan ruins at Caracol. Jose is the kind of guide you love to have…personable, knowledgeable, just plain “able”. He’s one of 13 kids and has lived in a village near Blancaneaux for his entire life. He knows the history and culture of the area, plus the names of the plants and animals that live in the dense jungle ecosystem. We left right after breakfast and drove for about 90 minutes through the jungle, over single lane bridges with necks craned for crocs, which we never saw. We also never saw a Jaguar, which happens infrequently and is considered good luck.
We arrived at Caracol, the largest of the Mayan ruin sites in Belize, and were the only ones there, except for the local guard. Jose told us about the history of Uxwitza (Three-Water Hill). Caracol, meaning snail in Spanish, is the name given by the first archaeologists that found the site in 1938. Caracol was built between 600 BC and reached its peak in 650 AD, when around 150,000 Mayans called the area home. Archaeologists estimate that there may still be 3600 buildings underneath the jungle growth, yet to be uncovered.
We climbed the 99 steps to the top of Caana (Sky Temple), the largest and highest of the site’s temples, where only the royals and shamen were allowed. Due to the incredible acoustics, they could stand atop the stone temple and be heard by the people down below, above the bellow of the howler monkeys in the treetops surrounding the site.
After a picnic lunch prepared by the hotel, luxurious cooling towels (did I mention it was really hot!), and an ice-cold Coca-Cola, we headed back toward Blancaneaux. Along the way, we stopped at Rio Frio Cave, a huge opening in a limestone hillside, deep in the forest. Long ago, this part of Belize was underwater in a shallow tropical sea. The layers of limestone yield all kinds of evidence of the area’s history, both ancient and recent. The cave was carved by the Rio Frio (which isn’t cold at all, btw), flowing through the soft limestone rock. During the rainy season, our guide, Jose, told us the water through the cave can be over 15 ft deep, which must be something to see!
Our final stop of the day was at the Rio On pools, where the locals come to swim in the natural pools formed by the rocks and waterfalls in the On River. School kids, all wearing masks, played in the water while their teachers and parents grilled meat on rudimentary grills. If we’d brought our suits, I would have jumped in myself!