The Belize Zoo and Mount Pine Ridge

Welcome to the Belize Zoo!
The zoo was started by an American woman who had helped with the filming of some documentary on local wildlife. Throughout the filming the animals had become tame and would not be able to survive in the wild. So, the zoo was started. The zoo is the last resort for animals. They are often animals that have been used, taken in as pets or hurt. All the animals are local and the zoo emphasizes the protection of the animals and their natural habitat.

We arrived at the zoo very early (we were the first visitors of the day). The animals all seemed to be very quiet. However, as the day went on the zoo got pretty noisey. While we were visiting with the jaguar (see picture) we started hearing some crazy sounds. Was it the tapirs? (National animal) It sounded like dinosaurs - really. We felt like we were in Jurassic Park! We decided to follow the sound and it turned out to be the howler monkeys! They're so loud!! We filmed it, so we have a sound clip to bring home with us. Anyways, here are a few pictures from our excursion.

They had four macaw parrots . They were just amazing. Their colours are incredible bright - especially when they fly!

And the toucan: the national bird. This toucan was fantastic. Perfectly kept and groomed. The toucan was probably the top pick for everyone who went.Mount Pine Ridge is a day trip with a local tour company. It costs $30 US and it was well worth it. The soil on the mountain has a higher pH, so trees like pines grow there but not the usual palm trees that you see every where else in Belize. We made four stops on the trip, after a 2 hour long drive in through the super bumpy, muddy road.
The first stop is at Rio Frio Cave. It is a huge cave nestled in the forest. This is a picture of what it looks like from just inside the mouth of the cave.

Here's Lee on his way into the cave. There was a stair case in, some climbing on various rocks and you can get down to this natural sandbar on the floor of the cave. A small stream/river flows through.
Here's Nancy also near the entrance to the cave. You can see the water leaving the cave behind her.
The next stop was at an area that had several levels of water. There were some pools, some areas with semi-strong currents and then other areas where you had to be careful. The tour provided us with lunch (fresh pineapple, banana, watermelon, some plantain chips, sandwhich, water..) so Lee and I climbed to a rock right by the small falls to eat. Then Lee ventured into the falls - I didn't have the guts, plus I had the camera :-) So here he is!

The third stop is at Big Rock. It has a high waterfall, then a great pool area to swim in. In this picture you can see some rocks in the bottom left corner. We swam to them and climbed them so that we were in the pool directly under the water fall. Lee swam across that pool (Nancy stayed behind again) and climbed up on the rocks on the other side (where you can see some water hitting the rocks on the mid-right. He did a quick jump and the current just about slammed him back into the rocks that Nancy was sitting on.
It turned out to be a great trip. Lots of swimming, waterfalls and so on. Relaxing. We ended at a resort that overlooked 5 Sisters Falls, but you had to pay extra to go down there so we all stayed back on the veranda and relaxed. Here's a shot of the group. This is all the current volunteers (although, someone is arriving tomorrow) and the guide.Lee, Nancy, Ellie, Jackie, Bev (all from the Ottawa area, some on the QC side, but all have lived in and around the school), Sarah from Bristol England and Stephanie from Miami, Florida.

We hope everything is well back home,