Most people will say it looks fake, when you see the reptilian hump in the distance. As your boat glides closer nosing marshy reeds the boat captain will cut the engines and water will ripple gently over the rigid torso which stays completely still. To the ignorant it just looks like a piece of driftwood, and many will simply look away
And with that, the baby crocodile pushes off with a muscular thrust of its tail, leaving a solitary, expanding water ring in its wake. A prescient sign as you're floating down the New River to the Maya site of Lamanai, whose name comes from "submerged crocodile".
Like many of Belize's splendid Maya ruins, Lamanai lies deep in the jungle, but it also overlooks the New River Lagoon, so most visitors journey here on a riverboat from Orange Walk, just as we are imagining and getting here really is half the fun. Though the river waters are eerily placid, the steamy jungle along its banks are not, with howler monkeys scampering overhead, emitting guttural howls, while a great blue heron extends its long neck, and flaps regally into the sky, As you float near a strange black cluster quivering on a tree branch, the swarm disbands, and hundreds of bats fly off every which way.
An old barge, heavy in the water with its load of molasses, slowly drifts past. On the deck sit three sun-browned beefy locals in sunglasses who raise their hands in unison. Around a bend, in the distance, lies the Mennonite settlement of Shipyard - the men in wide-brimmed hats and women in ankle-length dresses an arresting image, particularly against the tropical backdrop of Belize.
Your boat pulls up to the wooden dock at the Lamanai entrance, and it begins to rain, with big fat, heavy drops as you clomp single-file, stumbling over muddy roots. You will be sweating in your windbreakers, mosquitoes are biting and it all seems like a lot of effort, and then the first majestic temple looms into view.
Once the sun comes out, you start on the thigh aching slog up the thirty-five-metre "High Temple", which was the largest structure in the Maya world when it was first constructed in 100 BC. You pull on a slippery rope, heaving up one massive step, then another. At the top, panting, you gaze out at the jungle canopy, a magnificent 360-degree panorama of dewy, tangled green stretching into the horizon. From up here, anything seems possible. Until you look at the climb down.
