Venture to Lamanai and Chan Chich, Belize

January 3 - 11, 2004

If you want to spend a week in the tropics in January, there are not too many places as good as Belize. This year's Ventures tour to Belize was no exception, where wonderful food, comfortable rooms in exotic locals and incredible wildlife is the norm.

As in years past, we divided our tour by spending the first part in the Orange Walk province at Lamanai Outpost Lodge. Lamanai is built on the edge of a large fresh water lagoon, next to an ancient forested Maya site and across the water from classic Yucatan savanna habitat. These three habitats contribute to a vast diversity of bird species and this year's group had success with specialties like Jabiru and Yucatan Nightjar along the lake, Black Catbird, Yellow-lored Parrot, Rose-throated Chat and Yucatan Bobwhite in the pine savanna, and Tody Motmot, White-whiskered Puffbird, Northern Royal Flycatcher and wonderful ant swarms in the forest around the ruins. These, plus all the classic Central American species, were easy to see, thanks mostly in part to the extensive protected forest surrounding the lodge.

The second part of our stay was at Chan Chich Lodge. Talk about protected forest! Wow, there is over 250,000 acres of it. Needless to say, protected forest means protected wildlife and boy did we see plenty. Never in all my travels have I seen such a high density of "game" animals. Hundreds of White-tailed Deer, Ocellated Turkey, Crested Guan and Great Curassow were easy to find. They say that with all these game animals, the chance of a cat for any given group is 50/50. Well we were on the positive side of the 50/50 this time and we had not one, but two views of Puma! A male strolled across the road in front of our van during broad daylight. A few moments later, a female walked along the brushy edge to our left, just meters from our van's windows! Raptors were great at the escarpment, with White Hawk and King Vultures taking our breath away. Also, views of Black-and-white Hawk Eagle, Black Hawk-eagle, Double-toothed Kite, Short-tailed Hawk, Bat Falcon, Kestrel and others made for a great morning of hawk watching. The group had close up views of a number of other shy forest species around the lodge, including Barred-forest Falcon, Mexican Antthrush, Stub-tailed Spadebill and many others. A fruiting tree mere inches from our breakfast table had resident male Red-capped and White-collared Manakins. What a stunning pair to provide such corporative views. And as at Lamani, Chan Chich was full of the classic stunners...Collared Aracari, Keel-billed Toucan, Purple-crowned Fairy, Black-throated Shrike-Tanager, Green Shrike-Vireo, Masked Tityra and many, many more. Combine the quality lodging, wonderful food, warm comfortable climate and abundant wildlife, Belize is hard to beat!

Roger McNeill

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