Maya Center and Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Preserve

We left Placencia and made our way toward Dangriga, which was a beach town North of us that we needed to catch a ferry for a future destination.

It was difficult to decide how to do this portion of our trip - should we stay in Dangriga, and is there some way to enjoy one of the beautiful parks en route? Where to stay? Lonely planet didn't get us too psyched up about staying in Dangriga, so we opted to stay in a little village en route called 'Maya Center'. We booked a night at the cottage there a couple of months ago, although we weren't sure how we would access the park once we got there. This is one place where having our own car would have come in handy.

We caught the bus out of Placencia on Dec 23, which apparently was a busy travel day as many locals were finishing up Christmas preparations and shopping prior to Christmas with family. Our bus ride was going just fine until we heard a loud shot of a sound out the window. The bus calmly pulled over and the driver, conductor, and many passengers went outside to change our flat tire. It was hot and we all waited patiently. We had a fun interaction with a local family in combined English / Spanish as we tried to teach their children how to play "Spot It" with our girls. The first round was hard but by the third round all the children were pretty into it and playing together!

We asked the bus conductor to help us get off at Maya Center, which just seemed at first like a few basic buildings on the side of the highway. Our cottage was enclosed in a family homestead complete with many chickens, roosters, chicks, and dogs. Our host was very kind and spoke excellent English. We had one spacious room with 3 beds inside a concrete cool box of a building. The place was dusty, with a dampness feeling to it, ants crawling on the walls, and sagging mattresses.

http://mayacenter.com/

We were able to pay our host to drive us the 6 miles (10km) on a dirt road into the Wildlife sanctuary, drop us off for a few hours to explore, and then come back to pick us up and bring us back for supper and sleeping.

http://www.belizeaudubon.org/?page_id=3605

We decided to hike through the jungle on fern trail to a double waterfall, which was outstanding.

Along the hike at the top viewpoint area

The bottom waterfall, where R A and J jumped right in!

Climbing to the second waterfall in a bathing suit

M at the upper waterfall

R and A at the upper waterfall

Can you see Jason above the lower waterfall?

After our hike, we returned to our room at Maya Center. I lay down to rest and adjusted my pillow, only to have a cockroach surprise me! I screamed and jumped around and made the girls panic, only to laugh once I calmed down. 

The meals at Maya Center were some of the most expensive on our whole trip, but it was delicious. There weren't really any other choices in the area. We had some choices from a menu and then the meals were made (traveler tip - if you plan to eat there, try to order early, as several of the menu options can take hours to prepare.) We ate in a dining room for guests in another building from our cottage room, where the host family served us with pride and elegance.

The cockroach bed and saggy mattress

The girls each got their own bed.

The toilet room, sink and shower room.

Delicious traditional meal in the dining room.

We had planned to catch the bus by standing out on the side of the road and sticking our arm out when a bus approached, but our host offered to drive us for a decent rate, and he suggested that the buses coming through might already be quite crowded by this time. It was Dec 24 and we were keen to get going, so we left early in the morning and headed to Dangriga with our host, in his car.