Belize Mayan Ruins

My wife is taking her 2 teenage GDs to Belize (on Carnival) and thinking about the ruins. We've both been to Belize + realize there is little else around the port. Which of the Carnival excursions is best for viewing the ruins? Or, is there a RELIABLE tour operator in Belize? A little unsure about booking outside Carnival in this port.

You will find a lot of posts on this board covering which of the 3 ruins to visit. It will depend upon what the objective of the visit is and how much time you wife and GDs want to spend at the ruins.

The closer ruins, Altun Ha, are mostly excavated and easy to get around. There are a number of guides/vendors who have tours to here. It's only about 50 minutes from port and you can walk the entire site and climb some temples/palaces etc. in under 90 minutes. The Carnival tour via the River Wallace adds a bit more interest than just a bus/van ride.

The next closest ruins, Xunantunich, are a couple of hours away and while there are private vendors, most people like to use ship excursions with A/C buses and lunch provided. The ruins are excavated and there's a very high temple to climb. This can be an all day event if there are delays reaching the ruins or on return.

The furthest set of ruins people go to when tendering at Belize City are at Lamanai. To reach these usually entails boat a boat ride and a van/jeep ride to the site. The ruins are still under excavation and many people think they are getting a better sense of ruins than at fully excavated sites. But this is definitely an all day affair and while the vendors offering tours to Lamanai have good records and reps on getting cruisers back to port before the last tender, this is a tour where using a ship based excursion would probably be a wiser choice.

You wife and GDs may also wish to look into cave-tubing versus the ruins while in Belize.

You can look at altun ha on the Belize app on fire stick and Roku. Altun ha is about an hour from Belize City just negotiate with a cab driver

A few years ago, in Belize we did the "Altun Ha Mayan Site & River Wallace" tour through Carnival. Belize is the one port we'd probably only go with a tour through the cruise line. We really enjoyed our experience at the ruins and also really enjoyed the river part of the tour (beautiful scenery in addition to getting to see some wildlife). I would not hesitate to recommend this tour to others. When we did the tour, we met in the ship's lounge, tendered into Belize City and met our guides. They divided the tour group in half, with some taking the bus directly to the ruins to spend time, then the bus took them to the stop for lunch, which was at a small resort along the river, then returned to Belize City on the river part of tour. Our group did the river tour, stopped for lunch (same resort along the river), then took the bus to the ruins, then back to Belize City. If the tour would run late, for any reason, then Carnival would hold the ship since the tour is through the cruise line.

I did a review of that cruise here on Cruise Critic and included a lot of pictures. In case you're interested in seeing pictures, I'm attaching a link to that review to hopefully open up where our "Altun Ha Mayan Site & River Wallace" tour start. In case the link doesn't open up to that page, it's on Page 13, Post 251.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2039919&page=13

As crewsweeper mentioned, there are a few other Mayan sites in Belize that Carnival offers tours to, but I can't comment on those nor do I have any pictures for comparison of the different sites. I do recall seeing some pictures posted of some of the other sites in some of the other "Belize Mayan Ruin" threads here on CC, so if you find them you can compare to help with your decision.

if you want to see pictures just use youtube?

REALLY appreciate all the info! She went ahead + booked the Altun Ha Wallace River excursion thru the ship based on your reviews/pics.