Today we woke up early (6am!) for the birding and nature morning drive. Off on the safari jeep again! Hoping we catch a puma in better light this time.
Well, regardless of the animal sightings, it was a beautiful morning, clear, sunny, not that hot -- really picturesque. And the air smelled so fresh! Not just like green stuff, but also slightly sweet, maybe from flowers, but it was pretty intoxicating.
Spoiler alert: no pumas. But we caught a pair of foxes running down the road again.
And I figured the weather was so beautiful I would take the opportunity to snap some photos of the "common" animals -- like the deer:
And the pigeons (funny story, they're kind of territorial, so at one point, one was running alongside the jeep as if it wanted to fight us! 😆)
The Gallon Jug post office. So a tiny bit about the town and the Chan Chich lodge on the grounds: it was all developed and owned by the Bowen family, the billionaires behind Belikin beer. It is an archeological site as well, with lots of universities flying out regularly to examine the Mayan ruins on the property. We heard there are about 50-60 people who live/work here permanently, with their roughly 20-25 children. Here's the post office:
They raise almost all of the food for the village on the 33000-acre farm -- which, on the protein side, includes grass fed beef, bird-friendly coffee, and of course free range chickens.
Driving around, we also caught some glimpses of the very impressive house where the "Boss" (Mr. Bowen, current CEO of Bowen & Bowen) stays -- it was high up on a hilltop overlooking the entire estate -- not too shabby indeed for a weekend vacation home!
Back at the lodge, I decided we couldn't do this much eating with only sitting in the safaris as our only physical activity, so we went for some laps in the pool (really cool, will definitely be back tomorrow so will get the photos then! Our swim visit today was cut short by a thunderstorm) and then for a short hike around the property.
The hiking trails included a brief peek into a Mayan burial chamber:
And lots and lots of HUGE jungle vegetation.
Which of course then must include lots of encounters with creepy-crawlies:
We also made sure to enjoy the views from our new villa -- yes, this photo might have been taken from the bed:
We wanted to do a dusk drive today but the lodge was little wary of the weather (dark skies all around), so we decided to call it a day and spend those hours looking at the trail cam sightings with a drink at the bar instead. The bartenders/servers Johnathan and Sean were amazingly entertaining -- and informative! They gave us some restaurant recommendations for the San Pedro half of our trip coming up.
Dinner tonight was steak, which we gobbled down before we remembered to take any photos (a little tough, but more due to the cut of meat than the cooking -- the redness was perfectly done) but here's the dinner napkin -- I know we've been on a number of cruise ship napkin folding classes, but this one was impressive!
With that, another day over. Tomorrow is our last day at Chan Chich -- we hope to do a morning drive up a small mountain to see some birds of prey, do some more laps at the pool, and then hopefully catch a sunset. Crossed fingers that the weather cooperates!
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