Sunday, September 12, 2010

Visit to San Miguel, Toledo District - Part 2 - Nim Li Punit site


Germo and his brother Bernadino had planned a full day for Julio and I so that we could get a feel for what tourists would be able to see if we had anyone interested in traveling down to southern Belize. Our first adventure for the day was a tour of the archeological site known as Nim Li Punit.


Nim Li Punit is just off the Southern Highway up a fairly steep, rocky hill; I am not sure how a vehicle would do climbing the hill if it was raining and didn’t have 4WD. At the top though, the view is gorgeous, looking out to the south and east over the flat low lying areas going out to the sea.





Marge and I have been to a number of Maya sites and there is always something that sticks in your head to differentiate each site from all the others, and for Nim Li Punit it was the number of stela. Inside the museum there was a very tall, well preserved stela laying down to view,




along with a number that were standing up.










There were also various pots and tools on display that were found at the site.

As we were walking around the site we caught glimpses of agoutis running all about eating fruits that had dropped from the trees.



Germo and Bernadino’s little brother was along and he had a wonderful time trying to catch up with one.







One of the other notable items from Nim Li Punit was the open tomb that was displayed at the site. The tomb was open from the top and from looking down from the top you could see the cap stones and how far down the room extended; for one or two bodies, it was a lot of room.









After touring the site we climbed back in the car and drove back to San Miguel for lunch. Germo helped with making a lunch of breadfruit soup from the breadfruit tree we had passed the day before; it was delicious, and I usually don’t eat just soup for a meal. We rested up for about an hour and then we were off for our afternoon tour.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Marge and Tom,

Do you have an approximation of a recipe for breadfruit soup? We planted a breadfruit tree about 5 years ago and it looks like it will start bearing this next year. While we have been told about the soup, no one has described how it is prepared or the ingredients (other than very ripe breadfruit).

Thanks,

Dennis