A City of Submerged Crocodiles

Lamanai—Lama'an'ain in the Maya tongue, "submerged crocodile"—was occupied for well over three thousand years, from roughly 1500 BC through to the 1600s AD, making it one of the longest continuously inhabited Maya cities ever documented. The reptile's prominence runs through the site: the great carved masks that decorate the temples wear crocodile headdresses, tying the city's name to its most revered symbol.↗↗↗

Excavated from 1974 onward by David Pendergast for the Royal Ontario Museum, the site's hundreds of mapped structures straggle along the lagoon shore rather than clustering in a single plaza, and Lamanai is one of the rare Maya cities whose ancient name is recorded in a historical document—a church list of 1582. The Spanish briefly tried to plant a mission here; its 16th-century church platform still stands, built over the remains of a Maya temple, a stone reminder of the collision of two worlds.↗↗

Three Temples Worth the Journey

Visitors rarely see the Jaguar Temple in isolation; Lamanai's draw is its trio of monumental complexes. The High Temple (Structure N10-43) is the tallest at some 33 metres and one of the largest securely dated Pre-Classic structures in the Maya area—climbable, with a summit view of unbroken jungle canopy stretching to the horizon. The Mask Temple guards two enormous four-metre carved limestone faces, among the biggest and best-preserved such carvings in Central America, their Olmec-style upturned lips and broad noses now sheltered beneath protective replicas. Set all three against the carved jaguar friezes of N10-9 and you read, in stone, three millennia of Maya rule.↗↗↗

Arriving by Water, Surrounded by Wildlife

There are no roads to Lamanai's ceremonial centre, so the standard—and most memorable—approach is a scenic river-boat journey of around ninety minutes up the New River Lagoon from the Tower Hill dock near Orange Walk Town, the way the Maya themselves once travelled. The crossing is a wildlife safari in its own right: basking American and Morelet's crocodiles, manatees, green iguanas, and herons and cormorants line the banks.↗↗

At the ruins themselves, black howler and spider monkeys crash through the canopy directly above the temple stairways, and the surrounding forest supports more than 400 bird species, so toucans, kingfishers and parrots are common sightings. The result is a rare combination in the Maya world: a deeply historical archaeological site that is also a vivid piece of living jungle.↗