Today started with the awe inspiring sunrise and cooking breakfast. Byron picked us up at 9 and we headed for the village of Copper Bank. We weren’t too far from Corozal when we came to a river with no bridge. The answer to this is the hand cranked ferry. The ferry is a small barge that has planks that can fit 3 or 4 cars in a long row. A heavy cable is run from one bank to the other and strung through pulleys along one side of the barge. There is a hand operated crank that pulls the barge along the cable to the other side of the river. Christian and Mike thought it would be great fun to turn the crank so they asked if they could and the workers happily agreed. I got the feeling they don’t get a lot of help with the crank. Once across the river we continued on to a small village named Copper Bank. We stopped at a tiny supermarket to get a come and continued on to Cerros Mayan Ruins. Cerros is a 45 acre complex of Mayan Ruins that were discovered in the 70’s and much of it has yet to be excavated. One huge temple has been excavated and restored as has a ball court. Numerous other mounds can be seen with stone poking through the edges waiting to be uncovered. There are giant masks carved into the outer walls. The whole temple is right on Corozal Bay and its a beautiful setting. The major downfall is that the entire area seems to also be used as a mosquito breeding ground. From the moment we walked up we were swarmed by mosquitoes like I’ve never seen. At any one time there would be 20 or 30 mosquitoes on the back of your shirt and many more swooping in to take a bite of an arm or leg. We were all waking while flailing our arms and legs around trying to discourage the mosquitoes from landing. Unfortunately we had not brought any bug repellent with us. Another guide with a Canadian couple we met had a can of OFF! We would’ve paid her to use it, but she offered it to is freely. What a lifesaver! After we were sprayed down, the mosquitoes continued to swarm us and were buzzing their high pitched squeal in our ears but they didn’t seem to be able to bite us. Thank goodness! We were still doing a fair amount of flailing but only because of the buzzing and the nuisance of their presence and not because of the pain of being bitten. We followed a long trail to ruins and emerged in a large complex of humongous mounds. Most were yet to be excavated, the one that had been completely excavated and restored was awesome. THe large  masks that were carved on each side of the temple had amazing detail, we climbed to the top up the steep concrete steps where we had a great view of the bay. Corozal town was directly across from us. We explored the ruins grounds a little more but the relentless clouds of mosquitoes were hard to ignore. We perused the small visitors center to see pictures of other ruins and learn a little about the Mayan. It was all fascinating, but the mosquitoes finally ran us off. After leaving Cerros we made our way to a local resort to eat lunch. Orchid Bay is an isolated resort/development that has a small restaurant overlooking the bay. It’s a beautiful place. After lunch we explored the grounds a little, even taking advantage of the pier and 2 level palapa. We left and made our way back to the first of the 2 hand crank ferries. Christian wanted to try some of the endless acres of sugar cane we were seeing, so Byron pulled over and stood guard while Christian cut some cane. After we got through the first hand crank ferry we were driving through more sugar cane fields. In the distance we saw a small animal and we quickly assumed it was an anteater (we had been wanting to see one ever since some other tourists had told us about one they had seen). But as we got closer we discovered it was actually a fox. Which was almost as good really. We made it through the next hand cranked ferry after waiting in line for a while. Once home we did our usual afternoon activity of sitting down by the water. Dinner was at a small restaurant just down the road, which we had only discovered this morning. We had a long conversation with the owner from Florida. There are so many interesting people to meet and talk to everywhere we’ve been, that’s been a bonus we never expected. Tomorrow we leave for the islands. Corozal has turned out to be a nice little town, different from the the other places we’ve been but with its own charm. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds for us.