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If you want to see some Mayan ruins, this is a great option!

Cruise ship excursions to see Mayan ruins abound, especially in Mexican ports like Cozumel and Costa Maya. I saw the legendary ruins at Chichen Itza about twenty years ago in an excursion on a port stop in Progreso, Mexico.

I hadn’t really thought about looking for Mayan ruins on my port stop in Belize, but I did know that I wanted to book a ship’s excursion. Belize is a tender port, meaning that you don’t dock at a pier; you take a small boat from the cruise ship to the port.

Because a tender port often makes debarking and reboarding the ship a little difficult, I often recommend taking a ship’s excursion in these ports. It guarantees that you won’t miss your cruise ship’s departure, and you often get priority to board the tenders to get to land.

Our day started early with a 7:15 am meet time in the theater. (We later found out it’s good to be the first tour group of the day at Lamanai, which helped ease the pain a bit!) After taking the tender to land, we boarded a bus for a drive of a little over an hour to a place called Ayin-Ha.

At Ayin-Ha, we had an opportunity to use the restroom and purchase snacks and drinks before we boarded a speedboat to Lamanai for another 20-25 minutes. Overall, the transit time was nearly two hours, which is pretty typical for Mayan ruins excursions in Mexico. However, I liked this option a lot better than a solid 2-2.5 hour bus ride each way.

The speedboat dropped us off at the Lamanai site, where we were met by a local guide. He led us through a roughly one-hour tour of the site, where we saw a number of temples in this rather-large ancient Mayan site. (Here’s a little more info on Lamanai for the nerds like me. 🤓)

The walk was fairly strenuous but not impossible (and I am not in good shape at this point in my life, haha). I was glad that I’d worn good walking shoes; the terrain was pretty uneven. But the Mayan temples we saw were remarkable, and our guide Walter did a great job of sharing the history of the site.

After the tour, we returned to Ayin-Ha for a delicious lunch (included in the excursion). You could also purchase drinks and beers as well as items in the gift shop.

After lunch, we boarded the bus for the trip back to the cruise port. We were pretty close to the time for the last tender back to the ship, so we headed back right away.

I would definitely recommend this excursion, which I purchased through Royal. It was a little on the pricey side, but I bought it on a Black Friday sale and it came to $104.99 per person.