BELIZE CITY, Belize — What to do in this friendly country under the arm of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and bordered on one side by Guatemala and the other by the Caribbean Sea, yet 400 miles from the Gulf of Mexico…
If you're a deep-sea diver, or even a snorkeler, there's no shortage of activity. If you like to wander around a butterfly farm, you can do that. Visit some Maya ruins…take your pick. Shop 'til you drop…hey, Belize is a cruise port, albeit one that's a 25-minute tender ride from the Crown Princess, parked with three other cruise ships six miles away in the bay that separates Belize from Honduras.
Aha…a cruise up the Old Belize River!
Well, it seemed like a good idea, especially since on the Princess website it's rated the most popular shore excursion in Belize, and especially since it included 
your basic Central American lunch (beans, rice, chicken). Punctuating that was a short visit to some old ruins that were new, at least to us. And to be fair, it had its redeeming moments, spread over nine hours.
In case you're ever here on a Western Caribbean itinerary, there are some things you should know about a river cruise on the Old Belize:
1. At all costs, avoid sitting at the back of the boat. This is a boat built for 35 or 40, powered by two outboards that pump fumes into your air space for the better part of two and a half hours. There is no escape, short of joining the manatees in the water, because this is a "tour boat" in which you sit in one place and watch.
2. Be aware that wildlife can be fleeting. The boat races out to sea where dolphins feed and stops for a photo-op, then races towards the shore where the manatees hang out for another one. The amazing thing is how anxious tourists can be to snap a shot of a manatee's nose or a dolphin's fin, because that's usually about all you see.
3. Monkeys are everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but at a couple of spots along the river bank and just outside the restaurant with the beans and rice and chicken. In the final 
analysis, they gave tourists a choice. You can go to a place on the shores of the Caribbean and see them au natural, in their own environment (they like hanging around on coconut trees)…or you can find them close to home in captivity. Monkey sea, monkey zoo.
4. There are some hot spots along the 27-mile journey up a river that goes all the way to Guatemala. There are iguanas of varying sizes, especially in the area tour guides call "Iguanaville" and there are mangroves everywhere. This is particularly enchanting if you are into mangrove trees, of which there are 57 species. On some of them are bat-like bugs that eat 300 mosquitoes a minute (who counts them?) and more than one passenger from the Crown Princess was trying to figure out a way to get a couple of them through customs.
As for the Maya ruins, once a small city called Altun Ha (water on the rocks), it's like many others. They're interesting, especially if you're an expert on the people or 
ancient history, with some still accessible if you're okay with walking 67 steps up and 69 down for a panoramic view of a landscape organized in a time when we assume nothing was organized.
Travel is a big part of this trip. Also waiting.
Of the nine hours, three were in the boat and three in a bus, two having lunch or seeing ruins and one just waiting. The bus trips — there were two — give you a sampling of what life is like in Belize, from the rural areas with homes on stilts because this can be hurricane country to the winding streets of Belize City, the heart of the tourist industry that is 50 per cent of the country's economy.
And the students here all wear uniforms because, as the guide explains:
"That way, we know if they are causing trouble or out of school which school they're from."
It seems, too, that Belize is a good place to take a ship-sponsored shore excursion. The last tender back to the Crown Princess left at 4:30. The one we took left half an hour later. Had it not been a ship shore excursion, we'd have been…up the river.
Norwegian Sun
7 nights
May 27, 2013
Anchorage, Hubbard Glacier, Icy Strait Point, Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, Vancouver
Inside: $409
Cost per day: $58
www.ncl.com