La Ruta Maya Belize River Challenge

This weekend a bunch of students and staff celebrated Baron Bliss Day by taking part in La Ruta Maya! This is no ordinary race, certainly not for the faint of heart. It is a rigorous 4 day, 170-mile canoe race starting on the Macal River in San Ignacio and ending in Belize City on the Belize River. Although we only had a chance to participate in 3 days of the race, the three teams, Team Climate Change, Team OUA (Over-competitive Under-prepared Americans), and Team Granola Corps. paddled an impressive 145 miles. That’s the distance from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., Seattle to Portland, or Los Angeles to San Diego - all in three days! I think everyone agrees it was some of the most enjoyable pain they have ever experienced. Along the way we set up camp at designated spots along the river, enjoyed our rice and beans and loads of bananas, and headed to bed early. Don’t know how much we slept, folks were up at 3:30 blaring music getting ready for the race. But despite the endless bends in the river, the hours and hours and hours of rowing, the rains storms on the 2nd and 3rd day, the crazy amounts of pain in the arms, back, and neck, and the sun burn, I think everyone would say it was one of the coolest things they’ve done yet. Certainly not something to do again, but a really great time. The picture above is at the start of the race, before we knew what we were getting ourselves into. Below we see Team Granola Corps (second boat in) paddling hard off the start.