Word: reefs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Belize has rain forest, jaguars, waterfalls, toucans and, after Australia's, the largest coral barrier reef in the world. It was also one of the great centers of Mayan civilization. Ruins -- still largely unrestored, insufficiently studied and besieged by tomb robbers -- dot the lowland forests: the pyramids of Xunantunich and Altun Ha and the vast complex of Caracol, which in the 6th to 7th centuries was the rival of Tikal, across the Guatemalan border...
...Turneffe Islands, that are geared up for sporting tourism, mainly scuba diving, snorkeling and line fishing; or a small plane whisks you north to San Pedro on Ambergris Cay, a thin digit of land that protrudes south from the Mexican border. To the east is the barrier reef, which runs parallel to the coast, less than a mile offshore. To the west are mangroves and shallow flats, and then the low featureless Mosquito Coast. San Pedro, in between, is a pleasant town of ramshackle wooden buildings on stilts or cinder blocks, with a few new condos...
...probably impossible to go fishing in Belize and not catch something. If you don't care what, hire a skiff and go trolling off the reef with a heavy spinning rod and deep-running lure. That will produce anything from an overambitious triggerfish (beautiful colors but sluggish: let it go) to a large black snapper or a larger wahoo. Or, if you are unlucky, an enormous barracuda. The latter will either break your leader in the water or do its best to bite your foot off if you get it in the boat...
...time on civilian versions of a military navigator's case. The box could have fit exactly under the table used by Earhart's navigator, Fred Noonan. Richard Gillespie, executive director of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, which found the case, suggested that Earhart had landed on a reef. With temperatures up to 120 degrees F and no fresh water available, survival was virtually impossible...
...transition zone of thorn scrub from Madagascar and Mexico leads onto a Baja California desert biome. The stream, meanwhile, meanders to the saltwater marsh (transported in sections from the Florida Everglades) that gives onto the 10.6-meter-deep (35-ft.) ocean with its own coral reef and waves that can rise as high as 1.2 meters (4 ft.). Mangroves in the marsh are host to frogs, turtles and crabs, and the ocean includes 1,000 species of plants and animals...