A few months ago I found out that I had two free weeks
between one phase of my job and another.
Technically I was still expected to show up, but I would have nothing to
do.
So I said fuck it, used all my vacation time, and bought a
ticket to Belize.
Why Belize? A few
cool sights, a few nice beaches, some cool Mayan ruins, and a cheap-ish plane
ticket. Obviously.
All planes to Belize go
through Houston, except that now a few go through Denver. It was a red eye flight to Houston which
sucked, and meant that I would get to Belize both jet lagged and ridiculously
tired. An ideal situation under which to
begin a journey, really.
As the plane descended into the Belize airport, lowering
itself incrementally through the sugarless cotton candy clouds, I noticed on
the landscape a river so long dried that a road had been built through it,
running right over its bed, permanently disturbing its slumber. The plane descended quickly, as though diving
into the river that bordered the airport, missing the water at the final
moment, its belly almost tickled by the palm trees at the water’s edge,
civilization in the form of a runway emerging suddenly, thankfully, from the
jungle.
I was immediately assaulted by the oppressive weight of the
air. The airport in Belize City was
small and dingy, with few windows at customs and a confusing line for declaring
goods. There was one main line and then
another guy inspecting people. He had no
one and the line was long so I went over to him and he started yelling at me
“What are you doing? Why are you here?”
pointing at something written on my paper, giving no pause or time for an
answer. He sent me over to have my bags
inspected. The girl there was nice and
said “I don’t even know why he sent you here.
You can go,” without digging through my stuff.
After I changed into more weather appropriate clothing
(shorts and sandals) I went outside, hoping to find a cheap way to get to the
bus station. The only way to get
there was a $25 taxi, which I didn’t want to pay for. So I went up to drivers waiting for people,
people with vans and mini buses, and asked if they had extra space and were
going that way. The second guy I asked
offered to take me for free, and wouldn’t take any money, which was
amazing. He and his female business
partner just kept saying they wanted to help me. So I basically hitchhiked for free to the bus
station where I now know I waited too long to catch my bus going west to the
jungles near San Ignacio. I missed a few
buses going that way because I didn’t ask and thought that a bus would come
saying “San Ignacio” but instead they said “Benque”. The city buses were colorfully painted old
school buses, which was kind of cool. I
somehow didn’t take two buses that would’ve gotten me to San Ignacio fairly
quickly and instead waited two hours for the slowest bus. Clever girl.
And yet once I finally got onto the bus, I found the journey
had still only just begun. I had managed
to miss the express and so the bus stopped at every station, and also at
various points along the side of the only road.
The woman I was sitting next to asked me to hold a plastic bag filled
with food while she shuffled around to get her bus fare (a 3 hour trip cost
only $4 US) and then either forgot about it or took advantage of my being too
shy to say anything and I ended up holding her food for the first hour.
But not everyone was rude.
Another woman helped me out the whole ride long by pointing out various
seats I could switch to so I could stay out of the sun. “You’re the only one on this bus gonna burn
honey” was her reasoning, which was quite nice of her to consider. All the Belizeans I met were extremely
kind. The bus driver and attendant even
spent 10 minutes helping an old woman off the bus and to her door. Quite kind.
As we drove we passed several controlled burns, land left
behind charred with only the strongest trees still standing tall. The flames approached the road but kept their
distance, a few feet of grass interrupted by a ditch all that separated us from
the fingers of flame greedily reaching toward the air, as if, with enough
oxygen, they could set the whole blue thing alight. Slash and burn agriculture is still big in
some areas of the world, if more than a bit shortsighted.
We also passed some pre-teen boys riding horses. Some rode tandem, some trotted, and some were
shirtless. But every one of them was
united by a seemingly boundless self-assurance, as if the place in the world
where they best belonged was on their horses.
The ride, though interesting, was punishingly long,
seemingly without end, until finally we arrived in San Ignacio, one of the last
towns before the border with Belize. It
was a new kind of hot. I, who have lived
in Bangkok for a year and spent many nights with nothing but a fan, who came
from Portland where the weather was in the mid-90s a mere month before, was
dying.
I stayed that first night at a hotel called Casa
Blanca. Mistake. Too expensive and no air flow. I finally broke down and dropped $15 on my room’s
air conditioning remote, which effectively doubled the price of my room. Everything here is more expensive than I’d
anticipated. I’m too accustomed to SE
Asia prices for those sorts of things.
Day trips for the places I wanted to see in Guatemala would have cost
$270 not including accommodation for the night between the two trips, or dinner
either night. I decided to do it all
myself.
More on that later.
I’ve decided that this trip is going to be too long for one
entry as I would like to be a bit detailed for once. This first entry is about that first night
and then the first day trip I took while in Belize, a few days later. I’ll write another entry about the Mayan
ruins I visited both in Belize and Guatemala, and a third entry (that will be
much shorter, I’m sure) about the days I spent laying on beaches. Relaxing, yes, but eventful and blog worthy,
not so much.
The first trip I took in Belize was a day trip I took with a
few people I met at my second hotel, the Old House Hostel in San Ignacio. I opted to stay there because it was far
cheaper than Casa Blanca, and also because hostels are always good places to
meet people. I met Alice and James that
first night, a young British couple traveling South America together. They had already booked a trip to see Actun
Tunichil Muknal, known locally as ATM, a cave that was the site of many Mayan
rituals and sacrifices. It was at the
top of my list and a must-see for me, so I went to the travel agency and added
myself to the trip. Then the three of us
went to the grocery store and bought what we needed to make dinner, pasta with
cheese.
I did most of the cooking while talking to a girl from
Canada who was doing an internship at the hostel. Alice helped a bit, but not too much. Then the three of us ate at the large table
in the central room of the hostel. Soon
after other also started eating and we befriended three others, all of whom
were travelling alone. Ian was from
Switzerland, Angelica was from the Czech Republic, and Julia was from
Arizona. Julia and I hit it off
immediately and we found out that she was also going to ATM the next day,
though with a different tour company. We
kept talking about our trip plans and discovered that we basically wanted to do
all the same things, had already done the same things, and were on the same
flight home.
My new travel partner in place, I was ready to take on the
caves.
The first thing they had told me when I signed up the night
before was that there were no cameras allowed, and that we wouldn’t need
sunscreen or bug spray, and were in fact deterred from wearing it as it would
wash off in the caves and the chemicals could harm some of the artifacts and
rock. Cameras weren’t allowed because a
few years ago a tourist had dropped his camera onto a skull and left a huge
hole in it. Instead the company would
send us some photos from past trips afterward.
We met the other people on our tour and set off for the cave.
Our guides were two funny guys, one of whom spoke more clear
English than the other. The language of
Belize is officially English, but they really speak mostly Kriol. It’s based on English, with some Spanish and
a little slang thrown in for good measure.
I made a note to pick that guide so that I would get more out of the
experience, but people in the other group enjoyed the trip greatly as well. The final drive took us through a valley
where tens of thousands of Mayans once lived.
The Menonite population living in Belize (weird, I know, but there are a
lot of them) had bought up the land intending to plant there, only to
accidentally run over many ruins with their farming equipment. Eventually they just planted orchards and called
it a day.
Once we arrived, we first had to hike through the jungle for
a while. Our guide pointed out a jaguar
paw print along the path, though I didn’t really buy that as there were too
many shoe prints for it to be really believable. However, I did hear sounds that a guide at a
later trip told me were jaguar noises in the jungle. Apparently there are a decent number of them
remaining in Belize, though I didn’t get to see any. We had to wade across the same river three
times to get to the cave, but it was well worth the trek.
The river itself emanated from the cave, and we had to wade
in to get to the mouth of the cave, where the depth made swimming necessary to
get further in. The cold water was a
welcome break from the heat, and at first we were all glad of it.
Of course we were all a bit cold by the end
(the cave has a constant temperature of 21 Celcius, which helps preserve its
treasures). The swim was short, as the
water’s depth became more manageable a little way into the cave. From there we waded and clambored over rocks,
squeezing ourselves through small crevices and holes to get further back into
the depths.
At one point there had been
a cave in, which provided the last natural light before we had to switch on our
headlamps. Our guide rearranged us so
that the couples were in the back and the single women in the front. I was the only woman alone under the age of
50, and as such our guide took a strong liking to me, calling me “my peach” and
talking about how he never wanted to stop holding my hand as he helped me over
rocks. By the end he was talking about
buying me my first Belizean beer over dinner that night (I declined
politely). He showed us how to determine
what was present in the water and rocks along the way, from iron and magnesium
to calcium and sulfur. He showed us
various rock formations and how to tell where the high water line was.
We walked through a gigantic cavern, stepping
on the outside edges of what used to be pools but were now merely dips in the
rock.
Basically, it was an average cave trip in the beginning.
Then we got to the first of the artifacts. There were two rocks standing tall from the
top of the rock formations making up the walls of the cave. When one wall dipped back and provided a high
up flat spot, the two rocks stood up tall, one with perfectly smooth edges and
the other with jagged edges. The smooth
edged rock was meant to represent obsidian, which is a volcanic stone the
Mayans used in their blood-letting rituals.
The jagged edged rock was representative of a sting ray’s tail, which
they also used for blood-letting.
Just past that we came to a large rock that blocked most of
the path. Just next to it, tucked
partway into a crevice in the wall, was a wolf spider. Our guide took us to the side of the rock and
showed us how to climb on top of it.
Once we got up onto the rocks above us, we took off our shoes (the tour
provided crocs to wear) and proceeded barefoot or in socks, to preserve the
pathways, which undoubtedly had pottery buried beneath. Just after taking off my shoes I found a
scorpion spider by almost stepping on it.
Good thing I’m not scared of spiders.
We walked into a large cavern and everywhere we looked there
was pottery. Some of it was almost
entirely whole, some of it was shattered into pieces so small they would seem
impossible to piece back together. Often
the mouth of the pot remained intact.
These pots had once been filled with wine, beer, water, food, or even
blood as sacrifices to the gods of the underworld.
The Mayans had a large number of Gods, some of whom were
from the Upper World (Heaven), some from the middle world (Earth) and others
from the Underworld (hell). The ceiba
tree, sacred to the Mayas, was supposed to connect the three worlds, with them
believing that stalactites were the roots of the trees, which carried messages
up the trunk and through the branches to the sky. The sacrifices in this cave were made to one
or many of the Underworld Gods, which was why they were left underground. The prevailing theory is that they were for
Chaak, the god of rain. Many
archaeologists believe that a drought contributed to the end of the Mayan
civilization, and that the people came to this cave to pray for a rain that would
save them.
There were also some stalagmites that they had formed to
look like their gods, particularly like Ixchel, their jaguar goddess of
medicine and midwifery. They would sit
at her feet, light fires, and get drunk or do mushrooms and perform rituals to
her honor.
Farther back even, was evidence of human sacrifice. There were several skeletons and skulls that
existed either in total or in part. Some
showed evidence of being bound and left to die, others had been dumped into the
water that had once flowed. The end of
the cave was a complete skeleton, of indeterminate gender, whose rib cage had
been ripped open and back broken, a sign of human sacrifice.
On the way out, once we were back in the water and off the
rocks, our guide had us turn off all our headlights and walk through the water
holding hands in a line in the pitch black, so dark there was no adjusting your
eyes. We all walked along following our
guide, which I noted took a lot of trust.
“Are you saying you trust me?” He asked.
“I’m saying you didn’t give me a choice,” I replied sending titters down
the entire line. When we turned our
lights back on we turned them red, rendering everything a night vision look
straight out of The Descent.
The way home was fast, and Julia beat us there, though we’d
seen her often in the cave. She and I
then changed and walked to a cemetery I had seen on the road into town. The graves were all above ground and brightly
painted, blues, pinks, teals, and reds everywhere.
We took some photos and got to know each
other a little better, then headed off to eat dinner at a local spot her guide
had recommended. While eating I realized
that while I knew a decent amount about her life, family, and education, I had
yet to ask her name. She only knew mine
because she’d seen it written on my water bottle. I only knew hers because over dinner she
included it in a story. I’ve noticed
that happens often when traveling abroad.
Other things are more important because this is not a person you will
see again after leaving their side. The
only thing that matters for that relationship is the moment you’re in, the
story you’re telling, the ones you’re living.
Names and dates and personal histories won’t matter once you’ve
separated.
