Belize - Day 3

I can hardly remember this morning. It seems like a lifetime ago. How have we possibly done so much in three days? How have we been through six towns and slept in three different locations. I am looking forward to hunkering down here for the next five nights. Tomorrow we won’t lose part of the day to travel. We are here. On a remote island... doing island-y things.

I was right about the caged macaws and toucans. I didn’t expect the puppy and mangy mutt to wrestle at 5am as well. Stupid of me not to expect that, really.

Most of the day was just spent getting here. An hour car ride south to Dangriga along the Hummingbird Highway. Hummingbird because of all the twists, turns and dips. Like the flight of the bird itself. Somewhere along the rainforest walls there is a spot after an uphill climb where just as we are about to descend, our guide Anatashio throws the car into neutral. Somehow we start rolling backwards uphill. It was a slow pull, but our driver insists that at times it can bring a car back up the hill pretty quickly. A little mystery of Belize. The cause is speculated to be a magnetic shift. That day the magnets of the world must not have been properly aligned.

That drive also gave me a chance to try my first cocoa plant. The insides of the bumpy yellow gourd were not what I was expecting. Fleshy, round seed clusters made up the guts of the plant. It looked like pieces of raw fish, lumped together. I was told to suck on one. Obediently, I did as I was told. The ‘flesh’ was the cocoa plants fruit. Locals suck the pulp off the actual seeds; the seed itself never gets eaten. Standing alone the cocoa seed has very little taste, but that is the part that gets ground down and sweetened into my weakness. The fleshy part is actually very sour.

Who knew?

The drive got some heavy rain and made us all nervous for our destination …. a boat. The downpour politely kept to the mountains. We lucked out with smooth sailing and a few showers for the last ten minutes of the hour long rider. Glovers Reef is 36 miles off the coast. I can see how that boat ride, in the wrong conditions, could easily become a two hour journey.

After lunch, our new hosts stuck us in kayaks regardless of the overcast skies and strong winds. We paddled out a bit and got our first lesson – tipping the kayak. We worked it like pros. You would have never seen such a graceful dump or such a swift remount. Pros except pros that didn’t properly check their gear before setting out on the water. Neither seat had bailing buckets or sponges, so we had to borrow for our boat to float again.

This camp is amazing. The island is shared with a few other businesses but this week it is totally deserted. Our group is the only one on the island. I am in love with our Belizean guides. They ask me to marry them and it seems tempting. The locals are all warm people that are just looking for laughter and lightheartedness.

It is a long way from the hot shower and air conditioning I woke up to, and yet it is still comfortable. I am writing this by kerosene lamp. No electricity. No running water. Compost toilets. There’s a little well water for rinsing off but I am considering avoiding the showers all together for the five days here. We’ll see how crazy my hair gets. My locks are already on their way to wild. It’s funny to think that none of us have any idea what we look like in the real world, day to day. We recognize each other in our rawest states. They will forever remember me with island hair. I have island hair! Awesome.

This place in surreal in beauty and I feel like the group is warming up a bit more.

I have to remember to tell Alicia I ate twelve Johnny Cakes. Pastries here tend to have a man’s name within. Mmmm… what I wouldn’t give for a Fry Jack right now.