Wanderlust

Honeymoon Chronicles, Part 3

June 26, 2002

George and I have wisely opted to begin our day with an enormous breakfast ala room service. Since Mr. Tut will come for us at 10 and cart us away on his Mountain Pine Ridge tour, we are uncertain if we will lunch late or at all.

After a feast of fragrant french toast, a yummy, nearly greasy diner style cheese omelet, and a plethora of fresh fruit including papaya and freshly squeezed orange juice, we top ourselves off with little cinnamon buns and biscuits with jam. Packing goes quickly and we opt to forego showers in favor of sipping more fresh brewed coffee.

At ten, having paid our extravagant bill, we plunk down at Blancaneaux's gate in the alternating sun and clouds, playing "I Spy" and scanning the lane for our ride. He is forty five minutes late when he rumbles up, laugh lines crinkling around his eyes. No apologies are made and we don't really question, adding it up to local charm.

We turn up the road and venture deeper into Mountain Pine Ridge. Mr Tut tells jaguar stories from when he used to work in the bush here and points out where he and some of his guests once spotted a jaguar hunting deer. As we have become used to his broken English and accent, he is easier to understand. After forty minutes we pull into a dusty camp of perhaps a dozen shacks where workers are hauling and hacking away at the sparse fields and gardens. Mr. Tut says this once was a camp for the workers who tended the reserve but since the destruction of the trees it has mostly been abandoned.

We turn into a small, rutted side lane with signs pointing to Rio Frio Cave and all at once we are immersed in a dense jungle. The plants, deep green and dense, twist their brown vines around mahogany and gum trees, whose bark carries the mark of what locals call "chicaros," the men who climb these trees and cut and run off the sap to make gum. The noise of jungle birds grows loud around us and the air is moist. Only a few minutes later we pull up to where another car from Blancaneaux is parked and descend the trail to the stairway leading to Rio Frio.

Climbing the stairway through the jungle foliage with the muddy green river gurgling below seems pretty enough. But as you take several more steps, the enormous cave mouth falls open before you and it becomes awesome. Initially inside the cave it is cool and still lit from the nearby mouth. We walk on a wide, rocky ledge that runs 20 feet above the foot of the cave covered with the calm, meandering water of the river that carved it. The ceiling arches far above to a height of fifty or a hundred feet and though dark, stalagmites are visible hanging from the rock. We tiptoe carefully, finding our footing in the dim light around the ledge as it narrows and the cave bends to the right. The opposite opening is in the distance and as we step forward to investigate, the guide from Blancaneaux warns us of the yawning, porous rocks just a few steps ahead where the ledge falls away dangerously. We turn back and descend the ledge in a more manageable spot to the beach below, where you can stand in the dark on the sandy floor of the cave and dip your toes into the cool river waters that carved such a huge chasm through this rock. We linger for a moment and then turn back, pausing to admire the strange formation of holes that have been permeated into the rock by the slow drip of water over hundreds and thousands of years from the cave ceiling above.

Back in the van, we discuss our options and rather than go onto to the Hidden Valley Falls we opt for lunch and a look at some Mayan ruins in San Ignacio. Hunger begins to set in and by the time we approach the city, we are quite eager for lunch.

The bridge on one side has been unusable because of the flood waters and so all traffic must go over a one lane steel bridge to enter San Ignacio. The town and outskirts are a muddled, dirty confusion of narrow streets, shacks and roadside stands and staring locals or biking pedestrians. Mr. Tut navigates us to a side street and the small office of Crystal Paradise. From there, dodging traffic, we trudge up the dirt streets past fruit vendors in traditional Indian dress and loitering, dark skinned taxi and truck drivers to small hole in the wall restaurant that serves delightful Sri Lankan food. Wolfing down curried chicken and yellow rice with Mr. Tut, we compliment his dining choice and he explains that his son is friends with the owner's son, the entire family natives of Sri Lanka. This does not surprise us in a country with so many people of muddled cultural descent where Asians, Mayans, Indians, Mennonites and Spanish are neighbors.

After our lunch we are invited to explore the city a little bit while Mr.Tut runs errands. It is a strange experience and a bit uncomfortable to be so obviously out of place, avoiding traffic in the narrow streets and ignoring the stares of passerbys. The taxi drivers are not shy and we are solicited several times for rides. Avoiding eye contact, we politely refuse. After a chat with Gladys, a surprisingly young girl, dark skinned and dressed in chunky heels. tight jeans and a revealing shirt and lots of jewelry at the office, Mr. Tut returns. As he drives us up into the hills of San Ignacio to the ruins, I remark to George that most of the women, both in the cities and the villages, seem to be always dressed to the nines as if they are on their way to a disco or formal dance. It is strange to see a girl in chunky heels with a flowered skirt and tons of makeup, plodding through the muddy roadside gutter or staring from the porch of a shack. As there were no obvious clothing stores in San Ignacio, we began to wonder where all the name brand duds came from.

Soon we were at Cal Pech, translated to mean "plate of ticks," where a small Mayan city had been discovered. Mr. Tut pawns us off on a young guide and runs off to do errands in town. I glance worriedly at the gray, angry heavens and hope the heavy rain will hold off.

Our young guide, whose name I can not recall now, leads us through a small museum complete with a model (however incorrect, as he explains), of the site and a few of the artifacts and murals. At the entrance we are plagued by vendors, brothers and cousins of our guide, who have carved Mayan symbols into wood to make plaques, figurines and necklaces. With promises to buy later, we extract ourselves and escape up the path.

After paying a small entrance fee, he leads us around the site. We seem to be the only ones, besides archaeologists, on the grounds. Fairly large but simple structures, carved and made from limestone now turned white with age, have been unearthed from the jungle floor and several large mounds of trees and dirt nearby promise more. The central plaza has a large tower with front steps and the royal family dwellings behind, where cool windowless rooms and short beds were carved from the stone. The guide also takes us to the "ball court" and explains the ancient Mayan game in which prisoners of war played to win death with honor for days on end with a ball, set on fire, that must be bounced from side to side. The rules of the game seem vague, but the purpose of human sacrifice to appease the gods is very clear.

We meander back up the path to where our guide introduces us to all spice and other natural, wild Belizean spices. The boys accost us at the entrance again, plying wares, and I give in to a Mayan necklace with sign of my birth month, November, to appease them. Mr. Tut is waiting and as we get back to the van to descend into San Ignacio, it finally begins to rain fat drops. Mr. Tut professes to have held the sky off with his bare hands and we laughingly agree.

At the foot of the hill is what looks to be the town's soccer field, the most popular sport in Belize as well as in all of Meso and South America. A Cuban circus is setting up entitled Circus Del Mundo. The motor homes and trucks are unloading, while San Ignacio sits and watches form their porches, apparently awestruck.

It is a short drive back through the confusion of San Ignacio and the traffic waiting at the bridge to Cristo Ray Village and Crystal Paradise. At the foot of the hill leading to the village, Mr. Tut picks up a mother and her children that he knows. After he drops them about a mile up at a square, stucco house, Mr. Tut explains that she used to work for their family, cleaning houses, and that she recently became a widow. He tries to help with money, food and transportation whenever he can.

It isn't long until we enter Cristo Rey, a small cluster of houses in the same stucco style with meager roofs. I can see most doors open, with people on couches in the flickering light of the television. We turn into Crystal Paradise and the lane is small and runs through an exotic, tree flowered garden with a pasture and a pond on the left where several horses and ponies are grazing. Crystal Paradise is a cluster of thatched roof cabanas with a large thatched roof dining room and kitchen that has a mahogany porch and swing. We choose the cabana furthest away from the cluster and it is clean and simple, with a cement floored shower, Indian woven red bedspreads and a red tiled floor. The ceiling fan, attached to the roof of one of the cross posts of the thatched roof, swings to and fro when on and squeaks. Fresh towels are in the wooden closets and shelves next to the bathroom and a hammock swings on the porch outside.

It is getting late and we are told dinner with be at six thirty. We shower and report to the dining room. It is only the Canadians we had met beforehand and us and Carlita, the youngest girl, brings in beans. barbecued chicken, mashed potatoes and coleslaw as well as pitchers of ice water and the softest, most delicious flour tortillas. We are hungry and quiet, still adjusting to our surroundings. The youngest son, Jeronie, arrives in the midst of banana cake and coffee and we arrange a trip with the Canadians to the Mayan ruins in Tikal, Guatemala, the next day.

As the family cleans up and prepares to go to bed, George and I drink Coke and play cards at one of the tables. Large beetles, moths and other bugs, drawn in from the jungle by the light, get caught in the whirling blades of the fan above and come raining down upon our heads in odd moments with soft pings. We can only take so much of this and eventually retire to the room where, despite the hand sized moths that have invaded the cabana, we fall deeply into sleep on the impossible hard queen bed that sits nearly a foot and a half off the ground on sturdy, carved varnished wooden legs with an ornately carved headboard of a jaguar, hunting a deer in the jungle vegetation. To the tune of the squeaking, whirling fan, I dream of bats falling from the ceiling and biting my hand.

Posted by Kaz at June 28, 2008 8:38 AM