Jungle Week

I am just in love with Belize. A very simple life without all of the modern conveniences but once you adjust, you don't care.

Camping in the jungle was other-worldly. The friend that owns that land is living a life I would like to live. In the last few years he has cleared brush from the jungle and planted every kind of fruit tree - most I have never heard of, but now I have eaten from - and every kind of tropical flower. It's like jungle gardens. It's not pristine, pristine is not done here - it's natural and meandering, kind of like you'd imagine God's backyard out behind His kitchen.

Barton Creek is not Far from Spanish Lookout, where I'm staying, but it is Long. The roads are inexplicable. They seem like washed out gravel roads but the gravel is huge rocks and I ask - why do they use such rocks on the road? And the locals laugh at me and say, that is not gravel, that is the ground. The road is impassable, yet we drive on through. At 15 mph. The whole way. Slowing to 0 to go through dips and potholes and cranking up to 20 to get up steep inclines of slippery tree roots. In Wisconsin I think we might call this offroading. In Belize, it's the road to a place like the Garden of Eden.

Before we came to these offroad roads, we stopped in Georgeville for Alice to buy some Coke for the trip. The store could not be more than 12 feet deep and 10 feet wide. A beautiful elderly black woman who runs the store told Alice the update on her husband's health and her daughter's cancer in lovely Creole. I could have listened to her speak for a long time without understanding much of anything.

Outside, by the truck, a crowd (more than 20) of people waited at a bus stop (where, Alice told me later, no bus comes - they are just waiting for rides from benevolent pick-up drivers). About 10 of them were Mennonites in, as I have called it before, pilgrim attire. Alice knew they were headed to Barton Creek. She invited them, but not the others, into the back of the truck. She, being Spanish, does not trust the Spanish, or particularly the Guatemalans (she is half Guatemalan). I have not inquired further to figure this out.

One teenaged girl joined us inside because the truck bed was half filled with our Great Supply of camping provisions. She had a joyful, peaceful spirit - for me, quite a switch from most of the old world Mennonites. Many of those I've met seem very sober. Or, there is just a cultural gap of how one expresses oneself to strangers. It could be that.

I couldn't stop engaging this girl in conversation and asking her questions because she was so delightful and eager to share. We talked the whole way and asked her where we could find vegetables. She said we could come to her farm - which was a small piece of heaven on a hilltop. We stood in the yard among numerous kids of all ages and two dogs while a very kind father who had a similar (but quieter) demeanor to his daughters and a few of his sons went to gather every kind of produce for us. They had a barn and a shed for their wagon and gardens in various stages of planting - some fenced in, some covered with black netting. Clearly a whole planting strategy was taking place. The father gave much of the produce to us for free for the ride we gave "the children" and we left with avocados, breadfruit, sweet corn, lettuce, chinese cabbage, cilantro and more. Ready, as I said, for any camping culinary whim. We were set. We left the happy family on its farm in the rolling hills of upper Barton Creek and headed on to our camp spot on the lower creek.

Our route included two river crossings where you just drive right in.

I paused at the bank. "I'm supposed to go through? How do we know it's not too deep?"

"Go, Susan, go!" Alice says.

I don't know if I'm supposed to go slow so that I don't splash the undercarriage of the truck or go fast so we have enough traction to make it up the other side. So I just go. Right into the water. I can see to the bottom of the river. I think about how they should use some of this nice river rock on the Rest of the road.

If you've never driven through a river before, it really changes the demeanor of the drive. You realize you are in the very center of all of God's creation and there's a hush about the car and your mind because you simply want to take in all that is around you - peace and jungle sounds and green - every possible color and brilliance of green.

Sometime after the second river crossing, we came to the field.

"Turn here, turn here Susan."

Where? There is no road.

"Turn here Susan, Left." Down a steep embankment of only washed out tree roots into a field we go. Then left into another field.

"Do you see the tracks where Chris has driven? Follow them."

We are "tracking" now? I can hardly see them. If he drove in an hour ago, the grass has stood back up and grown 8 more inches.

"Here, Susan, here!"

Where? What? Again there is no clear "here."

We pull into the trees on the bank of the river and I am just glad we are not driving down into it this time because it is steep.

"We will call Jasmine to bring the canoe."

"I thought you said cell phones didn't work out here."

"We will call her, Susan," Alice laughs. "Call across the river."

Oh, the old fashioned "call".

I got out of the truck and stood indeed in the center of God's creation. The most beautiful place on earth. Thick vines hung down into the river with a tree swing amid them, waiting for us. Tall tropical trees and flowering plants covered both river banks, absorbing some of the sound of rushing water. Just this one view of the river alone seemed like perfection.

As soon as Alice called out, across the narrow river came a canoe navigated effortlessly by a beautiful Spanish girl with long dark hair, a contagious smile, and mischief in her eyes. She docked the canoe in the exposed tree roots on our side of the river on the first try. This is Jasmine. My new favorite 12 year old in the whole world. She speaks Creole, Spanish, and English (in that preferred order, I think) in a beautiful singsongy voice. The Creole here is based on English, as in Jamaica or the rest of the Caribbean.

We loaded the canoe down with our things - small parcels of our clothes and boxes of food for, oh, six people for a week. We were only two, and for only four days, but Alice and I are the same in this way. It's good to overplan on food. What if one night you want garnaches and another night empanadas and a night of homemade tortillas for burritos? You just need to bring enough for all of the possibilities... It worked out perfectly because for some meals our hosts joined us.

Jasmine navigates the canoe equally well from the water or in the boat. She gave Alice and I the only remaining space in the canoe and she swam the canoe across. (And also let go of it midstream, laughing and laughing as we floated past the landing helpless with the oar in the bottom of the canoe under 40 pounds of foodstuffs. We were laughing too.)

The site was all prepared for us - four tents to choose from plus a screen tent and a large pavilion roof over a propane stove and a picnic table and shelves for food and dishes. They had pans and plates and even a 5 gallon pail of spring water waiting for us for dishes or cooking - or drinking, though we brought our own drinking water. (Possibly an offense, I don't know.) The first day all we did was cook and swim. I don't know if we even looked around. How do you look around if the spot you are already in is all you want?

I think we are humanly wired for much more communion with the wild than the average life allows for. No spa on earth accomplishes the same rest and rejuvenation as a few days in the glorious middle of nowhere.

We spent four days in the jungle - a large percentage of that swimming and playing games with Jasmine in the river. She is a very effective persuader (without appearing to be so). The first time I saw her jump up to grab the swing over the water and spider-crawl her legs up over the seat, I said, "I used to be able to do things like that." But you can't just let the lithe little 12 year old have all of the fun. Soon I was spider-crawling (I'm making up that term because it seems to give the gist) into the swing from the water too. (Later perhaps I'll explain about the cliff jumping, ok, Rock Jumping, but from down below it looked like a cliff... that Alice and I were Not going to do, but you see Jasmine do it over and over with such glee you think you are missing a jungle experience to just tread water in the river below...)

One day Chris and Jasmine took us to explore Barton Creek Cave by canoe. We rented a light that came with a car battery for power and lit up areas so we could see. Stalactites and stalagmites and a spring running out of the wall of the cave into a mini waterfall. Tables and crevices and ledges that once held countless Mayan artifacts - pottery and skeletons - when Chris first started touring this cave 40 years ago. Scavengers and archeologists have made off with all of them. Apparently it's legal if you register them with the government.

The cave is 300 feet high in some places and 4 feet high in others. (You bend down low to pass through!) It's 15 feet wide in some places and 2 feet wide in others (Everyone lean right and tip the canoe a little to get through). The cave was oddly peaceful in spite of its history (I remind you of the skeletons mentioned earlier...they weren't ancient spelunkers ... but the Mayas practiced human sacrifice). The cave was quite dramatic. Twice we got out of the canoe to walk around (mostly in the dark!), once to have snacks and turn all of our lights off and witness darkness.

On the way out, we realized that It's one thing - and beautiful - going in toward the darkness (with your light to illuminate the cavern) but it's another when you're coming out of darkness into the light. It's stunning.

I'm sure there's a life lesson lodged in there...

After the cave, we went to one of Jasmine's friends' houses to cool off in the river. The river there has a deep pool right at the base of a big rock. This is the place that we could not help but jump because of Jasmine's contagious delight.

On Day 4 we broke camp (with thoughts of returning sometime before I leave Belize) and meandered home on, once again, impassable roads. Alice's dad had taken care of everything at the house while we were gone. We took him back home to San Ignacio and I saw the city for the first time in the evening. We all had dinner at a great restaurant tucked into a little neighborhood. (My best restaurant experience in Belize so far!) A little city ending to a perfect jungle week.