Jaguar Week

I am living in town now. Gone is the jungle and Alice's boyfriend's truck for going about the country. Gone is the preponderance of Mennonites, old world and new world. Now we are in Belizean culture - some Caribbean, some Spanish, some African, some other.

Gial About Town
(Gial = Girl in Creole, most often heard by me from Alice: "Susan, you si-lly, si-lly gial.")

When I leave the Lowe's house, I walk down the hill, past a church for rent, down a steeper hill to the main road through Santa Elena. On the corner is an Asian market and on the opposite side is always a guy walking through an open doorway to see who is coming past. They are renovating - or cleaning up - the house. If I turn left I am only a block from the high bridge, and only a high bridge away from San Ignacio.

The bridge is a suspension one with a walkway for pedestrians like me. It is made of metal slats so you can see 80 feet below to the water. Yesterday I dropped the pit from my "way a", a tiny sweet fruit that you'd think is a key lime til you open it up and it has a big pit with sweet yummy flesh around it. All I could think of is "16 feet per second squared." The rate at which a pit free falls to a river, without taking resistance into account. I wonder if there was another lesson of a smidge more relevance to my life that I should have learned in that brain slot. What's done is done. It can't be displaced now with "Venemous snakes have triangular heads" or "Wear wader boots the first time you swing a machete."

On the other side of the bridge is a roundabout for cars with park benches in the middle for pedestrians waiting for buses or rides. I cut through the full service gas station lot on the right, and the attendants find it curious, and I begin my trek down the narrow path of non-sidewalk made of mostly store stoops and steps and then drops to the gutter. My path is only a foot and a half wide and in some places street vendors have set up their carts to sell plantain chips or pepitos (pumpkin seeds) or tomalitos (corn mash wrapped in corn husks). Their carts may be on my path and I squeeze behind them or venture into the street to continue on my way. When I see the Belize Bank on the corner, I have found my spot. I look up and see my coffee shop above a nameless Chinese restaurant with a colorful sign FreeWiFi and a sandwich board out front proclaiming coffee smoothies. I can have an espresso ($2.50 US) or coffee ($2 US) or a blended juice ($1.50 US) - fruit such as cantaloupe blended with ice. I choose the latter because coffee is off my regimen and when I cheat it makes me nervous. (In both senses - to fall off the anti-cancer diet wagon and the caffeine both.)

It's Friday and I'm glad I came downtown. The vendors are setting up the Market. Booth after booth of bananas (scads of varieties), mangoes (almost out of season), pitaya - also called dragon fruit (a florescent pink fruit with tiny black seeds and Sweet), delicious monster (that's the name!), breadfruit, plantain, most things I don't know the name of, but booths and booths of it - maybe 50 or maybe 100. I bought romaine and cilantro because the fridge is already packed. My hosts have Every tropical fruit at home.

I live in town now so the up side is that the market and all of the fresh food and the pulse of the culture is just a few blocks away. The downside is that yesterday I met my roommate Earl. I am pretty sure he is not a mouse. Bigger, longer tail. AAaaaaaaaaaaah. As my hosts tried to convince me that having a cat is worse than having rats (I think it was tongue in cheek, but who really knows) ....I told them I needed 24 hours to adjust and at that time would certainly not be freaked out anymore. My time is almost up. It helped when I named him. Then I could let him know I was coming in the room and he could leave so I wouldn't have to see him. I'm pretty sure I cannot keep my promise, but there's always the possibility that Earl was as freaked out by me and has moved next door.

There are many more up-sides to being in town. It's a whole new side of Belize to experience. San Ignacio is the perfect size of town - there are no throngs of people, but plenty of activity. It's small enough that my hosts seem know Every person on the street, and vice versa.

I am sitting now at Flayva's - a restaurant open to the street with more seating in a park atmosphere out back. They are playing reggae music. I can see I've come to a tourist spot because we diners and web users are all white. The owner reminds me Completely of a friend from college and I had to look twice to make sure he was actually dark skinned, not just super tan, to know if it was my old friend. But he treats me like an old friend from college and that's delightful.

I sit here realizing my scheduled flight home is two weeks from today. Most people only go somewhere for two weeks - so I still have the whole stretch ahead of me, but to me, it feels daunting as though my time is up tomorrow. (Though whether I actually take that scheduled flight is another matter.) So I eat curried rice and drink mango juice and soda water and think through all of my adventures not-yet blogged.

Coffee Beans, Calaloo, Wild Cats, and Caves
Alice and I took our country-wide drive along mountains and sea to Punta Gorda at the south of the Belize. We stayed in a Mayan village called San Miguel at a guest house called Back-A-Bush (which equates to our term for "boondocks"). At Back-A-Bush the hosts harvest all of the wild jungle food from their "yard" - even the coffee we had at breakfast was picked, roasted and brewed right there by them (in front of us!). I learned about Calaloo (Amaranth) which leaves you eat like spinach. It's a staple for the Maya people - it is Delicious and great for vegetarians because it has a huge amount of protein and minerals etc. Back-A-Bush was so great, we extended our stay by a day or two.

Day One after our leisurely breakfast, we headed, we thought, to Punta Gorda, but found a Mayan family of women in need of a ride. So we loaded them into the back of the truck. They told us about Blue Creek and a walking path and ... a cave. We let them off at a bus stop (where, as you know, no bus comes) since we were headed the other way.

As we pulled away Alice said, "It sounds like Blue Creek is nice."

Alice and I understand each other. I did a U-turn in the middle of a wide and empty, newly laid, gravel road and Alice hopped out to tell the women to get back in the truck. We were headed to Blue Creek. The other 10 people - Spanish - at the bus stop also climbed in. I think this was our fullest passenger load by far.

Blue Creek was amazing. The creek was picturesque. The hike to the cave seemed to take forever. I started wondering if we'd been duped....leaving the truck back there unattended while we walked 30 minutes into the jungle to an alleged cave. Then, a sign. A weathered length of 2x4 bore the painted words "To Cave" with an arrow pointing across the river.

We don't even pause that much anymore at unexpected or unusual instructions. We crossed. It was only ankle deep. Then more trekking hand over feet on rock and through jungle. We still didn't see the cave and the water was high so we had little rapids swirling around the rock. We saw the face of a cliff and a waterfall coming down up ahead. The cave must be there, but the way had become "impassable".

If you've read anything on this blog, you know that word has come to mean "the path you take."

We tried to climb along the rocks at the edge of the river - the water was too rapid (or deep?) to get into, and the rocks in the water weren't close enough to climb one to the other. The problem was that on the edge of the river were little caves - crevasses in the rock, too deep to see into.

Jaguar lairs, I thought.

I was going to stop. You don't want to disturb - surprise - an animal in the wild. I couldn't pass the little side caves without stretching one leg past and clinging to the rock face with my arms.

Here, Kitty kitty, here are my ankles, it felt like I was saying.

The truth is that jaguars don't live there, but we didn't know that. The other truth is that someone else could live there. Triangle-headed venomous snakes, perchance. But we didn't think of that.

You have come all of this way to Belize, I thought. You seriously are going to let fear paralyze you now?!

So I stretched my meager frame across the dark and foreboding gapes in the rock, trying to keep my footing on slippery places. At first Alice stayed back.

"I will go a little farther to take pictures," I told her.

A little farther and I still couldn't quite see, so I kept going, past more likely jaguar lairs. Finally, I made it to the rock closest to the mouth of the cave (still 100 feet or more from it) and stood there with water rushing all around the rock on which I stood and rushing down the face of the cliff to my left and rushing out of the mouth of the cave. You can't stand there amid all of the energy of the rushing and say nothing. You fill up with so much awe and exuberance and glory of God you shout whatever is in your vocabulary to shout - Yes! or Yow! or Hallelujah!

Mine was Hallelujah.

I am sure I welled up with tears. It was unexpected beauty. We tried so hard to get there even when we weren't sure if there was a cave. A great reward. I would have laid on the rock and listened to the rushing and my own pounding heart for an hour, gazing up at the waterfall if there had been any room on the rock or traction.

I looked back to Alice, and she was coming too! She wasn't going to stand and watch the foreigner have the Hallelujah moment. I didn't know she was afraid of heights until After she arrived at the rock. Go Alice! We both felt victorious.

Then we made our way back and hacked open coconuts with machetes. We had seen men in a yard with a ladder and a truck picking coconuts and bought six from them for 50 cents (25 cents US) each. They were intrigued by our interest. Coconuts grow in every yard and bear year round. Clearly I was a tourista. They were pleased to have their work appreciated I think.

When I say "we" hacked open coconuts, I mean that I hacked at one; Alice actually hacked them open. Yum. You drink out the coconut water with a straw (super healthy and especially good on my anti-cancer diet) and then you slice off a piece of the green coconut husk and use it as a spoon to scoop out the coconut flesh inside. If the coconut is just right it's soft and gelatinous. We have pictures of us in our swimming suits hacking at coconuts with machetes and drinking them down like jungle girls.

Then we drove to PG. We probably should have waited til the next day because after the Hallelujah Blue Creek Cave, PG was bound to be uneventful. It was. I had my first view of ocean of the trip and said, "Hmm, there it is." Somehow all of our jungle experiences were so much more dramatic than water as far as you can see. ?!

That night at Back A Bush, a Mayan family made us a traditional meal. She showed us the traditional way to make corn tortillas started with (raw) soaked white local corn that is ground into a paste. Then she works it with her hands and cooks it on a camal (flat tortilla pan). For my vegan life, she served me Calooloo (amaranth) with fresh corn tortillas. Alice had a soup with chicken. She cooked it all on an earth oven made of clay with a wood fire right inside her thatch hut (and next to the propane stove).

All the while she was cooking for us, a daughter of about 17 was there as well as a girl of about 2. The toddler had been given to her by a family who couldn't raise her.

"You adopted her?" I asked.

No, she shook her head. "They just gave her to me. "

This is common among Mayan families, Elsbeth at Back-A-Bush told us later. If a mother has a difficult circumstance (this one's mother had been only 15) it is passed to someone else in the village to take as her own.

The next day, we hired Miguel (the grandson of the town San Miguel's namesake - not a saint that we know of, but named his town that.) to take us to Tiger Cave.

Tiger Cave deserves a post all its own. Local people call spotted jaguars tigers and call black jaguars pumas. Though there are puma here too.

First, let me just say I have never been so muddy - even when I was five - and rubber bottomed, not plastic bottomed, hiking shoes make all the difference in spending most of your time upright in such a cave rather than sitting in ankle-deep (or higher) mud and water. My great new Merrell Barefoot running / hiking shoes were not made for this. Go for rubber soles next time....

We drove an impassable rock and mud road to the hydraulic power plant that provides all of the electricity for San Miguel by water power alone, and parked there. Then, we did not go through the gate, but climbed over and through it. This was our first unusual feat. Not everyone could do this hike, I realized. We picked our way across big rock and tropical plants into the cave - or so we thought - with a majestic lofty ceiling that opened to the sky in several places - glorious.

This is the entry way, Miguel said. We haven't gotten to the cave yet.

We were already feeling the wonderful strain of a physical feat accomplished, so I wondered a little about not being there yet. Then the path got dicey.

"Go down there," Miguel said.

It looked like a drop of 12 feet of rock without any real handholds or toe holds, and away from the light streaming in from the ceiling of the cave into dark recesses below.

"How?" I wondered. "You go first."

He did. That didn't help. He has rubber soles.

This was our first introduction to a long morning of many involuntarily sittings in the mud. It was hilarious. We could hardly climb down anything. After a few drops like this, Alice started just sliding down on her butt to start with.

Down in the Real Cave, the ceiling was high in most places. Rock rubble covered the floor in most chambers - hard to pick our way through - and a sandy / muddy bottom was in others. Spring fed streams ran through the cave. It had rained the night before and flooded the cave so we had some unexpected knee-high pools to cross to make our way deeper in. Miguel had provided us flash lights, which used up a hand that was greatly needed for climbing and crawling.

Then we heard thunder. What?

"That's the jaguar, do you hear them?" Miguel said.

What?!

Yes, through the cave wall the playful growl of a jaguar sounded like thunder in the distance. Then a higher moan. Cubs!

"We go through there to get to the chamber closest to them," Miguel told us. He pointed to where the ceiling came down about four feet above waist-high water.

"No Susan," Alice said. "We have to get out of here."

"It's safe!" I told her, having no actual idea, but assuming Miguel wasn't stupid or anything. He'd given this tour hundreds of times.

Miguel said we could go one more chamber and the jaguar were down in another chamber below that we could not get to - so it wasn't dangerous, and they have a back way out of the cave. They don't like people so they will stay away from us, not come after us. And if we get too close for their comfort, they will roar to warn us away.

Oh to hear a jaguar roar in the wild!! I thought. This is not what Alice thought.

"Susan, we have to get out of here," she insisted.

"Ok Alice, will you stay here and I will go on into the next chamber and come right back?" I bargained.

Alice was not staying there alone.

"We have to get out of here now!" she announced.

Miguel seemed surprised, but maybe shouldn't have been because of all of the high water. It would have been easier for us to slip in and out of the outer chamber in other conditions.

Before we retreated we heard another thunderous growl. Miguel perked up. He pointed the direction from which we came.

"Did you hear it? One is on the other side of us."

We simultaneously spoke and hushed each other.

I was ecstatic. I don't know why. I love wild cats. If I am ever killed by a wild cat, know that I went out in awe.

Alice was not ecstatic.

Is it safe to go out, I asked Miguel. Yes, he said. It is no problem.

Making our way out of the cave, Miguel took us to a sandy place along the spring-fed river where we had been before. We saw the tracks of our shoes and...paw prints.

Fresh jaguar tracks.

The jaguar are very curious, Elsbeth told us later at Back a Bush. The cat wanted to see who had come into the cave. "He was tracking you while you were tracking them!" she told us. I don't know if she knows, but I chose to believe her.

A jaguar was tracking me!

We also saw marks in the sand where a jaguar had slept the night before and the prints of the little cubs who slept against the rock behind her.

Oh to stay longer, but Alice was done, and we were covered head to toe in mud. And we still had a distance to hike to get out of the cave and out of the non-cave cave entrance and back over the gate to the power plant.

We were completely spent when we arrived at BackABush and jumped first into the showers and second into the hammocks.

We headed back to "Cayo" the whole region where town is, where Spanish Lookout is, where Alice lives. But we were very jaguar minded. I must see a jaguar before I leave Belize. Twice we drove out at night to places jaguar are known to be seen. Dark 'impassable' gravel roads at dusk, hoping one would saunter out across the road. It happens. Just not when we are looking.

Once Alice brought a SAT phone in the car so we could call for help if needed. We picked up Carol on the way.

"Susan I'm going to tell her this is a jaguar sensor. Don't laugh when I say it." Alice told me.

I laughed.

"You're going to ruin it. Don't laugh," she said.

Carol got in the car. She is Canadian. She bought the whole story. The antenna senses the jaguar by smell. The phone rings when one is within 20 miles. (Really, Alice? 20 miles?) I called the SAT phone to break the illusion. It rang. Even Alice was shocked. Alice and Carol looked at each other. Neither saw the phone I was clearly holding until I finally said, "I don't hear anything."

It still didn't break the spell for Carol. The next day I told her it was just a joke.

"I wondered about that!" she said. "Gary, there is no jaguar sensor," she called in to her husband.

Oh hilarious. Was he believing it too? That Alice...

More, so much more to come. Bless you for reading these long adventures.

love and adoration,
Susana