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MEETING
BELIZE
Ny Resident Magazine
By Don DeVault
When
you left JFK in mid-January, the thermometer read a big fat
goose egg, and now, six hours later, you’re drinking
a frosty bottle of Belikin in 80-degree shade at the airport
in Belize City, waiting for the representative from Island
Expeditions. Before you set up this trip over the internet
on an especially bleak evening a few weeks ago, you’d
never, that you recall, heard anything at all about Belize.
First
off, they speak English. Sort of. The country, tucked away
under Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, used to be British
Honduras. The population of roughly 250,000 is a colorful
mix of Maya, Creole, Garufina, South East Indian, and Chinese
cultures, each with a unique history and heritage in this
huge little country of tropical rain forest and jade rivers,
rolling verdant farmland, and sleepy coastal fishing villages.
In
the wilds, it’s almost impossible to turn around without
encountering some exotic species or other. On a nighttime
trip to the zoo, billed as “a walk through the habitats
of Belize”, you come face to face with native jaguars,
tapirs, howler monkeys, and the “Royal Rat”, to
name but a few.
And
when your tour group piles out of the van and splits up into
four-wheel-drive vehicles for a trip into the heart of the
jungle to explore a Mayan cave, you feel like you’re
in the middle of National Geographic Explorer. For half an
hour the mud pushes up to the axles and you’re bumping
roaring and sliding forward sideways screaming with excited
laughter. Your guide is gesturing with both hands, the wheel
steering itself, four tires cutting through the ruts.
Then
it’s an enjoyable forty-five minute hike to the mouth
of the cave into which you swim with helmet and headlamp.
Turn off your light and complete darkness wraps around you
like a velvet shroud. Turn it on again and the walls are weeping
beautiful tears turning slowly to pearls. Farther on, in a
high, dry cavern sliced with light and shadow, stalactites
and stalagmites grow into columns. Ancient ceremonial pottery
and bones fill the cathedral-like space with whispers of an
ancient civilization. There are no ropes or chains between
you and a thousand years ago. It’s a mystical experience.
As
you head south through the screaming green countryside into
Dangriga, where you’ll ship out to the islands, you
learn the whole country is basically kept from washing away
in hurricanes by the largest barrier reef in the northern
hemisphere, and its vivid inhabitants will be your companions
for the next five days of sea kayaking and snorkeling. The
wind plasters a giant smile on your face as you go skipping
across turquoise water out to the white coral cayes littered
with discarded rose-colored conch shells.
Now,
there are all sorts of luxury resorts scattered throughout
Belize. But isn’t Paradise paradise pretty much just
the way you find it? Sure, the ground is harder than your
Serta Perfect, but a cup of coffee at sunrise will help you
forget it. And after a day of island hopping in kayaks, snorkeling
with eagle rays, chasing elusive barracuda, and diving
for conch, a little conversation with people you realize now
were from the beginning of the trip old friends you just hadn’t
met yet will send you to your tent to sleep like a baby.
And,
yes, there are mosquitoes and sand flies, but as the locals
say, you just have to “keep dancing” until that
breeze comes in off the sea and you’ re free to sit
back in a hammock listening to the clicking chorus of palm
fronds.
The guides are fixing a dinner that an hour ago you saw swimming.
The
sunset is exceptional and the stars appear, close and clear.
New York and bitter winter have faded away. Even last week
seems like a lifetime ago. What day is it? And what does it
matter when it doesn’t matter a bit? No worries, mon.
This is Belize.
Island
Expeditions runs a variety of trips in Belize catering to
all interests and abilities. Check them out at www.islandexpeditions.com.
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