Biking in Belize

Here in Punta Gorda, bikes are the most common form of transportation. While we may have trash lying everywhere, at least we can breath fresh air (unless you happen to be biking behind an old U.S. school bus that is now used as public transportation in Belize). Biking around Punta Gorda has given me so much joy. The bikes here take me back to my childhood. They are fixed gear, and to break, you must pedal backwards. This last characteristic has spelled disaster for me quite a few times, as I have a tendency to pedal backwards when I am coasting. The tires are wider than mountain bike tires, primarily because these roads are terrible. I am not sure if we can really call them a road. On Main Street, you have relatively consistent pavement, but when you veer from this road (as you must do, since it is a one-way street), you find yourself in the middle of a giant obstacle course. For the most part, I think I look drunk biking around town, attempting to dodge large potholes, and trying to find the most even ground. You see, the paved road here just ends, at odd spots, or breaks off, and the dirt road is not any better.

This is the road I take every day to get to and from work.

Front Street, though beautiful, has its hazards.

Any time I start picking up speed, I usually often find myself bouncing through a very large pothole, crossing my fingers that I did not just pop a tire or bend a tire frame. I quickly learned why everyone bikes so slowly. But despite the terrible roads, and the iffy bike, I love biking around PG. One of my favorite things to do is bike down Front Street, along the ocean, in the evening on my way to my apartment. With the ocean to my left, stars coming out, waves crashing, and me dodging one pothole after another, I couldn’t be happier.

Front Street at sunset.

But, I let myself go on a tangent there. I actually set out to write this blog about the other reason bikes make me so happy: people carry THE most ridiculous stuff on their bikes. I mean, without another means of transportation, they really don’t have any other option, but it makes me laugh every time I see it. Below, a list of things people commonly carry on bikes:

An additional passenger, sometimes a child, but often a grown adult.

An entire family. You laugh. I’ve seen it.

Chainsaws.

Machetes.

Brown paper packages tied up with string. No, really. I saw this one day on my way to Santa Teresa.

Weed whacker. (Is this their real name?)

Large planks of wood.

5 gallon jugs of water.

Pales full of tamales.

A large tower (at least 3 feet tall) of plastic bottles.

Large bags of garbage.

Bundles of tree branches for fire wood.

Banana bunch towers.

A sizable tree trunk.

I unfortunately, do not have photos of any of these occurrences, as they are fleeting moments, but you’ll have to trust me on this. People carry EVERYTHING on their bikes, and it is hilarious.

Feeling Invincible at My Most Vulnerable: Part 3

This is the final post in a series about my jungle adventure. You can read the first part here, and the second part here.

2.5 hours had passed, and we were just now making it to the damage assessment’s starting point. The damage assessment, or at least the first half, was slow moving. We moved along the seismic line at a snail’s pace while village elders identified trees and their uses. At one point, Egbert said to me, “I am just going to sit here for a while and let them continue, this is like the Stations of the Cross”. Later, under his breath, he muttered to me, "Station Number 2". After a morning of this, around 12:30 we stopped for lunch and to fortify ourselves for the tough part.

Because after our lunch was pure swamp. For 2.5 hours. It didn’t even ease us in. We went from perfectly dry land, to wading through knee-high (and ever deepening) water. And so, we slogged on, with rangers attempting to terrify us by sending a log down the swamp yelling "CROC", or screaming "snake". I like to think I made their day a bit more exciting. Eventually, we hit another river crossing, though this one within the swamp, making things much more difficult, resulting in more than one person falling off the submerged log and getting swept down the river. I am proud to report that I was not one of them! I was not entirely certain what we were crossing into, as there was just a wall of green, but then the machetes came out, and we were cutting our way through the wall of green and the swamp. This is where I was most terrified, as you really could not see anything in front of you, or below you, or to the right or left of you. 

But that terrified feeling never lasted too long, although I do think for any sane person, it would have. I mean, I was wading, waist-deep, through crocodile and snake infested waters, with no ability to see anything around me. And this is where the third item that made me feel invincible came in: my boots. While my boots had caused troubles when walking up the muck hill, I was so very thankful for them as I plowed deeper and deeper into the swamp. They give me a (totally false) sense of security. Of course a snake couldn’t bite through them (yeah, they could)! A crocodile won’t find this boot appetizing (I think it could care less)! These things are so thick; I will just roll over anything that could break my ankle (yeah right!).

Once we crossed this portion of river and swamp, we were in DEEP mangrove swamp. A swamp that smelled so fierce I thought I would gag. And, once again, I was wading up to my waist while crawling over and under and through mangrove roots. It was an adventure, to say the least. But despite the physical exertion, and the fact that in any other situation I would be terrified and grossed out, I was loving it. I had this goofy smile plastered on my face, was laughing throughout most of it, and was enjoying the absolute beauty surrounding me. It was an amazing feeling to be cutting your way through jungle and swamp, knowing few have done it before, and feeling like you are in The Fern Gully.

This continued for quite a while before we hit even deeper swamp over our heads, and we had to head back to the community. This meant a continued slog through the sulfur swamp, and my personal favorite, another deep river crossing. This one came without a log, and thus, we were all forced to throw our bags and machetes across to the other side of the shore, and launch ourselves as far as we could across the river, before kicking like heck so as not to get swept away (and hoping you didn’t swim into one of the machetes that got lost in the swamp/river). If you are lucky like me, you’ll have a park ranger to pluck you out of the river. And then, we made our way out of the deep swamp, back into the obnoxious muck for the final hour back into the village. When we finally made it out 10 hours after we left that morning, the rangers cheered, and I was happy that my invincible feeling was not truly tested, and that, thanks to kind and superhuman rangers, $10 rain boots, and a walking stick, I had made it. Made it to find, somehow in this small community of 190 people, 1.5 hours from the nearest town, an ice cream truck plowing down the street. You better believe that we abandoned our efforts of cleaning the filth from our pants at the town pump, ignored our fatigue, and a made a beeline for that truck. 

Feeling Invincible at My Most Vulnerable: Part 2

This is the second part in a three part series, if you missed the first part, check it out!

We entered into the rainforest with a flourish, greeted by the smiles and laughter of the park rangers, calmly resting along a stream, having waited for who knows how long. The asked us how we were doing, and when Mari responded that she was going to die, Egbert, my favorite ranger, flashed her a megawatt smile that kept me going throughout the day and told her that he had it on good authority that today was not her day to die. After a brief rest, we continued on, happy to have the most difficult part of the way done with.

The next 20 minutes or so of walking was a cakewalk. And then, we hit swamp. At first, the water was just an inch under the top of my boot, and I exclaimed to Mari how excited I was that I pushed the Guatemalan shop owners to search for the higher boots. And then, without warning, we were wading up to our knees in swamp muck, with all sorts of creatures lurking below. At this point, wading up to our knees, we thought we were hard-core. So hard-core. And so we, sandwiched between the rangers (who were quite entertained by our reaction), laughed hysterically, took photos, and stopped when we hit dryer land to wring out our socks and pour the water out of our overflowing boots. 

When we thought this was high water...

We continued this pattern for quite a while, until we stumbled upon the rest of our group. Waiting at a flooded river. To watch us and laugh as we tried to cross it. On a fallen but submerged tree that thankfully picked you off the bottom of the flooded river. So that the water only came up to your waist. And not over your head. With a strong current. And it was at this point that I could do nothing but laugh, and be thankful that I, at one point in my life, was a pretty good gymnast on the beam. And so following Egbert, and with 30 eyes on me, I, in waist-high water, walked sideways on the submerged log, grabbing onto carefully placed sticks to balance myself, while Egbert, with his smile, kept urging me on. I made it across. I cheered for myself. And then I cheered as all the other interns successfully made it across the river without falling in.

That gun was supposed to make us feel better...

We continued on, wading through knee-high swamp water and swollen creeks. Throughout it all, the rangers were joking, pointing out different creatures, creating handholds out of branches to help us cross rivers, holding out hands as we took the final leap from a submerged log to more shallow water, and cutting through dense forest. And through it all, they never lost their sense of humor. It was nice to know that in this unforgiving environment, we had knowledgeable, helpful people looking out for us. It was also nice to know that one of them had a gun (though at the same time a little bit disturbing…could this old, rusted gun get off a shot before a croc feasted on my leg?). These men added to my feeling of invincibility, while also making the journey so much more exciting…

Feeling Invincible at My Most Vulnerable: Part 1

I’ll be breaking my jungle adventure into a three part series. Check back in the coming days for the end of my harrowing journey. It is long, but it is worth it. I promise. And if it’s not, I’ll buy you a pair of rain boots when I get back to the U.S.

It’s no secret that I grew up in the outdoors. I would say that a childhood of frolicking in swamps, canoeing down rivers, birch swinging with my brothers in the sand pit, and hiking in Wisconsin with the family has made me a fairly confident person when it comes to the outdoors. But when I get to a jungle? That all goes out the window. There are so many poisonous creatures lurking, so many trees I shouldn’t touch due to couple inch spikes like a needle carefully hidden along the trunk, so many fake paths to take, so many insects that can feast on my blood, that my outdoor confidence shrinks significantly. I would not say that I am terrified, but I would say that I am relatively wary.

In Ecuador, when helping plant guayusa beds, that wariness went away eventually. Soon, I was no longer wearing gloves when mixing dirt, and I was trudging in my rain boots through mixed rainforest farms to find the next perfect guayusa tree. And so I just assumed that since I found my confidence in Ecuadorean rainforests, I would not have to find it again when I hit Belize. I figured I would hit the ground running in my rain boots. That assumption, though? So wrong.

A few weeks ago, I joined my host organization, SATIIM, to participate in a damage assessment. Back in February, some very astute park rangers noticed that U.S. Capital Energy had illegally started clearing seismic lines through Conejo land. This seismic line is roughly 3 miles long and a couple feet wide (at this point, it was much larger before), and is cut through the jungle, leaving fallen trees and plants in its wake. While USCE cleared the line however, they never got to the exploratory drilling portion, as the rangers reported it, and action was taken against USCE, who was forced to halt all exploration in the district because of their actions. So, now that SATIIM grant money finally came through, SATIIM hired a consultant to walk the seismic line with community members, park rangers, and SATIIM interns to assess the damage. Sounds pretty easy, right? Again, so wrong.

As soon as I set out for the Belizean jungle in a team of 15, I knew I was going to be fighting a totally different beast than I had in Ecuador. For one thing, much of this national park and the community land surrounding it is swamp. You know what swamp means in the rainy season (in which we are right now)? It means flooded swamp. For another thing, we were going DEEP into the jungle. We were given an estimate of 45 minutes just to get to the seismic line. (That time estimate, I reckon, was made when considering the dry season, and considering that the person doing it is some type of super human, or a park ranger). Finally, I had a short acclimation period. I was going to be in the jungle for the rest of the day; I couldn’t afford to be slightly unnerved.

As the group started heading out, the four interns were struggling. It wasn’t that it was ungodly hot, or a steep hill, or that we were out of shape. No, it was that we were walking in sticky, suctiony mud/manure in rain boots that are great for this terrain, and also terrible for this terrain, and with which we have limited experience. Every step was an assessment of the highest bit of land, the least suctiony looking area. Every step was a forceful yank of your foot, accompanied by a large sucking noise. Every step was a cross of your fingers that you would be able to pull your foot out, complete with your rain boot. Because one thing you absolutely don’t want to do, is pull your foot out, and step in that muck without your boot. I, happily, only got truly stuck once on the way into the seismic line, and with the help of another intern, lots of swaying back and forth, and some digging with my hands through the manure and mud, freed my boots.

While we were daintily and slowly picking our way through this muck, our executive director and a handful of others darted off, still daintily picking their way through the muck, but looking like leprechauns as they did it, seemingly without regard for the slow foreigners. And in that way, it was us four interns and one, ever so helpful community member, who happens to be the Alcalde, attempting to coral us on the correct path, laughing at us, and encouraging us. While I greatly appreciated his encouragement, it did not make me feel invincible. What did make me feel invincible? Enter the walking stick. Noticing that we were struggling, and perhaps hoping to increase our pace, Alcalde McCoy cut four walking sticks for us. Those walking sticks turned out to be pure gold when attempting to extricate yourself from the mud, and later, when feeling for hidden holes in the swamp. 

Alcalde McCoy

And with the help of those walking sticks, testing the land, spreading the weight, and serving as an excellent item for leveraging our weight anytime we got stuck, we continued on. The five of us trudged up this muck hill, easily the most difficult part of the day (though definitely not the scariest or most disgusting) for about an hour, before reaching a small opening in the jungle, and three rangers waiting for us. We had survived the first test of the day: the muck hill, with the help of one kind soul and one simple item: a walking stick, an item that made me feel invincible as we clamored up the hill. And, upon entering the dense jungle, I had just met what would increase my feeling of invincibility, the park rangers…

The Little Things

While living abroad definitely comes with its fair share of large changes, I honestly think that for me, it is the smallest things that I notice the most, rather than the fact that hey, people are gawking at me everywhere I go, and hey, I ate rice and beans for about the 15^th time this week.

It is searching your bed nightly for scorpions, cockroaches and spiders.

It is shaking out your clothing for the same reason.

It is not drinking out of the faucet.

It is being wary of what you put in your mouth, questioning whether or not you trust the source of your fruit and veggies.

It is pouring your water out of a massive 5-gallon jug.

It is the frequent power outages, and walking around with a headlight affixed to your body once the darkness sets it.

It is the constant stream of insects through your house.

It is the double packaging of all your foods so that those insects don’t get to it.

It is the inability to flush your toilet paper.

It is the lighting of your janky stove with equally janky matches, hoping every time you will not singe your arm hair or your eyebrows.

I’ll admit that these things, at times, wear on me. At the same time, they soon become routine. A week in, you are not so scared to light the oven. Suddenly, that nightly bed and clothing check becomes reality. Eventually, you stop going to the faucet for water. At a certain point, you decide you can’t eat nothing, and just start eating stuff and crossing your fingers. Somewhere along the line, you appreciate that perhaps the lifting of the 5-gallon jug every day will give you more defined arms, something that is certainly not going to happen from playing tennis in Belize. At some point, you catch an image of yourself with your headlamp resting on your head like a headband while in a house and not out in the wilds, and you laugh. The trail of ants through your bedroom and bathroom ultimately becomes just another neighbor, your once full-hearted attempts to eradicate them subsiding to the belief that really, it is not like the ants are going to do anything to you (not the same for the cockroaches). And, just like I wrote about here, this stuff becomes your new reality. Yes, daily life is harder and comes with more challenges, but it usually comes with pretty big rewards, too.

It is the smiles and cheers you garner from young Mayan boys as you follow their lead and jump 25 feet into roaring water.

It is the afternoons in your hammock, listening to the waves and reading.

It is the evening spent with expats from 5 different countries as you have discussions that are both serious and hilarious.

It is the strong friendships you make with people you’ve only known for a month or two, and all the adventures you share.

It is a 10-hour slog through a relatively undiscovered (and definitely unmapped) jungle swamp.

It is the cry of victory as you kill what you are certain is the last cockroach in your house (always a bit premature, it seems).

It is the satisfaction that you have somehow created a fairly edible meal with meager food and cooking preparation.

It is the calls from your new neighbors and acquaintances as you bike through town.

And with those rewards, the harder, little stuff seems more bearable. You’ll always be disgusted by the toilet paper thing, though.