Tikal y Belice

June 30, 2010

This past 7 days has been our week of free travel, a bit of a break between the first and second months of classes. It was great. Roxanne and I were joined by Ben Hoover (Goshen) and Joseph Spory (EMU/Hesston) for our trip. We left the City on the 23^rd at 9pm, taking a night bus to Flores, where we took another bus to the Mayan ruins at Tikal. Tikal is amazing, 3,000 years old, abandoned for unknown reasons long before the Spanish showed up. There are 6 major temples, each over 100 feet tall, as well as numerous marketplaces, plazas, dwellings, etc. Two of the tallest temples were “subir-able” (climbable), and emerged above the canopy, giving a spectacular view for 10, 15, 20 miles of absolutely flat Guatemalan rainforest. We also saw lots of wildlife – toucans, two kinds of monkeys, coatis, parakeets, and lots of others. It was SO hot though – we’ve been spoiled by the beautiful weather in the City (nearly never more than 75F). It was probably 90F there, and humid as all-get-out. We were all pretty gross by the time we got back to our hotel (Gringo Perdido [Lost Gringo – wonderful name]), so we hopped in the lake for a bit.

The next day it rained off-and-on all day. Turns out Tropical Storm Alex was making an appearance. We walked down to a nearby restaurant to watch the U.S. lose to Ghana in the Cup. We viewed the game with an Argentinean, two Guatemalans, and an absolutely gorgeous Belgian girl who were all for Ghana. Very multicultural. We swam in the lake more or less for the rest of the afternoon. We had met a Mennonite couple earlier in the day, also staying at the hotel, so we hung out in the lake and talked to them and their children while it absolutely flat-out POURED. Their names are Rob and Tara Cayhill, with children Nathan, Peter, Jonathan, and Ruth, all between the ages of 12 and 18. They were very helpful, and ultimately caused us to change our lodging in Belize, in favor of cheaper accommodations, which ended up being a good choice. They work in the Coban rainforest, protecting quetzals and such, and invited us up to see some. We are SO going.

Sunday was a definite low point. We had to get up at 4:15, but due to the storm, there was no electricity, and EVERYTHING was wet. Roxanne and I gathered our things by the light of my iPod nano screen. We took a bus through Belmopan, Belize, to Belize City, then hopped on another bus and backtracked back through Belmopan to Dangriga, where we waited an hour for a water taxi for a 45 minute ride to Tobacco Caye. It was very hot and humid and we were all pretty tired and quite grumpy. The first thing I noticed about Belize was “the men are so TALL!” The people in Belize, on the coast anyway, are descendents of African slaves brought by the English, and while they aren’t any taller than guys in the U.S., I’ve been used to the short little Guatemalan guys here, with whom I can usually see eye-to-eye. They are known as the Garifuna, and they speak Kriol, a mixture of several African languages, French, Spanish, and English. As it turns out, Belize was colonized by the English, much to the chagrin of the Spanish and the Guatemalans (who still kind of consider Belize “theirs”). They declared independence in the 70s or something, but remain a commonwealth of Britain.

Tobacco Caye is about 25 miles off the coast of Belize (we don’t know for sure, just taking the approximate speed of the boat and the approximate commute time and figuring it). It’s about the size of a football field, all less than 10 feet above sea level, and squashed full of no fewer than 8 little resorts, beach chairs, docks, palm trees and hammocks. But we were practically the only people there, which was kind of awesome. We stayed at a little hotel called “Lana’s on the Reef,” recommended by the Cayhills, and run by Lana herself, a sweet little Garifuna lady who may or may not have been slightly off her rocker. We shared a room with the boys to save $20/night. The fan only worked for about 2 hours during the night, which sucked, but the food was good and there was chocolate cake, and that’s really all that matters.

The next morning we rented snorkel gear and messed around inside the reef, just off the shore of the caye. It was like watching “Finding Nemo” (except without the talking fish and the sea turtles) or a National Geographic documentary (without the helpful droning of the narrator). We saw all sorts of fish, brain coral, fan coral, normal knobbly coral, and a spotted MANTA RAY!!! I was like “please don’t stab me with your tail-thing! My name isn’t Steve Irwin, don’t hurt me!” Turns out it was harmless, according to a Garifuna guy cleaning a fish on the dock, who overheard my excited/panicked shouting to Ben. I also poked a sea anemone and swam through huge schools of tiny fingerlings. We all got fantastically sunburnt (yes Mom, I did put on sunscreen. SPF 50). We decided to go home the next day, mostly because we ran out of money, but that was really pretty ok. We felt like we’d gotten our money’s worth out of the trip.

We left the Caye at 5am on Tuesday, hopped on a bus to Belize City, barely made the 9:30 bus to Flores, and arrived in Flores at about 2:30, with the bus to the City leaving at 9pm. It was a fairly doable wait. We ate dinner, played cards, learned card tricks from a Guatemalan policeman, and chatted for a couple of hours with Cassondra, a GLBTQ protestor from the Pilson District in Chicago (last year’s Interterm class visited Pilson). It somehow came up that we were all Mennonites, so there were the standard Amish/Mennonite/ideology questions, which helped pass 3 hours or so quite easily. We arrived back in the City at about 6:15, and Joseph and I got sort of a bit lost trying to find our way from Zone 1 to our stops on the Periferico, but we made it, so that’s all right. It’s pretty hard to recognize my bus stop coming from the other direction. But I got it right and Joseph didn’t, so the poor guy had to wander around on the wrong highway in the rain for 45 minutes, trying to find a house that didn’t exist. Oops.