Traveling Baker

With 98,000 acres of lush jungle, the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary is a prime place for viewing wildlife in Belize. Almost 300 species of tropical birds call it home. Ditto any number of black howler monkeys, anteaters, armadillos, Baird’s tapirs, deer, otters and even a few “deadly poisonous” snakes. Sarah and I could live our whole lives without seeing those deadly snakes up close, as far as we’re concerned. No, what we wanted to spot was one of the eight jaguars that roam the basin, searching for their next meal.

Sounds fun, right?

The bus dropped us off on the main highway but not the park entrance, which was still six miles away on a lonely dirt road. We had no choice but to hike for two hours in the sweltering afternoon heat.

“This will make us stronger,” Sarah would suggest now and then as I rung out sweat from my shirt. “It’ll build character.”

Nonsense! “I was building lots of character at that bar in Placencia last night,” I’d shout back, reminding her once again of the seaside paradise we had left behind.

We bid the beach farewell from our little window on the bus earlier that morning, naively surmising that “what we need now is a little turf to go with our surf.” Now here we were in the middle of nowhere, swatting hopelessly at mosquitos that could easily carry us away if we hadn’t been weighted down by our backpacks.

We were finally able to breath a sigh of relief when we spotted the visitor’s center in the distance. We made our arrangements for the night in what the park brochure very carefully and very gently called the “rustic” cabin. It had no electricity and single bunk beds. No mosquito netting, but we had brought our own, good enough to cover one mattress, but not both. “We’ll just sleep in the same bed,” Sarah said, eyeing the cracker-sized mattress.

We showered in the dark with cold water, then got dressed and lit a kerosene latern so we could get in a game or two of Uno, our new favorite card game. A couple of Canadian travelers joined us for a game, then taught us a thoughtful card game they called Yennev. One of them learned it in Thailand from a guy with that very name.

After that, we settled in for the night in the bottom bunk. That was just about when the chorus of jungle birds decided it would be a good time to serenade us. Plus, the park brochure didn’t explain that the rustic cabins came with “rustic” sheets that smelled like ass. So as I lay there on my side, hanging off the bed, scratching at my various bug bites, the bird calls reaching a frightening crescendo, I began to realize I would not get any sleep. After an eternity, the bird calls began to sound like words in my mind. “Kill her,” the birds ordered. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”

I just put my fingers in my ears and tried to go to sleep.

Sarah, equally tired and frustrated, eventually threw in the rustic towel and climbed to the top bunk. “I can’t sleep like this,” she said, deciding to fend off the mosquitoes without the net in order to try to get some sleep.

I was awake when the alarm clock went off at 5 in the morning. We had decided to get up extra early for our jaguar hunt, because the big cats are nocturnal creatures.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEEP!

Sarah forgot she was in the top bunk and drowsily rolled over to shut off the clock.

Uuumph!

She hit the concrete floor on her side, uttering a number of expletives in the dark. She had fallen a rustic 5 feet.

We keep waiting for bruises to appear, but so far she seems to have escaped the fall unscathed. “Builds character,” I snickered later.

We hit the trail an hour later as daylight was starting to break through the jungle canopy. We walked as quietly as we could manage, keeping an eye out for those snakes I mentioned before.

Every now and then we’d hear a rustling sound, but it always turned out to be a bird of some sort. I know our feathered friends are exciting to some people, but I can’t get worked up over them. I say: show me the monkey!

But no monkey. No jaguar, either. The closest thing we saw was a lizard. We did better during our hike to the entrance of the park, spotting an iguana sprinting into some grass on the side of the dusty road.

When we got back to the room, we threw our water bottles onto the mattress and took a long look around. “Let’s get out of here,” one of us said. I don’t remember whether Sarah said it or I said it, but we were in a taxi on our way out of the park an hour later.

We’re back on the beach tonight. It took a daylong bus ride, and I’m really getting sick of bus rides, but we are in San Pedro, a touristy resort town on one of the islands (called cayes, pronounced “keys”) in northern Belize. It’s a change of pace for us because we’ve been to places without the crowds, but here it’s one big tourist trap. But the beach is beautiful. And it looks even more beautiful when you realize you’re just not a jungle kind of guy.