Belize

Belize has a bad rap among the travelers we've met -- too expensive and not friendly. It is certainly more expensive than neighboring Guatemala, with which it has had a long-running land dispute, but we found the Belizeans to be very friendly. The country is primarily English and Kriol speaking, though at the borders Spanish and English seem interchangeable. We had a bit of difficulty getting used to speaking to people in English -- somehow "hello" has come to seem less friendly than "buenos días." Belizean Kriol is a mixture of English, Miskito and West African languages and in my limited experience is entirely incomprehensible.

Leaving Guatemala we argued our way out of a departure tax we had never heard of. We're still not sure whether it was legitimate or not but the speed with which it disappeared makes us think not. In San Ignacio we stayed with the very friendly and knowledgeable John (who only spoke English to us) and his wife Rosa (who only spoke to us in Spanish.) John is a former tour guide and told us a gripping story about beating off with his umbrella a wild pig that was attacking his Australian client. He finally had to grab the pig and "Whomp!" it against a tree. John proudly repeated a few times that "You think you have the first black leader in the Americas, but it was really us!" (Prime Minister Dean Barrow is pictured below.)

We visited two impressive Maya ruins outside San Ignacio at Xunantunich and Cahal Pech and walked into the hills around the town. While we waited at the bus stop for our ride home from Xunantunich we had two separate people approach us just to chat. One man had spent some time working in the local chicle-harvesting industry and described the method of hacking into the tree's trunk and limbs, letting the sap run down a master channel to a bag at the bottom. (Chicle sap was the rubbery component of chewing gum and Wrigley's was big in Belize and Guatemala.) Gregorio, our other acquaintance, had had a debilitating stroke a few years before and proudly explained how he had worked to regain much of his ability to walk and speak. He discussed how contemporary Maya culture was being eroded as young people move away from indigenous communities.


















On our second day in Belize we rented a canoe and paddled down the Mopan river. We saw a lot of beautiful birds and actually had some blue sky! (We have been discouraged by the gray skies that linger over all our visits to ruins and make for drab photos.) We pulled the canoe out at a pretty landing and found a lovely eco-hotel at the top of the hill. The limeades at Table Rock were delicious and we chatted with Jen and Chris, the U.S. couple who act as the clearly excellent manager and chef. For those who are not traveling on a shoestring we recommend Table Rock!





It was a tough call but, making a genuine effort to get home within our second year, we decided to move on quickly from Belize to Mexico. We have the additional attraction of meeting up with our friend Scott in Oaxaca to keep us moving. On our way from San Ignacio to Belize City we stopped at the Belize Zoo. The animals here are all local, rehabilitated injured creatures who can't be rereleased. There were great photos of the female harpy eagle who refused to stay away once released and had to be fended off with a chair before getting back into the comfort of her cage. Mike also has some nice video of the snuffly baby tapir Indy, and the weasel-like grisons that somehow move forward while running in circles.









From Belize City we got a bus to Corozal near the Mexican border, stamped out of Belize and stamped into Mexico. A local bus took us to Chetumal where we found a couple of Mexican beers and a bus to Tulum.

Costa Rica

Our border crossing from Panama was easy -- the official asked for our tourist cards, I said we didn't have any, he stamped our passports. The cards seem to be something you get or don't depending on your arrival, and that's a problem or isn't depending on your border official. From Paso Canoas we got ourselves on a bus to Golfito, a little town on the Pacific Coast and checked into El Tucan, our flophouse for the night. From Golfito we took a lancha to Puerto Jimenez, an hour and a half across the gulf.



Jamie, a battered Canadian septuagenarian met us at the dock. He would not have looked out of place sitting on the sidewalk at 6th and Market but his unpressured approach and plethora of apparently solid information won us over. We followed him to the squeaky clean Corner, past trees full of red macaws, and bunked down.

Puerto Jimenez is on the Peninsula Osa, home of Parque Nacional Corcovado and much jungle. It turned out that access to many parts of the park is limited right now, due to the rainy season and to current restoration work. Instead of the trek we had planned in Corcovado we decided to check out Bolita, an outpost in the rainforest on the border of the park. We had the isolated cabin, kitchen and hammocks to ourselves and spent a day hiking to several waterfalls with toucans and other beautiful birds overhead. We saw a couple of types of frogs, one of them tiny and red with green legs. And we slept under mosquito netting with four small black bats roosting on the beam above us.



















From Puerto Jimenez we caught the bus for El Palmar and from there to Dominical, a tranquilo little beach town. We checked into Camping Antorchas where Jorge and Deily run a lovely place just off the beach. It is the end of sea turtle egg-laying season and many local organizations are involved in collecting eggs to hatch in protected areas. We met a woman with 3 slightly malformed baby turtles in a plastic bowl, eating shrimp and fattening up for their release.
We spent a day on the beach and then a day hiking in the rain at the eco-retreat Hacienda Baru. In the park the only big animals we saw were pizotes, white nosed coatis. It is wonderful to see these animals walking up tree trunks and nestling down in the crowns of palm trees. We met one on the road and named him Sandwiches.






We were hoping to see sloths in our rainforest time in Costa Rica and moved on to Quepos to check our Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio a bit further north. We stayed in the Mar y Luna hotel in Quepos and took the short bus ride to M.A. where we were treated to at least 5 sloth sightings. They are lovely and strange to watch climing in the trees, moving verrrrry slowly. We also saw a couple of venemous snakes, the eyelash viper and the fer-de-lance, and squirrel and capuchin monkeys. We have still only heard the howler monkeys.







Costa Rica is rather expensive for Central America and we decided to move quickly up to Nicaragua. We met a nice couple from New York on the bus to San Jose who got us excited about Honduras and Mexico, and from San Jose caught the bus for Los Chiles and a river boat to the Nicaraguan border.