Travel
Jungle Fever
Glimpses of jaguars, toucans, and black orchids reward the intrepid traveler in the unspoiled wilds of Belize.
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One evening, after consuming that feast, I set out again with Gilberto and four other guests for night walk in the jungle. Armed with flashlights, we had rather up-close encounters with tarantulas, bats, spider monkeys, and a playful little ferretlike animal called a kinkajou, which delighted in scratching every inch of its flexible body on the limbs at the top of the trees. Once again, Gilberto’s extensive knowledge was indispensable. He pointed out the red eyes of a wolf spider from one hundred yards away—I stepped the distance off as we walked to within inches of the diminutive arachnid. He showed us an amazing click beetle that glows in the dark like a firefly (except that the click beetle’s greenish-yellow light never turns off and was bright enough for me to read my trail guide). The larva of a distant North American relative of the click beetle is that childhood delight, the glowworm, which looks a little like an illuminated toy train.
In addition to his lifelong accumulation of local jungle lore, Gilberto has augmented his knowledge with the careful reading of field guides sent to him by satisfied patrons of the lodge. He is also a skillful herbalist who practices bush medicine, dispensing traditional plant remedies to the sick and injured.
One occasional surprise of the night walks is the automated camera system. To study the impact of tourists on animal movement, resident biologists Bruce and Carolyn Miller have set up a series of flash cameras that go off when an animal breaks an infrared beam. Judging by the photos on display in the lodge, there is a healthy jaguar population in the area, but getting close enough to see one before it sees you is another story. The Millers’ camera did, by the way, record one shot of me, startled and wide-eyed, as I innocently tripped the camera flash in the darkness.
Just as the mountain lions of North America get blamed for killing livestock, jaguars are often accused by Belizean ranchers of feeding on domestic animals. Barry Bowen has a different view: The jaguars hunt domestic animals only when their natural food sources are depleted by hunters or when the jungle is cleared. Bowen takes particular pride in pointing out a spot where he once saw a full-grown jaguar lying peacefully in a field among his cows and calves. Because he believes strongly in conservation, Bowen has taken it as a personal mission to find ways to use the land productively but with as little disruption as possible to the natural ecosystem. To this end he is experimenting with special varieties of citrus, bananas, and an excellent coffee grown under the jungle canopy. He is also practicing no-till corn planting, which keeps the subsurface soil from drying out as much, and is developing a new crossbreed between English Herefords and the local criollo cattle that needs half as much pasture space. Finding ways to reduce cultivated acreage will result in more habitat being saved for the native species.
When you’ve lost count of the birds and animals at Chan Chich, you can always hop a plane on Tropic Air or Javier’s Flying Service to other beautiful destinations. Belizeans, it seems, fly around the country the way we drive to the store for a loaf of bread.
Near the Mountain Pine Ride National Reserve are the classy back-to-nature Chaa Creek Cottages, lighted by candles and kerosene lamps. Resident chef Bill Altman runs a Belizean and Mexican food cooking school, and there’s a great five-mile canoe trip from the cottages down the Macal River to the town of San Ignacio. The country’s hippest (and perhaps priciest) destinations, complete with a pizza oven in the kitchen a fine view of the Privassion River, a lodge named Blancaneaux, which is owned by filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola. Blancaneaux, by the way, was a legendary nineteenth-century naturalist who conducted extensive biological surveys of the area while searching for a reputed cave-dwelling yeti.
At Lighthouse Reef Resort, on Northern Two Caye (pronounced “key”), hardcore scuba divers can indulge in Belize’s abundant water sports: fly-casting from shore for bonefish, swimming with bottlenose dolphins, or diving the Great Blue Hole, made famous by Jacques Cousteau.
Aside from lodges and resorts, the country’s most popular destination is the town of San Pedro, on Ambergris Caye. It has a long string of sleepy hotels overlooking clear blue water teeming with tropical fish, which are easily viewed while snorkeling or diving. Just stay clear of the coral, because wherever you touch it, it dies. The fishing, not surprisingly, is also spectacular.
The weekly amusement highlight in San Pedro is Wednesday night’s Chicken-drop Bingo at the Pier Lounge in the Spindrift Hotel. The back courtyard is marked off in a large numbered grid and much of the town turns out to drink, laugh, and wager on which squares the chickens will decide to leave a little gift. Now that’s entertainment!
Top-of-the-line accommodations in San Pedro are found at Victoria House, with thatched-roof cabanas and a deep-shaded bar hidden behind a colonial colonnade. In the bar, rows of thick pillows cushion the bottoms of a thirsty crowd swigging the fine Belizean brew—Belikin Beer—on tap or in bottles. The regular Belikin packs a 7 percent punch, but my favorite is the thick, dark Belikin Stout (which may soon be available in Texas). The Coca-Cola in Belize is also premium, still made the old-fashioned way: with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. The owner of both the Coca-Cola franchise and Belikin Beer, by the way, is Chan Chich’s Barry Bowen, more proof that Belize is a very small world. As Bowen himself told me: “The Miami airport uses more electricity than the entire country of Belize.”
Indeed, a secret to Belize’s abundant natural beauty is its small population, but will this heavenly backwater survive the pressures of the modern world? Belize shares a long border with heavily overpopulated Guatemala, which has never officially recognized Belize and always needs more raw jungle to cut. The last of the resident British troops, holdovers from colonial days, are now pulling out, and because of its rather freewheeling banking laws, Belize is not on the best of terms with the United States.
In the meantime, heroic conservation efforts continue throughout the country. The 260,000-acre Chiquibul National Park, surrounding the Mayan ruins of Caracol in the rain-soaked southern part of the country, has been created recently, although it is accessible only with a government permit. Bruce and Carolyn Miller are working on this area and also trying to establish a greenbelt called Paseo Pantera, Path of the Panther, that would provide habitat for mountain lions and other wild cats all the way from Panama to the U.S.
On my last morning at Chan Chich, equipped with A Field Guide to the Birds of Mexico by Ernest P. Edwards, I set out on a final solo walk of the forest trails. I watched a Central American river otter play in Chan Chich Creek and identified a green kingfisher, a creamy white laughing falcon, and a rarely sighted slaty-breasted tinamou.
Near the graceful suspension bridge that spans the creek, I spotted an ornate hawk-eagle sitting on its nest. Having watched warily for snakes every day, I was more than happy to see the eagle eating what appeared to be a large fer-de-lance. Mother Nature seemed to be looking out for me. It was, I realized immediately, the perfect end to a perfect vacation.
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