Happy New Year!!!
January 2, 2002
Tourists Glam-Traveling
Kyle (Excerpted from his personal page) We people travel for many different reasons. Some to see and do new things, some to experience others' cultures. We travel for adventure and excitement, for activity or leisure pursuits, to see wildlife and environments that may disappear soon. Humans have always traveled for myriad reasons, food, shelter, climate; I just learned that travel for leisure's' sake is called tourism. Tourists can be lulled by the glossy pretty pictures of tropical destinations sold to us by our culture, whether they are reading Outside, Blue, or just flipping through a Patagonia catalog. These publications market a lifestyle, and they glamorize this lifestyle to quite an extent.
But those of us who have traveled and avoided, nay eschewed the first world amenities of destination resorts, know that travel is not always, sometimes never glamorous. Anyone who has dealt with the immediacy of an impending bowel movement due to Montezuma's Revenge in a local urine-soaked toilet seat-less baņo while a cockroach crawls up the wall mere inches from their nose may know what I mean.
Traveling is difficult. It can be stressful. Being in a foreign land, not knowing the customs, the language, it takes us out of our sphere of comfort. Staying within our budgets while trying to convert different currencies can confound even those who have adequate arithmetic skills. Often our sense of personal space is invaded from being in close quarters with people. I often feel that I am conspicuous in my wealth, even though I do not wear jewelry or expensive watches, and my income in my own country is well below poverty level. Feeling too wealthy may cause stress as it may make one feel as if they might be targeted for crime. None of us want to be a victim of robbery, or god forbid, violence. Traveling can be urine-citronella-mildew scented, rain-sweat-sunscreen soaked, tacky skinned, insect-bitten itchy, lethargic attituded hell.
Traveling is rewarding. Perseverance through difficult tasks may fill one with a sense of accomplishment not easily obtained through other activities.
James (Small addendum to Glam Travel) Speaking of glamour, I wanted to do a 'scratch-n-sniff' webpage, but, alas, I don't think it is going to happen. The rank, decaying laundry. The rotting, fetid roadside garbage. The pall of diesel or the burning engine from the decrepit vehicle ahead of you. The shirts mildewing right on your body. Unwashed armpits (among other unwashed appendages). A cloud of bugspray around dusk as everyone bathes in whatever voodoo insect lotion they believe in. The foulest bathrooms in the hemisphere. Dog flatulence. . . while we had two dogs on board it was easy to blame them for the diaper smell permeating the bus interior.
I worked for awhile on a shrimp boat out of Brownsville, Texas, and I remember how, at first, the stench of shrimp and dying marine life was overwhelming, but, after no time at all, you grew accustomed to the odor. This is how it was on Greg as well, I'm sure. We were accustomed to the assaulting odors.
As a means of counteracting the smells, Mace purchased and placed two air fresheners on the ceiling of the bus --- one forward and one aft. We even cleaned the entire bus twice, removing all of it contents, and, one time, just prior to picking up Mollie, we mopped the bus with a citrus perfumed anti-bacterial disinfectant. We have averaged more showers per person per day than we have on any of our previous bus trips. The extraordinary hygiene level is predominantly due to Sharon's shower, but we have also purchased more campsites than on any other trip.
So, I guess what I am saying is that it could have been worse.
~~~
Gracias, Amigos de la Placencia
A
special thanks to everyone who contributed goods and clothing to the community
of Placencia, Belize, which suffered tremendous structural damage due to
Hurricane Iris. Iris made landfall on the 8th of October of last year and
the residents are just beginning to regain their footing. They went two
weeks without electricity and six weeks without running water.
Apparently, according to the Belizean newspapers, the only fatalities were tourists who remained onboard their moored boat at the Placencia dock. However, dozens of homes were lost from a village of about one thousand people. We had approximately 200 pounds of clothing, foodstuffs, small appliances, kitchenware, bottled water and shoes that we dropped off with the Village Council. They told us they would let the teachers know of our contributions and they would distribute it to the neediest families.
January 3, 2002
San Ignacio, Belize
James
We retrieved Heather just like clockwork. We left southern Belize around
10 am, stopped at Brodie's Supermarket in Belize City for supplies and then
showed up at the airport only moments before Continental flight #1956 touched
down from Houston. In fact, as we walked onto the Waving Gallery at
Phillip Goldson International Airport Heather's plane swooped onto the
runway. We were very pleased with our impeccable timing, having driven the
length of the country to achieve our objective.
We immediately departed for the 'mountains' of western Belize and San Ignacio, the only portion of Belize --- easily accessible by school bus --- we had not yet explored. Throughout our journey, we vowed to raft a river. The Macal was the river we had in mind because it was part of the Save the Biogems website and is slated for yet another dam. However, we have been discouraged and certainly not encouraged in regards to the Macal, and now we have decided to boat the Mopan from Soccoths to a bridge to the west of San Ignacio.
Tonight we are decamped at Trek Stop Campground on the highway to Guatemala and the Mayan ruins of Tikal. Trek Stop's owner, John, has generously offered to assist us with our logistics. Show us the put-in and help with running the shuttle by taking me and the bus to the take-out, and shuttling me back, leaving the bus. (Nope, there are no circular rivers in Belize either. . ) A couple of Trek Stop's campers will be joining us. They have traveled from Wisconsin to Belize delivering computer equipment to be used for educational purposes in one of the local communities.
It is quite amazing how things have fallen together to produce this capricious river trip. But that is the nature of these bus trips.
January 4, 2002
Mopan River
James Complacency is the bane of
adventure travel. The moment you let down your guard, trouble finds
you. Many hardcore, long-time 'thrill-seekers' and envelope-pushers (or as
my brother refers to them, "ree-rees", as in relentless recreationists)
have learned the hard way about the price of complacency. If you are
lucky, the price to learn the lesson will be small --- a sprained ankle, a lost
piece of gear, a torn raft. If you are less fortunate, the price may be
too steep to bear --- the loss of life. Of course, the trouble is, the
lesson must be renewed on a regular basis. Maintaining your guard at a
high-state of readiness is extremely difficult. I should know. Even
someone as cautious as I am seems to have to renew a high state of readiness on
an annual basis.
Guide training usually serves this purpose for me. I have to teach safety, so I am forced to reintroduce and reconsider a safety-first attitude every spring. Still, sometimes my guard drops and, occasionally, a 'spanking' must be endured.
This time it happened on a
Class I-II stretch of river several miles from the Guatemalan border. A
pool and drop river with far more pool than drop. The drops were brief
shelves of limestone with one to two foot ledges. Somewhat reminiscent of
the shelving action you find on the Deschutes or the White Salmon. The
rapids were secondary on this river trip. We really were just interested
in getting out on the water and seeing Belize from another perspective.
The float eventually centered on observing iguanas. An iguana float trip, not unlike our bald eagle float trips in Washington. Once you learn how to spot iguanas, you begin to see them everywhere. They seem to favor fig trees. Probably for the fruit and the more airy and open branches with slightly less dense foliage than the other trees in the jungle canopy. But you also will find them in palm trees and just about every other tree in the rain forest. Looking for iguanas was a little like the 'Where's Waldo?' books --- you know they have to be there somewhere.
The large, orange iguanas are the easiest to spot. But even their coloring works as rain forest camouflage since a few leaves or shriveled palms are orange in color. Of course, the smaller, green ones blend naturally into the surroundings and cling closely to the tree limbs. We began to notice chewed on figs dropping into the river as we drifted past overhanging limbs. And then, suddenly, iguanas were crashing through the branches and splatting into the milky green Mopan current. They were either losing their footing or claw hold having fallen asleep or we were startling them out of their torpors. At least four iguanas unceremoniously found themselves all wet after our raft passed by.
That was, essentially, the highlight of the day --- falling iguanas. That and the group of men and boys who were using slingshots in an effort to bring one of the orange ones down from its perch.
Until we got to the take-out at Bullet Tree Falls.
After a day watching iguanas and snowy white egrets, the complacency level was pretty damn high. A one lane bridge marked the take-out. As I approached it I could see, and I mentally noted, that the remains of an older bridge were on the downstream side of the existing structure. Some of the old cement blocks and metal works protruded above the water. An obvious piece of rebar not too far from where I wanted to eddy out, probably influenced my decision-making and masked other potential hazards.
Sure enough, not 10 feet from shore, the raft struck an obstruction just far enough below the surface and hidden at the lower end of a small tongue. I could instantly tell when the raft got jolted that it was an ugly obstruction. A boat ripper. Before I could swear, all of us on the right side of the boat were flung into the river. My first thought when I reached the surface was "I hope no one hit their heads or were otherwise injured by any of the random metal below the surface". I knew the boat would be ripped without looking.
I was fortunate. None of our swimmers were hurt, merely startled. And once again, the river gods administered some humble pie. And, once again, it was well-deserved.
January 05: Back in Sittee
Mace: We have returned.