St Ignatio, Belize
Somehow I have managed to clip onto a stray Wi-Fi signal here in a small town called St Ignacio on the western border of Belize. We are staying in a little guest house that does not have things like Wi-Fi or Ethernet but it appears to be available in the general atmosphere.
We lived ten life times today. After a rather grand repast in a fine marble and tile dining room next to the pool in Chetumal, we loaded up and headed south, crossing into Belize at 9:30 AM with little difficulty, other than modest ego-strutting by border officials trying to remind themselves of their importance in the universe. They are, in fact, all important if you want to enter their universe.
We passed a few flooded roads as a consequence of hurricane Alice that blew through here three days ago; storm waves are still breaking over seawalls. Mid morning we stopped in a little town called Orange Walk; the former British Honduras retains a number of British language sensibilities. In Orange Walk we took a short break and photo ops in a colorful produce market on the plaza. An hour later we pulled off a road that felt progressively more remote, alighting under a highway bridge at a small marina consisting of about four or five outboard boats and two tiny wood shacks under palm trees.
From there I felt a bit like Marlin Perkins on one of his Mutual of Omaha adventures into the wilds. It’s difficult to describe the sensibility of traveling at high speed in an open boat across thirty miles of river rainforest. It’s very different than jet travel or even driving on the inside lane on the Autobahn. Speed seems more organic, more enfolding. A serpentine river forming nearly complete oxbows made for an experience far exceeding amusement park rides. There’s magic in travelling through ‘forests’ of twelve-inch stalks capped with luminous water lilies. Carpets of huge lily pads covered most of those thirty miles. Walls of emerald canopy enclosed the ever bifurcating rivers. Expansive beauty was to be embraced in abundance. Jesus Christ birds walked across the lily pads and water, defying gravity and thus earning their name. Cormorants and white egrets arced over us.
After traversing this most amazing watery arboreal realm we decelerated at an ignominious dock. For ninety minutes I wondered how anyone would ever find his way through a maze of river channels walled in by canopies of unbroken forest.
Along the way a monkey was spotted swinging through the tree canopy. Before I could almost set up a camera, this female spider monkey jumped down on the bow of our open boat and was right next to me. How human-like its mannerisms were, giving me a vague unsettling question about human origins. This monkey was smart enough to hit us up for snacks of granola bar, nuts, and whatever little bits of snacks we had with us. Staying just long enough for photo ops, she soon headed back into the trees, meeting up with a retiring male.
To enter the ceremonial city of Lamanai is to take a time machine back two thousand years into the early Classic Period of a far advanced civilization that has slipped into oblivion, leaving behind a haunting collection of vast cities, now cloaked in dense jungle. Lamanai is unknown even to many Maya experts, despite magnificent efforts to restore some of the 732 structures that once made up this inconceivably beautiful ceremonial city.
I am often ribbed by friends at the Y for spending so much time on the stair climber as my exercise of choice. They often chide me for never getting to the top. Last week I was telling them I would be getting to the top in a few days. So it was today that I climbed to the top of the grandest of pyramids, known simply as 10-43 on archeological maps. This spectacular structure was built one hundred years before Jesus showed up in Palestine. Climbing a 70 degree stair is akin to climbing a cliff face. Reaching the top must be a bit like summiting a great mountain. We had a breathless view of the world encompassing three countries.
In a day and a half I have already amassed some six hundred images of a long lost world. I can only hope to add a bit of persistence to its memory.
Back on earth we retraced our way across thirty miles of lily pads, finding fine accommodation in a guest house in St Ignacio known simply as Casa Blanca, painted pink and white. At last light we ‘collected’ sunset images of a town painted in lime green, chartreuse, purple, and most any other brilliant color an artist might put on an impressionist palette. Across the street in what is little more than a shack, we had an astonishingly fine Asian dinner in a Thai flavor; curried chicken with coconut milk and lime. Amazing this finely presented meal emerged from a seven foot wood kitchen on the back end of this small cosmopolitan eatery filled with the kind of people that like being off the grid.
Sleep came easily.
Beauty is an infinitely renewable resource. The odds are 100% you will find it, if you but look for it.
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