We’re in Belize, can you belize it? We’ve each been allocated ten Belize-related puns for our time here, so if I sprinkle in a few in this blog post, it’s just because I’m trying to get them out of the way (and they’re fun). Our first stop here after the sweltering jungles of Tikal in northeastern Guatemala was the sweltering immigration office on Belize’s western border. We experienced unbelizeable amounts of sweat and a few tears waiting in line in that AC-less room as we truly came to realize just how hot and humid it will be here. After a few days and a few more treks into the jungle, you better belize that I’m still not used to it.
Overall, these last few days have been a complete whirlwind, quite unlike the daily routine we became accustomed to over two and a half weeks in Antigua. Yesterday, we made our longest drive yet and stopped along the way at the San Antonio Women’s Cooperative and the Belize Zoo. My inner child rejoiced at the opportunity to play around with wet clay and pet a fuzzy baby tapir. The tapir (or mountain cow) is Belize’s national animal and apparently they’re as ubiquitous as deer are in the US. For that reason, their natural environment is being encroached on by humans. The fresh baby in the picture is named Fuego because he was found and brought to the zoo after a fire killed his mother, but the adult is Navidad, his new foster mom! He seems to be doing pretty well and he even got a little nibble of my shoe that he looked like he enjoyed.
Today’s trip to the Maya site of Lamanai is probably one of my favorites so far. We took a two hour boat ride down the New River that simultaneously felt like a vacation and an educational lesson on the wildlife and history of the area. In the site itself, we summited the last pyramids we’ll climb on this trip and that’s when I started to realize that we’re at a really bittersweet point: so far in space and time from Antigua and so close to going home. We took the boat out again for dinner and watched an incredible sunset and then rode back to the hotel in pitch darkness, and that’s when the emotions really started to set in. Be-lease don’t make me be-leave Belize!
