Belize 2 – Thur – Go West

Maeve said she’d focused on good thoughts on the drive back from the zoo so that she’d have good dreams that night.
In the morning, she reported it had worked.  In her dream she beat up a crocodile, cooked it up, took it to the zoo and fed it to another crocodile, or something like that.

Kate’s dreams weren’t as nice.  Kate dreamt that water was rising up through the floor of our pond house, which literally stood over the edge of a large pond at TEC.  We’d gotten such hard rainfall at night, amplified by the tin roof on the pondhouse, that her dream really was a natural outcome of the circumstances.  As you can see from the photo, the inside stayed dry and comfortable despite the heavy rains.  And was quite comfortable this time of year, without air conditioning.

The plan for Thursday was to head west to San Ignacio at some point during the day.  Rumored to be only an hour drive west.  However, we planned to take our time at TEC and enjoy the grounds a bit after breakfast, and probably revisit the zoo in the light.  I got up early and got almost 2 hours of quiet time on the deck of our pond house, 30 minutes in the dark and 1.5 in the light.  As things lightened I began to make out wildlife.  There was a flock of white birds painting the tree on my right, 2 larger birds one grey and one brownish across the bay, and a merelot crocodile roused off the opposite bay and swam slowly to within 20’ of our porch where it just hung out apparently resting on some vegetation.  The kids woke eventually and joined me in our own personal wildlife sanctuary.  

They saw the gator and the birds and even spotted a turtle floating nearby.  We headed over to the TEC to round up our breakfast.  On the way a french family with binoculars, pointed out an iguana at the top of a distant tree.  We offered them access to our pondhouse as a perfect dry viewing area as it had begun to rain, and continued onto breakfast, which was fry jacks (breaded deep-friend triangles), shredded cheese, ham, and hard-poached eggs.  Delicious.  We then did a little trail walk to enjoy the nature at TEC, but with the heavy rains, we were unable to venture too far and keep our shoes from getting horribly muddy, so we turned back and headed back to our pond house. 

The bridge back to our pond house.  Notice the rails on both sides.  Just around the corner, the left hand rail disappeared.  Who knows why.  It wasn’t in disrepair, just never built.

Theo trying to stay dry under the vegetation.

We hung there for awhile longer  and watched a couple more crocodiles from close range

Difficult to get any sort of decent shot through the mosquito screen.  The kids named this one white-out for his tail. He (or she… who knows) was only 20’ from our porch.

We then checked out, and jumped over to the zoo and saw everything in the daylight.

Got to see things better during the day (but experience them less).  One of the zookeepers, Patrick, gave us the headsup that rain was likely and it might be a good idea to see the cats now as the cats go into hiding as soon as they hear rain.  That turned out to be good advice, as we, like the cats spent 20 minutes waiting out the heaviest of the rainfall near the end of our visit.  During the day we got to see a few additional animals, including the spider-monkeys, which we finished our day with. 

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It was at about that point when I realized that I’d forgotten to leave the keys to our pondhouse at TEC.  Fortunately, at the zoo, we bumped into the Canadians we’d shared the night tour with, who said they were heading back to TEC.  Kate and I decided there are no dishonest Canadians, and handed our keys over to them to return for us. 

The zoo was just EXCELLENT.  Something to be proud of for anyone working there or associated with it.  The education of the local Belizean is at its core and evidenced everywhere, including the numerous poems painted in white on black signs throughout the zoo.  I’ll leave the zoo with this sign…

After a quick 2 plates of nachos to tide us over, we drove to San Ignacio, which was remarkably easy.  There’s only 1 ‘highway’ that runs west in Belize.  It’s just a 2 laned paved road, passing through many small villages where you experience sleeping policemen that double as cross walks. We hit Santa Elena, the sister city of San Ignacio, separated only by the Macal river.  Totalling about 17k population between the 2 similarly sized cities.  The scare came as we attempted to cross into San Ignacio.  The wooden bridge crossing over the river was completely closed due to high water.

(A shot from the Saturday market later in the week)
Our hotel was on the other side.  Fortunately, we found out that the wooden bridge was the ‘new’ bridge, created to allow single lane one way traffic into town, with an older taller single lane metal bridge heading out of town.  With the new bridge out of order, they just reverted to intermittent two way traffic on the old tall metal bridge.  No problems.  Once we crossed, Kate was able to navigate our crude map and get us to our hotel up the hill.  It was under construction, including a pressure-washing of the pool steps as we walked on our tour.  But that didn’t concern us.  The kids were most impressed by the pool, and were quickly in it.  We let them swim out some of their energy and ate at the hotel restaurant.  Zeke and I were so happy with the 2 meals we’d found and agreed to share, only to find out that they were out of both.  In fact they were out of most of the things we’d ordered.  Kate said her garlic shrimp was the worst she’d had.  Small serving and very dry.  We won’t be dining there again.  As we chatted waiting for our food, Theo disappeared on us.  He arrived back and Kate asked where he’d been.  “I went to the bathroom”, hmmm benign enough.  But that’s often how these Theo stories start.  Kate followed up with where, and that’s where it got interesting.  “In our room.  The door was wide open”… YIKES.  really, did I leave the door unlocked with all our electronics laying out!  I didn’t think so, but it was worth the short trip to our room past the pool to check.  hmmm… I got back to the restaurant table to report it’s locked tight now and I could definitely remember just pulling the door shut and testing it to ensure it was locked.  Jane decided to walk Theo back down to the room to solve the mystery.  Sure enough, Theo had walked into the room AFTER our room, and used their bathroom.  We laughed at his misstep and joked that he probably walked right past someone napping in their bed.  Theo’s collected a few funny bathroom missteps in his life.  One of the best being when he was much younger, 4 or 5?  And still needed a parent escort in the bathroom.  We were at a highway restroom, and Kate was his escort, so he was using the women’s bathroom.  Kate “stood guard” outside the stall as Theo worked on things.  Kate was startled by a woman’s loud shriek in the next stall over.  Theo had popped his head under the stall and said, “hello” to the lady next door.  Completely unaware of the response he would get.  He was so shocked Kate reported he repeatedly said “sorry, sorry, sorry” and ducked back into his stall.  Kate apologized profusely to the lady who was still catching her breath from the shock when she came out many minutes later.  That’s our Theo.  He keeps life interesting.