Saturday, July 1st, 1995

Day 7: San Ignacio, Belize

The Matus Brother's shop in San Ignacio, Belize

I wake with the sun feeling sick as a dog.  Not a good start for a trip into Guatemala that I am concerned about anyway.  I tell Sean I'm having reservations about Tikal.  He doesn't seem too disappointed, and we make our way down to the street.  We straighten up the truck and I tell Victoria that I'm feeling poorly and may cancel the trip.  She doesn't seem too upset.  I sit down with Fletcher inside Eva's as he eats his breakfast.  He gives me his last piece of toast.  That's all I can handle.  I write a bit in my journal.

Victoria and Tara are eating breakfast also.  I wander over to their table and tell them that I'm real sorry, but I definitely can't make the trip.  They aren't thrilled, but appear understanding.  I feel like quite the loser.

I join Sean at a table outside.  The sun is almost unbearable.  It must be 90 degrees outside at 8:30 a.m. We decide to drive out to Ramone's shop and change the oil in the truck.  After I've maneuvered the truck into their garage (photo above), Ramone's helper climbs into the pit with me and does most of the work.  "That's a pretty clean engine," Ramone comments, "it looks good, but for an engineer, it could be cleaner."  We all have a good laugh over this.

Sean with Ramone and Rafeal Matus at their shop

We are thinking of driving south into the Mountain Pine Ridge area.  Victoria and Tara went up yesterday with a tour and said it was pretty cool.  We bid the Matus brothers farewell and head back into town.  At Eva's, we look for Victoria and Tara to see if they want to join us, but are told they have moved on, probably headed south for Placencia.  We wander into a gift shop, and I find a T-shirt that features some Mayan ruins and reads: "Belikin Beer- It's Monumental."  I throw down BZ$15 and wear it out of the store.

Thinking the Mountain Pine Ridge access road is west of town, we drive out on the Western Highway towards the Guatemalan border.  We pass a lot of local Indian-looking people as the road winds along the Mopan River.  We quickly come upon a small sign for Xunantunich jammed between the road and the river.  At the opposite bank, a man waves to us from the deck of a small covered ferry.  The man hand-cranks the ferry over to us, and it begins to rain as I maneuver the truck aboard.  As we slowly make our way across the river, I ask the man how much I owe him.  "For the ferry?  Nothin'.  It's free."  Unbelievable.

A half-dozen Indian children try to sell us Mayan carvings.  Sean and I both promise to buy some on the way back.  The rain comes harder as we drive off on the opposite bank, and turn sharply right to follow the dirt trail.  The rain builds steadily during the mile-long drive through hilly jungle terrain.  We pass a group of tourists slogging through the rain down the muddy, rock-strewn track.  The rain becomes so intense that they can't hear us ten feet behind them, and I must repeatedly blow the horn, as I try to keep some speed up the steeper inclines and not run over tourists.  The windshield wipers don't stand a chance against the deluge.

We arrive at the site at the top of a long hill covered in tall trees.  The tourist group collects and runs for cover while we pay the entrance fee and enter the ruins alone.  The main pyramid stands probably 100 feet tall, and a sign at its base reveals that until recently this was the tallest structure in Belize.  The rain comes down in sheets- eliminating any possibility of photography.  Soaked from head to toe, we climb the lower steps up the center of the pyramid.  Around to the left a trail leads up to some more steps.  Sean heads around back, while I continue up the front face and finally arrive, shivering with cold, at a small enclosure near the top of the structure.  It provides shelter from the torrential rains, and I sit there cross-legged at the top of the temple for a long time.  The rains come in huge sheets, falling like swirling gray snow from the dark, swollen clouds overhead.  The wind blows in great gusts, and thunder crashes roll across the jungle-covered mountains stretching as far as the eye can see.  Rivers of steam flow through the dark green valleys.

Sean comes around the side of the temple and joins me for a moment.  "God is up on top,"  he says.  I believe him.

The rain-swollen Mopan

Eventually we make our way back to the truck.  Driving back to the ferry is a bit of a challenge.  The rocky dirt trail has become a puddle-strewn mud path.  We smash through sections of road which are completely under water from swollen streams feeding the Mopan.  When we finally arrive back at the river, the operator tells us we are lucky, for he was about to dock the ferry permanently because the river is so badly swollen.  He urges us to hurry as I again maneuver the truck onto the boat.  The water has risen so much that I have trouble making the sharp turn onto the ferry, and have to back up against the low cliff face behind us.  Large logs wash down the angry brown river as we crank our way slowly back to the road.

The rain is lighter when we reach the other side.  A raincoat-clad tourist from Maryland named Dennis jumps onto the ferry and introduces himself.  He is hoping we can take him back to San Ignacio.  He is backpacking around the country alone, so we offer to drive him around for a while.  We decide to drive through the town of Benque Viejo towards the Guatemalan border.  The town is small and looks just as I would have imagined it.  We come to a point where a stream feeding the river has overflowed its banks and now flows across the road.  It seems that half the town's children have come out to play in the roaring brown water.  We entertain them by driving through it (photo below).

At the border, black-market money-changers storm the truck before we can turn around, wanting to give us Quetzals for our dollars.  We cause quite a stir, as we do most places.  We drive back to Ramone's, get proper directions into the Mountain Pine Ridge area, and begin the drive up to the famous Rio Frio Caves.  Two hours of driving on the worst roads we've seen- more like trails, actually.  "I keep expecting the road to narrow down into a single-track bike path," comments Dennis.  At times 5 mph is the maximum reasonable speed.  It often looks exactly like driving the forest access roads near Clemson.  Red clay soil, tall scrubby pine trees, rolling hills.  But mostly it is unmistakable Belize.  Sometimes the terrain dips down to a stream, where we crawl across spindly wooden bridges.  Other times the dirt track flattens out and we make good time, but usually we are shaking the hell out of the truck and ourselves at about 25mph.  We hit 55mph once just to see if it can be done.  It's a bit sketchy.

Finally we get to a spot in the dense jungle where the mouth of a large cave can be seen in a depression to the left.  Outside, huge anthills five feet in diameter sprawl across the jungle floor, the holes as big as my thumb.  Standing near the truck, extracting our tourist gear, we must jump from foot to foot to avoid being boarded by the hungry ants.  We are definitely in the rain forest now.  The huge trees obscure the sun and the ground is a tangled mass of life.  Opposite the cave, the black bark of a tall tree supports a large flowering plant twenty feet above the ground.

We enter the cave and explore with flashlights.  It's pretty cool, but we leave hoping that this isn't the cave we drove out here to see.

A quarter mile down the narrow trail we come to the real Rio Frio caves.  It's difficult to express the magnificence of this natural wonder, and the pictures we take surely won't do it justice.  The mouth of the cave arches four stories into the air, but it is dwarfed by the monstrous trees growing around it.  A wide stream flows from within.  As we enter, we all fall silent and stare in awe at the 100 foot peak of the cave's ceiling.  Soft light emanates from the back of the cave, and we discover that it actually forms a 100-yard tunnel through the mountain.  I sit atop a large rock outcropping, forty feet above the burbling stream.  Sean and Dennis wander through the stream, taking off their shoes when they find the sandy beach which has formed in the cave's center.  I soak up the peacefulness and listen to the forest.

The ride back is long and slow.  We fill up with gasoline from the rack before driving out of the jungle.  I feel for the truck.  On the way we stop off at Francis Ford Copula's Blancaneaux Lodge as a diversion.  We find it much too ostentatious for this country.  We take a joyride down Francis' runway before continuing on our way.  Back to San Ignacio and drinks at Eva's.

We check into the Belmoran again.  The sky is black as I wash our laundry in a tub on the roof of the hotel and hang it out on a line to dry.  Bob Marley plays from a stereo in the hotel above Eva's, and the smell of ganja floats up with the joyous voices of the local rastafarians.  Life ain't too bad here.

I almost fall asleep after taking a cold shower.  We have promised Fletcher and the Matus brothers that we'd see them all at Cahal Pech tonight to say good-bye.  A band called Santino's Messengers is playing.  Fletcher raves about them.  The walk up the hill leaves Sean and I exhausted.  There aren't many people up there either, and it costs BZ$8 just to get in. We don't see Ramone or Rafael, but find Fletcher is out on the deck overlooking the town.  We talk for a bit.  Fletcher seems down- he mentions that he thinks some people spend too much time in Belize.  "It effects them, screws them up."  We say good-bye and walk back into town.

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