Been awhile but I just haven’t been able to get a blog post up. Things just seem to conspire against me having some writing time. We did a month back east, including time in Delaware and Christmas dinner at my sister Lynn’s house in Pennsylvania. Then, right after the New Year we did a trip to Belize with Molly and Mitchell. I just couldn’t find time to write while we were in Belize. Not that I’m complaining.
Heading into Belize.
Molly and Mitchell set up most of the trip, so it was relatively laid back. Not as much birding and photography as I would have planned. We did a couple days in San Pedro for the tourist beach gig, then went inland to San Ignacio for another couple days. Molly and Mitchell headed back to Philly from San Ignacio, but Lise and I went up to Crooked Tree village for some birding and photography.
In short, we had a great time. Belize is the country to go to if you’re worried about being lost in a foreign country. English is the official language. You will also hear Kriol (Belizean Creole) and Spanish, but everyone speaks English. I don’t think I have ever been in a friendlier country and that includes Canada and Japan. Especially considering that Belize is a third world country. Sure, there were plenty of guys and stray dogs just sitting around but that’s expected in a third world country. In no part of the country, at any time, did I feel unsafe. Even when watching the police sitting at the beach drinking a beer.
Bacon in Kriol.
Dogs hanging around.
Dog in an open air bar.
Policeman chilling with a beer.
San Pedro and Caye Caulker are the beachy tourist thing. Good food, especially seafood, lots of beach, and the ocean. Grilled fish and lobster on the beach, right out of the water. The best part of San Pedro was snorkeling in Hol Chan Marine Reserve and at Shark Ray Alley. First time I’ve ever seen a moray eel and an eagle ray swimming in the wild. When we did shark ray alley, the boat crew chummed in a school of nurse sharks. Nurse sharks are harmless. They’re essentially large catfish. Really, really, large catfish. It’s kind of weird when you’re swimming with fish the size that you are. The boat captain made sure to throw the chum around us, so we were surrounded by the beasts.
Rainstorm from the water taxi going to San Pedro.
Water taxi terminal, San Pedro.
Excellent street food place in San Pedro.
Caye Caulker street.
Fisherman at Caye Caulker.
Lobsters and fish being weighed.
Lobsters grilled on the beach.
Mitchell eating a grilled fish.
Swings in the water.
High dive.
We had only one aquatic related wildlife incident. There’s a place in Caye Caulker where you can hand feed small fish to large tarpon. When Molly tried to feed the tarpon, a pelican came up from under the dock grabbing the fish and her arm. No permanent damage but the incident further reinforced her dislike of birds.
Pelican chewing on Molly.
After a couple days in San Pedro we went inland to San Ignacio. A very different atmosphere than the beachy tourist San Pedro gig.
Molly and Mitchell snoozing on the water taxi back to the mainland.
Storm over San Ignacio
San Ignacio is the jumping off place for a number of Maya related sites. We did the Actun Tunichl Muknal (ATM) cave a popular Mayan site. ATM cave is a Mayan religious site, with artifacts and skeletons from a thousand years or so ago. You have to wade a river three times to get to the cave and one of the crossings is chest high. To get into the cave you must swim a short distance, keeping your headlamp up out of the water. Most of the cave you are in water and there’s a few tight squeezes. ATM cave is a moving experience. The cave itself is impressive with great examples of typical cave formations. The thousand-year-old Mayan relics, including remains of human sacrifices, take ATM out of the typical cave tour. Unfortunately, because of problems with a few jackass tourists, cameras are no longer allowed in the cave. The following pictures are from the web and are not mine.
ATM pictures from the web. These are not my pictures.
From San Ignacio we went into Guatemala to visit Tikal, an ancient Mayan city. Tikal is hard to succinctly describe. An ancient city rising out of the jungle. This is Indiana Jones stuff. A couple thousand years ago Tikal was a major metropolitan area but has now been abandoned for a thousand years. The jungle took it over and due to its remoteness, it went relatively undisturbed until the mid-1800s. Now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In many ways Tikal is up there with Machu Picchu. The Mayan’s obviously had an excellent grasp of mathematics and astronomy. It’s hard to imagine the knowledge lost because the Spanish, in their infinite wisdom, thought burning the Mayan writings was a good idea.
Our guide explaining the Mayan number system.
Mayan ruins of Tikal.
While in San Ignacio, Lise and I did a guided birding trip to El Pilar. El Pilar is another Mayan site that stretches across the Belize border into Guatemala. The site is mostly unexcavated and the jungle around it relatively intact. It makes for interesting birding. Because the jungle is intact you get birds that need the intact system. But you stand on mounds knowing you’re standing on an ancient unexplored city buried beneath you.
Wandering livestock on the road to El Pilar.
We had two guides, and two of their friends joined up with us. All were excellent birders. Birding with these guys was fun. For starters, the banter between these guys was exactly the same as you would hear between U.S. birders. With the difference that there was sometimes a momentary switch from English to Kriol.
Thanks to these guys we got a head start on our neotropical migrants like warblers for the year. A number of our migrant species winter down in Belize. Can you blame them? Up here, we have the advantage of their breeding plumage and breeding songs to ID them. In Belize all you hear are their winter chip notes. We were duly impressed with our guides’ ability to ID birds by just the chip calls.
The highlight of the birding trip was getting a quick look at a male lovely cotinga. This blue and purple bird is one of the prettiest, and rarest, birds in Belize. This bird was a big deal. When we spotted it, our guides and their friends started whooping and high fiving each other. It was a life bird for at least one of them, as well as Lise and I. The friends left about a half hour earlier than our guides and us. Apparently, as soon as they were in cell range, they posted the sighting on the Belize birding listserves and eBird. The instant we got back into cell range our guides received a message from their boss wanting to know why they hadn’t immediately informed him of the bird.
Documentary photo of the male lovely cotinga we saw. Francis Canto picture
From San Ignacio, Molly and Mitchell headed back to Philly while Lise and I did a couple days in Crooked Tree village. And village is the proper term. The village is on an island in the middle of Crooked Tree Wildlife Refuge. About a thousand people and no paved roads. Of course, there’s the obligatory dogs and livestock wandering around. Kriol is the main language, but again, everyone knows English if you need help. The grocery store was a small one room affair that was part of someone’s home. No browsing the aisles. You told a lady at a window what you wanted, and she would hand it to you through the window. The restaurant close to us had three menu items. Burger and fries, stew beef, and stew chicken. The stew chicken was excellent and a huge helping along with coconut rice and beans cost $5.00 American. In all fairness to the town, there was some rain every day we were there. The roads were muddy and slick, so we didn’t wander except down to the lodge closest to us. There may have been other amenities in the town that we didn’t see.
Wandering horses.
The daily rainstorms.
We stayed in an Airbnb cottage dating from the mid-1800s. It was the great-grandparents’ home of the gentleman we rented it from. It was rustic, with low water pressure and no air-conditioning. The yard contained trees such as lime, coconut, mango, and cashew that were over a hundred years old. His great-grandparents planted them as food sources. The cottage had its own resident green iguana and black iguana. You really got a feel for rural Belize.
The cottage. The fence is to keep livestock out, not in.
Resident black iguana. There was also a resident green iguana.
Bird’s Eye View Lodge was about a half mile away on slick dirt roads. It’s located on the shores of the lagoon that make the village an island. We did a couple birding boat tours with the lodge and ate most meals there. In the spirit of how friendly Belize is, because the roads were so muddy the lodge would send a driver, at no cost, to pick us up or drop us off. When the cook found out I was gluten free she would make sure to prepare me something suitable. The first evening we ate dinner there, the credit card connection would not work. The cashier just said, “it’s OK, you can just pay tomorrow if you come for breakfast.” And we weren’t staying at the lodge.
Sunrise pictures over the Crooked Tree Lagoon from the birding boat ride.
Wood stork.
Tropical mockingbird.
Common toady-flycatcher.
Snail kite.
Snail kite with an apple snail.
Snail kite eating an apple snail and spitting out what he doesn’t like.
Gray-necked wood-rail.
American pygmy kingfisher.
Osprey.
Limpkin top and glossy ibis immediately above.
Jabiru.
Fork-tailed flycatcher.
Boat-billed heron.
Black-crowned night-heron.
Rufous-tailed hummingbird.
Green iguana in breeding colors showing his stuff.
Frog on the lodge door.
We only had ten days in Belize. Nowhere enough to do the country right. The natural history and birding were great. Thanks to this trip Lise and I are up to 181 bird species already this year and some were lifers for us. But we only had a couple quick birding trips, nowhere enough to catch the diversity Belize holds. The Mayan history and ruins can’t be grasped in a short visit. The Mayan sites need repeated visits and time to grasp their significance. More than a ten-day trip. But a ten-day trip did give us enough time to appreciate the culture of Belize. I have never been to a more friendly and accommodating place than Belize. Take away message – if you have a chance to go to Belize – Go. Do not hesitate, just go.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 