Lisa and I packed up headed off to Belize for what we had loosly planned
as a week in the jungle, a week at sea, kayaking,snorkeling and camping
on islands and then finally a week on the mainland coast catching up on
R&R and perhaps doing day trips.
I was a bit surprised at how quickly we got there. I guess I had in my
mind from my other international trips, to anticipate being in a plane
for many hours and traveling for 20+ hours. Belize is a short and pleasant
little hop: first to Houston, then directly to Belize City (~2hr flight).
Seems the majority of people we met, came through Houston on Continental.
The economy in Belize is directly related in he US dollar 2:1, so converting
is easy and everyone takes USD, but will usally give change in Belize
dollars, and unless it says USD, it is safe to assume the price you see
is in Belize dollars...after all you are in Belize!
Our first playground was the jungle, courtesy of Cave's
Branch. Everything I looked up on line either linked ot them or highly
recommended them for jungle exploring and awesome caving. We stayed there
5 nights, with 4 full days to do jungle and caving stuff. We met several
people that came in for a couple nights, giving them only one day to do
something and usually they picked the relaxed (a bit too mellow) cave
tubing. I would recommend at least being there for two days worth of exploring.
We stayed in the bunkhouse which was a great deal at $15US a night. The
meals were a bit of a rip though, with no options except a breakfast and
dinner buffet for $12/17US respectivly. The food was ok....but not THAT
good. Plus some of us just don't eat that much. The meal time atmosphere
however was really cool...people hung out, exchanged stories either of
the days adventures or of traveling in general. We definitly met some
incredible and interesting people. Although we were getting a taste of
the Belize jungle and (depending on your guide) learning a bit in the
process, we were not really experinceing the belize people being in a
jungle lodge designed to accomadate tourist and run by an expat. Most
of the guides, housekeeping and kitchen were locals but that was it. The
adventures were $70-105US each. There were a couple adventures that we
had decided we definitly wanted to do, due to our adreline-junkyiness:
the black hole drop which was according to them the most physicaly exhusting
and the waterfall caving. Our original plan was to mix it up: first day
do a hard one, then easy, hard, easy. This would give us sufficant time
to relax and yet keep us worked - and out of trouble. At dinner time the
planner dude came around to take everyone's adventure order for the next
day and we announced we wanted to do the 'waterfall one'....he said no
(in a very polite way). We were told that is was a very physical and technical
outing and that they require you to go on another trip first so they can
see how you do. the answer was still 'no' even after a bit a pleading,
not wanting to give up our alternating plan, and attempting to convience
him that we were strong climber chicks. Basically I think what he saw
was too overly ambitious or eager skinny chicks hoping to be hardcore.
(Little did he know!) After traveling all day, basically sitting around
and eating, we were really hoping for something active, but he insisted
we do something else, and highly pushed the cave tubing, (which was one
of the easier things we thought of doing) so we relunctantly conceded.
The following morning we climbed aboard the trailer thing carrying all
the tubes and hung on for dear life as the tractor took us out of the
jungle, through a bunch of orange groves and to the river before the mouth
of the cave. The tractor ride was by far the harshest thing of the day.
The water was comfortable and the cave was amazing, with several different
large chambers. We ate lunch inside the cave and our guide showed us some
great points of interest, mostly relateing to the Mayan culture and their
activities inside the caves. About half the time was spent walking in
and around the cave and half leasurly floating or slow paddling.
The next day we were discouraged from our jungle trek idea and opted instead
to do the jungle/mountain biking. this was definitly way intense. I had
a blast on the down hill sections where it was more technical and we were
closely surrounded by deep jungle, but really truly hated the uphill sections.
Since it was a long trail time was an issue and there were very few breaks,
with the exception of a long lunch. Lisa realy rocked on the bike, managing
to keep up with the guide fairly well, whereas I could only catch her
if we were going downhill. I guess she favored the peddles and brakes,
whereas I favored niether ;> So after the mtn biking day I began to
think that if the blackhole was the hardest adventure....I could not think
of anything more torturous then that damm bike ride....maybe it would
be nasty hard. The third day we finally got our waterfall caving adventure.
Because of some of the technical rope sections, there had to be two guides
and Lisa and I were the only two going, so it was cool with just the four
of us. On the way there our Kia minibus/pickup thing died in the middle
of an orange grove. Our guide stood on the top of the Kia in an attempt
to radio back to the lodge for a replacement vehicle, but the signal was
still weak and a crackling voice on the other end not only informed him
(as if he didn't know) that the signal was poor...could he please get
to higher ground so they could hear him better. At this we couldn't help
but all lol....here we were in the middle of an emmense orange grove with
no 'higher ground' with our guide holding the radio while standing on
top of the Kia, already obtaining the highest possible postion. Anyway,
maybe you had to be there.... they got the general idea and said a ride
would be there when we finished up. We walked the extra distence to the
jungle trail and worked our way to the mouth of the cave (a different
one then before). The waterfall caving turned out to be the undisputable
best thing at Cave's Branch. In the cave system we walked, scrambled,
checked cool stuff out, rock hoped, waded, did a technical climb behind
and up a small waterfall and even a bit of neceassary swimming. We had
lunch in the cave and eventually came to the see the light of day once
again. The hike out was a bit harsh (I hate steep uphill hiking) and the
bugs were out, but after a nasty but only one hill (aka mountain), it
was a really nice jungle hike back out to the road were our ride was....or
was supposed to be. Waiting in the heat, Lisa and I grabbed an orange
and sat on the ground in the shade of the broken down Kia. This is when
the only negative thing of the day happened: ticks! By the time I noticed
them there were hundreds of them - little itty bitty ones all over my
arms and pants and shoes. Blood sucking creatures really gross me out
and I had visions for days if not weeks of a tiny missed tick being discovered
at a later date huge with my blood. Yuck! As we were franticly brushing
ticks off, and the locals were laughing at us, our ride came. I continued
to find and remove ticks that were roaming around on my clothes looking
for something to attach to, when we got back and proceeded to bee-line
for the showers.
Anyway! Enough of that ickiness....it was a great day. That evening Lisa
started to feel sick and eventually decided to not join me on the next
day which was our final day at Cave's Branch and the day we were doing
the Black Hole Drop. This was the adventure that both of us had been really
excited about doing, so it was really unfortunate that Lisa wasn't well
enough to go. The hike in was suppsed to be the most physical of all their
day trips....I was still convienced it could not be more difficult then
that damm bike ride. Thankfully I was right. It was definitly a healthy
approach in with three or four major uphill sections, where at the top
of each, our very nice and knowledgeable guide kept telling us "one
more hill" with a smirk. The 'hole' was huge! Dropping some 300'
down, from the jungle into another jungle - it was pretty cool, kind of
like finding a lost world. The set-up and rapple was actually a bit slow
and tedious, since one person went at a time, we all had to wait around
both at the top and bottom for everyone. Most of the people there had
not rappled before (fairly intense rap for a first timer), so they were
naturally slower with the set-up and reassurances. The rap was on a bar
lock device so it was slow and actually difficult to feed rope to, plus
they also had a TR set up, so even if I did get a fair amount of rope
through, I could feel the TR hold me. The lower/hole jungle was really
cool to meander around in. Once everyone got down, we escaped via a ladder
on the other side (while on TR). The hike out was knee-aching down. I
would definitly recommend the trip, the jungle hike part was the best
of all of the others and more informational (may have been guide dependant)....the
waterfall was still the best though!
the next morning Lisa and I headed out to Placentcia. Over the past few
days we had tried to find out the bus schedule. The main highway runs
directly infront of Cave's Branch so if you are taking public trans to
or from it is really easy. We just need to know what time to get the bus.
Every different source had a different answer: anything from 8am-9:45
I think was the range. We headed out at 8am and either just missed the
bus, or there just wasn't one until about an hour later. We waved down
our bus as we saw it in the distence barreling down the two-lane highway
at a rather speedy clip for an ancient American school bus conversion.
Our ride to Dangergia was cheap (a couple US dollars) and entertaining.
The passing sceanery was beuitiful, good people watching and an interesting
bus driver with his funcky island dance tunes blasting through the fairly
decent installed stereo system. In Dangergia we discovered there was only
a couple bus to Plancentia from there and the earliest left at 12:15 (?),
so the fact that we may have missed the first bus was kind of moot. We
hung out around and in the bus station, similiar to any other city bus
station: filled with a mix of travelers and 'interesting' people. We killed
time getting snacks nearby and watching a couple (gringo backpackers)
getting constantly harassed by either a drunk or mentaly distrubed guy
in the bus station. When the harassment got a bit out of control (the
travelers had done their best to politily make him go away and deal with
him), a local Belize guy sitting nearby, silently and swiftly got up,
grabbed the harasser and took him outside. The entire incident I found
really interesting.
Anyway, our bus ride the rest of the way to Plancentica was not nearly
as interesting, it was long and a good portion of it was on a dirt road
(decent but nonetheless, dirt). Although we really hadn't done anyting
that day other than sit, Lisa and I were both starting to get really....grumpy
(nicest word I can muster). We wanted our packs off, we wanted our room
and we wanted it quickly. Placentia's Main St is, according to the Guiness
Record Book, the smallest in the world. I'm not really sure what qualifies
it as a "street", since it is simply a sidewalk that runs the
length of the village. There is also , one block over, parralle to this
Main Street, the road that we drove in on, which like the sidewalk dead
ends at the end of the pennisula. So I felt some confusion when locals
would give directions: "take the main street", "the road?",
"no the main street", "the sidewalk?", "yes the
main street". They seemed either unwilling to admit that their main
street is simply a tattered sidewalk along the sand, or they proudly are
holding on to the village's world-wide claim to fame for having the smallest
main street.
So with some confusion and backtracking in blazingly hot tempurtures,
and the mid-afternoon sun baking us, we and our packs made it to our hotel
on the beach. Every place we stayed in seemed to have some humourous or
strange element, which alone could fill pages, so I'll skip those...sufice
to say the place was very well located, right on the sand, with an interesting
owner and hammocks under thatch roof on the beach. There was some intitial
confusion with guide that we got for the first few days exploring, but
eventually that evening we figured out the critical details for the next
couple of days, and spent some time before we passed out, exploring the
village and emailing back home. The next morning we packed up and headed
to the Mayan village of Red Bank, via Dave from Toadal (local operation,
supporting and hiring locals). The plan was to spend the day and evening
in the village, eating each meal in a different house, then hit the river
with a couple inflatable kayaks and paddle our way down the Monkey River,
checking out the wildlife and scenery along the way. The time spent in
the village was nothing less than culturally amazing. On the second morning,
after breakfast, the three of us launched our kayaks into the river (Lisa,
me and Aurther our guide). The paddleing was a bit tedious since the water
was exteremly low. we were having to navigate around a lot of trees (still
left over mess from the hurricane a few years back), and shallow sand
bars. Lisa and I both managed to get ourselves sun burned pretty badly
on this first day out. We made the tragic mistake of waiting a couple
hours before putting on sunblock (just in the rush to get into the water
and get going, we spaced on it), it only took those couple hours in direct
tropical sun to do some serious mischief. Both days we paddled pretty hard, since the current was really slow and we had a bit of distence to
cover (~30 miles). We saw only a few locals, mostly iguna hunting, which
Arthor explained to us in detail. We camped out on a small sandy beach/sandbar
just before the main Monkey River junction, where the river becomes very
wide and more crowded with locals and day tourist coming up via speed
boat from the coast. Arther more than exceded his guide duties, rescuing
us from many tedious beachings of the kayak in shallow waters, cooking
dinner for us while we hid from the evening onslaught of mesquotos and
he definitely won our hearts when it started to rain in the middle of
the night and he got out of his tent to put on our tent fly. The conversations
we had along the way and at meals times about local life, local practices
and history were the highlite of those two days on the river. Lisa and
I surely could have gone solo, but we never would have seen 99% of the
igunas that he pointed out to us...even then we struggled to locate the
huge, but very well camoflaged igunnas.
Once we got back to the village of Plancentcia we checked into our room
on the beach and got ourselves cleaned up, unpacked, and repacked for
the following morning's departure out to sea. That night we had dinner
with the rest of our group to discuss the details of our sea adventure.
THAILAND
Pictures | Trip Report | Country Info/Map | Top of Page
...then came Thailand...
It all started with thirty-two hours of travel. First SFO to Tapei then
to Bangkok then to Karbi, all via air. Once we were in Karbi we had to
get a taxi to AoNang, where we grabbed a long-tail boat to Railay. Whew!
Tim and I were exhusted by the time we got there...not to mention our
sense of time was completely messed up.
Our rough plan was to climb in Railay for four days, take a rest day
to travel to PhiPhi and then climb there for four days. Then for the rest
of the time we were thinking of heading east to the other coast and explore
Ko Samui, or another island and do some snorkeling, kayaking, temple exploring....whatever
got our attention. We pretty much stuck to that plan - end of TR. :) j/k,
you know I have to say than that!
Railay was much more built up than the last time I was there, along with
this were higher prices and less willingness to give discounts. Although
it had been three years, I was disappointed by the new construction, and
the strangness of such a small "island" having numerous swimming
pools. We had some bad luck with the weather: it rained almost every afternoon
we were there - hard! But we did climb in the mornings and the day it
didn't rain we powered through the whole day...albeit too much of that
day was fruastratingly spent walking from crag to crag trying to work
with the tides. Some areas are only accessible at low tide and I think
we had our tide timing messed up. We had really good luck with the climbing
crowds - virtually none. Most places we went, we were the only climbers
there, the only place we ran into a 'crowd' and had to change our route
plans because of other people was at Fire Wall, when we went to do Groove
Tube.