You better Belize it

Day 2: Saturday, December 8

Today is our first full day in Belize. It's also our monthly date anniversary! We ate breakfast at the hotel for $6 BZ each. I forgot to mention anything about currency. Here they take U.S. and Belize dollars. One Belize dollar is two U.S. dollars- the easiest conversion rate ever. If you've never traveled outside the U.S., aside from Mexico and Canada, this area is a great place to start. They speak English (and Creole and Spanish), have the same standard wall outlets- no converter needed!, and they take U.S. money with a very simple conversion to Belize currency.

On the way to the zoo. West of Hattiesville.

The hotel called us up a cab to take us to the main bus terminal in the sketchy-don't-walk-there part of the city. I'm sure we would've gotten lost anyway with all the not-street streets and road construction. The bus station is hectic with food stands, people coming and going and hanging out, taxis, and buses. There isn't much of a solid bus schedule- everything runs on Belize time. I think it took us about 10 minutes to get a handle on what was going on. We asked at least 2 people, who were standing by the gates where passengers load and unload from the buses, if that bus was going to the zoo. We thought any bus heading west would stop there, but determining which bus that was proved challenging. Neither of them were much help. Finally, a random old man came up and pointed us to a counter where we bought our tickets. We were supposed to get on the West Line bus in terminal 1. All the buses are school buses like we used to ride as kids- Blue Bird- but now they've been painted rasta colors and fly down the road making stops whenver someone wants on or off. There are official bus stops, but if you're just on the side of the road and flag one down, they'll pick you up. It was $3BZ each to the zoo and ticket attendant on board let us know when we were there. [...]

American Alligator

Why check out a zoo? They are the same everywhere right? Well, my zoo experience in India was one of a kind and this particular zoo in Belize is highly recommended by locals, Lonely Planet, and Trip Advisor. It was started after a documentary film about the jungle was completed and the animals had become so domesticated that they couldn't release them back into the wild. Since then, they have taken in a lot of animals orphaned at a young age, injured, bred in captivity, rescued from private collectors, or donated from other zoos. It looks like a zoo, but really it's a wildlife rescue sanctuary. It was $15 US each to get in and all of it goes into maintaining the place. They were doing some construction on the welcome center/ gift shop. They've recently upgraded the paths to allow for wheelchairs too. This trip to the zoo turned out to be a great introduction to many of the animals we'd see in the coming week (like all the coatimundi running around Tikal!)

The Birds of Belize

Immediately when you walk through the welcome center you're met with three paths. Straight in front of you are the macaws. My parents own eclectus parrots who can talk so of course we start by saying hello not in the least expecting they will say anything in return. It's just what you do to parrots. They were very friendly and one surprised us by cheerily saying hello back! The scarlet macaw is the largest parrot species in Belize and it is critically endangered due to habitat destruction and poaching. There are less than 200 remaining in the country!

If you've never seen or heard of the Harpy Eagle, it really is quite impressive. (The San Diego Zoo is the only place in the U.S.) They stand over 3 feet tall and have a 6.5 foot wingspan! An predator that size eats big prey like sloth, monkeys, and other birds- no wonder they are considered one of the world's largest and most powerful eagles. They have very serious pinpoint eyes and talons rivaling a bears. Everything about them is intimidating, well, almost everything. They have the a shrill, high pitched cry, that sounds like the puniest thing you've ever heard from something so fierce! It caught us by surprise to say the least and we had a laugh at his expense.

Harpy Eagle

Keel-billed Toucan

I think my favorite was the Tucan, oh which they had two of the three varieties: Keel-billed Toucan, which is the national bird of Belize and the Collared Aracari. The first is the toucan people usually think of. It's mostly black with a bright yellow chest and a large green bill with a red tip. The second has a mostly black head with a smaller black bill and his body is a mix of red, green, yellow, and black. They are pretty lively little birds hopping all over the branches.

The Jabiru Stork is one of the largest in the world standing 5 feet tall with an 8 foot wingspan! There were 2 or 3 here I think. One was found very young in a backyard after it's mother had been shot. They kept and eye on it, but after several days and seeing that it wasn't eating they called the zoo to come pick up. The vet did not think the nearly starved baby stork would survive, but he did and is doing very well! This is an incredible success story as the Jabiru Stork is very rare. Belize has the healthiest population in Central America at a whopping 24.

Jabiru Stork

The Mammals of Belize

The tapir (sometimes called a mountain cow) is the national animal of Belize. They had a lot of them here at the sanctuary. The first one we saw was a young guy with a special story.

I'm Tambo the tapir

Here's my story for you!

My mama was shot!

But I was saved by the zoo!

Tapirs are special!

We're the symbol for our nation!

So make sure we're here for

our future generations!

The next pen over was a really large guy (or girl, who can tell?) and he must have been there for quite some time as he seemed to be losing his mind. (Oh man, now I'm rhyming too!) We watched him walk around in 6 foot wide counterclockwise circle for a good 5 minutes. We kept thinking he was doing the dog/ cat thing of trying to find the perfect way to lay down or the perfect place to poop. I don't think it was either. He was still going each time we walked by.

Ocelot

They had a few different cats ranging from very small lap cat to piss your pants large. It was late morning while we were here, so the cats weren't active, but we were fortunate to get to see them all- our hidden picture skills came in handy for finding them in their thickly treed homes. The two smallest are the Margay and the Jaguarundi. The Margay looks very similar to an Ocelot. The Jaguarundi is pretty much the same size as the Margay except stockier. Apparently, it has two color phases: gray and a rusty reddish color. We didn't get a good view of this guy because he was sleeping in a cat box and didn't want to say hello. We could tell it was in the red phase though. The ocelot has long been a favorite of mine. We found him cat napping in a sunny spot. The puma was pretty challenging to find. It was by pure luck that I happened to see it through the brush after we'd given up. 

Jaguar

There is a Jaguar pen and there is the Jaguar walk. We didn't see any in the pen and when we got to the walk we couldn't see it either. The walk is an area where you can have a close up encounter, because it can catwalk goes over your head. There are stairs so you can get even closer. There were stairs on the other side of the walk, but you had to push through plants to get to them. It's safe to assume we weren't supposed to go there, but we did anyway. The cat was hanging out in the walk past where visitors could see it from the path. We got caught coming out of the bushes by a park janitor who scolded us and the family who followed us back there, but it was worth it.

A howler monkey

The were two types of peccaries and there's nothing really special about them- they are basically wild hogs with a bristly coat. However, there was a sign by their pen not to put your hand through the fence because they will bite it off. Yikes! 

The monkeys at the zoo seemed to have plenty of roaming space and no type of netting or caging to keep them there. A bit of a mystery, but they seemed very happy. 

Rare albino coatimundi

The coatimundi looks like a mix between a raccoon and a lemur. They are typically darker colored, with piggy-looking snouts at the end of long noses and a long tail. They were hard to find in their pen at the zoo, but they are everywhere once you reach Tikal National Park. The zoo had one very rare albino coatimundi, which you can see to the left. He was sleeping in a tree and would slowly rocking side to side. Every now and then he'd rock a bit too much and nearly topple out. 

It only took about an hour and a half to see the whole place. We walked back out to the Western Highway to stand on the side of the road and wait for a bus to come by. When we got back to the hotel we ran into our first Intrepid travelers! Charlie and Caroline were heading out to find lunch, Gail had just checked in, and Louise waiting to check in. We also realized we no longer had possession of our room key! It must have fallen out when we split from the cab.

Neiri's II

Our meeting wasn't for a few hours, so Matt and I headed out to get lunch. We wanted to go to Jambel's Jerk Pit, but we had some communication issues with the cab driver. In our Lonely Planet book, it looked like it was near the water north of the Princess hotel. We told him what we were looking for and where we thought it was. Apparently he heard "Pickwick" instead of "Princess" which is the same area as where we thought we wanted to go, but we couldn't find Jambel's. He kept going on about how we said Pickwick and here we are and we kept trying to tell him, no, we want to go to Jambel's! Finally, he gets it and says "oh I know where that is. You have to pay me new fare because this is where you told me to go and that is somewhere different." UGH. We made a hasty, frustrated exit of the cab and decided to walk back toward the Swing Bridge area and find something there. We ended up at Neiri's II, which has been featured on the travel channel and has great reviews from Lonely Planet. I don't remember what we ate- shredded pork and rice and beans, I think- and it was amazing. We also ate cassava pudding because we were curious. It's kinda of a gelatinous, brown sugar colored dessert. We highly recommend finding this place if you're ever here. It's easy to find from the Swing Bridge by going north and hanging a right. The place is painted bright green. Once we got back to the hotel we discovered our ill-fated cab driver had returned to the hotel to drop off our key. Yay! Okay, I suppose we can call it even now.

Aerial view looking SE toward Belize City

Everyone made it into town by the 3pm meetup. We met Emilio, our group leader, and 9 other Intrepid travelers: Charlie and Caroline, Heidi, Erica, and Bryan and Danielle all from the States; Helen and Gail from Toronto, and Louise from London. This seems like it's going to be a really fun group of adventurous people! We took a walking tour of Belize City, which having been here for a day already, was nothing new to us, but Emilio could point out and tell us some things we may not have known. All in all, it was a good time to get to know the others. Louise and I spent a while talking about our time India. Helen had been there too, but I didn't learn that till later. As a group we decided to eat at the Bird Isle restaurant for dinner. I was still full from lunch so I just drank beer. Apparently our decision to eat there instead of at the hotel really pissed of the hotel owner. She had taken it upon herself to go out and buy pork chops for dinner expecting that we would pay to eat there and now was stuck with all this food they had been working all day to prepare for us. I think most people in the group did not know this was an issue until after we'd left Belize City. The owner gave Emilio a really hard time that night when we came back and had drinks upstairs. Then again in the morning when we were checking out! I will say that Intrepid is no longer going to use that hotel. The group members were treated just fine as guests; it was only Emilio who got yelled at, but it left a bad taste. I will say the staff there was great and very helpful. The only problem was between the owner, after we decided to eat elsewhere.  Tomorrow, Chicken bus to San Ignacio!

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