Cayo

Day 3: Sunday, December 9

Today is our first official day and we're heading to San Ignacio in the Cayo District near the western border with Guatemala. We are incredible excited to get rolling to the jungle! Belize City was an interesting time, but after two days, it's time to move on. In my opinion, if you are ever in Belize City all you need is 2 hours. One hour to see the sights and shop the local crafters- they're all within half a mile of the Swing Bridge (most are far less than that) and an hour to eat (I recommend Neiri's). Then move on to the Cayes or the Cayo. 

Sam and Louise in San Ignacio

We were told breakfast would be at 7am, but when we got upstairs to eat we were told breakfast was now at 7:30. All fine and good; we are quite alright drinking coffee and chatting on the balcony. Take that! The bus we wanted to catch is at 8:30, so we did the after-breakfast dash to get our bags and get to the station. The hotel called 4 cabs for 12 people. They all showed up in under 60 seconds and not everyone was ready. The first cab drove away with 3 people in it. The next had 2 people. (We're off to a great start here.) The had the remaining 2 cabs wait which had 3 and 2 people, not counting Emilio was at the front desk making sure everyone had turned in room keys and checked out (and also getting scolded AGAIN by the owner). Wait a minute, that's only 10 people total. We're missing 2 people! But we only just met everyone, how are we supposed to figure out who's missing? After consulting the girls in the other car and trying to remember everyone, none of us can remember seeing the two blonde girls from St. Louis get into any of the cars. They were in the lobby with their bags right before the cabs came and Gail said she saw them walk to the back of the hotel. No one has seen them since. Emilio was leaving to join us in the cab and we're trying to tell him what we think going on. It doesn't look good to lose two people on the first day. We searched the hotel, recounted in our heads, and still couldn't figure out what happened. [...]

Emilio

I'm going to take a moment to explain something about the taxis here. There are taxis that are a part of taxi association, and all the cars with drivers a part of this association have an oval sticker on the side of the car stating as much. However, MOST of the taxis that get called for you are not a part of this. They look like regular cars- no stickers, no taxi signage anywhere, just a dude and a car who will drive you where you want to go. There are no cab fares in the north american sense of paying per mile. You simply tell them where you want to go, and agree on the price. They like to charge more for every person in the car even if you're all going to the same spot.

Now, our fear, seeing as most taxis just look like regular cars, was that a non-taxi had pulled up with all the ones that had been called and that the girls had climbed in and instead of going to the bus station they were now kidnap victims to be trafficked a la Taken (this is a legitimate world problem). Emilio decided we should go ahead to the bus station and that maybe we'd see they had just decided to walk it instead. Walking was our original plan, but since some of our group decided to bring regular suitcases we went with cabs because it was easier for them. No cute blonde girls on the side of the road on the way to the station. They hadn't made it to the station either. At least the rest of the group made it. We are instructed to stay put and "Don't get on any bus until I get back!" and Emilio heads back to the hotel to see if they've turned up. Seems that they have and the hotel owner simply shouts down to Emilio from the balcony that they came back, she called them a cab, and it went to the airport. We're just going to chalk the airport remark up to her still being mad about dinner. He heads back to the bus station and just before he arrives our girls, Heidi and Erica, are climbing out of a cab. WHEW! Major relief! Turns out they had decided to run down to the ATM to get some cash and didn't realize how far away it was (it is farther than you think and there's always a line). By the time they got back we were all gone! Well, we're all together again, let's get out of this city please! 

The bus finally shows up and there has to be 50 people or more waiting to get on not including us with all our luggage. We hop in line only to find ourselves stopped by the tourism police. Poor Emilio. He's had crazy hotel lady yelling at him relentlessly, "lost" and refound two of our group, and paid for the cab 3 times trying to find them, only to get stopped by the tourism police?! In Belize, every guide is licensed by the Tourism Board. If you are doing an activity, the guide MUST be licensed. Now they assume a Guatemalan with a bunch of white people is a tour guide, which he is in a sense, but not that type of tour guide. He only gets us from A to B to C and arranges hotels; he doesn't need a license to do that. He tells us to go ahead and get on the bus which is now nearly full. A bus worker leads us around the bus to load our suitcases in through the back. I'm just not comfortable having my bag with my passport in it out of sight so Matt and I just walk around to get on the bus with our bags. I think only the ones with large traditional suitcases loaded them into the back. 

Getting cosy.

There are no seats left of the bus. Our entire group is standing in the aisle of the school bus trying not to knock out seated passengers with our packs. Once we're all on we're told we need to get off (in all the chaos of the moment none of us understands why) and as soon as we start to delicately turn ourselves around we're being told to stay. The issue is that the bus driver can't see behind him to back the bus up with all of us blocking his view. So we have to squat instead. Our first long ride (it's 3 hours to San Ignacio) on the chicken bus is turning out to be quite an experience. The one blessing is that although initially annoyed, the local passengers are actually being really good sports about it. Some are giggling, a few try to help us gets bags up onto the storage rack, and a few of the skinnier ones squish themselves together to try to leave enough space at the end of the seat for another butt. Normally, a bus heading out on it's route makes regular stops to pick up other passengers, but clearly we're packed to the brim here. Standing room only. We stop at one stop where 3 girls want to get on and their one girlfriend who is already on the bus is shouting from next to me (over halfway to the back of the bus) for the driver to let them on. There's another man who just got out of a taxi who wants on too, but there's just no way. What happened next, I didn't see in whole, but Matt and some of the others did. The man who couldn't fit starts shouting at the driver and pounds the front windshield cracking it. Our bus driver responds by whipping out his machete! In a country where police walk down the street with machine guns, it should not be surprising that a bus driver might wield a weapon of his own. He owns the bus and it comes out of his pocket to pay for a new windshield. 

Helen and Brian love the chicken bus!

So far- LOVE the chicken bus. The is way more fun than private transportation! Slowly, but surely as we make our way west passengers reach their stop and awkwardly make their way off the bus by climbing, hopping, and clambering over and around us. By the time we reach Belmopan we all have proper seats. Belmopan is the capital now (after Hurricane Hattie destroyed everything as far inland as Hattiesville). There really isn't anything in this city, but it has another major bus station. We have a few minutes to jump off if we need to use the bathroom, but none of us wants to pay $1 to use it or give up our precious seats.

An hour later we arrive in San Ignacio. The hotel we're staying in is called Casa Blanca. It's cute and clean, has 3 resident cats, and if you want air conditioning in your room you have to pay $20 US each day. I think only one couple paid for it. The rest just opened the windows and turned on the fan.

Once we were all checked in we wondered down to Mayawalk, a tour operator and restaurant, to hear about what we could do in the area. This is where we met Jimmy, who had passed the business down to his son Aaron. Jimmy is quite a character. He loves attention and flirting and bragging about winning the best bbq grill master in a cook-off sponsored by the Tourism Board. We all decided the next day that we were going on the cave tour of Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM).

It's lunchtime so we walk over to KO-OX HAN-NAH (Let's Go Eat) which is across from the hotel. They have really amazing food. Emilio has a beer in his hand before half of us have even had a chance to enter the restaurant. This happens wherever we go- it's quite miraculous! 

After lunch we split up for an hour. Brian, Danielle, Matt and I walk together. We're going rather aimlessly until we see this round platform at the top of a lot of stairs that looks like a great spot to get a view. The city is built next to the Macal River and up into the hillside. Turns out the viewing platform is part of a hotel that is partway through renovations and upgrades. The owner says it's fine for us to check it out and sends her 7 year old daughter to be our tour guide. It really did have a great 360 degree view from about 5 stories up. 

Matt and Brian. Danielle and I are on the matching platform.

Meeting back up at Mayawalk, Emilio is going to take us to see our first ruins at Cahal Pech. The name translates to "Place of Ticks". Awesome, right? He gives us the option of walking or taking a cab. We choose to walk the "short distance". It was good to walk off the meal, but it didn't take long to understand why Emilio wanted to take cabs-  it was up 2 steep hills. 

We opted to wonder the site without a guide, but there was a lot of interesting information in the gallery at the entrance. For instance, sometimes sacrifices includes chopping off your pinky finger and offering it to the gods in a pottery dish. Also, the Maya were not the tree huggers we might assume. Today we are so concerned with preserving the jungles and forest, but those Maya clear cut everything. It looks jungle-y today because we've let it grow over, but when they were around, they pretty much paved over everything. And it would have been painted red. Can you imagine living in a rock-built city that was entirely red? It must have been impressive. 

The proper way to descend is sideways.

There is another thing unique to the Maya and it is that every ruin has a ball court. No one knows how the game was played, whether it was the winners or losers (or maybe no-one) who were sacrificed, or even why they played. The courts have similar layouts in that there is a distinct field of play and a set of "bleachers" for spectators, but none of the courts are the same size or exactly the same shape. It reminds me a lot of baseball. Every field has a diamond, but the outfield is always different. And the size of the entire playing area differs depending on the level. Compare the scale of a tee-ball field to a major league field. Cahal Pech is small, but a great introduction to the life of the ancient Maya.

Matt at Cahal Pech

On the way back down we stopped by a fancy hotel, The Cahal Pech Village Resort, with a pool and poolside bar and a great view of the city. We learned a little bit of dancing and Emilio's take on the Maya calendar and what will happen on the 21st. 

Sam at Cahal Pech

What we understood from his explanation: The Maya calendar doesn't have an end. Picture it like the insides of a clock with gears of different sizes that interlock and turn each other. There are several numbers that were very important to the Maya: 13, 18, and 20- you see them over and over again. (Today we count in Base 10, but the Maya counted in Base 20.) There are several calendars that are the largest gears turned by the smaller parts. 




The basic components are:

k'in = 1 day

winal = 20 days (aka a month)

Calendar 1: A Tzolkin is a period of 13 winals or 260 days. It is not a solar calendar, but one used to set religious and ceremonial events. There are a few theories as to why it is a 260 day cycle.   Two of them are: 260 days equals 9 months which is the gestational period for the human fetus. It also corresponds to the growing season (wet/dry season) of their region. 

Matt and Brian

Calendar 2: A Ha'ab is approximately a solar year at 360 days. It is made up of 18 months of 20 days each. The 5 (missing) days at the end of the Ha'ab, we're considered nameless days between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. During this time they performed rituals to ward off evil spirits and did not leave their homes or bathe. 

Calendar 3: Combining the Tzolkin and the Ha'ab calendars creates the Calendar Round. It is equal to 52 Ha'abs, 73 Tzokins, or 18,980 days. This is approximately a 52 year calendar. 18,980 is the least common multiple of the two calendar lengths of 260 and 365 days. Pictures those two different gears interlocked and spinning.

But, what if we want to go farther out than 52 years? 

Calendar 4: The Long Count. Going back to winals (20 day months), 18 Winals makes a Tun, which is the primary unit of measurement for this calendar (not a k'in). 20 Tuns = K'atun and 20 K'atuns = 1 Baktun or 144,000 days (that number is also important in Christianity). According to the Maya Long Count, December 21, 2012 is the end of the 13th Baktun and start of the 14th. This is a big reason to celebrate since it only happens every 394 years. 

Cahal Pech "The Place of Ticks"

Here's a summary:

1     K'in =   1 day

1  Winal =  20    K'in = a 20-day month

1     Tun = 18  Winal =       360 days = ~1 year          \

1 K'atun =  20    Tun =    7,200 days = ~20 years          The Long Count Calendar

1 Baktun = 20 K'atun = 144,000 days = ~394 years     /

1 Ha'ab =  18 Winal =  360 days + 5 nameless days (like the Tun, but for a different time tracking purpose)

1 Tzokin = 13 Winal =   260 days (For tracking growing seasons)

The Calendar Round = 18,980 days = 52 Ha'ab or 73 Tzokin = ~ 52 years

According to Emilio, the Maya used these calendars to get a really accurate prediction of when something would happen but not what happen. 

Making our way downhill in the dark after several drinks we had a lively dinner at Mayawalk with Jimmy at the grill. The ladies even made a cake for Danielle even though her birthday isn't until Friday. There was lots of rum, but the rum and cokes are just too sweet for me. Emilio introduced Louise and I to the Cappichana. It's rum, soda water, lime, and a splash of coke. Much less sweet and now my favorite rum drink. At the fancy hotel I had a Belize Snow, which you see to your right. By far the fanciest drink I had all vacation.