Fiacré's spade: You better Belize it, Part 3

Tuesday, Dec. 16. We drove an hour and a half north of the lodge to Bermuda Landing to visit the Community Baboon Sanctuary to learn about conservation of black howler monkeys and Kriol use of rainforest plants for housing, food, and medicines. There are no true baboons in Belize. The black howler monkeys were called baboons by slaves from Africa, where baboons are native. I can’t believe that they failed to notice the considerable physical differences between the new monkeys and the ones back home, but they were not taxonomists. Being dumped in a foreign land and forced to harvest mahogany trees was enough to deal with, I’m sure.

After using the restroom marked “Female,” we assembled in the corrugated iron shed that housed the Community Baboon Sanctuary interpretive center and museum. I noticed a camouflage net strung underneath the ceiling. I wondered at its purpose until I saw small insect-eating bats flying around between the net and the roof. Our noise must have disturbed them from their daytime sleep.

Bats hanging from the ceiling of the Community Baboon Sanctuary museum and interpretive center

A friendly cat circulated among the students and selected Kyra as his new BFF (best friend forever, for those not up on the lingo of the day).

Kyra with her new cat friend

Our guide introduced herself as Geraldine. She explained the history of the sanctuary, one of the first places on earth where private landowners signed agreements to use farming practices that were compatible with maintaining the population of howler monkeys. The provisions included leaving trees that were sources of food and shelter for the monkeys, not cutting the forest along the river’s edge, and providing safe corridors for the monkeys to move from one forest fragment to another.

We had barely left the parking lot when Geraldine stopped us, walked to a fence line and pulled the leaf from a plant that resembled a yucca. She held the thorny tip with one hand while she pulled all the flesh from the rest of the leaf, leaving just the fibers. “This makes a needle and t’read,” she explained. “If you rip your pants in the jungle, you can use this to sew them up.”

Geraldine demonstrations jungle needle and thread

Across the road, she pointed out a vermillion flycatcher. Unfortunately, the photo of the bird in the shade failed to capture its remarkably red color.

Vermillion flycatcher

We hadn’t gone far into the jungle when Geraldine stopped in mid-sentence and looked up, noticing some movement or sound that the rest of us missed. “Here they are!” she said, leading us back up the trail. She imitated the howler’s roar, and sure enough, a troop of monkeys came right down the tree almost to arm’s length, and we heard the dominant male’s ear-splitting howl in the tree just above us. A recording of the call of the black howler monkey was used as the sound track for T. rex in Jurassic Park. I saw the same female baby I’d seen last year, judging by the birth date Geraldine shared with us. Her mother had a new infant, born this November.

Four monkeys (including an infant hanging on his mother)

Close up of mom and baby

We watched the howlers for quite a while. When they lost interest in us, Geraldine walked us farther down the trail to show us the national tree of Belize. She asked us to guess what it was, but the only one we could think of was the Ceiba, sacred to the Maya. But no, it is the mahogany, sacred to the Europeans, who began using slave crews to harvest the tree for profit in the mid-1600’s.

A mahogany tree

On our way back to the van, Geraldine showed us, among other plants, the red-flowered herb known as hot lips or womb plant. It is used to ease childbirth and help expel the placenta. Geraldine mentioned in passing that plants that look like a body part are often good for treating that part. The resemblance of the hot lips flower and the labia minora was obvious. And I had only associated the Doctrine of Signatures with Europeans.

Hot lips or womb plant

In the afternoon, our group split up for zip lining and cave tubing.

The zipliners

Liz on zipline

Even though these where the only activities scheduled for fun rather than education, the students at the zip lines got to see and, if sufficiently brave, hold a red rump tarantula.

The cave tubers (makes them sound like potatoes…) saw fruit bats and learned that the acidic poop of the fruit bat dissolves the alkaline limestone of the caves so that large holes develop in the top of the cave where the bats roost.