Fiacré's spade: Belize, Day 2: Cave Hike and Interviews

In the light of day, we were able to fully appreciate our lodgings. Kate and I had been upgraded from the “garden view” room in the lodge where we stayed last year to a “casita.” Frankly, it looked like we had the honeymoon suite with a twin bed thrown in.

The king-sized bed

We had a couch, a mini-refrigerator (which we never used), a coffee maker (also not used), and an outdoor patio with table and four chairs.

The twin bed (left), couch (right), and patio

After breakfast, we piled in the van for the short drive to St. Herman’s cave in the Blue Hole National Park. We each got a hard hat with a head lamp.

Ready to hike the cave

Edgar was the lead guide for the morning. Oscar brought up the rear. Edgar showed us many of the plants we’d seen last year, including the fishtail palm that is used to make a green dye for U. S. currency. When we got to one tree, he asked us to look at the fruit and tell him what it reminded us of. I’m sure we were all thinking the same thing, but I was the only one who would say it out loud: “Testicles.”

"Horse balls"

“Yes,” Edgar said, “this tree is sometimes called horse balls.” Other names include rubber tree or elastic tree. The guide last year called it “grandpa balls.” While different from the true rubber tree, this species has sap that can be made into a bouncy substance. The Maya made their game balls from it. The sap is also sticky. Edgar’s family was too poor to afford store-bought glue when he was a child. He used sap from this tree for his school paste.

Edgar bent down to a rock and poked at something with a stick. The students next to him screamed and recoiled. I leaned over to see a Mexican red-rumped tarantula holding the end of the stick. Nice of it to take up residence right on the trail where we could see it.

Mexican red-rumped tarantula attacking the stick that Edgar used to lure it out

We came to a termite nest. Edgar casually flicked off part of the outer covering. Termites streamed out. “These are good to eat,” he said, holding his finger to the hole so the termites crawled onto his hand. “They taste like mint or carrots. Who wants to try one?”

I ate the termite! We didn’t have the chance last year, which was a true disappointment to one of our students. I thought I’d better take advantage of the moment. I thought it tasted like carrot. Everyone else seemed to think they tasted like mint. I concluded that it was more a difference in taste perception than in the termites, since they were all from the same colony.

“You can even put your tongue right up to the hole if you want to get more of them,” Edgar invited.

Feeling bold, I did that too while the students snapped photos on their cell phones. I, of course, did not get a picture for myself.

We learned all the uses of the Cohune palm. A thatched roof of cohune palm leaves can last seven to nine years. The center of the growing tip can be eaten as heart of palm. Palm oil can be extracted with difficulty from the seed. The seed coat is so hard that it can be burned as fuel and to generate electricity.

We entered the cave from the side we exited last year. To give us a rest from our hike to the cave, Edgar gave us a complete, accurate, and lengthy explanation of the geology of cave formation in Belize. Kate was impressed. He told us that Belize was 65% limestone, explained how the limestone had formed as the bottom of ancient seas and how it had be uplifted to make dry land. Water dissolves the limestone, and there you are—a cave.

Looking out of the cave just after we entered

When he was done with geology, he launched into Maya mythology and how it related to caves. It was all excellent information, but if I’d known he was going to talk so long, I would have taken my pack off and found a good rock to sit on. Instead, I stood throughout the geology lesson and teetered on a narrow rock for the mythology.

In spite of my swollen feet, I was glad to have such a concise description of how the Maya viewed earth, heaven, and the underworld. Edgar drew it on the ground with a stick. He started with the Tree of Life. He drew a circle around the tree. This was the path of the Sun God. The Sun God went through thirteen stages above the ground each day. He then descended to the underworld and became the Jaguar God for nine levels in the darkness before reverting to the Sun God at the next dawn. Edgar said that the Maya certainly knew about wheels, but did not use them, perhaps because the circle was so sacred to them. The underworld, Xibalba, was full of spirits. The Maya went to the caves to make sacrifices to please the gods and bring the rain. When a person died, they went to the underworld and had to pass nine challenges to get to the bottom of the 13 steps to heaven, each of which had a task that had to be accomplished. As we learned last year, if you were killed as a sacrifice, you got to skip all these challenges and tasks and go straight to heaven.

Entering backwards meant that we had to clamber up the giant boulders rather than down them. I thought this might be an improvement, but afterwards couldn’t really make a decision. I remember that this part was the most difficult. That was a false memory. The whole hike seemed unfamiliar. Sometimes that happens just because one is going backwards. One of the guides told Kate that there are two trails through the cave. Because of recent heavy rains, we were taking the one less traveled by. I don’t know if it made all the difference, but the hike was more challenging than I recalled, and what I remembered was bad enough.

A narrow passageway

Jeremy takes a photo of a column

Climbing down over fallen rocks

The exit--at last!

We stopped briefly at Blue Hole. Some of the students got their feet wet. Kate explained how the water wells up from deep springs to create the aqua color.

Some of the students at Blue Hole

We had a traditional Belizean lunch of stew chicken, rice and beans, potato salad (not so traditional), and fried plantains. The juice of the day was watermelon. I had never had watermelon juice before. On a hot day, let me tell you, there is nothing better than a cold watermelon juice. Kate called it “a glass of pink heaven.”

I noted that the lodge had started putting rice in the salt to keep it from caking. In fact, there was more rice than salt in the shakers. The tables still had toothpicks available because, as this picture shows, the rice in the shaker does not prevent the salt from clogging up the holes. So humid.

Mostly rice in the salt shaker--toothpicks still necessary to unclog the holes

We interviewed the lodge staff after lunch. This experience could not have been more different than last year. Last year, everyone we talked to worked 10 days and had 4 days off. This year, we learned that the work schedule depended on how close an employee lived to the lodge. Amalia, who lived in Belmopan, worked 5 days and had 2 days off. Eugene went home every few days. Swift and Keith still worked at the Lodge, but we didn’t interview either of them. Maria was the only repeater. Both Maria and Amalia were K’iche’ Maya. Maria still went home to a traditional village. Amalia, a younger woman, had been raised in Belmopan, but still had aunts, uncles, and cousins in a village to the south. Eugene (Kriol) spent his childhood in Los Angeles. He was particularly adept at comparing the culture of the U.S. with the culture of Belize in a way that the students could understand. We also interviewed Orlin, who had a mixed heritage of Kriol and Mestizo.