How cheerfully he seems to grin,
-The Crocodile, Lewis Carroll
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
A bit of a personal update before I get started. Vince and I fell in love with and purchased a new home back in October, and finally moved into it during our Christmas holiday. Normally, I’d have tried to be done covering this trip by early December, but between a busy holiday season, and the added work of selling our previous home and moving into the new one, blogging has not been my most pressing priority. Thankfully, we are finally settling into our new place with everything mostly in order (and loving it I might add), and I feel I have time to get back to writing again. This will be the penultimate post in my series on Belize, and the last post will be coming soon as well. In a few months, we have some travel coming up that I am really looking forward to. This will be a handful of destinations that I have wanted to visit for years, but thought I’d never get to due to exorbitant flight prices. We ended up finagling an unbelievable deal on flights that made it possible, and I can’t wait to share more about how the experience goes! Until then, Happy New Year, and I hope 2024 brings great things!
Early morning wakeup calls have never been a strength of mine. As much as I love enjoying a hot cup of tea in the quiet time before sunrise, I simply struggle to convince myself not to hit snooze… That is unless I have a very good reason for being awake. When my alarm shattered the three AM darkness on our second to last day in Belize, I had to forcefully remind myself that I indeed had a very good reason to drag myself out of bed.
I’d booked us a nine AM tour that happened to be on the other side of the country. A three hour drive separated us from the coastal city of Placencia where we would be taking a boat tour upriver in search of some Belizean wildlife we hadn’t encountered yet on our vacation. Dreamy manatees and crocodiles floated lazily through my imagination; just the encouragement I needed to roll out of bed and stumble over to the bathroom for a quick shower. By the time I was drying off, I could hear tired groans echoing from the main room of the cabana where Vince, Bonnie, and David’s alarms were sounding. I sincerely hoped this tour would be worth our trouble.
An hour later, we were all packed into the rental Jeep, which rumbled along a still dark highway in the direction of the capital city of Belmopan. I made a pointless attempt at watching the shadows of jungle leaves roll by through my window, but it was no use. My heavy eyelids fluttered and drooped until I couldn’t fight sleep any longer, and then I drifted into a dream filled with howling monkeys, plants with leaves the size of houses, and a dirt trail that led to nowhere.
I finally jolted out of my slumber to see a cotton candy sunrise glowing around us in soft pinks and purples. A glance at the map on Vince’s phone revealed that we would arrive in Placencia in less than an hour. The sunrise slowly lifted, pale blue creeping across the sky incrementally until the jungle gave way to views of a crashing Caribbean Sea, and impossibly large mansions lined up along the coast. We’d made it to Placencia.
Our first order of business was to find somewhere to eat breakfast. Bonnie and Vince can’t go a morning without coffee, and my stomach was begging for a snack. We found a local cafe and devoured a quick breakfast of muffins before continuing on to the office of our tour operator, Captain Jak’s, where we were directed behind their building to a channel lined with more mansions and lavish hotels. Suddenly I felt out of place in my long-sleeved hiking clothes and floppy hat. I was dressed for repelling bugs and UV rays, not hanging around four star resorts.
Our tour guide/captain was waiting for us in front of a boat with the Captain Jak’s logo plastered on its hull. The four of us hopped aboard and soon we were putting along the channel, gaping as we passed imposing houses. We made one stop to pick up another group of four, and it dawned on me that this was the first time we’d had a tour with other travelers since way back on our Lighthouse Attol dive trip a week before.
Once everyone was settled into a seat, our captain steered the boat out to a large bay, where he picked up the speed, and we zipped along faster than the shore birds that dove and swooped in the sky above us. The boat listed to side as we took a sharp turn into a mangrove swamp, where our captain expertly avoided the tangled roots of the mangrove trees.
When we exited the swamp, we emerged into the gaping mouth of Monkey River. A distinct line formed where the black water of the river met with the salty, green sea. Nestled amongst tall palms on the water’s edge, were a few buildings that belonged to the village of Monkey River. We made a quick stop to place our lunch orders at a small restaurant, and then picked up a local guide named Raymond. Raymond would help us spot wildlife as we cruised upriver, and would provide us with information about the local history and ecology.
Once we were back aboard the boat, I began eagerly scanning the tangle of trees that lined either side of Monkey River, intently searching for any motion that seemed out place. At first, we saw the expected smattering of animals. Large green iguanas lounged on spindly tree branches, and turtles poked their heads out of the water. Little blue herons waded in shallow water, and cormorants and anhingas sunned themselves on fallen logs.
Then, Raymond pointed to something floating beneath a tangle of branches that hung over the river’s edge. I squinted until a brown shape emerged from the shadows, its orb-like eyes protruding from the water. It was a crocodile! This was one of the species I most hoped to see during the tour because it was from the only family of American crocodilian that I had yet to see in the wild. I’d seen American Alligators in the swamps of Louisiana, and black caiman deep in the Peruvian Amazon, but this was my first time seeing any of the four species of crocodile that live in the Americas. This individual could have been one of two species of crocodile found in Belize, the American or the Morelet’s crocodile, but I think it looked a bit more like an American crocodile (in my completely non-expert opinion).
The creature eyed us warily as all of the occupants of our boat furiously clicked off photos. Eventually it had enough of posing, and ducked out of sight under the water. With the crocodile gone, our captain resumed cruising upriver as Raymond kept a watchful eye for any more wildlife. He had the captain slow the boat again so he could point out a group of bats hanging from the shadowed side of a log. He explained that since there were no caves in the area, the bats would sleep in whatever shade they could find during the day time.
A short time late, we slowed again and Raymond pointed to what would be the most surprising highlight of the tour for me. There was a small lizard perched on a tree branch overhanging the water, with its nose pointed obstinately to the sky. Raymond said it was a Basilisk Lizard, also known as the “Jesus Lizard” because it has the peculiar ability to run on top of water for distances of about thirty to sixty feet. I’m not sure that the little reptile realized we had spotted it, because it stood completely still, even when the captain maneuvered the boat right alongside it for a closer look. The creature relied on its natural camouflage rather than fleeing, which gave us the incredible opportunity to observe it right down to its intricately patterned scales.
After finally leaving the basilisk lizard, our captain angled the boat towards a clearing in the trees, and beached its bow against a muddy embankment. It was time for a jungle walk, the reason I’d worn long pants and long sleeves. All of us tourists climbed off the front of the boat, dropping down onto the slick earth. Raymond led the way along a flat, spongey trail, machete in hand. He stopped frequently to tell us about native plants like the Cohune Palm as little land crabs peeked out of their burrows to watch us pass by.
Raymond managed to find a massive crab with gigantic pinchers buried in the mud. He stuck his arm, elbow deep into the ground and pulled out the crab, then let go of it so we could watch it crawl away.
Just then, the loud roar of a howler monkey echoed from a nearby treetop. Raymond motioned for us to approach a sprawling tree with a girthy trunk, and branches that hung low to form what felt like a natural shelter in the middle of the forest. A pair of howler monkeys stared down at us from the branches, backlit in the late morning light that penetrated between the thick jungle canopy. I snapped a few pictures, but the lightning conditions made it impossible for me to get anything amazing, so eventually I gave up and just watched the monkeys until Raymond led us away from the tree.
We followed him though a twisting maze of towering bamboo, and I became a little disoriented as I craned my neck to look up at the tessellated pattern of green stalks. It felt like we’d stepped into a completely different forest, devoid of all of the typical leafy plants I’d grown used to in the Belizean jungle.
Emerging from the copse of bamboo was a return to the familiar, and just on the other side of it, Raymond pointed up to a tree branch where he knew a porcupine lived. This was a Mexican tree porcupine, much different from the North American porcupines I am used to at home in Michigan. It was not at all interested in giving us a look at its face, but we got to see its spiky quills as it walked across the branch far above our heads.
Our trip through the bamboo had led us nearly all the way back to the boat, so it was only a short walk before we were jumping back onto the bow, leaving a trail of muddy footprints on its once-pristine white shell. It was time to retrace our path back to Monkey River town for lunch, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t stop for more wildlife sightings along the way. A tropical slider turtle and a juvenile tiger heron were among the highlights of the return boat ride.
But the show was stolen once again by another crocodile. This was was sunning itself onshore when we found it, but it quickly slid into the water once it realized it had been seen. Once again in my amateur opinion, I think this one may have been a Morelet’s crocodile because of its darker color and slightly broader snout. Don’t take my word for it though, this is just my best guess.
Back in Monkey River town, the lunches we’d ordered earlier were ready for us. By now we’d worked up an appetite, and we devoured the food and soft drinks provided for us. Since we’d eaten so fast, we had plenty of time to poke around a couple of little souvenir stands before it was time to get back on the boat for the last part of our tour.
We waved goodbye to Raymond as the boat pulled away from Monkey River and headed back into the mangrove swamp. For the last segment of the trip, we’d be going in search of manatees, an animal that I’d never seen, but desperately wanted to. There is a shallow lagoon near Placencia, full of the sea grasses that manatees love. Our captain slowly navigated to the center of the protected area and then killed the boat’s motor and gave us a crash course in manatee spotting. He warned that the manatees had been shy lately and that they might prove difficult to find, but we all started scanning the water in hopes that we’d be lucky enough to see them.
Unfortunately, we would have no such luck. After an hour of searching and finding nothing but a very distant view of a manatee’s back briefly breaking the surface, we had to admit defeat. I was slightly disappointed, but this is to be expected on wildlife excursions. There’s no controlling what wild animals are going to do. Sometimes to find what you’re looking far and sometimes you don’t. As we zoomed back towards Placencia, I focused more on all of the amazing creatures we did see instead of dwelling on the absent manatees.
After the tour ended, we decided to stick around Placencia for a while since we wouldn’t make it back to San Ignacio before dark. We bought some ice cream, and then went to a nearby beach to take a swim. Eventually we dried off and made the three hour drive back to our jungle lodge, discussing possible plans for the next day as Vince drove. Tomorrow would be our last full day in Belize, and I’d left it as a free day so we could figure out something spontaneous to do. By the end of the drive we had a plan, and we were all looking forward to spending one last amazing day in the rainforest!
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