Stage 2: Harmonyville to Santa Elena

Ride through the Jungle

The road after Harmonyville seems as if they just paved the highway directly through the jungle. This was an amazing ride for me, just due to the sheer contrast to riding in Colorado. Large birds flew overhead every hundred feet or so. A constant chorus came from the trees the entire way - clacks, whoops, chirps, squawks and tweets seemed to announce my passage as I rode by. They were either greeting me or mocking me, I haven’t decided which. But in any case, I was simply impressed by the density of the wildlife inside the forest.

There were a lot of brightly painted houses along the way. 

It was not particularly hot, but it was humid. The air is thick, and fortunately I rode under mostly heavy cloud cover. I stopped on the side of the road for a banana and a horchata, I couldn’t find the fresh coconut water today.

My departure from the farm. 

Quick horchata stop!

Santa Elena / San Ignacio

It wasn’t a particularly long ride - just 30 miles of rolling hills. My host, Mar, met me at a roundabout and we headed to her house to drop my stuff off, she wanted to ride with me around her town to do some sightseeing. She lives in Santa Elena with her mom and two brothers, two dogs and a parrot.  

Inspiration on the basketball court. 

Mayan street art. 

Mar and her mother gave me a warm welcome when I came in. But Mar had a program planned, so we went off on the bikes around some of the neighborhoods in Santa Elena, then to a hammock bridge over the Macal river. The hammock bridge is one of those rickety jungle bridges that you might see in an Indiana Jones movie, that gets cut with a machete just as the bad guy is coming from the other side. In this case, people just casually ride their motorcycles over the bridge, causing it to flex and shake. We stood there and enjoyed as several motorcycles squeezed their way past us.

Motorcyclist on the hammock bridge 

Our ride through the streets

She then took me to downtown San Ignacio. It was a Tuesday, so the market and a lot of stores were closing up by 6:00. We saw some Mayan street art and got some garnaches - bite-sized Belizean chips covered in cheese and salsa.

We then went to a restaurant to enjoy another Belizean specialty - rice and beans. Although I was famished after my ride and downed both a salad and a fish quesadilla, Belizean style, of course. What makes it Belizean style? Well, it was made and eaten in Belize.

Mar was so good at pointing out cultural points and interesting bits about Belize and the region itself. Starting with music - Belize does not have a flourishing music scene because they do not have a large enough population to elevate artists. However, Belizean music follows a lot of what comes out of the Carribean, especially Jamaica. Some artists have managed to break through and get contracts in the United States. Some Belizean artists that we listened to are:

• Supa G - very danceable music. The dance style for this is called “Punto” - I got a fantastic demonstration from Mar’s mom. 
• Stig da Artist - a rapper who weaves in a lot of Belize-insider stories to his music. For example, there was a scandal at an ER when a raccoon fell from the ceiling and onto a patient who was about to have surgery. There is a viral video showing the hospital staff trying to chase the raccoon from the operating room while the patient is clearly unconscious on the operating table.
• Tanya Carter - a new singer who has been producing elaborate videos. 

She also showed me an Instagram account called “Rice and memes” filled with sardonic memes about life in Belize.

She and her mother schemed about the Belizean food I should try and any particularly Belizean experience I needed to have before I left. At some point, I was too tired to even begin this blog post and passed out.

Fry jacks with ham and beans. 

Special tortilleria in San Ignacio

Rolling out the fry jacks

Mar has worked on and off in the tourism industry, although she currently works for a US-based real estate company fielding requests for short- and long-term rentals. She liked the work because it is remote and she sets her own schedule. But her connection to the tourism industry means that she has a lot of connections to guides and various tours that take place around San Ignacio. I could have spent several weeks just doing sight-seeing and excursions with the information she provided me. 

However, I had my sights set on the ATM cave, which sounded too exotic for me to pass up. She arranged the tour with one of her friends and she came, too. It was me, her, the guide and one other German woman who had booked the tour through her hostel.

The ATM cave is an ancient Mayan ritual site, located deep in the jungle. To get to the mount of the cave, we drove for 9 miles off the main road past mahogany and orange tree farms, past miles of dense brush, and through deep green hills with vapor from small streams rising up above the canopies. After the drive, we were still about 2 miles or so from the entrance of the cave. The hike through the jungle involves three river crossings - one across which we had to swim, and two others that were waist deep, where we had to hold hands and forge against the strong currents to reach the other side.

Our intrepid team to venture into the cave. The government does not allow electronics in the cave itself, but you can Google the ATM cave for more pictures. 

Then begins a roughly 3/4 mile expedition into the cave, which is under about 3 feet of water in most parts, although we did have to swim and submerge under some rocks in a couple of places. The currents through the cave are also very strong and the floor is covered in uneven and sometimes jagged rocks. We had headlamps, but there is only so much to take in while trudging through a wild cave. I will stop here to note that our guide kept talking about the prospect of rain and that several trips have been trapped in the cave due to rising waters for up to 24 hours. Note: do not watch the documentary “The Rescue” before going to the ATM cave, like I did. Through this entire area, there are magnificent cave formations - stalactites and stalagmites, mineral curtains and other deposits that are themselves breathtaking. 

After about an hour we climbed up some rocks, and then up a ladder and into a giant cavern. This cavern was a place where the Maya would come to offer gifts to the gods during periods of drought or soil infertility. They came with elites and priests and left hundreds of ceramic pots, carefully arranged throughout the cave in elaborate displays, some filled with gifts for the gods, others placed below holes in the ceiling to collect water. This is an archaeological site, but it is only partially excavated, and all of the artifacts have been left in-situ for people to observe. To prevent damage to the artifacts the government required that everyone remove their shoes, which forces you to be much more careful and watch your step as you walk on the rocks through the cave. Our guide also pointed out what seem to be modified stalactites and stalagmites - that appear to be visualizations of various deities when seen from certain angles or when the shadow is projected behind it. There are also the remains of about 18 human sacrifices around the cave, as well as some limbs like hands, feet or fingers that were also likely to be part of the rituals. It seems like some of the humans may have been prisoners, as their hands are bound - and some appear to be elites, as evidenced by their body modifications (Mayan elites modified their bodies, even to their babies, to give them appearances such as flattened foreheads or large ear gauges, through which they would place fine stones, like Jade).

The way back was much faster, as we cascaded down with the current and back to the mouth of the cave. After emerging from the cave, the three guests all experienced intense waves of adrenaline from having carefully navigated our way through the cave for the past 2.5 hours. Upon our arrival back at the guide’s car, we enjoyed a nice lunch of chips and salsa, corn, and rice and beans with a plantain on top.

Mar and I were both too tired to do anything more spectacular with the day (how could we follow that up anyway?). I needed to get some food for the road as well as a covid test that I could take to the border on my way out in the morning. I also took my bike to a bike repair shop because I was having difficulty shifting to my lowest “granny” gear and the derailleur needed some extra attention - I wanted it to work right because I saw on the map that I would be climbing some hills the next day. Mar took me to see her friend José, an avid cyclist who also runs a repair shop for seemingly all of the cyclists in the region. He fixed me up and we went home to prepare some Belizean food for dinner.

The bike shop in Santa Elena. 

Mar, her mom and myself all prepared an assortment of fried tortilla chips and fry-bread which, when served with beans and ham are called “fry jacks”. Mar also made a cheese dip to go with the tortilla chips. We had dinner with her uncle, who lives nearby, and her brothers. Mar’s brother is a serious cyclist and we spoke at length about his bike rides and races that he’s won around Belize. There is no pro team in Belize, only a “development team”, so they do not receive sponsorships and he also works for the ministry of the environment at the same time, approving the import of products containing plastic waste. 

They all had fun teaching me, and watching me struggle with, Belizean creole. I like it a lot because it is basically an English dialect composed entirely of slang (and a fair amount of Spanish). When spoken very rapidly amongst themselves, I can’t really hang on to the conversation, especially when it becomes to abstract. But a lot of it is the way in which words are pronounced. For example, “what” is pronounced “whey” and “th” becomes “t”. There is a modified grammar about it, too. “I don’t know” is “me no know no thing”.

After such an eventful day of learning about Belize, both new and ancient, I fell asleep right away, ready to ride in the morning.