Tom Eppenberger Jr’s blog

Those gnarly bites that Shelly got in the “jungle” waiting for the rest of the group today… well, they were growing rapidly.

She had five bites total, and they all grew substantially in size from 2 PM to 12 AM. The most obvious one was at the base of her thumb, and it grew from the size of a Nickel to a half dollar in about 10 hours.

Shelly woke me up and then went and found one of the owners of Maya Mountain, Susie, who just happened to be up working on another project. She woke up her husband, Bart, and he volunteered to drive us to the private hospital (the public ones are in bad shape), and we accepted (it was much more appealing than dealing with taxis after all).

Once we arrived at the hospital, an older Spanish gentleman opened the door for us, with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Yep, this was a little different from home. Because most of the people working at that hour spoke Spanish first and English second, Bart also ended up serving as a translator for us. My two years of Spanish in high school helped, but not enough to be able to deal with the situation.

Within about 5 minutes, we were in a room and had a nurse examining the bites. She decided it was an allergic reaction and immediately began prepping Shelly for a shot. We had to almost forcibly stop the woman from administering the shot, and ask for a few minutes to talk about things. When the nurse came back into the room a minute or so later and started trying to give the shot again without asking anything from us, I had to ask her to leave. Another nurse came in, and she spoke much less English, but was much nicer to us and more aware of our needs and concerns.

After getting some help from Bart, a Doctor came in and examined the bites. He came to the same conclusion as the nurse, that it was an allergic reaction, but he helped to quell some of the fears that we had, and explained things to our satisfaction.

Shelly got a 500mg shot of Hidrocortisona, and they kept an eye on her for about 45 minutes or so. At that time, we were given five Cetirizina pills which she was to take each day for the next five days (she has yet to take one ). Our bill for this visit (Emergency Room visit + doctor’s exam + injection + prescription) came to a total of $74 BZ, or $37 US. And, no, I didn’t forget to add any zeros in that amount. Oh, and it was cash only, no credit cards accepted.

Total time elapsed, less than two hours.

She is now doing much better, and the allergic reaction seems to have be stopped. While her bites are the same size, they are fading fast and are no longer increasing in size.

This was quite an experience, to say the least.

Today was the earliest day on the trip so far. We had to be up at 4:45 AM in order to get  breakfast at 5:30 AM, and then be on the road by 6:30 AM. This was the full-day trip into Guatemala to visit Tikal, one of the largest Maya ruin sites.

Our Guatemalan guide drove us to the border, and then we had to walk through the immigration offices and get in a different van on the other side. Maya Mountain has this process down to a science (since they do it weekly), and it made everything pretty painless. Getting through the border only took about 15-20 minutes, and that was for all 14 people in our party. Once in Guatemala, we had an hour and a half drive to Tikal.

We carried Lane’s car seat with us across the border, but nobody ever stopped to tell us that the vans in Guatemala have no seat belts. When I asked the guide about this, his response was, “Guatemala doesn’t care about people in vans…” and everyone chuckled. It was said in a very sarcastic tone after all. Regardless, Lane sat in his car seat for the whole trip.

Once we finally arrived in Tikal, the tour started at the Tikal Museum. There were lots of Mayan artifacts, and exhibits that talked about what was presently known about the history. The museum was very small, but contained lots of cool stuff.

Now, we began our trek. We had been told this would be a walking tour, but nobody realized that what they really meant was a 5 mile tour on all kinds of terrain. Luckily we brought the backpack to carry Lane, but it did turn out to be quite a long day.

Our tour included seeing four of the Mayan temples at the site, and several plazas. The most amazing site was at the top of Temple IV, which is also the highest peak at the site. It was quite a trip up the make shift stair cases, but you were fully rewarded once at the top. The view was the same that George Lucas used to show Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi. Michelle, Griffin, Dante and Suzette all made the trip up to the top with me. Even though I am scared of heights, there was no way I was going to go all that way and not see the view from up there.

After that temple, we took a “shortcut” through the “jungle” to get back for a late lunch. While on the trail back, some of us got to see some monkeys up in the trees playing, but unfortunately, Lane wasn’t one of them. Him and Michelle ended up way ahead of the pack, as they were both very tired and just trying to get to the end of the trail to get some food and rest.

While waiting for the rest of the group, Michelle got bit several times by what we believe to be a mosquito. She did kill the bug, and it turned out to be very bloody, but the bites were pretty gnarly looking.

Our lunch was at a restaurant there at the Tikal site, and wasn’t great, but by that point in the day, anything could have been on my plate and it would have been eaten. After lunch, we got right back in the van to head home. Lots of people on the van were asleep before we got out of Tikal.

Just before the Belize border, we stopped at a gift shop, and we left a decent amount of money in the country. I also got some Guatemalan change back, meaning I had three different currencies in my wallet, something that I don’t think had ever happened before. It was a pretty cool feeling. The exchange rate between Guatemala and the US is something like 7 to 1, so it is much more confusing that Belize (which is exactly 2 to 1, meaning $1 US is $2 BZ).

Getting across the border was again very painless, and there was nobody even there to verify anything that people wanted to declare bringing back in. So, very different than I am used to, but much easier to deal with.

We ended up getting back around 5:00 PM, about 30 minutes earlier than we expected, but everyone was happy to be back. It really had been a very long day.

Today’s menu was:

Breakfast:

• Banana pancakes with orange sauce
• Watermelon 
• Papaya

Lunch:

• Vegetable plate with peppers, carrots, Mayan squash and onions
• Beans and rice 
• Fried plantains 
• Eggs

Dinner:

• Stuffed eggs
• Peanut soup
• Thai stir fry with tofu and bean sprouts and Coconut rice
• Papaya cake a la mode

Actually, it went more like this… Shelly opened a drawer in our room and casually looked in it while reaching for a shirt… jumped back about five feet while trying to push the drawer closed and yelled…

“Holy fuck! There’s a scorpion! A big black scorpion… in the the drawer!”

Also, in the interest in full disclosure, you should know that while all of the following was happening, Lane was sound asleep in our bed, about 10 feet away. He slept right up until the very end.

While I initially thought my wife was seeing things (not to mention a bit crazy), I was a little scared when trying to figure out what to do. We both looked at each other for a minute or two and tried to figure out what was what. We decided that it was either still in the drawer, or it had jumped out when she discovered it.

So, we slowly and carefully pulled the drawer out and went through every item of clothing… nothing.

We went through my open laptop bag, which was directly below the open drawer… nothing.

Michelle went down to get help from an employee while I continued the search. Phil heard what was going on and also headed up to help. He quickly took charge of things and we went through just about everything in the room… nothing.

The employee and myself unfolded every blanket and item of clothing in our bags… nothing.

We moved the beds and furniture in the room… nothing.

Finally we assumed it took off and started putting everything back in its place. All the blankets, all the clothes, all the bags. Phil and the employee took off.

When I finally lifted the last duffel bag off the ground to put it back on the shelf, out ran a black scorpion, right into my shoes. I yelled something like “Holy crap! There it is!”

We had been told by both Phil and the employee to smash it “as hard as we could” with a shoe. Anything less than “as hard as we could” would simply piss it off and we’d be in trouble…

Well, it was in my damn shoes and so I didn’t know what to do. After a second of “OMG’s” and “Holy craps” being yelled back and fourth, I did the two things that camera naturally… I asked Michelle to get the camera, and then yelled for Phil…

Michelle grabbed the camera, and one of her shoes. She was closer to it, and had a shoe, so she hit it — but not has hard as she could. Sure enough, it was pissed, a bit disoriented, and looking for something to sting. This is about when Phil got in the door, ripped off his sandal, raised it way above his head and unleashed a fury on that scorpion. He let go of the sandal just before it hit the ground, and that thing must have bounced a good 2-3 feet off the ground. It was dead, laughter ensued, photos were taken, and Lane finally woke up.

The staff all joked about this with us, as it is a very uncommon event, but certainly nothing that we will forget anytime soon.

Two things are for certain though… we will sleep a lot better tonight knowing the scorpion is now food for other insects here, and we will be shaking out our clothes before putting the on for the remainder of our stay.

Our scheduled trip for today was to be an all-day event, but mother nature got in the way.

Before any of that could happen though, Lane’s poor feet were attacked by red ants while waiting to get into the van. Our guide, Andy, noticed and cut an aloe leaf off of a nearby plant, which almost instantly fixed the problem. There certainly are advantages to being in this environment…

After a 30 minute drive to banks of the Macal River, we canoed for about 45 minutes. It was quite beautiful and very peaceful. There were a few currents, but nothing significant. We saw a few very large Iguana’s in the trees above the river, and a bunch of bats (that Lane loved).

Three people to a canoe, four canoes total. I was in a canoe with Suzette and Dante, Michelle and Lane were in a canoe with Linda and our tour guide, and Phil was with Griffin and Zeke. The fourth canoe had another visitor at the lodge and another tour guide.

Phil’s canoe capsized inside of three minutes. Everyone in the canoe has a different story about the events ( ), but let’s just say they were all wet.

We parked our canoes at Chaa Creek and hiked through a bamboo forest up to a picnic area and ate lunch. Pretty decent sandwiches, jalapeno chips, ban ana and an amazingly delicious lemon bar.

Then we headed off for the Medicine Trail hike. This was news to Michelle and I, as we didn’t know we were doing the hike, but we went along. About 10 minutes in, we could hear the thunder in the distance, and the rain was coming. You can hear the rain in the jungle for a few minutes before it hits you. And, when it did hit, it really hit. Total downpour, and us without an umbrella or ponchos… oops. We stuck it out for a few minutes, but soon turned back for shelter in order to get Lane out of the rain.

Once I had Michelle and Lane in dry ground, I headed back to try and catch up with the group… no downpour was going to ruin my fun… I thought. After about 15 minutes of walking as fast as I could on the mud and wet rock, I decided to turn back because I was totally soaked, and the rain was not letting up. When I got back, I found out that the group had turned around on the trail and passed me on a parallel trail when I was trying to catch up to them…

Everyone took shelter together, and after a few minutes we decided to proceed in the rain rather than trying to wait it out. One of the guides helped me to make a “poncho” for Lane out of a garbage bag, and we went onward.

We hiked up a pretty steep hill, a short cut, to the Natural History Museum. I carried Lane up the whole way, and was totally wiped out upon our arrival. Not to mention, very wet. The museum is very small, just two rooms, but they have some great Mayan artifacts and a really good guide who was full of info.

After that, we went to their Butterfly hatchery. This turned out to be nothing like I had expected, but was still very neat. It is a single small greenhouse, where they breed a single species of butterfly. The guide walks you through the entire process and all the in’s and out’s of butterflies. We learned a lot, and I had a butterfly land on my hat…

Because of the pouring rain, which still had not let up at this point, we arranged to have a van from Maya Mountain come out and pick up Michelle, Lane and Linda. Everyone else was going to continue canoeing up the river another 2 hours, even with the weather. I was totally exhausted, but really looked forward to continuing, especially with the weather. I mean, how often do you get the chance to canoe (with two expert guides) up a large river in bad weather? I figured, if nothing else, it would be a great story.

We reached the Chaa Creek bar and were told to wait there for the guides to figure out transportation and what not. Nearly 30 minutes later, they came back and said that the canoeing was canceled for our safety. The river was rising very rapidly, and the rain was not letting up. Damn.

It was easily another hour before we finally got out of Chaa Creek, and then another 30 minutes back to Maya Mountain. Hot showers and dry clothes were at the top of the agenda.

I think it rained well into the wee hours of the morning.

Today’s menu was:

Breakfast

• Spicy eggs
• Banana
• Cantaloupe
• Creole bread
• Papaya juice

Lunch

• PB&J sandwich with Papaya jam
• Veggie sandwich with carrots, zucchini, green bell pepper, lettuce, tomato
• Banana
• Jalapeno chips
• Lemon bar
• Coke (with real sugar)

Dinner (Mexican fiesta of corn)

• Pineapple Atole
• Garden salad
• Calalou soup
• Black Bean taquitos, panadas, tostadas, tamales 
• Flan with fruit sauce

Today was our first “real” day in Belize. Nobody had any real issues with the two-hour time change, and a good night sleep really helped everyone. After a great breakfast, we jumped in our tour van and headed off on the first adventure.

We drove nearly an hour to get to the Barton Creek archeological site. The drive was very bumpy (except through villages — more on that later), and our guide kept telling us that the real exciting part was the descent into Barton Creek. Well, he was right. The road that descends to the creek was nothing like I had ever seen before. 65-70% grade with about five hair pin turns… driving in low gears the whole time. He joked about going back up the road being the really hard part, or at least we thought he was joking…

In front of the archeological site is a small bar/restaurant that a Canadian couple and their kids live at and operate. It is a lovely thatched roof, open space area with lots of seating and hammocks. Lane noticed that they had a parrot hanging out on a branch attached to a support beam that was very friendly and would get on just about anyone’s finger or shoulder. Lane liked looking, but ran away when giving the opportunity to hold him, but Griffin instantly bonded with the bird.

After hanging out for a few minutes, our guide returned with oars, car batteries, flash lights and life jackets. Yeah, you read that right, car batteries, well at least they looked like car batteries. The spotlights had clips on the ends of their wires that attached to the batteries for a power source inside the cave.

Now, we finally got down to business and got into canoes. Three canoes, with three people in each canoe. I was with Michelle, Lane and Zeke. Phil had Dante and Linda. Suzette was with Griffin and our tour guide, Andy.

We went 900 meters deep into the cave, or for about 30 minutes, and daylight disappeared after only about 3-4 minutes. Somewhere around half way in, the guide had all three canoes side-by-side, and we killed the lights. He asked everyone to close their eyes and let them adjust, and then hold your hand in front of your face — you couldn’t see a damn thing. It was very eerie, but because of the spotlights, nobody freaked out about being so far away from daylight.

During the trip, we learned a lot about how the Mayan’s used the cave, their beliefs, and saw some artifacts. There is a human skull, some bones, and pots that have been found in the cave by archaeologists.

Long story short, the Mayans believed the caves to be the gateway to the underworld, so they really feared them. Lots of ceremonies (human sacrifice, blood letting, offerings to god, etc) took place there, and that is really it. Stalactites were viewed as the roots from the trees in the physical world, so pots were placed underneath them to gather the water that dripped off.  They would use this as holy water during ceremonies. Lots of interesting stuff.

No canoes capsized, and everyone stayed mostly dry. We did see a lot of fruit bats, and Lane absolutely loved it — we had no idea that he would like bats so much.

Next came the really fun part — driving back up that hill. I really wished that I had video taped this, as seeing it would be the only way to understand or believe it. We got stuck going up the grade after only a short ways. The van’s tires spun and spun and spun, and we created a lot of black smoke. Our guide backed the van down the hill a ways, almost going over the edge at one point, and gunned it. We made it past the first hair pin turn, and just kept going. Sharp turn after sharp turn, the van was going as fast as possible — no brakes involved. Let’s just say that I now truly appreciate the art of a “power slide.” Everyone in the van was “white knuckling it” for a minute or so while we were stuck, but once we got moving — and Lane started laughing historically at all the fast turns, everyone would say this was the best part of the day. Some even joked about turning around so that we could do it again…

Next came lunch at Rio On Pools, inside the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve. This was a gorgeous spot over looking a series of waterfalls and rapids.

After lunch we down to the waterfalls and went swimming. There were some natural water slides that a number of us did, and many got scratches and bruises, myself included. It was a ton of fun though. When we were leaving, Phil got stung by a bee of some kind, and Lane got bit by a fire ant. Both were fine, although Phil complained more than Lane… something about poison and being deathly allergic to bee stings… he’s such a whiner.

On our way back to Maya Mountain, Andy took us to a local “super store” which is a local convenience / grocery store. The purpose of the trip was to get beer (but a bottle of local 1 Barrel Rum, some bottles of Coke, and chips we also purchased) since the owners of Maya Mountain do not sell alcohol.

Belize only has one brand of beer, Belikin, which is pretty good, and the brewery recycles all the bottles. So we got a case of 24, which comes in a large plastic case that you return with the empty bottles and receive a deposit back for the trouble. The brewery then gets the bottles back and reuses them.

Next came a delicious dinner, followed by a rather half-assed game of Hearts with Phil, Griffin and Linda. And that was our second day here.

Today’s menu was:

Breakfast:

• Huevos Rancheros
• Journey cake
• Banana
• Starfruit
• Fried Plantains

Box Lunch:

• PB&J with papaya jam
• Veggie sandwich with carrots, tomato, lettuce, red bell pepper, onion
• Banana
• Jalapeno chips
• Brownie
• Pineapple Coconut flavored juice

Dinner:

• Deep fried plantains with sugar
• Three bean salad
• Coconut sere with potatoes, plantains and carrots
• Mashed pumpkin, Steamed rice and Calalou
• Casaba pudding