I woke up very excited Saturday morning to go on our inland trip as a cohort. I had a little “taste” of what the mainland was like when I went to the zoo with my students and I was excited to be able to explore some more of it on this trip. A few of us who were already packed and ready to go went to breakfast on the beach at Estelle’s. I had the most amazing banana pancakes and bacon EVER! It tasted like a homemade breakfast from home. We went back to Pedro’s to pick up our backpacks since we would essentially be “backpacking” or living out of our backpacks for the next five days. Luckily we got a ride to the water taxi on a golf cart so that we didn’t have to trounce through town with them on. When I went with my students we had went on a smaller boat that had an open top. This time we all took the water taxi which is bigger than a small open motor boat but and it’s completely enclosed with the captain steering on the top (much like the boat I took to Mexico). The water taxi was extremely crowded and hot. There wasn’t much room to do anything except for try to sleep. The water was so choppy though which made the boat jolt up and down and there was not much of a breeze coming through the windows making it a little more than slightly uncomfortable. An hour and a half later we pulled into the dock and I was yet again in Belize City just as I had been 3 days earlier.
We got off, quickly grabbed a bite to eat at the market area and then boarded a private bus that would be taking us to the zoo. De-ja-vu! We ended up at the zoo just under an hour later. I have to say that this was a more organized trip for sure. We showed up to the zoo and broke off into groups and started wondering around. This experience at the zoo was so much different; I got to see so many more animals. I think it was because I was with people my age who like to actually look at the animals, read about them and take their pictures rather than the little kids who just run around and could care less about which animals they see. My favorite animals this time were the puma and the scarlet macaws. The puma was enormous and it was so close to us! We even got to see one of the zoo keepers feeding it. It is a smaller cat than the jaguar but it still is very powerful. Its front paws were huge and even though he is more than ten times the size of a regular cat, I couldn’t help but to think of Brody J
My other favorite animal was the scarlet macaws! A few of us were watching them and talking about them, one of us said “they are such pretty birds”. All of a sudden they both started repeating over and over “pretty bird, pretty bird, pretty bird”. We could not believe it. Then Katie started to whistle and they were mimicking her whistles. Then we tried other phrases for them to repeat. All during our English lesson they were picking on each other constantly. I made the comment how they seemed like two brothers who were really close with each other. They would pick at each other and make each other mad and fly away from each other. Then one would come over to the other one after a while and groom him and make soft noises. Then they would play and be silly, hang upside down and play “footsies” with each other. A zoo keeper came by and explained to us that they were indeed brother macaws. They had been born at the same time and were essentially twins. Scarlet macaws are birds that have to be in a pair, they don’t do well on their own, whether it is a partner, sibling or another macaw of the same sex. Very fascinating birds!
After several hours in the zoo I had seen every animal at least twice and headed back to the bus. We were spending the night in the zoo’s educational center which was across the street. It was set up with little stone houses that had a few rooms. Each room had several sets of bunk beds in them and could sleep anywhere from 6 – 9 people in a room. It reminded a lot of people who had been to camp when they were younger of “camp days”. The showers and outhouses were separate from the sleeping barracks and even the sink was separate from the outhouses. So you had to shower in one place, go to the bathroom in another place and wash your hands and brush your teeth in yet ANOTHER place! Screens covered the open windows in our rooms and while that was supposed to give us peace of mind about the place being “bug free” we all felt the sensation of being bitten all night long. Dinner was served in the “mess hall”; it really was like being at a camp. After dinner a few brave people ventured to the showers. I was one of them. I was hot and sweaty and even though we were only going to get hot, sweaty and dirty tomorrow, I couldn’t have slept in the filth that was on my body. Using a flashlight I bathed and brushed my teeth and made it safely back to the sleeping barracks. We all stayed up playing cards in the 9 person room, reading magazines by flashlight and listening to music off of people’s I-pods. It was a fun night excluding the bugs and it made us all really excited for what was yet to come on our trip.
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