Belize Believer part 2 - Banana Bank Ranch

    The next portion of our Belize trip required moving into the western part of the country: the Cayo.  Thus we repacked our bags and got into the taxi to travel to our next lodging.  When I had booked the Banana Bank Ranch I was intrigued and excited to read that it was quite isolated, actually nestled in the heart of the rainforest, only accessible by boat.  "Accessible by boat" I had, somewhat naively assumed (and we all know what happens when you assume...) meant that we would travel to a dock and unload our bags onto some sort of water taxi which would ferry our band of happy travelers to our well marked destination into the welcoming arms of our hosts.
     Imagine my surprise when our car heads off the road and parks by the side of a deserted riverbank.  Our smiling driver leads us down a rickety staircase onto a tiny wooden dock where 2 beat up looking canoes are tied up.  "This is the Belize River.  Here are oars (handing us 2 objects that were clearly oar shapes cut out of 4x6 wooden planks).  The hotel is that way (pointing down river).  If you see any men on the side of the river...just stay away." "Wait!" I gulped out, slightly panicked, "what about the children? What about our luggage?" At this point I swear our driver was actually giggling. "Here are some small life vests for the babies. Don't worry about your luggage - I will take it to your hotel." And off he went.
     Huh.  My husband and I looked at each other.  I believe he sighed.  I smiled brightly and said, "c'mon kids! It's another adventure!" and we loaded ourselves carefully into our canoes and cast off, having pretty much no idea where we were heading, alone on a river in the middle of the central american jungle.

The Belize River with dock

canoeing down river in search of our hotel 

luckily I had Captain Bligh to help me navigate

      We decided G would ride with her father while S sailed with me.  Who knew such a cute little girl would turn out to be a raving she-devil on the water?  But we bravely paddled on down the river, looking for any signs of civilization amongst the tangle of jungle greenery and vines.  And we paddled. And we paddled.  We did see some men dressed fetchingly in what appeared to be dirty loin cloths squatting on the river banks once or twice.  They shouted what I'm sure were helpful hints in some strange language ("haha there go another bunch of foreigners down the river - let's hope they are eaten by alligators").  We carefully avoided them as instructed.  Finally after conservatively 1 1/2 hours of wandering around, straining our eyes for any signs of any kind of lodging (and a distinct feeling of unease setting in on all except S who was too busy shouting commands, i.e. "Raise the sails, batten down the hatches, I'll keel haul the lot of ya!"), my husband finally caught site of a rope strung across the river.  I didn't even notice it (although in my defense I was concentrating all my energy at that point into not throwing my delightful child overboard).  As we got closer we saw that the rope led to a small empty dock where we aimed our canoes figuring we were getting out no matter where we were.  

The Banana Bank Ranch - note the rope strung across the river was the only thing visible from the river itself

     

     And we were in paradise!  The Banana Bank Ranch - which still exists although now it is much more built up and commercial (http://www.bananabank.com/) - in 1996 was owned and run by a Montana cattle rancher and his wife, an artist, and consisted of a few thatched cottages, a stable for horses, a main house where the couple lived and where the communal dining room was located (we ate family style with the owners and the meal consisted of whatever the cook felt like making that day), and the most incredible little zoo/aviary/orchid garden you could ever hope to find.  It was a kid's dream. All located in the middle of the rainforest.  

Tikka

The girls and Tikka

     The BEST feature - at least as far as my kids were concerned - was Tikka, the household pet JAGUAR.  Tikka had been found as an abandoned cub and was brought up by the couple who owned the ranch.  Up until recently Tikka had been able to roam the hotel grounds freely, but as she had taken to pouncing the hotel staff, playfully of course, the wife pointed out that it might be better if she were left in her enclosure as some of the guests might take a friendly pounce the wrong way.  

      Tikka was not the only animal attraction.  "Look over there in that paddock," the owner proudly indicated a small wire enclosure. "That monkey there is a famous celebrity! He is the very same monkey they used in that movie 'Heart of Darkness".  Not wanting to miss viewing a simian celebrity. the girls hurried over to see the monkey. G, arriving first, grabbed the wire fencing in her rush to get the first glimpse of the movie star. ZAAAAPPPP!!! She was thrown back about a foot by an electric jolt - which we should have figured out in retrospect as what monkey in their right mind would stay in an open air wire inclosure without an electric fence.  Startled, but basically unhurt, G recovered her composure and scampered away to investigate the other sights.  (Later that day my husband approached the owner regarding the dangers of having an unmarked electrified fence around children.  "You know my daughter got a shock when she touched that electric fence," he began. "Yeah. Shouldn't do that." replied the owner with a look that said only a city slicker idiot would allow their kid to do such a thing. My husband respected him for that.  The Belizean local credo seemed to be "if you do something stupid - it's your own fault")

"Heart of Darkness" Monkey - he was opposed to signing autographs

  

     As many of you know I am a bit of an avian aficionado, thus my favorite part of the ranch was the open aviary which housed many exotic parrots and other birds. I absolutely fell in love with these little colorful toucans which flew around freely, alighting on your arms and generally being cute and friendly.  There were also many (non-celebrity) native monkeys, peccaries, and other assorted creatures.

cute little toucan

quite inquisitive

G and toucan friend

peccary

non-celebrity monkey

     The ranch had a generator for electricity which ran from about 7AM to 7 PM.  At about 5 PM each night a staff member would come around to your cottage to fill up your kerosene lamps as that was the only source of light at night.  The cottages were well equipped with excellent mosquito netting (and fire extinguishers for the occasional kerosene fire) and had lovely little patios from which you could sit and sip your cocktails and watch the sun set over the jungle river.  Dinners, as I had mentioned, were family affairs - the ranch owner loved the little kids and would frequently bring some little wild creature to the table for the children to see and touch.  A particularly fond memory is when he brought this tiny little mouse deer and plopped it on the dining table whereupon it began to pee and poo all over in fear as his wife screamed at him to get it off, we EAT on that table damnit!  The kids were delighted with this. 

our cottage

     The Banana Bank Ranch was one of the best places we have ever been - my kids still talk about how much they loved that place. I fear now it will never be the same as I read they have a swimming pool and wifi and spa treatments.  We were just so lucky to have been there before it was a tourist attraction.  It was a little piece of heaven. And I didn't even get to the jungle horseback ride yet!  That will have to wait until my next post, "Coracol and the Jungle on Horseback"

  

Belize Believer - 1st stop Altun Ha and Lamanai

     Hanging out on the beach in Cozumel, another couple heard us enthusiastically discussing our trip to Chichen Itza and interrupted our conversation. "If you really want to see some amazing Mayan ruins you MUST go to Belize and Guatemala!" After hearing them describe their previous year's vacation we decided that our next stop would indeed continue into "el Mundo Maya".  We did take note of our new friends warning that, while  the coast and cays of Belize were a popular mecca for scuba divers (having the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world), this being 1996 the INTERIOR parts were still fairly untraveled and conditions were, shall we say, rustic.  So we outfitted ourselves in our best Indiana Jones fashion and set off for our Mayan Adventure.

     To ease our transition, I booked us into what I had read in the guide books was to be a luxury hotel - The Maruba Resort.  And at first glance it appeared to be truly lovely and exotic with nice people meeting us in the lobby carrying delicious tropical drinks. We were staying in a beautifully appointed native thatched hut, family style.  Everything was going swimmingly until nightfall.  In case you ever plan a similar trip, let me just give you a heads up: nighttime in the jungle is NOT when the native fauna tucks itself into sleep.  Nighttime in the jungle is PARTY CENTRAL for those charming nocturnal critters. This includes the myriad of native INSECT life that abounds in the rainforest.  And here is where we discovered A) insect repellant containing a high amount of DEET works very well except in the places you missed putting it on - i.e. the SOLES OF YOUR FEET (oops!); B) thatched roofs look really quaint but don't do diddly-squat to keep out the GIANT RAINFOREST COCKROACHES causing much squealing and jumping up on beds and crying amongst the female contingent of our party (the male member of our group was none too pleased to have to be the roach vanquisher either); and C) squealing and jumping on beds causes a peculiar phenomenon whereby suddenly it begins to rain tiny Central American frogs down from the ceiling onto all the squealers and jumpers thus causing the cycle to continue.  And no one thought to bring out the video camera to film this sequence (there was no youtube to post it to anyway).
     After somehow getting through our night's excitement, we were off the next day to see our first Mayan ruins: the site of Altun Ha.  A word about the Mayan ruins in Belize in 1996.  The Belizeans (?) had juuuusst sort of figured out that they might be able to attract more of a tourist trade if they actually started to dig out some of the rich assortment of ancient Mayan cities they had found traces of in their jungles.  I am sure many of the sites I am going to show you pics of look very different today.  As in they have may been fully excavated and roped off to tourists (of which I'll bet there are a lot more than there were when we were there).  But I have to admit it was really cool to see the ruins arising out of the living jungle, more or less untouched, and to be able to climb the pyramids and poke around like amateur archeologists.

Altun Ha

    I'm going to let the pics speak for themselves (mainly 'cause I have no idea what any of the building were - nothing was labeled and I just don't remember what was what from the guide book).  

    The next day we took the boat trip up the New River to see the ancient site of Lamanai which means "submerged crocodile" in Mayan.  I really wonder what this looks like now - when we were there we were practically the only ones - no tour buses or groups, no concession stands or souvenir stores.  It was paradise.

Off on our boat ride to Lamanai

The New River

A Jacana

Blue Heron

Cormorant

The walk was a bit rugged - this ain't Disney

The walk through the jungle to the ruins

the ruins emerge from the jungle

S and the guy from "Legends of the Hidden Temple"

the jungle also emerges from the ruins

my 6 year old jungle explorer atop the Lamanai pyramid

The great pyramid - G & I had to climb this but S was too sweaaaty to come, leading her to remark, "Mommy and G are never going to come back and they are going to die and we are NEVER going to have lunch!"

famous stellae

some of us were less happy with our lovely picnic lunch

 This was a great introduction to the Mundo Maya - and it only gets better!...Stay tuned for my next post, "Belize Believer part 2 - Banana Bank and Coracol"!

Mexico - pursuing pyramids with a preschooler

     The next few years were spent travelling domestically as time and money were not readily available.  Not to mention having to deal with diapers, baby foods and toddler tantrums. We amused ourselves flitting to Florida, Arizona, San Francisco and other assorted vacation spots.  It soon became apparent that our kids were indeed good little travelers, pretty much go with the flow types - game for whatever ridiculous venture their parents proposed.  So, after a particularly successful trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming during which we proudly watched our youngest assert that she was indeed five years old so she could go snowmobiling in the back country with us (to be fair she WAS turning 5 the next month and she was riding in front of me on my snowmobile.  This was, in retrospect, a truly insane idea which I paid for subsequently with inner thigh agony),  I decided that we were ready for international adventure.
     The decision where to go on our first foreign family vacation was made balancing cheapness, flight time and convenience, and potential for major relaxation.  MEXICO!!!  We booked a lovely little hotel on a tiny private beach with an outdoor restaurant on the water where the kids could feed the fish.  Perfect!  And it was perfect...we enjoyed sunning and swimming, and I even took the kids snorkling over the tiny reef off our little beach.  It was perfect for about 2 days. And then I noticed the pamphlets in the hotel lobby advertising...ADVENTURE!
     I'm sorry. You are already in Mexico. Who WOULDN'T want to see CHICHEN ITZA???  What an amazing cultural opportunity for my kids to learn a bit about Mesoamerican history?  I talked my husband into the idea without too much difficulty and the next day we were off on the hydrofoil to the mainland.
     There are 2 ways to get to Chichen Itza from Cancun - you can drive through the jungle, which takes several hours, or you can fly which takes maybe 20 minutes or so.  I figured the kids would get hot, bored and cranky driving so I chose option 2 which seemed like a good idea until we got to the airport and saw the plane.

 Yeah. It was actually made of cardboard.

Now it began to dawn on me that this might not have been the best idea.  However after a brief,  uneventful flight during which I prayed to any and all gods to spare my children as it wasn't their fault their mother was crazy enough to make them fly on Aztec Air, we walked off the tiny air strip and into HISTORY.  There it was - just like in the books...CHICHEN ITZA!!!

 

It really was an amazing sight.  What was equally amazing to my children was seeing a whole flock of poverty stricken Mexican kids begging for change outside the entrance to the site.  "Why aren't those kids in school and where are their shoes?" they wanted to know.  Always one to take advantage of a teaching moment, I began a quick lesson on the sociopolitical aspects of class difference and poverty until I noticed my babies' eyes glazing over whereupon I shouted "who is gonna be first up the big pyramid?!?!" and got them back on board.  We all excitedly entered the archeological ruins.

    Chichen Itza is not a World Heritage site for nuthin'.  It is pretty awe-inspiring, even to a pre-schooler.

   

And of course we all had to climb the pyramid.  And FYI, getting a 5 year old to the top of a major pyramid is a HELL OF A LOT EASIER than getting her down.  But we all made it and everyone was quite pleased with themselves at the end of the day. 

  

With the success of our Chichen Itza jaunt, it was a no brainer to journey to see Tulum (another Mayan ruin) as well as Xel-Ha (a natural snorlking water park).  I highly recommend the trip to Tulum although unfortunately Xel-Ha has apparently become somewhat overrun now that Cancun and the River Maya have become major tourist attractions.

  

We even were able to find some Mayan ruins on Cozumel itself.

 

      Last, but not least, we were able to find an animal mascot for Mexico.  This has become a tradition on all subsequent vacations; we always look for an animal friend that symbolizes our trip. In Mexico that honor went to the iguana.  All in all, Cozumel was a great vacation - especially as we went BEFORE the Cancun area became a famous "girls gone wild" spring break extravaganza.  (Try to avoid taking your small children to "Senor Frogs" for dinner. Take my word for this.)  And it was a good preparation for the next Aiuto Adventure...BELIZE!!!

The family adventures begin - or I'm still surprised no one calls Child Protective Services on us

     I must admit we started out pretty tamely with our first kid.  We gave G a full five months to mature into a world class globetrotter before we bundled her on an airplane and flew with her 2500 miles to San Diego.  My husband had a conference there and I was never one to pass up a free hotel room in a place I'd never been, despite having to drag along a fairly cranky infant. We made it through the zoo and aquarium and some quaint little walks and open air restaurants happy in the knowledge that, with any luck, we could someday return and actually enjoy the sights (we did).
     After that cross-country excursion we played it fairly safe for the next 2 years - I was in residency and way too tired to indulge in anything strenuous or requiring much brain action. We made due with trips to my mother's house in Florida and my sister-in-law's house in Shelter Island, very low key and mostly relaxing. Nothing like taking advantage of relatives' generosity to enjoy a cheap vacation! However I felt myself becoming restless, even through my sleep-deprived haze.  I HAD to get away, get out of the country, go somewhere NEW and DIFFERENT! Then, suddenly, it hit me. My OTHER sister-in-law worked for the US State Department. They were stationed in LISBON! What 2 year old wouldn't want to meander down the ancient cobblestone lanes of Portugal's largest city?  Suffice it to say taking a newly potty-trained toddler to Europe can be a tad challenging (to say the least); however, all in all, we spent a delightfully calm holiday (mainly because my sister-in-law herself was 8 months pregnant and not really feeling up to our usual brand of kamikaze sight seeing). Unsurprisingly G herself remembers little from that vacation - the rest of us unfortunately are scarred for life having had to watch the movie "Annie" approximately 40000000 times as it was the only kid-friendly videotape our hosts owned.
     Within a year I gave birth to S. Due to a variety of somewhat insane factors I promptly booked a trip down to my mother's place in Florida for a well deserved break. And our married but child-free friends decided to join us. Yeah, my kid was only 6 weeks old, perhaps a bit young for her first travel experience, but this was just going to be a relaxing stay in boring Boyton Beach. Right?  HA!!!
And thus begins the first of many Merry Tripster Family Adventures...

     Who knew the SPACE SHUTTLE would be scheduled to blast off during our lazy vacation?  And what part of, "Let's drive the 2 1/2 hours up to Cape Canaveral at 4:30AM with our 3 year old and our 6 week old to watch the launch even though we don't have tickets!" did you think I objected to?  I can at least claim my brain was somewhat addled from the post-partum hormones but my husband has no such excuse.  And that's how I ended up at 6 o'clock in the morning with a 6 week old in my arms and a 3 year old clinging to my waist standing in, essentially, a swamp with a zillion other crazy space enthusiasts watching the Discovery blast off.

I believe this is what ignited S's fascination with Space Camp

BLAST OFF!!!

     You would think that was enough insanity for any one day but nooooooo.  In a cunning bit of bait and switch for which I will NEVER forgive them, my "friends" (who I later found out were Micky Mouse Maniacs) suggested that, since we were up so far north anyhow, why didn't we just wander on over to DISNEY WORLD as a treat for the kids? NOT!!! What idiots would think a 6 week old infant and a 3 year old who'd been up since 4 AM and spent the last hour standing in a swamp would enjoy a hot sweaty romp with giant cartoon animal impersonators? And WHY DID WE AGREE TO GOOOO??? Needless to say it was a disaster although that trip generated some of my most memorable moments of Disney-ania... The fond mother-child bonding experience I shared with G ("I don't care if you think it's scary - close your eyes! We're going on the 'Haunted Mansion' 'cause it's mommy's FAVORITE ride!"), the interlude where I introduced proper breast-feeding technique to all the kids lining up for "Splash Mountain" ("Mommy! I can see that lady's BOOBIE!!!" yes, I popped out a boob at Disney World - anything to shut up my screaming baby), and my personal favorite - the Meltdown at "Pirates of Caribbean." All the rum in the world wasn't gonna cheer up that hearty wench!  Yo Ho Ho my ass!!! 

     Well it all turned out well in the end - as in nobody died. And it set a precedent for all future vacations: no matter what or where our travels lead us, we must always do at least one incredibly stupid thing so we have something to laugh about later! I think that's just about enough retrospective agita for now...until next time!

A Blast From the Past or How I came to love to travel

     So how did I come by my love of travel? Especially to the crazy exotic places we seem to frequent? I simultaneously blame and am grateful to my parents who were globetrotters before it became fashionable and saw nothing wrong with dragging along their kiddies. They also fully believed in straying off the beaten path even when we took "normal" vacations.  From an early age I was taught that February meant a stay on a Caribbean isle - which in the '60's were not the popular tourist destinations that they are now. And although my parents certainly enjoyed relaxing on the beach, each trip entailed ventures into the local towns to walk in the markets and trips to any and all local attractions that they could find. As we got a bit older our ranges grew wider aided by my father's international lecture circuits.
     My mother believed in 3 guiding principles while traveling. First and foremost, she did not pay "x" amount of money for us to sit around in a hotel room (which is true as she certainly didn't pay for these vacations!).  If you were sick you could just as easily be sick while sight-seeing as you could in bed.  This accounts for one of my favorite childhood memories of at age 10 suffering from food poisoning in Athens and vomiting all over the Acropolis.  This also may have contributed to my choice of medicine as a career as I was often called in to patch someone up so we could go on - I remember distinctly having to use my eyebrow tweezers to remove some glass from the bottom of my brother's foot and use my acne wash (because it container alcohol) to disinfect the wounds while on vacation in a remote outpost of New Guinea. We had a bus to catch to see the Mud men!
     The next principle my mother acted on was her complete belief that NOTHING BAD COULD EVER HAPPEN TO HER OR HER FAMILY.  And therefore there was no reason not to take any risks or do anything absurdly dangerous because, hey, It's an ADVENTURE!!!   This was why at any given time you could find our family driving down cliffside switchbacks on a volcano in Maui in a rented car with no lights and no brakes during a severe thunderstorm in pitch black darkness (we did stop once on the way down so my poor brother could relieve his stomach of it's contents by the side of the road).  Or find our land rover stopped in the middle of lion country in Serengeti National Park and my mother taking my poor brother out of the car so he could pee while our guide screamed and cried. (my brother did have a bladder the size of a watermelon pit - he was a bit of a pain)  And probably why, in Australia, my mother saw nothing wrong with sending me back into the water to pick up and bring back WITH MY BARE HANDS the live poisonous cone shell (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conus if you don't believe me) that I had found which she coveted for her shell collection. To be fair I did survive the encounter, as she so lovingly pointed out, "See you didn't die!" when I deposited the treasure into her bag.

Poisonous Cone Shell

Pirate Skull?

     Finally my mother truly believed that anything she found while on vacation was hers to bring home with her as she wished.  She may have rivaled the Metropolitan and British Museum's archeology teams from the early 1900's in her "finders keepers" mantra.  In this aspect she was actually an impressive international smuggler. Through the years her loot has included live sea creatures (well dead by the time they reached our house - imagine how the stewardesses enjoyed placing her carry on bags in the overhead compartments!), live chameleons (I remember holding a chameleon in 2 plastic cups behind my back as the nice man from US customs smiled at me and asked if I was carrying anything I shouldn't be back across the border...and gravely shaking my head no as my mother pinched my arm), actual pieces of a human skull we found while beach combing in Barbados (she told us they were ex-pirate remains at the time to get us on board with this. Now when I think of it...perhaps not.) She took home all manner of small found artifacts from Egypt and Greece and anywhere else she went. Her piece de resistance though was the time she somehow brought back a cannon ball - that's right, an ACTUAL CANNON BALL - from a fort in Puerto Rico. How you ask? In her purse.
     Africa, Australia, Greece, Paris, Hong Kong, New Guinea, New Zealand, Switzerland, Venezuela...and of course all over the US including Alaska and Hawaii - these were the vacations of my childhood and thus shaped my view of travel as an adult. Which, of course, I have spread to my husband and children resulting in our own set of fun family vacation adventures.  I will be posting about some of our family trips in the next few weeks until I actually have something live to post about.
     One last thing for which you can all blame my mother, an avid and fairly brilliant photographer, is putting a camera in my hands at an early age.  This is why you will soon be suffering through the zillions of pics I will be posting!

     Hi guys! Well as you may have guessed I'm new to this blogging thing but already I can see there being a few issues we are going to have to contend with...mainly 1) I take far too many photos than any one human being should be allowed to (and I am horrendously indecisive about picking out the "best" few to display), and 2) many of the places I travel to are fairly (if not totally) remote and thus internet access is sketchy (if it exists at all).  This means much of my blogging will have to be done through a retrospectascope.  Especially anything I will be posting up until my next vacation (Destination - Morocco!).  But of course the beauty of the blog is that you don't have to read it if you don't like it.  So I guess I'll just give it a whirl and see what tales I can spin. And post as many pics as I can 'cause I like to - HA!