Rainforest in the morning, Caribbean in the afternoon

We left our home in the rainforest this morning. It was sad to leave. As I mentioned, we were well taken care of, and I already miss the sound of the howler monkeys.

As many of you who are following my blog from Colorado know, we have a saying that Colorado is often a place where you can ski in the morning, and drive to Denver and play golf in the afternoon. Well, Belize is a place where you can be in the rainforest in the morning, then drive and take a boat and be on an island in the Caribbean in the afternoon. After a 90 minute boat ride, we arrived at Long Caye at Lighthouse Reef Atoll (www.belizeisland.com). We are here because it's an island that is being developed as a model of environmental sustainability, and not a bad place to visit too. It's also quite an amazing place we can add to our destinations for this trip, and not just because it's an island in the Caribbean.

Tomorrow, we will spend some time in "our classroom" reviewing our course materials and the experiences we have had thus far. Tuesday, we will experience snorkeling and SCUBA diving at the Blue Hole, a remarkable site. I'll write more then.

A few more photos

A real life journey to the center of the Earth

With a really heavy, front loaded course, today was planned for an off day to explore the rainforest and allow for some down time. I guess we have an active group, as we all agreed that we wanted to go on a cave expedition. So, after another wonderful breakfast from our hosts at Jaguar Creek (special thanks to Fermin Oliveira and everyone here who makes it such a wonderful place to stay), we ventured to our neighbor Caves Branch (www.cavesbranch.com) where we were led on a tour of a magnificent cave system. We learned about a number of rituals led by the Ancient Maya people throughout the caves. It was an awesome feeling knowing that we were underneath the earth, or more specifically, under about 150 feet of limestone with the rainforest on top of that. I cannot imagine many other places in the world where you can have this same experience.

Afterwards, we returned to our launch point at the river and found some of our students jumping off a 25 foot cliff into a deep section of the river. All of us jumped at the chance to jump. What an exhilarating feeling jumping off, trusting that you weren’t going to crash into the ground because the students before you didn’t. The feeling of flying through the air was amazing. It seemed to take so long between the time that I jumped until the time that my feet splashed loudly in the water.

From there, we returned back to Jaguar Creek. It’s the first day we returned in the middle of the afternoon, instead of dusk or into the early evening. So, of course, we decided to rest up and recuperate, right? Well, not really. Instead, we went to Blue Hole National Park (the other blue hole in Belize). The park is down the road from Jaguar Creek and is a natural swimming hole and deep blue in color. So, we of course climbed up cliff next to it and jumped again.

Throughout this trip, we have probably put close to 1,000 miles on each of our two diesel vans, and the irony of leading a trip on sustainability is not lost on us, as we use many hydrocarbons to view all of these beautiful areas. My hope is that we are making a difference in the way that stories are told, not only in the lives of our students and those they will touch, but also in supporting the places like the Belize Zoo, Friends for Conservation and Development, The Nature Conservancy and others who are doing this great work.

That’s it for today. I may try to post some new pictures tonight, but that may be what’s crashing our Internet, so I’m going to wait and see.

Past Two Days: Oil, Animals, and Mayans

Our Internet connection (in the rainforest) cut out the past two nights, so I was unable to get a blog post up either night. I wrote the post below just before the Internet went down last night. 

Tonight, I’m tired from being up at 5:00 in the morning, in order to get to and from Caracol today. So, I want to write an update, but it will be a bit brief. 

In short, the trip is going really well. Yesterday, we spent the morning and lunch at Belize Natural Energy (www.belizenaturalenergy.bz), the only company that has produced oil in Belize. Oil is obviously not considered by most to be a sustainable resource. However, this might be the best oil company you ever come across. They are making a lot of money with the newfound oil, but they are doing it in a socially responsible way and in a number of ways that are responsible environmentally. They have a great story, and convincing evidence that they are going about business in a different and exciting way.

We followed that visit with a trip to the Belize Zoo (www.belizezoo.org), which was amazing on a number of levels. Not only did each one of us get to feed a tapir and high five a jaguar, but we also got to meet Sharon Matola, the founder of the zoo. Sharon is an amazing woman who took in a few monkeys that were going to be discarded from a film she assisted with, and has built a tremendous zoo. She is a great example of a citizen leader that has made a tangible impact in the sustainability of wildlife in Belize.

We returned tonight from a long drive from Caracol, a Mayan city that thrived for over 1000 years and at one point was home to over 150,000 citizens (about half the current population of Belize).

Some amazing highlights indeed. I hope to write more tomorrow after our cave tubing adventure!

A few photos

A Most Dangerous People

We heard the howler monkeys for the first time this morning at 3:18 a.m. If I hadn’t watched a video clip with the sound of a howler monkey two days before, I would have been scared out of my mind. The sound they make to protect their territory is disturbing. It sounds nothing like a monkey, but more like a sound from the X Files or the sound a T Rex might make (thanks Nichole Parker for the reference). Actually, they are getting an early start tonight as they are going crazy right now at about 9:25 p.m. Just hearing them is worth the trip.

We spent the day today visiting Dangriga and the Gulisi Garifuna Museum (www.ngcbelize.org). We had the pleasure of talking with the Museum Director Peter Ciego. Mr. Ciego was so informative and shared the history of how the Garinagu, (plural of Garifuna), came to Belize and withstood efforts of genocide by the British and have managed to sustain and preserve their culture to this day. He presented a section of text from a British document stating that they were “a most dangerous people”. Yes, I think you will find that people who fight back when you try to take their land from them can and, perhaps, should be dangerous. The museum is just one of a number of steps that community leaders in Belize have created to sustain the Garifuna culture, in addition to a national holiday that is now celebrated by all Belizeans, whether they have Garifuna heritage or not. It was an important part of the course to see how culture can be sustained within a developing country.

We took the opportunity of being close to the Caribbean to jump in for the first time. Thank you so much to our gracious hosts at Jungle Jeanie’s by the Sea (www.junglebythesea.com). Then we returned to Jaguar Creek on the Hummingbird Highway. It is really hard to describe the beauty of the Hummingbird Highway. Surrounded by mountains and dense, lush rainforest, it was impossible to pay attention to all of the speed bumps on the road (there are many), so I’d like to make a public apology to all of the passengers in my van for the few times that we may have hit a bump a bit too fast.

That’s it for tonight. Tomorrow, we go to Belize Natural Energy and the Belize Zoo. More to come tomorrow night.  

Official Day One: Galen University, meeting the M A Y O R, and damaging a Budget rental van

(sorry, picture wouldn't load and I need to sleep :))

Today was the first official day of our course. We had the privilege of hearing about issues of sustainability in Belize from two professors at Galen University as well as a technical officer from a quasi-governmental organization called Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT). In addition, we met a number of Belizean students who joined us for two of the presentations. It was a great start to the day and I had a moment where it all seemed surreal that we were really here, in a classroom in a Belizean university hearing from local experts on sustainability issues.

The first presentation was primarily on watershed management and ways that community leaders are partnering with the university to protect streamside forests. He also discussed the issues facing Belize including the huge national debt, and the huge foreign investment from the United States of America. It seems like there are a lot of people in the country committed to preserving the vast natural resources. At the same time, the highways we travel are often littered with trash, and in a couple instances, we witnessed large mounds of trash being burned.

We then heard about the Mayan culture and the ways in which space is being created for the Mayan culture to be embraced. The challenge presented is the way that development is seen as a linear process from underdeveloped to developed. Difference is not seen as a positive, nor even relevant. Rather, the Mayans are being judged by Western standards of development as underdeveloped and in need of help. Toledo is the district within Belize where the largest concentration of Mayans live and its poverty data compared with the rest of the country is staggering. One telling statistic is the percentage of child poverty in the country compared with the Toledo District. In Belize as a nation, the child poverty rate is an overwhelming 39%. However, that seems minuscule when compared with the poverty rate of the Toledo District which is 84.5%. The larger issue presented was the lack of the ability for Mayans to determine their own future. In a hopeful sign, a group of Mayans recently won a court ruling that settled a long existing dispute and granted them land rights. It was a victory and a hopeful sign for many Mayan people who are fearful of their way of being disappearing.

The final presentation was from a technical officer from PACT dedicated to funding grants throughout Belize to preserve protected areas. She told a great story about a women’s group that came together to fund efforts to maintain the howler monkey population within protected areas. In addition to their successful efforts in repopulating howler monkeys throughout Belize, they personally developed skills in marketing, and non-profit management and the funds opened new, more economically viable careers to them. On the other hand, the officer also spoke of the distribution of funds by district within the country and Toledo received far less funding than any of the other five districts in Belize. The reasoning was the lack of capacity for the organizations in Toledo, which came across as also neglecting the needs of a population for self determination.

The excitement of the afternoon happened when one of our vans was rear ended by another car. Some minor damage and it seems that everyone is all right. Having an accident in the U.S. is enough of an ordeal, but having to deal with it in Belize was another matter altogether. We were waiting in a parking lot for the Belmopan police to come when a car pulled up with a license plate that said “M A Y O R”. He happened to be shopping at an adjacent store, so I got to meet the Mayor of Belmopan, who seemed more than a bit disinterested in our accident and our leadership course. He did welcome us to Belize and share his best wishes for a good trip though.

We received a lot of rain last night and the local wisdom is the rain kept the howler monkeys away. It’s a clear night tonight, so I’ll let you know if we get the joy of being awoken in the wee hours of the morning.