This day does not deserve a title.
Trip Start
Dec 31, 2007
1
10
12
Trip End
Jan 15, 2008
San Ignacio,
Belize
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
When the van, Everald's Caracol shuttle service came to pick us up, there were virtually no seats left, so we squished into the third bench seat of the van. The drive was going to be a little over three hours over some of the worst continuous stretches of backcountry dirt road I've ever seen. After the first hour and a half of teeth-snapping, bone-jarring travel, we stopped at some sort of station that was at the beginning of the Mountain Pine Reserve, I believe. This marked the border where the broad-leaf forest changed into the evergreen forest, and the scenery did get markedly different. While we were waiting at the station, I sat and fed a mango cookie to a puppy nearby and watched a tour van pull up. One elderly woman was complaining vociferously, and I noted that she and her husband looked like some of the people who passed us in canoes the day before. As she headed off to the restroom, I got mild amusement picturing what she would make of the hole in the ground with a board that Sarah had described.
After Everald had paid our fees, we climbed back into the van to find that he had rearranged the seats to add a fourth bench seat in the back, which Sarah and I were relegated to to give the driver more room up front. This just made the ride that much worse. I swear that van had no shocks whatsoever. (Memo to my parents: You know your driveway when its bad? The ENTIRE road was like that. For three hours.)
By the time we arrived at Caracol, I was grumpy, slightly headachey, and very hungry. But it looked like instead of eating, we were going to tour the entire ruin before we ate. This is when we found that even though it was called a "shuttle service," it was actually an in-depth tour, where every single thing would be explained to us in excruciating detail by Everald, and we were not allowed to lag behind or get separated from the group. This was not our plan. We are not fans of strict guided tours with groups of people.
About an hour into the tour, while Everald was describing some stelae in great depth (Everald, it should be noted, knew his stuff and worked at the dig occasionally, mapping the ruins and working with graduate students.) I realized I was starting to get a migraine from hunger. In the middle of a jungle with armed guards walking around to protect against Guatemalans looters and the most impossible to shut up tour guide ever is not the time or place to start getting stabbing pain of any kind, I can assure you.
Up and down at least one building in every single cluster I made myself go, including one interesting one that had a tiny, twisty staircase to the side, rather than the huge stairs straight up the front. My favorite time in the whole tour was when I climbed that peculiar pyramid, and just sat there, by myself, looking out at the view with no one trying to lecture me about anything. I did also have time to notice the acoustics of the place were extraordinary, and I could hear the conversation of people speaking in normal voices several hundred feet below on the ground very clearly. Eventually, I noticed most people were trickling back to Everald, so I started down the pyramid. Good thing I did, too, because by the time I got down, the whole group was across the plaza and back out into the jungle. At this point, had I had a map, I would've just gone back and had lunch, but no such luck, so I caught up with Sarah lagging behind and trudged on.
Just when I thought the tour could not conceivably get any longer, Everald started pointing out trees, leaves, bark, mounds of dirt, flowers, and showed us a trick where a flower petal changes color with the nicotine in a cigarette. By the time we got to the next plaza, Sarah and I had given up polite disinterest and were scowling off into the middle distance, with me occasionally wincing as the migraine stabbed at my head. Then he asked us if we were having a good time, Sarah said "No," I walked off, and he kept talking. Eventually, when other people of the group were fidgeting away from him with their cameras, he let us go climb Caana, the main pyramid, while he stopped to talk with another tour guide. At this point, climbing stairs was on about the bottom of my to-do list, but I figured I was only going to see Caracol once, maybe twice, in my life, and I better get on with it. I was dizzy with the effort by the time I got to the top, just in time for a jungle rainstorm, making the stairs slick and scary on the way down. I love my raincoat. One of the top three items for Central American countries.
When I got to the bottom and collapsed near Everald waiting for the rest of our group, I found with mild interest that Everald, when not giving his tour guide speech and just talking like a normal guy, could actually be, well, interesting. As soon as the rest of our group trickled over, that ceased, of course, and we made our way back to the van. Not with any quickness, no indeedy, even though we'd covered this ground once before, and you'd think he would have nothing left to talk about. Once we got back to the van and started in on lunch, I realized the headache had made me too nauseous to even eat more than a handful of Pringles, so I sat glumly drinking water until it was time to go back to the van.
About fifteen minutes down the road, I had the unwelcome realization that if my head was shaken fiercely enough when I was already nauseous with a migraine, that I do throw up. I can count the number of times I've thrown up in my entire life on both hands, including the flu when I was seven, so this was something of a surprise. Sarah got me a plastic bag, and I can sum up the rest of the trip by saying that even with someone vomiting (thankfully mostly water) into a bag in the back, Everald STILL would not stop talking, parking the van to look at trees, birds, and pulling off of the road to take pictures. We even stopped so he could give everyone else a tour of a cave. Longest ride of my life. To add insult to injury, one off the other guys on the tour (both guys were remarkably whiny) announced that the seat Sarah and I were sitting on was the most uncomfortable and jarring one and he couldn't possibly sit there, so he left me clutching my head in the corner to go snag himself an empty seat when someone moved. (This was before I even needed the plastic bag.)
I, of course, went straight to my wonderful, wonderful migraine medication and the comfort of a pillow over my head as soon as I got in, and Sarah tried the Chinese restaurant across from the hotel.
Caracol reminded me a little of Uxmal in surroundings, since they both had the wide central lawns that were being constantly mowed and upkept, and of Lamanai in structure of the plazas. The reservoir (which was pointed out no less than six times) that was used back when it was a functional city is still used for the water in the bathrooms at the visitor center. Other than its sheer size, though, I can't rightly recall anything outstanding about Caracol. Many of the artifacts and decoration had been taken by looters, and other than the natural raised bedrock the main plazas sat upon, I don't think even Everald could find anything quirky or interesting about it. I guess it was the Phoenix of the Mayan world.
