The Jungle

Damn if I’m not awake again at five A.M. Today’s mission is the jungle. Back from Ambergris caye and on the main land of Belize. We will met Celisto, the Bush Master, to learn jungle survival skills.

Graham, the tour operator, meets us at the hotel. he drives up in an ancient yellow land rover. Graham is a Brit by way of South Africa.

It’s a short drive to a dirt road that I will be on for the next hour and a half. We pass a few buses and military Land Rovers. The British forces practice jungle warfare skills here. We pass their encampment and head further out into the boonies. We’ve climbed up to about twelve hundred feet. Here the forest is far from jungle but pine. A decrepit pine forest. The pine beetle has hit this area hard. I get a good look at where Colorado is heading as the beetle infestation is pretty serious there also. Finally we leave the dirt road for a road no more than a beaten track. Now the jungle takes over.

Keith parks the car here as his Land Cruiser is going no further. Tomorrow, after scoping it out, the Earth Roamer will get to really strut it’s stuff. It will be driven way into the jungle. Now, we wait. The Bush Master and his grandson, walk out of the jungle to met us a half an hour later.

I get on my way heavy pack and hurry off after them. At first, our path is an over grown track of some sort. Maybe an old road from the logging days. The jungle then thickens and then thickens more. We hike for forty five minutes. Celistro nicks the trees with his machete, making a trail so that we can find our way back to the cars.

It’s hot. I’m in long sleeves, long pants, big sun hat, smeared with bug dope, stupid from the early morning call with the heavy pack stuffing me into the ground and excited to be going deep into the jungle.

The shadows zebra stripe everything. I’m taking pictures but they’re too often bright streaks and blackness. There are hanging vines coming down from the canopy, creeping vines that grab your feet. Huge broad leaf plants tower over me. The sky is no more than shards of blue seen amongst the leafs over head. The sounds are of birds and bugs that are unfamiliar to me. Some gigantic fly makes a noise like playing a wood saw with a bow.

We come to a river after a few miles. It’s a green river tumbling through rocks. the river is wide enough to break to foliage and let the sun in. We form a bucket brigade to pass the big camera from rock to rock. I got a all my gear in a my paraglider pack and easily hop over. Going from dry rock to dry rock.

Graham, hits a shit slick patch of moss and goes in the drink. As we are all burden when our gear and scattered across the river our our individual rocks, where’s nothing to do but watch and see if he’ll get out before going down one of the numerous falls. But Graham is out and telling us it’s all part of the fun when we ask if he’s ok.

After a short climb, we come a lean-to made of sticks and huge palm fronds. This is where Celistro and His grandson spent the night. This where we will set up our camp. The idea is for Keith to be shown everything he’d need to know to survive in the jungle, say, after a plane crash.

Step one, make sure the plane you are going to crash in has a stash of machetes in it. Celistro is a master of the machete. With it, and a short search around for materials, He would build all sorts of things. We got to joking around after a while ask him to build us a jungle microwave or find the pizza tree.

Celistro is a Maya. He is quite small. Next to Keith he is child size, his head barely to chest level. He is thin and strong and all leg. He has worked in the jungle all his life as a Chicalaro. That is, one who harvests the sap of the trees for chewing gum. He demonstrates his skill with machete by showing us how the trees were, “bled”. As with everything he did, He used a minimum of effort to make a series of herring bone slashes along the trunk of the tree in which the sap would run from one slash to another till reaching a bag at it’s base.

Next, He showed Keith how to build a shelter. Shelter is the first step, they told us to survival. The shelter was a simple lean to. The roof was the long palm fronds.

Next they built a jungle bed. At first this seemed a little silly. What do you need a bed for? But Celistro pointed out that being off the ground is very important. It keeps you away from the ants, snakes and the wild pigs will have to, at least, stand on their back legs to bite you.

The bed was made of four “Y” shaped branches. The bottoms were driven into the ground in a rectangle. Then two cross branches were set into the “Y’s”. A series of stalks from the palm fronds were placed ninety degrees to branches in the “Y’s” to make the platform of the bed. More palm fronds were split long wise and then placed on the bed to make the mattress. The whole thing was unexpectedly comfortable. Finally a pillow was made of a different kind of palm leaf.

Once you have protection from the elements, you look for food. The palm that Keith used to thatch his shelter and to make the bed held, deep within it, a heart of moist, white, cabbage like food. (I wonder what it would be like in a stir fry?) It took a lot of work to cut it out. Celistro and Keith took turns swinging the machete. Celistro’s skill more than made up for what Keith had in size and power. We all took a break to munch this crunchy veggie meal.

For the non vegetarians, our Bush Master set couple of traps. One was a spring driven bird lynching machine. The other was a classic box trap.

Next was a few plants of medicinal value. One, the “Give and Take” plant was covered with spines to poke you, but had in it’s a bark to help heal the poke wounds. The other was to counter a poison found in one of it’s neighbor trees.

The sound of thunder canceled the rest of the day. Part of me thought of what if would be like to over night it in the shelter in the jungle. It was a safe thought as I knew the camera gear had to get to the protection of the cars. We headed back over the river and through the jungle.