|
Pampered Paddling: A worldwide sampler of where to get coddled in your
kayak or canoe
Boating Belize:
La Ruta Maya
Paddling Smorgasbord and
Slickrock's Caribbean
Island Vacation
 It’s
late afternoon on the opening day of the Ruta Maya canoe race, and I’m
enjoying my sudden dunking in Belize’s cultural melting pot. We’re camped
at the Banana Bank Lodge on the Belize River, a riverside spread run by
Montana transplant John Carr, a real-live cowboy with the rodeo
championship belt buckle to prove it. As competitors straggle in after the
first stage of this four-day, 170-mile canoe race across Belize, an old
Creole man strums a guitar and sings Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. Each
time he comes around to “Won’t you help to sing/These songs of freedom,” I
get a tingle in my spine.
Then, without losing a beat, he switches to an old Hank Williams tune, and
the cowboy puts down his plate of rice and beans and joins in. That’s how
I’ll remember Belize—two old men sharing a song, while a half-dozen
younger Belizeans try to follow the old-timey country beat on drums
crafted from five-gallon plastic buckets.
Luis Garcia, whose parents fled the Guatemalan civil war in the 1980’s
explains: “In the old days the only radio station anyone could get in
Belize came from Texas. That’s why all the old people here love country
music.” It’s a perfect analogy for the cultural feast that is Belize.
The next morning I awake to a 4 a.m. bugle call, courtesy of one of the
at-risk kids Garcia mentors. “He’s a good boy, and he’s come a long way,”
Garcia says of the trumpeter, who woke the camp an hour early, “but
sometimes he can’t help himself.” I inhale fry jacks in the pre-dawn
blackness, preparing to paddle 60 miles with two American Peace Corps
volunteers who first held a canoe paddle the day before. Their attitude
is inspiring—I am subbing for a heat-struck team member, who will later
rejoin the crew and finish the race—but the experience leaves me feeling
anything but pampered. So that evening I hitch a ride to San Ignacio to
join Slickrock Adventure Tours’ more luxurious exploration of Belizean
rivers and reefs and best vacation package.
I
sleep in a comfortable cabana that night and wake to a far different
breakfast: piles of fresh fruit, toast, bacon and perfectly prepared
eggs. We linger over coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice as our guide,
Neri Chi, briefed us on our day’s adventure—an easy float down the Cave’s
Branch River, through nearly five miles of limestone caverns to the place
where, according to Chi’s Mayan ancestors, the land of the living meets
that of the dead.
The next day we sample the Mopan River’s Class III rapids before traveling
to Long Caye on Glover’s Reef, one of only four coral atolls in the
western hemisphere. The island is the exclusive domain of Slickrock, and
it’s a kayaker’s dream. A thatched roof shelters a fleet of sea kayaks
and surf boats, and the island provides perfect opportunities for both,
not to mention world-class fishing, snorkeling, scuba and wind-surfing.
The sheltered lagoon stretches for miles to the east and north, while the
windward shore sports an active surf break.
This isn’t pampering in the five-star white tablecloth sense; it’s
highly-living Belize style. We sleep in thatched cabanas perfectly
situated to take in the sea breeze, our showers are warmed by the abundant
sun, and the toilet is the pride of the island—a one-of-a-kind composting
affair that smells pleasantly of wood chips. The Belizean staff prepares
excellent family style meals, and after dinner they destroy us at
dominoes.
Our guides are full-time professionals, and it shows in their complete
mastery of every activity, from wind-surfing to snorkeling. The head
guide, John Ariola, gives the best talk I’ve heard on kayak wet-exits and
assisted rescues, and then declaims “I’m sorry if it’s hard to understand
me. English is not my first language; I have my own language.” John and
most of the staff are Garinagu whose ancestors escaped slavery on the
Caribbean island of St. Vincent and intermarried with Carib Indians,
adopting their language and much of their culture. After a long struggle,
the British deported them to Honduras in 1797; their distinctive Garifuna
language and culture has since spread up and down Central America’s
Caribbean coastline.
Whether Garinagu, Mayan or Canadian, our guides are consummate watermen
and passionate volleyball players. For the first couple of days I am
content to bask in the sun like the island’s resident Iguanas, saving my
energy for the afternoon volleyball match and dives to Long Caye Wall—one
of Jacques Cousteau’s favorite dive spots, which happens to lie 200 yards
from my cabana. Twelve hours of cane racing had temporarily dulled my
paddling appetite, but the deep blue Caribbean revives it: Soon I am
rallying the crew for a 12-mile paddle to a neighboring caye. This island
has a more substantial human footprint, including a fishing resort with
air-conditioned rooms and a perfect little bar on stilts. We sip cool
limeade as the proprietor tells us how tourism has saved the tiny island’s
economy after coconut blight. Then he ushers next door for a proper
seafood feast, served with cloth napkins. The way back would turn into a
sprint—our life of comfort has left us with energy to burn—but until then
we loiter over our coffee, enjoying the warm Caribbean breeze. Info:
www.slickrock.com
Paddler
January/February, 1999
Story and photos by EDB
 12 Top Jungle Rivers
Want
to swing Tarzan-like through the rainforest? Want to live like George of
the Jungle on fresh bananas, mangos, papaya and guava? Want to listen to
bird chirps, monkey calls, crocodile growls, hippo snorts, frog croaks and
jaguar snarls -- as well as the roar of whitewater?
If
so, shuck your day-to-day responsibilities aside and head south to one of the
world's Top Jungle Rivers. Each waterway listed below can be run in a variety of
craft, from inflatables to hard-shells, and is guaranteed to put you in some of
the best bush on the planet -- the type where your alarm clock rings from high
in the rainforest canopy. The main attraction of these rivers, of course, is
boulder-strewn, jungle-lined whitewater, ranging anywhere from cricket-chirping
Class II to snake-hissing Class V. Listed alphabetically by continent, the
following runs include simple day trips, over-nighters in thatched-roof huts and
week-long outings where you can camp like Dr. David Livingstone under the
rainforest canopy. And who knows, after spending time in the jungle, you might
just unleash that hidden Tarzan or Jane that's been waiting to break out of its
city-locked shell. Just don't blame us if you come back to work growling.
 The
Macal and Cave Branch, Belize Tour Packages When
a team of British army adventurers first ran Belize's Macal River in the early
1980s, little did they know that -- despite the many Class VI portages -- they
had stumbled on a run destined to be a jungle classic. In 1994, hardshell
kayakers Cully Erdman, Dugald Bremner and Josh Lowrey affirmed this fact by
running all but five drops in the river's 20-mile granite gorge in one day.
"It's definitely a classic," says Erdman, who feels so strongly about
the river that he offers eight-mile, one-day trips on the lower gorge through
his company, Slickrock Adventures. "It's got everything you need in a
jungle trip."
The
Macal is the largest drainage of Belize's Maya Mountains, funneling countless
rainforest tributaries through a 20-mile gorge cutting through the highlands. In
the heart of the gorge, vine-clad walls tower up to 1,500 feet overhead, many of
which harbor cascading waterfalls and hidden limestone caves. After flowing
north out of the highlands near the Guatemalan border, the river opens up to a
lush valley before joining the Mopan River in San Ignacio. Be forewarned,
however, that it is not for the faint of heart. The granite river bed creates
classic pool-drop rapids in the form of waterfalls and strong hydraulics.
The best levels to tackle the rapids are between 500-1,500 cfs, which usually
occurs when the rainy season subsides from November through March. The river
often rises as high as 45,000 cfs in the rainy season. Excluding the Class VI
portions, the average gradient is about 75 feet per mile. Helping
river runners -- but harming the river's wilderness qualities -- is a
hydro-electric complex recently built in the middle of the canyon that diverts
flow for a few miles before depositing it back in the river at the base of the
gorge's Class VI section. The power plant provides the only road access to the
lower eight-mile run, which houses such rapids as Cartwheel Falls, Rock-Hell
Falls, Vaca Falls, Duck soup and The Wall. The lower section still has several
portages, including one that avoids a Class VI cataract, before you reach the
take-out at Black rock Lodge (you can also paddle another four miles of
flatwater to an alternative take-out at Chaa Creek Lodge). For
a jungle fix without the adrenaline, head to the nearby Caves Branch River,
which, when not meandering through rain-forest cloaked countryside, flows under
ground through Mayan artifacts-filled caves for five of the run's eight miles.
And it's the perfect place to learn white water kayaking.
And that's someplace even British army adventurers dared not venture in their
reconnaissance of the area in the early '80s. This is the ultimate
Belize vacation. For
information on this trip and a three-day tour of Mayan
civilization, contact Slickrock
Adventures: (800)390-5715. |
