Days 8 & 9 - Camping in 'Jaguar' territory and tubing down the river!
 
An early start and the newly grouped 7 of us bundled onto the small ferry again bleary eyed to say the least . Sandy unbelievably after not feeling too good all night (are you sure it wasn't the rum Sandy ha ha!) managed to make the boat too and into the slightly unknown we headed via chicken bus to be dumped on the side of the road, heading for the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Reserve and Worlds only Jaguar Sanctuary! Having been told that 'on arrival guides would be there to take us to the park etc... etc...' we arrived to find nobody in sight and the not so helpful Mayan ladies at the craft centre basically said 'no room in the inn' and  'we are not really bothered in helping you.' After much confusion we all decided to go there anyway and jumped on the back of our local taxi driver's truck stopping on route at his local shop to buy food which basically sold dry packets of Macaroni Cheese and stale crackers...yum!
 
Driving on the back of the truck was cool as we headed along a mud track further into the jungle and 6 miles later landed at the reserve. Unfortunately as expected there were 'no room at the inn' but on asking the ranger if he had any tents we finally ended up with 3 tents and not a lot else deciding that a night in the jungle camping would be fun, even though the ranger seemed to be quite surprised that we were camping ....... Soon we would probably understand why!
 
The site was cool though, we had our own little picnic area with straw roof and an open fire area plus we could use the camp kitchen to cook the delightful dry packet meal we had so all was good. On asking the ranger if we could go tubing in the river he proceeded to tell me that there had been a flash flood the day before so it wasn't safe but he would check, then when he saw that 7 of us would hire tubes the river became suddenly safe...what were we letting ourselves in for!! In addition he said that we should be ok here as long as we avoided the many poisonous snakes in the jungle that loved the wet season and were in abundance.....eeek!!!
 
The tents were cool though and soon the 7 of us were happily heading down to the river to brave the tubing! We did have to laugh at the safety sign which said 'tubing this way' next to a sign saying 'do not use inflatables in the river?!!!' This Belize safety stuff would do well in England.....not!! Thankfully no crocodiles live in this river and with the muddy brown water being so high we were soon floating pretty swiftly down the river on our inner tubes, it was wicked! Definitely a moment we will all remember (especially the jungle book tunes Isobelle & Regular!), an entire river to ourselves in a tropical jungle, the sun beating down, on what would be a working day at home!, just paradise, all that was missing was a cold beer in our hands! The wildlife we saw too was staggering, I have never seen such large jet blue colourful butterflies and bright red and yellow birds in all my time and amongst the many jungle noises booming around the river it was just fantastic, there was even an otter in the water! I was still convinced though that the coconut shells bobbing in the water at times were crocodile heads though!
 
Weaving through a few near misses with bushes, rapids and fallen down trees we finally came to our 'safe' exit point, a rope across the river, placed at a point where the current was amazingly at its strongest! We all had to laugh as we clung on trying to help each other to reach the river edge, whilst t-shirts and nearly all our shoes were swept away down the river . Then David decided to try his luck in putting his feet down and we all realised that we were actually in knee height water and that was it!!! It was so funny and we had to laugh at our stupidity in thinking the raging river would sweep us away any minute!! Like a bunch of school kids we exited the river then hiked back through the muddy forest to have another go (after our stale cracker lunch!) and tubed down the river again, this time on reaching the exit point we went to stand and almost went under, I was in a deep pool of all places that hadn't seem to exist the last time we had tubed, thankfully we all managed to get out and this time Adam managed to hold onto his second t-shirt!
 
Dumping the tubes in the trees we then hiked to see Bens Bluff Waterfall which despite being small, was beautiful and it was great to swim under the falls in such clear and fresh water, our natural shower for the day! Remarkably as we were walking we saw hundreds of tiny leafs floating above the ground across our path and on looking closely saw that it was an army of ants!! It was amazing, they were each carrying a leaf at least 4 times the size of themselves with the route starting down a huge tree on one side, across the path then along the 'ant motorway' they had created the other side to go into the jungle, it was fascinating! We watched for ages and laughed when one ant with the biggest piece of leaf dropped it, only to have 4 other ants come up to help him pick it back up! I thought I was watching a children's cartoon movie! Not sure if the ant trail is in the safest place though and expect on writing this that a few million have already been stamped on!! On passing a wild boar in the forest and James spotting a jaguar print in the mud, we went back to base where upon we had our first unfortunate encounter with a poisonous snake! Whilst sitting under our little camp straw roof, the Swiss girls suddenly spotted a head sticking out of the straw and yes, there it was a 1 and a half metre length poisonous yellow and green colour snake!!!! Now I could see why the warden looked abit shocked when we said we wanted to camp . A few screams later it finally made its way into the grass (not sure if that is a good thing!) and we all then were on snake alert for the rest of our stay......
 
That eve we all prepared ourselves to sample our 'A la carte menu for the eve, macaroni cheese! Basically all of us had bought a packet of this dried 'stuff' and together it would come to about 35 portions for the 7 of us, result! Taking over the camp kitchen, Regular and David measured the amount of water needed whilst Ads and I sorted the implements needed to make such a difficult meal of pasta, water and cheese powder mix, bring to the boil, eat!!! There seemed to be gallons of water and after an hour we started to realise that perhaps our 'cup' measurements were indeed equivalent to the largest mugs of coffee from Starbucks!! The consistency was literally yellow water with some 'bits' in it and on sampling the delight all I could taste was salt, which was better than Regular as she tried it and tasted absolutely nothing! So David and myself started to cup out the water, then realising we needed to lose about a gallon, we decided to just tip it out! It was so funny, nearly 2 hours had passed and the next camp group of Americans needed the kitchen!!!! Although the American school girls decided to join us in the kitchen and sing Britney Spears songs loudly .....nice! We went to add the famous 'moo cow' cheese we had but found half of this was mouldy, by now the thought of dinner along with the huge ants nest running wild in the corner of the dining room was starting to turn our stomachs.....
 
Eventually it thickened slightly (well done Chef David!) and soon our slop or should we say macaroni cheese was served. In the end it wasn't a bad meal, tasted a lot better when smothered by 'Aromat' that the Swiss girls had and it filled a hole.
 
Later that eve my stomach decided something wasn't too good and a run for the loo in the jungle it was for me. When your camp loos though consists of a toilet into a hole in the ground which stenches beyond belief, the jungle life can become abit harder but hey that's part of the experience as they say, didn't feel that way that eve though as I made several runs in the dark to the loo and basically was scared stiff by all the noises around me. At about 9pm bust we all retired to our tents and during the night the jungle noises all around us were incredible and just got louder and louder. The only slight problem was that they were so loud, when I needed the loo at 2am I was too scared to leave the tent and took an hour to pluck up the courage!! I was convinced I could hear what sounded like a jaguar (wearing flip flops!) stomping round our tent.... On waking in the morning the others too had said they had heard this and Regular in braving the loo in bush had turned her torch on to find a red poisonous snake going passed her feet! Aaah! All in all it had been fab though, despite the hundreds of mozzie bites we all woke up too it had been worth it and whilst we had not had much sleep it is definitely a highlight of Belize we will never forget.