It Was All Fine Until the Invasion

Near the rainforests of San Ignacio, no snack is safe

Photo taken in Cayo district of Belize by author

Slowly nearing my hostel within the highlands of the Mayan mountains, my SUV driver tries his best to attend to my battery of questions about the coastal country through his thick Belizean accent. I watch as the geography rapidly changes along with our elevation, and bucolic fields of sun-battered gold are replaced by lush and verdant forests.

As we ascend, brush transitions into towering trees. Empty plains are supplanted by foothills, flowing streams, and humble, ramshackle towns suspended atop stilts. Struggling vegetation begins to flourish more and more with each mile further inland we travel.

At seemingly every town center is a bus stop and a convenience store proudly adorned with a Coca-Cola sign. Most are worn and shaded by dirt. Some are fixed askew atop storefronts, and others rock back and forth in pendulous indecision, the scant and sultry breeze of the sweltering day just enough to keep them from devolving into rust-locked obscurity.

As we continue rising in elevation, the hulking SUV winds its way through roads increasingly rutted. Main streets turn into dirt paths. The driver retains a smug look on his face as the roads begin to grow untenable for the oversized vehicle. It trundles through jungle and turns abruptly onto the street of my destination, an orchestra of wildlife now chittering and chirping all around us. On our right is a yard with enough broken down school buses to house a village full of children. Rusted over, boarded up, and slowly returning to the elements, the once-functioning vehicles tell a woeful tale of abandon.

Photo taken by author

The road continues to narrow, slope, and turn in a serpentine path as the trees grow taller. Further along the road on our left we find a cow staked to a yoke and placed carelessly close to the rural roadway.

The forest sprawls out before us. The trickle of a nearby tributary is drowned beneath the resounding bellow of the turbocharged truck. It passes over a stone bridge, only a couple of feet wider than the vehicle, crushes a series of twigs, and pulls up to the outskirts of my hostel with the churning squelch of his treaded tires rotating in the mud formed from freshly fallen rain. The dirt road connects to a driveway lined with little wet stones.

It’s here that I’ll spend my next week. The driver announces our arrival to the jungle-bound abode with an abrasive beep that sends half of my luggage tumbling into the median where tall grass meets gravel.

With my cash and tip in his hand, he u-turns the crusader of a truck in one swift movement and continues roaring back toward the city from whence he’s come. Beneath carefree shades are the eyes of a man laser-focused on the day full of duties ahead. And he maneuvers his car through the oppressive jungle with the gritty determination of a specialist poised to complete them one by one.

Surrounding the entrance of the hostel is a foreboding fence, but within its steel-latticed confines is a colorful compound stretched out across an acres-wide clearing of land within the luscious, towering woods. And on the compound, where the glade gives way to ceibas, sapodillas, cohune palms, and banana trees, lie the weather-worn remnants of ancient Mayan ruins. Once a modest pyramid, it rests here in a state of disrepair. It’s flanked by vines and collapsed into an indiscriminate pile of spalled stone with plants and sinews sprouting from the jumbled facade.

Photo taken by author

The decayed old monolith is covered in lichen and moss, guarded by mosquitoes, and placed a sacrilegiously minimal hundred meters away from where the hostel stores its Belikins, the Belizean beers that muster a nearly ubiquitous presence throughout the Central American nation.

I make my way apprehensively into the compound, opening the gate and closing it behind me with the grating fear that I’m about to be accosted. But I’m welcomed instead, first by a pack of dogs who turn quickly from aggressors to friends. Then, a saggily dewlapped flock of roosters enters into frame. Finally, a kindly woman careening through the grassy plains of the property on an e-bike greets me with a casual wave before disembarking from the ride with an impressive poise.

“I’m Katya,” she explains with a German accent at odds with both her name and current choice of locale. But arriving from Philadelphia with a tan more suited to Nigeria and an accent woefully unbecoming of my city, I’m hardly one to raise questions with the multi-cultured character.

Though she’s not a hostel keeper herself, she knows the property nearly well enough to give incoming guests a proper tour of the grounds. She gives me a cursory tour of the dining room, the pool hall, the Belikin-filled-fridge, as well as the ingeniously designed — admittedly honor-based — cap accounting system. It works as follows: each time we take a beer or Mexican coke from the fridge, we place the caps into little designated glass receptacles. By the time we reach the day of check-out, each cap in our specially allocated cup equates to an additional dollar or two tacked onto our total for the generously-priced stay.

She shows me to my room, makes friendly conversation as I place my things beside my bed, but neglects to warn me of the voraciously keen-sensed ants residing beneath the floorboards. Unencumbered by my suitcase and changing into a fresh set of clothes, I wander the compound and begin to settle into the blissful realization I’ve survived the last step of my journey to Belize.

But by the time I’ve returned, it’s to the horrid sight of a thousand tiny creatures scuttling impudently through my possessions. In the folded-closed, half a bag of chips that I’d stored in my backpack before my plane had even landed, the insatiable insects find a call to action. Ravaging my clothes in search of loose crumbs and ferreting their way into every crevice within my backpack in search of the unassuming snack, the mission is handled methodically.

Watching the fastidious little bugs carry off bits of the helpless chips, I shamefully realize the error of my ways. With a terrible dilemma written across my face and hardly a plan of how to solve it, I return toward the entrance of the compound in hopes I can relocate Katya. A discordant afternoon cock-a-doodle-doo emerges and spurs a chorus of barks into action. As Katya tries to quell the snarling canines, I sheepishly explain my predicament.

“Oh noo,” she replies sympathetically. “In your backpack?”

I nod in shame, my head cast downward at the stone walkway between lodgings. “And suitcase,”

Feeling like a nuisance about an hour after arriving in the country, my first solo international trip is off to a rocky start. Fifteen minutes pass as unfamiliar birds chirp, the sun bakes, and I anxiously tap my foot as I struggle to conceal my trepidation.

Then, I see Katya walking through the courtyard with a venial custodian named Mario. His English is nearly as sparse as my Swahili, so it’s through my pointer finger and a few mispronounced words from my drying reservoirs of high school Spanish that I guide him toward the problem.

With a shirt pulled over his face, insecticide in his hand, and what I can only assume is a look of heroism beneath his scrunched up shirt, he sprays the offenders up and down, along with every other inch of my ant-covered belongings. Finishing the job with an accomplished wipe of his hands and a thousand ants writhing on the ground behind him, Mario looks urgently toward me and gestures that I should probably vacate the premises.

After an hour of fumigation and biding time by the nearby stream, I return to my bunk, pick up my belongings, and shake out the aftermath of the gruesome war between ants and repellent that had just transpired minutes prior.

With the ordeal behind me, I lie in the bed of my conveniently vacant room and wait for the quaint bell that signals dinner within this quietly ant-plagued community. The lingering concoction of fumigants in the air lull me into a gentle slumber as the winter sun sets and storm clouds thunder overhead.

Photo of formerly ant-infested lodging taken by author

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