Well, I guess I should start out with my weekend of insane coolness. We had finished up our first full week of teaching and were ready to chill out! We left for San Ignacio to spend the weekend at 7:30 in the morning.
After about 2.5 hours, we arrived at our first activity of the day which was the Belize Zoo. We entered and were welcomed by the signatures of people from all over the world. Pennsylvania, all over Europe, Aurora, Colorado, everywhere!
The zoo is world-famous (which I didn’t know) and I now know why. It was the most natural habitat for the animals. I didn’t feel bad for them. It was a non-profit organization and they have rescued the hurt animals to nurse them back to health. All the native vegetation, smells, and sounds made me feel like I was in a rainforest.
So, it was pretty much a normal walk through the zoo. Then we were invited to spend more money (to support the Jaguar Foundation) and to actually go pet a real live jaguar. I was like “Heck Yeah!” So, I donated my $10. They put the jaguar in its cage and we walked in to the “human cage” which was in the middle of his pen. 5 of us piled in and they closed the pen. The jaguarist had a bowl of delicious chicken feet that he fed to the jaguar as he did tricks. They trained “Junior” to do somersaults which were the cutest. Then, Junior jumped on the top of the cage. The jaguarist let the animal lick his head so that we could pet his paws and get more pictures of his head. He was absolutely beautiful—marigold yellow with black spots and a white underbelly. Quite humbling to see one up-close. Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story of the zoo.
Then, the most terrific story happened. We had just finished looking at the rest of the zoo and had taken lots of pictures of some pretty cool animals. Then we saw a sign for April’s Birthday. The mountain cow or Tapir had turned 26 years old and I am guessing that it was a momentous occasion. Given that I know so much about the mountain cow, I was a bit of a party pooper. The two people I was with were just fascinated by this ugly animal and got pretty close to the cage. One of them even pulled a long piece of grass out of its mouth so that he could keep eating without gagging. He/she/it kept giving us some mean looks. Then one in our group saw a sign that Tapir had a bit of a pee-problem and liked to spray people randomly. I thought that was interesting, but it didn’t quite register.
As I watched April turn around, she passed the others (who happened to be melanin-less a.k.a. white) and then she paused for like 1/100th of a second and decides to spray me with her white, veggie smelling urine. I was a bit shocked to say the least. How many people can actually saw that they were peed on by the national animal of Belize??? I personally/jokingly think that the animal was racist because I was the only person of color in my group, but it all makes for a great story.
I went to their water pump and unpeed myself and my camera. I did smell like grass for a while, but what can I say….
Our driver travels all over Belize and parts of Mexico and has Sirius radio. He is always listening to Sirius Station 50 which is called Gangsta Love. It has songs from Black Eye Peas, Take Me Down which gives me fond memories of the Kappa’s step show performance at MSU, and lots of others.
Well, I distinctly remember hearing that Sirius always plays no matter what. I wanted to let the manufacturing plant that I have been to a few places in Belize where it does NOT play. It seemed like we went to the boonies and then took a left on an unmarked road.
What we did on this unmarked road will have to stay a mystery until you read my next entry.
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