Belize - April Update

Jungle Training

After being met at the airport by Al, the Expedition Leader, we headed out to Elijio Panti National Park visitor centre for the first leg of our jungle training. We were met by Boo, Oz, Cat and Antonio, the park ranger and rainforest encyclopaedia. If there is a tree plant or animal in existence in the forest, Antonio knows what it is. After the initial introductions had been made and a surprisingly civilised cup of tea drunk, we cracked on with jungle training. Our first course was Personal Hygiene and Heat Related Illnesses led by the team medic, Cat. In the lesson our complete lack of heat related illness knowledge was shown up but by the end we had become experts.

The next lesson was on the contents of the belt kit. The belt kit is the belt we have to wear at all times containing the things we use regularly and an emergency kit in case we get lost.

And so we spent our first night in our hammocks which passed uneventfully except for me falling out and ripping my mosquito net from its hangings and having to try to fix it in the pitch dark.

After 2 days we moved onto another part of the park and Boo took us through fire lighting which everyone excelled at bar Tom and I, who took so long to light a fire that Antonio had to build it for us.

The following day, Al, Our great leader took us through river crossings at the top of a huge cascading waterfall, at the bottom of which was possibly the most beautiful wash point ever! River crossings were very exciting even if it did feel slightly strange walking into a river in your full clothes and belt kit.

At 4am the next morning an emergency casevac practice drill was sprung on us and we had to Boo's (our snakebite victim) leg, simulate a radio call for a helicopter and carry him on a stretcher to the HLS (Helicopter Landing Site). All of which according to the instructors went very well.

Tino, our Jungle Warfare Instructor an the hardest man alive, showed us how to survive in the jungle with just our machete, including chicken slaughter and preparation (very grim), fire lighting, trap building and how to build a five star hotel room with nothing but a machete and some Kuhune leaves. As if the morning hadn't been stressful enough it was sprung on us that our last evening of jungle training would be spent alone building our own basha sites and cooking our own food.

To say the night passed eventfully is an understatement. Tino shot a 7 foot Fur-de-Lance, I thought I had got poison wood on me, but that turned out to be a false alarm, Tom continued where he left off and took half an hour to light his fire, but regardless of all of this, we survived and were very proud the next morning.

And so, despites Caroline's determination to cut herself on every surface, Tom's worrying obsession with his machete, my all encompassing paranoia of everything in the jungle, Oz's epic snoring, Lucy's relentless enthusiasm for nature regardless of it's ability to harm her. We passed jungle training.