We moved off to San Antonio the next morning and from there to Elijio Panti, a national park in Belize. Here we would finish off our Basic Jungle Training and do some more work on Nav and River Crossings. We arrived around lunch time and had our first taste of the rations – not too bad! But we have been promised that after the next 3 months they will not seem so tasty. The rest of the day was spent going over the Nav we had learnt in Wales and having a go at Jungle Observation. Jade had hidden 15 objects along a route and we had to try and spot them. We all got 9 or 10 and were frustrated when we finally found the last 5 but the lesson was good fun and important.
The next day was spent with Antonio, a crazy local bushman who would teach us some flora and forna. Many of the plants and trees in Belize have medicinal properties and while some were very believable others seemed less genuine. For example, a plant which cured a headache – over the course of a week! And we also learnt that it is possible to catch Gonorrhea by wearing wellington boots on a hot day and then stepping in horse pee – we think not! Other’s just taste great like the all spice plant and the hog plum plant and others like cohune and moho are great for building shelters. Antonio also helped us in our quest to make fire! This proved extremely difficult after 2 days of rain at the midpoint of the wet season. Conditions like these were challenging even for a jungle ninja like Antonio but after several hours of huffing and puffing, wafting repositioning of wood and tinder also aided by some protection from the rain by carefully held leaves, we were rewarded with fire!
Our third day at Elijio Panti was the final day of our Basic Jungle Training, a solo night in which we would pitch our hammocks alone and cook our own food on a fire we had made. We set off excited and collected wood as fast as we could before the rain came.A similar battle to yesterdays firlighting efforst ensued but after a couple of lighters and candles and many hours of streaming eyes due to the large quantities of smoke a fire did start in one of our camps and therefore everyone managed to get some food in them before we settled down for our first night alone in the Jungle.
We arose the next day very early and smelling fairly… unique we got the bus into San Ignacio to sort out our kit for our second attempt at the cave rescue. After a hairy bus journey, offending people with our “unique” odours, we arrived and all ran for the shower so that we would not offend anyone in town. So again we leave you about to depart for the BDART cave rescue scenario – hopefully this time it is successful!
