Trek – Bario to Long Main - Day 2

This day later came to be known as Epic Day. The story about Day One being the hardest day of trek was soon to be completely rubbished. This day turned out to be the most knackering day of our lives, and one I'm sure none of us will ever forget. We left camp at 8.30am and did not reach camp until long after night had fallen at 9.45 pm. After about only half an hour after leaving camp Rebecca remembered that she'd forgotten her perang, and Pen (one of our guides) zoomed back to get it for her while we carried on.

This day was filled with steep uphill and downhill jungle trails, with each mountain getting bigger and our energy getting lower. At the top of one hill during a short breather we were told that we had one more downhill, a 'hill' to go up and over, one river crossing an we'd be there. So thinking this nobody bothered refilling their water, thinking to save weight on the last 'hill'. However, this hill turned out to be a never ending mountain. Ben had a high point whilst climbing this mountain and chattered away spouting out encouragement and random chat giving us something to listen to, which helped some of us no end to get up that mountain. Mike meanwhile was up at the front with 'Warrior Man' aka Robin, one of our guides, who seemed not to want Mike to overtake him. In a fit of competitiveness they ended up having a running race - up the mountain!

When we reached the summit of the mountain at 6.30pm we were told that camp was only 40 minutes trek and one river crossing away. Alas, this was not to be the case.. The summit of this mountain turned out to be far from the top of the mountain, one river crossing turned into eight (one of which was chest height and terrifying!), and 40 minutes turned into over three hours. After losing the light head torches came out, apart from Ben, who had swapped torches with Ali, couldn’t work it, so had to struggle through in the dark! We actually lost the trail at one point and our guide had to cut through very overgrown parts of the jungle with his perang. The new trail led us over what was basically a cliff face, and in torrential rain, it became mudslide haven, with us eventually giving up using out feet and simply going down on our bums. Or as in Holly's case clinging desperately to the guide Tim and claiming him as her own! Over thirteen hours later, and eleven hours of hard trekking we finally reached the village of Pa'Tik. We were relieved to say the least to arrive to a house and not have to put up bashas. We were all mentally and physically exhausted and the comfort that a warm Milo and some noodles gave us was inexpressible.

Trek – Bario to Long Main - Day 1

Our two days of 'rest' after Project Hornbill Camp included a BBQ feast and party (prepared by our Bario Mum Seluma), some of Florence's delicious cake, and last trips to Y2K to stock up on Treats-for-Trek. These varied from highly sugared jam, hundreds of sweets (Becca), chocolate and for Andy who liked them a little too much, nuts. After a day of packing and splitting up 5 days of rations between us, desperately trying to make our packs lighter in any way possible; we set off on trek. A breakfast of 'interesting', but tasty, spicy purple rice set everyone up in good stead for leaving the beautiful Bario in its glorious morning sun with feelings of mixed excitement, dread and nervous anticipation.

We were told that the first part of the first day of Trek would be the hardest, as we set out it looked as though this was holding true. It started off almost immediately with a tough two hours of uphill trekking, many tricky rivers, with an impressive disappearing act from Ali (after just an hour!) falling through and then down a fallen tree. This made us all start wondering what else was going to come up in the next four days, and if we were going to manage it.

That evening we arrived in very good time at our camp, at 3.15! This gave us plenty of time to put up our bashas and hammocks, and as in Rhi's case after a complaint from Andy fix the 'worst basha of all time'. We all then had time for a bathe in a beautiful jungle river before dark fell on the first night of trek. This was our first night of plain noodles, and although some of us thought we would never say it we were all starting to sorely miss veggie curry and the beautiful too full feeling it gave us. We were definitely glad to be in bed by 8.30 after what we thought had been a difficult day, how wrong we were...

Barton Creek Outpost, Bets & Rambo

The next 3 days were spent chilling out at Barton Creek Outpost, a kind of hostel-come-restaurant that is to become Trekforce’s new field base. We didn’t completely escape from work, however, as there was plumbing to be done. To say that the group was inexperienced at this would be a massive understatement. We left without testing anything, so fingers crossed! The food at the Creek was fantastic, and the rope swings and cliff jumping left us wishing we could stay for longer.

Dick has earnt 3 cheese burgers through bets about nails and Jasper and Big Dom have spent most of their time eating like kings back at field base, tempting us with professional looking photos of steak and potatoes, and smoking grape flavoured cigars. Dave likes gravy and custard almost too much, and Harry continues to believe that he is Rambo.

As we write this to the background noise of Dick’s snoring, we look forward to heading out tomorrow on a short canoe trip before returning to Elijio Panti National Park to do another project. Bring on the next 4 weeks!

Boardwalk into a lagoon project

Our first project was the long anticipated ‘boardwalk into a lagoon’ at Hill Bank. When we arrived we were amazed by the facilities, which included clean shower and toilet blocks, and a lot of spacious clean rooms. Unfortunately those rooms were not for us and we set up a rather muddy camp in the jungle nearby. The boardwalk we began to build the next day was indeed into a beautiful lagoon with crystal clear water, but the particular location that had been chosen happened to be the swampiest, smelliest, crocodile infested corner by some mangroves.

For the next 6 days we worked hard and enjoyed Harry’s generous ration plan, which saw us eating more than a sensible amount of chocolate biscuits.

On the way back from Hill Bank we stopped off for a night at the ancient mayan ruins at Lamanai, where we watched the sunset and rise from the top of the high temple, which 2000 years ago was the highest building in the whole Mayan area and afforded us fantastic views over the jungle and lagoon.

Unfortunately Frenchie had to leave at this point, as she had already extended her stay by a week. Her strange French ways and willingness to give anything a go will be missed. Now who will tell Jack off for farting while we eat?!

Waterfall Camp & R&R

Next we moved on to the beautiful waterfall camp for advanced training. We played with ropes in the river (ahem, learnt about river crossing), and learnt about shelter and trap building. Our instructor in much of this was the goldmine of all jungle information, Marcos, who used to train the SAS. He showed us the best way to eat termites, and how to eat the heart of the cohune palm, amongst other handy tips.

During all of this we were kept on our toes by a game of jungle cluedo, which Frenchie won with an impressive 4 assassinations. On the final night before we left Elijio Panti we went on a night walk. This basically consisted of a conga line led by (and terrorized by) Colin wending its way through the pitch black jungle with no head torches on.

Our first R+R back at field base began in rather messy fashion with a night out in San Ignacio. The cheap drinks got the better of some! We visited the Belize zoo, which is a strange mix of big cats in small cages and monkeys roaming free throughout. It was on this night that we had a roast dinner, although if those Yorkshire puddings were served anywhere in the UK the chef would probably be shot. Our final day of relaxing was spent by the swimming pool of a nearby resort, where Dick set up a strategically placed sun-lounger and spent most of the afternoon pretending to read amongst a group of American girls who were staying at the hotel.

Jungle Training & Machete Use

Its 26 days since we trekkers arrived in Belize eager to get stuck into jungle life. The time has flown by but much has been accomplished.

After half an hour to sort out our bags, get into our jungle gear and meet our fellow ninjas, we were straight into an hours walk to our first camp in Elijio Panti National Park. The first week consisted of basic jungle survival skills under the tuition of the TELs with their 2 months of knowledge and experience.

The first 2 days of our jungle adventure kicked off in style as Jack spent most of the night snoring farting and sleep talking. First thing in the morning we were paired into ‘buddies’ and played team building games which often ended in scraps between our two role models and leaders, Colin and Jade. After blindfolded obstacle courses we moved on to the advanced tests of our buddy skills. The Trekkers took on the TELs in a game of paralyzed farmer, blind dog. Needless to say the trekkers came out on top with a tremendous display of how to round up deaf dumb and blind sheep into a palapa.

Although we trekkers didn’t quite understand the novelty, the TELs were all amazed when Jasper and Harry revealed that they had managed to carry 6 eggs, unbroken, into camp. The sensible thing to do would have been enjoy the treat, but we had to have an epic egg and spoon race first, fortunately only one was broken (not naming names Frenchie!).

Putting aside the shenanigans of the first few days we rolled on into the more serious side of jungle life. Through jungle observation we learnt how to spot items of Dick’s belt kit but failed to spot Dick himself amongst them. Wendy instructed us in jungle hygiene, which turned out to be a bit futile as Jack only brought 1 pair of boxers with him. Jasper taught us which items to carry on us at all times in our belt kit. Nearly everything in his own was in some way useable to start a fire, which led nicely on to Harry’s lessons. We were excited to get our hands on our machetes, but that only meant a morning of chopping firewood for our fire lighting lesson. After about an hour of burning our fingers with lighters the pros stepped in to show us how it is done.

With all these skills we were ready for our first foray into the jungle on our own for solo night. While Jack was still setting up his basha Dave snuck round and stole most of the good fire lighting materials in his area. On the other side Frenchie and Dom set up quite quickly and were on the hunt for dry wood too to get a brew on. In the end we all got fires going, and settled in for the night.

Local guide / professional jungle ninja Antonio spent a few days with us to pass on his vast knowledge of the local flora and fauna (he knows over 200 different birds). Hopefully we won’t need most of the stuff he taught us, as it was for pretty extreme problems. Highlights included the ‘Plugyourbutt’ tree, the ‘Waitawhile’ vine and ‘Jackass Bitter’.

By the end of the initial training phase we knew which ants to use to stitch wounds up, which tree to cut down for pink cocaine and which trees would splash us with poisonous sap.