Punta Gorda & Columbia: South of Belize

After the amazing stop at the Dangriga Festival, it is now time for us to keep heading south. At around 1pm, we finally reach Sobre la 13h llegamos a Punta Gorda, la pequeña capital del distrito de Toledo. El autobús nos deja en la calle principal, cerca de la pequeña Universidad de Belize. Ahí es donde hemos quedado con Hakeem, un beliceño que gracias a couchsurfing nos acogerá durante una noche en su casa.

Hakeem is 21 years old and works at the secretary of the University. At seeing us, he welcomes and hugs us as if we knew each other long time and without losing time he happily guides us back to his house just a couple of blocks from the university. He tells us that he lives alone (he just recently moved out from his parents house) but there’s always people around; and guess what, today there’s only 4 of his friends cooking and listening to music in his small living room. Once settled, Hakeem leaves us to the company of his friends and gets back to the Uni to finish his shift.

Later we go out for a walk in PG (that’s how the town is for here) and have a stroll along one of the main road along the seaside. In this town, there’s not much to do but relax and take a break from the city-life, so how could we not follow this “commandment” and not sit down at a bar sipping beer as the sun goes down? Once back at Hakeem’s, the house is completely packed with people and now there are something like 7 peeps sitting on the sofas (our beds) while some others are cooking. We decide to start preparing our dinner as well and after having our short but regardful dinner we start playing altogether (probably around 10 peeps by now) at UNO. This is a great way to understand the style of living of these guys; we tell stories, they tell stories and we all have fun till late. At around midnight, when Hakeem goes to bed some people starts to go home, some others go to sleep in another room and a guy stays to sleep in one of the three sofas like us. It was fun but without Couchsurfing I don’t think it would have been the same! Tomorrow we’re gonna leave early for another town close to here: San Pedro Columbia.

At 7am we leave PG pn the bus that drop us off at the junction with San Pedro Columbia. This junction seems like the beginning of the jungle, only three people waiting for a bus, a dirt road going to nowhere and the sounds of nature surrounding us. There’s no public transport to the town but luckily, just after 5min of walking on the dirt road, a teacher who’s picking up some kids to go to school kindly stops for us as well. For us this is an amazing moment. As if we don’t exist, we’re here in the backseat of the car, listening to stories that a teacher and her students tell each other.

Unfortunately for us, the school is the first building of the town and there’s still quite some road left to reach by foot the Butterfly EcoPark, a butterfly farm which also guests people. Burning sun, our heavy backpackers and long road are all not helping but in the end (also thanks to a last hitchhiked pickup) we manage to get there!

The Butterfly EcoPark Guesthouse is a located in a gorgeous natural environment nestled in the middle of the jungle; it was build 15 years ago by Lisa, an american professor who bought land here when more than thirty years ago moved here to help educating kids of small villages & communities. The accomodation is very basic and nothing special (water, electricity, bunk beds) but amazingly enough it also have wi-fi.

The younger son of Lisa, Isah (5 years old), gives us a short tour inside the cages where butterflies are kept for reproducing. We’re left speechless: hundreds individuals of Blue Morphos and Owl Butterflies are flying around! The kid also show us small boxes where they keep the butterfly eggs, where the larvae starts to feed and also where the cocoons are hidden.

Lisa invites us to have a papaya smoothie at her house and we take the opportunity to ask her a bit about her life, her ideas & her dreams. And while Isah stare at us with his big blue eyes, Lisa also show us how to eat the cacao fruit (growing in her garden) which surrounds the seeds, eventually used to make chocolate. They’re definitely a very special family living in a very fascinating place. But for today that’s enough for us, tomorrow awaits a day of full of Indian Jones exploring the jungle surrounding us.

The next day, we wake up at sunrise to witness a gorgeous spectacle; as the first rays of sun hits the Earth a thin morning fog starts to rise, creating a unique game of lights and shadows like in a movie. What a beautiful way to start the day! Still thinking about that beautiful show, we start walking toward the Lubaantun Ruins located just 20min away from us. This excursion can be done in less than half day as the complex of ruins is mostly groups of rocks piled together with very few building still intact: something unusual in relationship to the other mayan ruins we’ve visited so far. But here, it’s also the first time we see huge trees growing on top of the forgotten ruins and so creating an incredibly fascinating bond between nature and history.