Three kilometers east of the Guatemala border, the forest fell silent.
Four hours earlier we had left Tapir Camp — the entrance to the Chiquibul forest — via a newly cut trail off the Caracol Road, to trek to the Cebada region of the Chiquibul and document a sinkhole re-discovered by the Friends for Conservation and Development’s (FCD) Karst Management Unit (KMU). FCD co-manages the Chiquibul forest which represents 7.7% of Belize’s national territory and the KMU is tasked with surveying the Chiquibul’s cave system, the largest in Central America. Under cloudy skies the six of us — two members of the KMU, three FCD rangers and myself — shouldered our packs, shifted loads, buckled straps and began the gradual uphill hike to the new sinkhole.
During the first few hours of silent walking we saw brocket deer, great curassows and crested guans, howler monkeys lounging in the canopy, macaws, parrots and parakeets flying overhead. Underfoot were coral snakes, lizards, leaf cutter ant columns and spider webs — lots of spider webs. We heard rustling, hissing, grunts and the ever present chainsaw-like whine of cicadas, first in the distance than washing past like a wave before retiring into the forest expanse.
Vines, ferns, palms and forest giants like Mahogany and Ceiba trees created a lush, verdant wall around us. Rain during the previous week had produced a trail full of thick, sticky mud which clung to our boots, adding 2 lbs to the loads we already struggled with. But the mud also captured the tracks of tapir and wildcats, deer and warrie. Wildness surrounded us like a fantasy world, a reflection of what I imagine the Garden of Eden once was.
Then the vision was gone.
Rounding a bend in the trail we entered a broken, plundered and harsh landscape. Bare trunks rose out of scrub like skeletal sentinels. The air grew silent and thick, ladened with pollen and grit. The canopy disappeared, replaced by a burning sun. The muddied track turned to a knee-deep brown pool. The rain that had fallen all week was not draining, probably because the debris from the cleared land blocked the normal water flow. Individual corn stalks flowered near the trail, leftovers from a previous crop.
We were in Belize, still three kilometers from the Guatemalan border, but Guatemalans are illegally clearing and farming hundreds of acres of Belizean territory. The flourishing forest we just passed through was replaced by a wasted valley choked with tiger ferns and coarse new growth. During the next dry this valley will burn like kindling right up the hillside slopes into the surrounding forest.
Witnessing this wanton destruction of our forests, the very forest FCD is tasked with managing, drained us. We hurried on and soon left the trail, making our way up a steep slope to the rim of the newly discovered sinkhole, well away from the cleared land below. Dusk lengthened shadows and a steady rain began, soaking already damped spirits. We setup camp and ate supper as the forest first turned murky, then inky black. Wearily, we crawled into our hammocks, the constant and loud tap of raindrops on tarps no competition for the sore muscles and exhaustion putting us to sleep.
Morning broke with wispy clouds rising from the valleys and a light drizzle, the view would have been beautiful and primeval if we didn’t know what lay beneath the fog. After coffee and breakfast, the KMU team, an FCD ranger and myself packed camera and climbing gear into backpacks, strapped on helmets, checked headlamps, and headed to the edge of the sinkhole. Two armed FCD rangers remained behind to guard the camp.
A sinkhole, or dry cenote, is basically water-soluable limestone rock hollowed out by an underground river, forming a cave. Over time, the roof of the cave thins, weakens and crumbles, leaving a hole in the ground with a pile of rubble at the bottom. Along the sides of the sinkhole there are often river-hewed tunnels or passageways leading further underground to other caverns and sinkholes, like spokes on a wheel, creating a multi-node network of underground structures. The Chiquibul forests hide the largest such network of caves in Central America; this is what the KMU is tasked to map.
With the help of ropes, we scrambled down a 15 foot vertical rock face to a jumble of car-sized, moss covered boulders scattered along the side of the sinkhole which provided a slippery passage to the bottom. We climbed past an ancient Mayan rock wall. Behind the wall lay a level, thinly plastered floor, possibly a platform for ritual offerings. Archaeologists theorize that the Maya saw caves as portals to the underworld. Throughout Belize, evidence has been uncovered that the Maya entered caves to leave offerings, conduct ceremonies, and perform sacrifices. A cavern on the far side of the sinkhole, across from the rock wall, also has a level floor, but of dirt, with pottery shards and a beautiful view of the sinkhole rim lined by trees leaning over the edge as if trying to view the inside.
But the true gem of the sinkhole, a 60 ft column of rock, rose out of a jade-colored pool surrounded by bright green plants and showered by dripping water from the roof of the sinkhole 130 ft above. This “splattermite”, an informal name used by cavers to describe a type of stalagmite, features platy protusion, like the petals of a flower. The “petals” arc around the central column, fed by the drips from above which splash on the column, depositing their calcite as they evaporate.
The top of the “splattermite”, when viewed from the east side of the cave, takes the form of a Mayan head and shoulder, facing toward the boulder field and the entrance to the sinkhole. The column rises out of the water as if a guardian of the underworld, the last defender against the loss of history, the loss of ancient wisdom, the loss of nature, the loss of the spirit of the forest.
After spending the morning photographing the splattermite and exploring every nook and cranny of the sinkhole, we picked our way back up the jumble of boulders to the base of vertical wall. Grabbing onto the rope left from the climb down, we pulled our selves up one by one to the rim and out into the sunlight and a partly cloudy sky.
After a lunch of tortillas and cheese, four of us again grabbed our camera and climbing equipment, but this time headed downhill away from the sinkhole toward the Cebada Cave, a major opening into the Chiquibul Cave system, a short two kilometers from the Guatemala border.
On the way down the narrow valley toward the cave, we once again passed through an expanse of Guatemalan clearing, the same tiger fern, low harsh bush habitat devoid of wildlife and birds, a desolate wasteland that would burn hot and out of control next dry season. We passed an old fence post with wire, and the remains of a burnt homestead that was destroyed years ago by the Belize Defense Force (BDF). The Guatemalans had been chased from here before, but they were back with a tenacity fed by need. Pollen and dust was again thick in the air, this time stirred by a blazing sun. Without the canopy, the heat was oppressive.
The Cebada Cave entrance was flooded, so we could not enter. We took a few photos in the misty light, sat for while listening to the rushing water, then grabbed our gear for the return hike. As we made our way back up the valley from the cave, the trailing ranger turned to look behind and called a halt to the column. He could see movement in the distance. A lone figure worked on a barren burnt hillside; a Guatemalan squatter working Belizean land. We stood there staring, speechless, helpless, trying to make sense of the scene. The fact that we could see him a kilometer away, in a habitat where we usually can’t see more than a few feet because of the dense forest, was bad enough. But he was at least a kilometer inside Belize territory, and was working a steep hillside, part of our watershed, part of our treasured Chiquibul forest, gone.
What will it take for the Belizean government and people to wake up and realize the magnitude of what is being lost? If protection of the watershed does not move us to act; if the illegal logging, illegal wildlife trade, illegal gold mining and more does not anger us into action, then consider this. The 5 Guatemalan departments (Guatemalan districts/states are called departments) that adjoin Belize’s western border have close to 350 separate communities with a combined population of over 300,000, most poor Mayan farmers, and most young people looking for a future. There are also indications that organized crime is fueling the push for land into the Chiquibul and Belize. The presence of cattle pastures support this…poor people do not have herds of cattle.
We are not dealing with the Guatemalan army along our western border, we are dealing with a Guatemalan social problem, one that is not of our making, one we are not obligated to help solve — we have plenty of our own social problems to deal with. Belize’s problem is that people are coming across our western border illegally and harvesting our resources. Therefore the only solution is to secure the border with our military. If we do not stop the Guatemala poor at the western border, where do we? At the Natural Arch? At Caracol? At Augustine? At San Ignacio? A constant, daily presence all along a demarcated border by our military will significantly reduce the incursions, the stealing, the clearing, the appropriation of Belizean territory by Guatemala’s poor farmers.
And it does not have to break the bank, as the unpunished financial crimes of both our political parties have done. For example, a series of 8 outposts spaced about 10 miles apart covers the entire Chiquibul and Vaca forest borders with Guatemala. Man each outpost with an armed squad of 9 soldiers. Add armed squads of 9 moving between posts each day. An unarmed peasant population is no match for a rotating presence of 135 armed soldiers that patrol the border on a daily basis. Add in proper communications, proper equipment and training, utilize new electronic surveillance techniques, resupply the outposts by helicopter to keep the troops light and mobile and motivated …you get the idea. The BDF soldiers will have a sense of purpose, hone their jungle skills and we will have invested in the development and camaraderie of the young men and women of Belize.
We are, at this moment in our history as a country, dealing with an issue of national sovereignty. This is our generation’s Battle of St Georges Caye, our generation’s 1981 Independence movement. We can continue to hide behind our phones, our televisions and our complacency, as well as search the Internet for Spanish language schools in Guatemala (which returns 18 million results) because we may all soon be speaking Spanish.
Or we can take on the generational challenge before us, create a shared vision of an independent and sovereign nation, and back it up with action, not just words … protect the Chiquibul and secure our western border.
Our national sovereignty is the predominant issue for Belizeans at present; without secure borders we have no country. But future generations will also see it as moral and ethical issue, as a time that defined us as Belizeans. For you see, much of our Belizean landscape is still forest-covered. The forests are almost constantly bathed by either a warm tropical rain or a bright sun. In this ideal habitat, plants strive so riotously against each other to reach the sunlight, that they appear youthful, healthy, uncontrolled, and wild. It is in this wildness that our humility can be renewed, that our spirit can thrive like the plants, because besides the watersheds, besides the biodiversity, the lumber and forest products, the Chiquibul provides us, and the world, the opportunity to experience the disappearing environment we evolved in as humans — a real Garden of Eden.
FCD is not only protecting the Chiquibul and its natural wealth from destruction, they are protecting us from the death of the wilderness experience, protecting us from losing our way within this artificial world we have created of concrete and electronics. The very presence of the Chiquibul returns us to a world of wonder and a renewed humility of spirit, reminding us that Nature exists outside, but not separate from us. The Chiquibul provides a baseline, a perspective to know where we might go because we still have what we came from.
One of the first lessons the Chiquibul taught me was that the ease of the life we have built and grown accustomed to in Belize, separated and safe from nature, can never be taken for granted. We may wonder from afar, looking at Facebook photos and words, at what appears to be a vision of the original paradise — a realm of serene, fertile and beautiful Nature — but we also need to know the realness and fear of Nature’s cunning, it’s savagery, and it’s indifference. That is the world we all evolved in, that drives our behavior today. To be able to return to it at will is a privilege few countries have.
Nature does not care what happens in the Chiquibul. The Guatemalans do not care if it becomes what their country has become. Only Belizeans can care and decide the fate of the Chiquibul, and as a consequence, their own fate as a people, as a country. As the Chiquibul goes, so will Belize.
