Belize: Day Six

This morning I did not have any adventures planned, yet I got up early anyway. This whole trip I have been getting up before 8 a.m., on my own. I suppose it’s probably largely due to the fact that we have been going to sleep somewhat early (11 p.m. or so).

Doc went diving in the morning, along with Brett, Kurt, and Megan. I think that he’s really enjoying it. The divemasters have cancelled the trips to Blue Hole and Glover’s Reef, so all the divers are just staying on the barrier reef this week, which I guess is still probably pretty damn cool. I puttered around this morning taking pictures, and then took the laptop to the lobby so I could upload some of my photos to flickr.

Even though I technically have an internet connection while here, I haven’t really been using it as much as I thought I would have. I mean, I know I’ve mentioned getting online for three or four days now, but when you compare it to my normal online schedule (averaging about 70 hours per week, I would say, between work and home), it’s nothing. The connection is slower than molasses in January, but I don’t know that that is necessarily a factor. I have not missed TV at all, I have not once had the urge to make a phone call, and I also haven’t wanted to listen to any music on my iPod. It’s weird how my nearly-total disconnect from the fast-paced hurry hurry world of my normal life, where I constantly attempt to absorb as much audiovisual information as possible, happened so quickly and easily.

Maybe that means that when the apocalypse comes, I will survive because I adapt well, and society will value me because I have skills that don’t require electricity.

Speaking of activities that don’t require electricity, later in the morning I sat in a beach chair in the shade of a palm tree and watched for Doc coming home from sea.

Once he arrived safely back on land, we ate lunch (I had a mini pizza with bacon… WAY too much bacon, and y’all know about how much bacon it would have to be for me to say something like that).

At 2 p.m. we hopped in a van and drove several miles out to a spot on the Sittee River, where we disembarked and got into canoes and kayaks. The kayaks were not the kind where you basically enclose your lower half inside the boat, and if you tip over you’d better hope you can right yourself quickly; these much less scary “sit-on-top” kayaks were very flat plastic boats with flat areas to sit on, seat backs to hold you in place, and little grooves for your feet. The canoes looked much safer, but we were told that the kayaks, despite their smallness and flatness, were actually more stable. So Doc and I decided to be adventurous and climbed into a blue kayak.

Which immediately started to fill with water. We were both horrorstricken by how fucking enormous we must be that we could sink a kayak between the two of us. We were both on the verge of scrambling back out onto the dock, but they told us that they were actually SUPPOSED to partially fill with water — that’s just how these kayaks worked. We were not entirely convinced, because there didn’t seem like there was much kayak to fill before the damn boat was completely underwater. But we decided to give it a go. So we paddled down the river, with a few inches of dirty parasite-filled tropical river water sloshing around our legs, feet, and unmentionables.

Not that I was paranoid about, you know, parasites and my nether regions. Not at all.

We paddled down a short stretch of river, shaded by graceful tall trees and under a nice little bridge that I was almost too tall to fit under — Doc paddling for power, and me using mine to steer. And then we emerged onto a very large pond, in full tropical sunlight. The temperature zoomed up into the high 90s, and I started to sweat. As far as we could see down the river, there was no shade at all. I began to think that this was all a Very Bad Idea; it was miserably hot and still and we only had a little bit of water between the two of us, and I had no clue how far we had to go before we reached the pickup site.

I began having flashbacks to the day that we canoed down the Brazos river for six hours in 100-plus degree heat, with only one gallon of water for four people (us plus Ginger and Kathryn, I think). The river was so low that we had to walk our canoes through the shallows for much of the time, and poor Doc had a screamer of a cluster headache and was getting badly sunburnt.

So I was having all these visceral memories of the Canoe Trip From Hell, and my mood plunged. I wanted to get this stupid adventure over with as quickly as possible, and so I attempted to paddle more quickly so we could get ahead of the pack and zoom on ahead. Doc was much calmer (probably actually enjoying himself!) and kept telling me that I didn’t need to paddle so quickly, or at all, and basically to just stop and look around a little. I kept thinking, snakes, mosquitos, heat, sunburn, headache; I was miserable.

Then, around the next bend, we saw it: a rain squall coming up the river, headed right for us! It was wonderful. We got soaking wet, and the temperature dropped. My mood immediately improved. I began to slow my frantic paddling and enjoy looking at the huge orange iguanas in the trees and on the banks, the turtles, birds, and various other wildlife. Kathryn even saw a crocodile. Luckily I did not, nor did I see any water snakes.

After about two hours, we reached a little dock near where the river emptied into the Caribbean Sea, and we hauled our canoes up to the trailer, got into the van, and went back to Hamanasi.

At dinner, I wasn’t feeling all that well and I couldn’t eat much. I didn’t even want dessert. This may have been partly due to me feeling extremely uncomfortable because our dinner group had expanded at the last minute to something like 14 people, and the Hamanasi staff was balking at putting together a table that big when we hadn’t let them know ahead of time (and rightly so), and members of our party began moving tables around on their own and insisting that Doc and I not eat dinner by ourselves, which we were attempting to do in an attempt to alleviate the clusterfuck. After nearly a week of social interaction, I also felt like my supply of social energy was running dangerously low at this point. (I am, after all, an introvert and I need lots of alone time.)

Our group had made plans to go out to a little bar in Hopkins Village called King Kassava, to have drinks and hang out with some of the Hamanasi staff and village locals, and up to this point I had planned to go, even though I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it (me + strangers + alcohol = much awkwardness on my part). However, I realized during dinner that I was becoming more and more anxious about the prospect of going, and after a discussion with Doc, who understood that I was feeling anxious and graciously agreed to do whatever I wanted to do, I told everyone that I wasn’t feeling well and had used up all my social energy for the week. Of course there were protests (“we’ll come back as early as the earliest person wants to come back!” — it never works that way, and I said so) but I held my ground. We came back to the room and watched a movie instead.

I think I made the right decision. Kathryn told me later that I would definitely have been uncomfortable at King Kassava — she very much felt like an outsider there, and if she did, I certainly would have, even more so.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I’m developing an anxiety disorder. I often am terrified at the prospect of going to places where there will be people I don’t know, especially when I don’t know how or if I’ll be able to escape.