"Ouch! That hurts!" my granddaughter squealed.
"I just broke your brush, Paige," I apologized, looking at her cousin Kelsey's longer, thicker hair. We had just returned to Belize's Caye Caulker from an all-day tour of Goff's Caye, where we'd sipped fresh coconuts plucked from one of the dozen trees on the sand-rimmed Caribbean island barely 200 feet across. On the way back to our Caye, we stopped to watch the friendly manatees, commonly called sea cows, that were almost extinct at one point because they were so easy to catch and so good to eat. Before the area was made into a reserve, manatees were often killed by propellers, too, so Gramps tried to convince the girls that the boat motor was cut because we were at a manatee crosswalk. The day trip ended with a swim amid stingrays and milk sharks off the tip of Ambergris Caye.
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Kelsey, 12, and Paige, 10, had long hair that knotted tightly in the wind as we sped from site to site. Caye Caulker is the easiest island to reach from mainland Belize City and we were on day two of a two-week trip. Day one was spent getting from the airport to the water taxi, to Caulker, where we found funky, cost-efficient cabins on stilts for the four of us. The cabins were tucked into a garden blooming with hibiscus and hiding geckos the girls tried photographing.
"Let's get your hair corn braided," I said, chucking the broken brush into the trash.
Braids & Beer
Two Garifuna ladies — indigenous people of Belize — who were running the beachfront salon sat the girls on chairs made from Royal Palm stumps. The women brushed and braided the girls' hair while local boys cartwheeled in and out of the water trying to get their attention. Gramps and I sipped a cool local brew, Beliken Beer, and supervised from the patio of Don Corleone's Italian Restaurant a few feet away.
With braiding done and photos taken, we invaded a local hamburger joint. Kelsey, who had discovered that milk in Belize was always too warm, egg yolks too orange and chicken too crisp, lifted the bun with her nails, curled her lip and raised her eyebrow. Paige passed the ketchup for the fries, the only acceptable restaurant food found so far.
Next morning I announced, "Glenda's for cinnamon buns!" The girls were practicing their two-minute showers, and with no hair to brush, were ready in 15 minutes. The buns were warm and sweet.
From Caulker, we crossed back to Belize City and went to Neiri's for lunch. Gramps, pretending to be a role model but, in fact, trying to freak the girls out, ordered the Cow Hoof Soup, advertised as a national dish. The girls ordered fries. Gramps had outsmarted himself. The soup was warm gelatin sliding around in liquid fat. Not even he could eat it.
From Belize City we took a local bus to Barton Creek Cave, in the interior and just beyond an Amish Mennonite community. We passed horse-drawn buggies loaded with men in blue-bib jeans and women in long cotton dresses.
The cave was a Mayan ceremonial site where years before, archeologists had found skulls and clay jugs. The girls had studied the Maya in history classes and were interested.
A river flowed into the entrance, a narrow canyon shrouded in aerial plants with ropes of roots hanging like beaded curtains. Inside was cool and eerily quiet. We paddled into a room surrounded by stone shelves dotted with fire-scarred jugs. The colored stalagmites and stalactites formed images of animals. The guide shone lights onto a bat bed above the shelves.
"Glad I've got braids," said Kelsey referring to the old myth that bats targeted human hair.
We slid our paddles into the canoe, lay back and used our hands to push the boat under a low-lying natural stone bridge and into a small passage not ten feet wide. The guide shone lights onto crystals formed from water dripping off a stalactite onto a skull. "He ate Cow Hoof Soup," said Paige.
More Mayan Ruins
From the cave we bussed to San Ignacio and rented an air-conditioned jeep that had good brakes but loose steering. We drove through the Pine Ridge Reserve, past the Blancaneaux Lodge (personal paradise of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola), past the 1600-foot high Hidden Valley Falls, and to the Rio Frio (Cold River) for a cooling dip.
Caracol, an ancient Mayan city that once rivaled Tikal, was our ultimate destination. The name means snails in Maya, but glyphs found at the site indicate it could have been named Three Hills. There were no other tourists at Caracol, so the girls could run, climb, poke, peer, and photograph at will. Ascending the highest pyramid in the main acropolis in the tropical heat, immobilized them — and me — for a bit.
After viewing the surrounding jungle, they craned their necks at a toucan, with its gigantic bill, flying overhead. We cautiously descended steep stairs into a tomb; it was cool and refreshing but — to the disappointment of the girls — without corpses.
Evening, which so quickly turns to night at that latitude, arrived. We walked on a cool jungle path toward the car and the roar of howler monkeys made us eager to find it.
Once back in San Ignacio, long after dark, we found a secure hotel that had cable TV and kitchen facilities. We bought the girls two boxes of microwave macaroni and left them stretched out on the bed.
Gramps and I headed across the street to Hannah's for some Indian food and a bottle of Chilean wine. Occasionally, we looked up to see the lights still on in our room where the girls were watching English-language sitcoms and gobbling their idea of gourmet.
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