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Travel Photography > Isthmus > Monkey River, Belize
We
sit there in the launch, watching the bare-throated tiger herons and
the amazon kingfishers dispersing from their nests. We pass under branches
filled with bats. Sometimes, our motor would cut out, and we would drift
into the bamboos, scaring a giant iguana, sunning on a stump. The trees
- cohune palms and sapodilla trees and the giant Ceiba tree, surviving
against strangler figs. These are shady tree infestations which take
over the tree itself, wrestle it to death and eventually send it tumbling
into the river. Its rotting corpse becomes the nests of crocodiles,
who vie with the Jaguar for the Paca and the River turtle.
I
asked Winsley about the monkeys after the hurricane.
"I guess you could really say that the monkeys really had a really
rough time aftah da hurricane. You really see them doing all sorts of
things. He swim across the river, he fall out of the tree. You know
I gotta really say, he really get blown outta da tree during the hurricane.
He really lose his life."
"Do
they ever lose their grip?" I asked.
"Yeah,
you know, I really gotta say, the monkey really fall out of the tree
sometime. He steps on a bad branch, or the branch isn't enough to hold
him. I've seen 'em fall into the river and come climbing back up the
branch all wet. He really fall down, but usually doesn't really lose
his life."
Winsley
spent most of the year building lobster traps, placing them as deep
as ninety feet under water, and bringing them to market in Belize City.
I was familiar with the horrible deaths that occur from Belize to Nicaragua,
by lobster fishermen diving for lobster. Untrained, they rise too fast
and die of the bends. "Scuba or air compressor?" I ask.
"No,
no. I free-dive."
When
the water drew to three inches or less, we shifted our weight, skimming
over the sandy bars with a raised motor, sputtering water. Shallower
yet, we jumped ship and pushed the launch through the thin, yellow water.
Into dusk, pushing through branches infested with sleeping bats.
By
evening, we had approached a simple sandy bank, surrounded by impenetrable
green, and the flow of tributaries. Winsley rammed into the shore, helping
us with our bags, and then left. We sat there on the beach, sharing
a can of beans and jelly sandwiches, sitting on the sand filled with
crocodile tracks. "What if the answer," I said, coughing on
habanero sauce, "has nothing to do with, say, people and relationships.
Like it's an internal thing. An internal purpose, like the Buddhists
and their meditation."
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