The cawing birds sounded like a pestering partner, telling me to keep quiet and listen. The loud stridulations of a thousand crickets reminded me of our last good conversation. Our relationship was on its deathbed and we both knew it.
We’d been quarreling some before this trip.But long boiling incompatibility hit a new crescendo under the stress and logistics of travel. A trip I’d been looking forward to with her suddenly had me wishing I was alone.
I forgot about my strife for the moment. I pressed my nose against the air-conditioned window of our tourist van, preferring the economic despair flying by, to the chaos of my personal life.
The locals had it rough. Makeshift electrical wires dropped to shanty homes like confetti. Rain poured down. Each house looked leakier than a screen door on a submarine. Our van shook side-to-side and vibrated as it went up and down the long, steep, gravel roads towards Belize.
Each mile revealed a harder life than the next. People toiled away on small farms. Indifferent donkeys and thin horses stood in sparse sloped fields. Many were tied with a rope to various objects. One horse was tied to a telephone pole with a 15-foot rope, with no owner in sight. A small part of me wanted to go snip the rope off but I preferred not to appear on an episode of Locked Up Abroad.
Ahead of us, a lone 10-year-old boy walked on the side of the road, wearing a backpack while holding his arm out horizontally. His thumb pointed to the sky. The small silver car in front of us stopped. The driver leaned over and opened his passenger door. The kid-hitchhiker jumped in with a complete stranger like it was no big deal. I presumed my phone wouldn’t be getting an amber alert that day.
A haze of humidity blurred the steep green hills on the horizon as we pressed deeper into the jungle. I chatted with a fellow tourist sitting beside me. He was thin, European, and seemed educated. It turned out he was the CEO of Napster — which surprised me — as I didn’t know Napster was still a thing.
We were all here on a guided mission to see ancient Mayan pyramids.
We arrived at the entrance to the jungle and eight of us filed out, following the tour guide down a trail. It struck me that most jungles aren’t like the emerald-green rainforests you see on TV. They are messy and, usually, quite inhospitable. They aren’t organized, and tranquil, with neon-colored photogenic lizards sitting on every big leaf.
As I followed our guide down the trail, with my partner beside me complaining that the sky was blue and that clouds had to be white, I was reminded again of the raw power of equatorial heat. I took a deep breath, trying to gather myself.
Before the trip, my friend had asked, “You sure you want to visit Belize in the hot season, Sean?”
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