After a great day yesterday in the streams and caves it was time to go for a deep hike into the Jungle and some climbing so today is the black hole drop. The Black Hole is a huge cave opening where much of the overhanging rock opening caved in and when you look at it from a distance it looks like a celestial black hole… the drop part I will get to
We started by hitching a ride with the cave tube bus to nowhere where we got off the bus with our three guides and started hiking onto a road that went into a Orange Orchard. The are tons of Orange Orchards around here…great growing seasons. On the way in we had some breakfast from the tree’s. These oranges on the tree’s had a fungus on the outside that made their skins hard so Sara got some help from one of our guides….
Lets put it like this I was glad he was on our side going into the Jungle…Ha!
Next we entered the Jungle and started our hike… Our guide Esperanza(in the front) and our two hiking friends for the day Lindsey (Lohan for short) and Erin…
At times the trail got pretty steep but no so bad just really hot and humid.. I can’t imaging blazing this trail what a job
On hike in we had some company from the Howler Monkeys in the tree’s above us. This group was really close and Esperanza was hit by poop on the shoulder and hat as we were hurrying through their area…
One other thing we kept hearing about in the jungle was the the poison tree that can cause a person to get symptoms like poison ivy..even just walking past it; the strange thing is that another tree almost always grows right next to it which is the antedote… here you can see both tree’s the poison one has the black paint on it
After hiking for about an hour we could see our final destination where we would be rappelling..you can see that hole in the white rock behind us and above that in the green is where we will drop from…
We hiked up to see that our guides had already set up the ropes or our rappell. We geared up with our harnesses and climbing helmets and off to the left of us Esperanza was setting up our rappel gear
Esperanza taught us about the ballet device we would be using, one that I had never seen before, but totally bombproof and safe with more gates than I had seen before
Next is was time for us to go down one at a time. Sara was a stud and got on the rope and started her way toward the edge…
Here is some video of Sara as she moved off of the edge of the cliff…
On the way down there was a heck of a view up….
and a heck of view down…
and down…. suspended by nothing but a rope.. what a feeling 🙂 – yup those are people down there
After getting back to Caves Branch we checked out a kind of Botanical Gardens that Ian Anderson and his wife setup on their Jungle property in an open air green house right by our hut. The gardener in charge was nice enough to give us a tour and we were amazed..
This gardener goes into the Jungle and finds Orchids and brings them back to grow and cross pollinate flowers in this greenhouse.
Check out these flowers, probably the largest collection in all of Belize…
This last two are our favorites – delicate and beautiful colors
Well that is the end of day three…bring on the ocean tomorrow!!
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