Beef Worms and Buffalo Wings

Canoe Trip/Caving Trip – Today was a jam packed day. We woke up in the morning and set off at about 9 for a 3 hour canoe trip. We drove the canoes down river a couple of miles and then dropped in at a particularly dense jungle area. The trip down the river was fairly chill… the current was really flowing so there was a minimal need for paddling. Most of us just floated and did a little paddle/rudder action. The fact that the current was really whipping along made for some pretty fun miniature rapids, with a couple of my passengers barely making it through without tipping. We saw a couple of iguanas and some birds, but with the exception of it raining, there wasn’t much of a difference from our previous river trip. Because the current was flowing so intensely we actually made it to the pickup point nearly a half hour early where some of us skipped stones and others listened as Craig (our 27 year old South African guide) regaled us with horror stories about the “Beef Worm”. The Beef Worm is a fly that lays it’s egg in your skin and then it turns into a inch long flesh eating larvae that hangs out in a big goose-egg boil under your skin… NASTY! Craig had apparently been host to 4 big Beefers.

After the canoe ride we got picked up and taken back to Monkey Bay where we all supped (well, actually we had lunch, but I think supped is a funny word) and prepared for part 2 of the day.
The second half of the day was a caving trip. We all packed into the van and cruised next door to the neighbors. Next door was a 2000+ acre citrus farm owned by a family from Ohio. In the back of the property the orange groves give way to steep, dense jungle hills that are home to more than 3000 caves. Craig and another guide Juan took us to the back of the orange groves and then we geared up hike through the jungle to some of the caves. They warned us about bugs, but the amount that we encountered even surprised me. When we turned off of the main path and into the thick foliage, we were enveloped in clouds of blood lusting mosquitoes. We had to walk fast and continually swat ourselves in order to remain remotely comfortable. We scrambled up a steep, muddy cliff and then came to our first of many caves. We entered through a small crag in the rocks which opened up into a fairly roomy cavern. The highlight of this cave was not the beautiful rock formations but rather the 11 inch scorpion spiders that we crawling along the dripping stalagmites. Laura really freaked when I grabbed the dead shell of one and rested on her shoulder… funny stuff. Then we moved through another patch of jungle to the second cave. This one the highlight was the Mayan pottery that was still in perfect condition in the cave, resting in the same place that it had more than 1000 years ago. It was really amazing to see large, delicate urns resting in tucked away places in caves in the middle of the remote jungle. Then Juan took us the last cave, the most expansive. It was a gigantic vaulted ceiling monster complete with vampire bats, animal tracks, an underground cenote and the bug that causes Chagas disease. Then we hiked back to the cars. I managed to talk Juan into giving me his machete and I plowed ahead of the group swinging the machete like a pro and imagining myself to be a modern day Indiana Jones. When we got back to the car Juan went to some nearby trees and picked us some of the juiciest, sweetest grapefruits that I have ever tasted. A great moment chomping into a grapefruit while lying on top of my van, machete in hand, watching a group of wild parrots passes overhead. Then it was back to Amigos for their kick-ass chicken wings. That night I went to bed only to wake up about an hour later with stomach pain. It was déjà vu… I felt exactly how I had the night that I ate Subway on my sprint to Texas. This time I managed to avoid actually puking, but I was still up for most of the night running back and forth between my room and the bathroom. I probably only managed to sleep for a couple of hours