More adventures than you can shake a stick at

Feeding the greedy tapirs.

High-fiving a jaguar.

A keel-billed toucan in flight.

Phew.
Today was a triple-adventure bonanza, and we all made it back in one piece.
We got our acts together and made it to the Belize Zoo by 11 to meet its founder and head zookeeper and animal trainer, Sharon Matola, an American biologist and subject of the book Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw. She is one of the busiest people I know and is working doubly hard after Hurricane Richard decimated the zoo she has worked decades to build, back in October. I always bring her down some small necessities – this year, her preferred aquarium filters and leather gloves to handle the barn owls she’s raising – and in turn she gives us her special tour of the zoo. Starting with hugging Toni the Boa, we moved on to feeding April and Indie, the tapirs. April got carrots and zucchini and Indie got fed milk from the world’s largest baby bottle. We spent a good amount of time playing with these gigantic critters, part of the horse and rhino families. Their dancing snouts alone are entertaining, and Kate got some good video that I’ll try to post tomorrow evening.
After the tapirs we headed to the scarlet macaws, and got into the training pen with them to feed them peanuts. Though she’s trying to keep them from talking (she has hand-raised a number of babies but they are difficult to introduce into the wild from domesticity, and having them say “hello” to their fellow wild macaws is little help), both of the ones we played with were a bit chatty.
Next we stopped by the pumas, and she fed a beautiful specimen – named Springfield – some chicken so we could admire him. It’s the only large cat that purrs, and we heard him – cute! We also saw ocelots and margays on the way to the jaguars.
Sharon is working on a jaguar rehabilitation program, and let us play with Fieldmaster, a large male she has trained to interact with the public. Each of us got the chance to have him roll over on command and then high-five us. Though he was inside his access tunnel, we were mere inches away from him through wire and there was something mesmerizing about staring into his huge yellow eyes as he performed tricks for chunks of meat.
We left the zoo for a quick lunch at “Cheers with a tropical twist” (at mile 34.5 on the Western Highway, if the copyright lawyers are looking for them) and then on to the Caves Branch area, where we under took both ziplining (new course, which was faster, steeper and longer than the one we have previously used, but many of the same folks we’ve worked with for years) AND cave tubing in one afternoon. Our favorite guide, Alfredo, gave a great walking tour of the ecosystem in the jungle (ask Lizzie what live termites taste like, for example….) as we hiked the 40 minutes through the rainforest to the opening to Cave 4, where we put in and enjoyed the accelerated current of a rising river to help us through the system. Not many pictures from this as cameras are not safe but Matt took some video which I hope to post tomorrow.
Once we had made it through the last 4 caves and back to our starting spot (about 1.5 hours through the pitch-black caves), the kids took a couple of leaps off of a big overhang into a deep pool before we scuttled for home, hoping not to miss dinner and Miss Tanika’s wrath. Thankfully we made it on time and Tanika was on her night off – so no harm there.
The kids are completely fried (that’s how I like them) and with orders to get going early, I expect they’re tucking in early. This morning as I was sitting on their porch I saw a keel-billed toucan (the Fruit Loops toucans), so they’re determined to see him too – might even have them out with binocs in the dawn hours tomorrow – you never know!
Tomorrow is a long travel day – we cross the river on the Spanish Lookout ferry  and our friend Zander Bowen will meet us and lead us through the old logging roads and up to his family’s estate – our favorite part of BZ, though we’ll let your kids each choose their favorites. There’s a whole new part of the country and new set of adventures ahead. I’ll work to get some pictures up tomorrow so you can have the visuals, as well as some video once I iron out some techie issues.
Hasta luego!