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Sail Belize
By El Gallo
You don't even try to think of it as a real place: you've dropped out of the world you knew and slipped into a dream world, a post card, a generic tropics calendar shot. It's just a quick boat trip out from the coast of Belize--a place that is foreign, but definitely real. But the Barrier Reef, and the string of cays it has produced, is another environment that doesn't follow the natural laws we're used to.
Any paddler would instantly recognize it as a dream: the ocean a flat lake so shallow you can see bottom miles out from shore, a huge sky with a perfectly circular horizon, hundreds of green islets strewn out within easy reach, a lilt on the water and just enough breeze to keep the heat and bugs at bay. The shallows are a shifting palette of greens, the sky a deep well of blues, the horizon a blur of everything in between. Your boat skims between the two, over constellations of starfish big and orange as basketballs, purple urchins with quivering points, big rays and skates winging like languid birds. You reach deep into the warm water and slice through the sparkle like Halcyon, leaving ripples that spread a web of sundance on the bottom.
The island camps are also dreamlike, not like real life. Your tent is arched by graceful palms with a hammock suspended over transparent water that deepens to cokebottle green, to emerald, to jade, to teal, to technicolor sky. You are living here, flopping in that hammock and wondering what's for dinner. It can be disorienting. If you're from Minneapolis or Winnipeg, it could cause hallucinations, fever and quickening of breath. Lie down, drink fluids.
It takes awhile to really absorb living out on where the Reef underlines the edge of the world. Never mind the lack of radio, TV, newspapers: there is a deeper kind of silence out here. It's not uncommon to be awakened at night by the silence, or by a change in the timbre of the wind rustling palm fronds and step out into the spangled night, only to discover another voyager strolling the pier, snoozing in a hammock, or standing knee-deep in sea to stare at the stars. There is also a silence of light, miles out to sea, with no ambient light except perhaps the domed glow of a tented candle. There is a closeness to the night here, not simple darkness. The light is alive with silent light. Even familiar constellations like Orion are hard to locate, snowed in by a million other stars you don't ever see back in Chicago. By night and day you are wrapped in the distances of the world spun out by the Reef.
The Barrier Reef is the prime determinant of reality in this earthsea world, just as the Rocky Mountains create their own environment. The second largest coral reef in the world, one of the largest objects on the planet, the reef extends from Mexico down into Honduras, a huge ridge of stone amassed by tiny, shimmering polyps of coral. The reef has been built up for centuries at the edge of a thousand-foot drop-off, where depth, temperature, and an upwelling of nutrients produce a fertile area for coral to feed and secret the complex calcium cavities they live in.
The more you learn about the coral cays, the more you realize that they are not that different from the clouds overhead. They form along traces of sediment in shallows drifted into shape by currents as subtle, if less ephemeral, than the skyward wind. By blocking incoming waves and winds, the reef creates a serene, sheltered world miles, and therefore an environment of shoals and shallows carved by sea, wind and gravity--a place where the long, floating mangrove seeds can take root and grow. And once rooted, mangrove trees immediately begin to build islands around themselves--it's their nature. They spread avidly, a busy bristle of roots/limbs scramble for sustenance from water, soil, or sun, creating the grasping fingers that feed and anchor the mangroves--and trap the chunks of coral limbs that the storms break loose. The tangles of the mangroves fill with coral, then with sand and mud, then with rotting leaves and bird droppings. Gradually there is enough soil to support bigger trees. Then a few coconuts--seeds designed for long sea voyages--lodge where the currents have dropped them and start to sprout. The end result are green hummocks strewn along the edge of the world.
This huge, unique ecosystem is like a rain forest, not only a fount of life, but a spine and anchor for other life around it, every bit as vast, diverse, and vital. And even more endangered--reefs around the world are bleaching, expelling symbiants, possibly a prelude to a catastrophe of planetary ramifications. Nobody knows exactly what it causing it (usual suspects include both you and I). Nobody knows what to do about it.
Under the Sea
If the surface world is dreamlike, the underwater slopes around the reef are downright surreal. The reef shelters life, and displays it to a dazzling advantage. Alien lifeforms in florescent colors, unworldly shapes, and mesmerizing motions flash around you as you plunge into the crystalline shallows with mask and fins. Brain corals the size of small cars lie around the bottom, anchoring waving purple sea fans and attracting racing-striped, darting wrasse. Big trees of stone coral create thickets full of queen angels and parrot fish, flaunting their colors. There are sponges everywhere: giant goblets and bowls, green organ pipes, bulbous orange blobs with weird inner workings, long red tubes with holes lying around like extraplanetary flutes. Life flashes all around you in forms you'd never dream of.
Island Expeditions Co.
Meanwhile back on the surface, and back in the real world, things are being well handled by your life support system, Island Expeditions. The boats that brought you out are strong, fast sea kayaks brought down from Canada, some of the doubles equipped for sailing. Transport matters have been streamlined--getting you out to the cays as quickly and easily as possible. What seems impossible is that all the tents, stoves, water and food can be packed into the boats along with personal and diving equipment, but it always works--even if there's a watermelon strapped to the deck somewhere.
More important, the level of guides is world class. Our trip was led by Duane, as fine a professional guide as I've ever met, an instructor in college guide class during the summer. A good leader doesn't really get noticed, but my respect for Duane went sky-high when we broke our rudder and he handled the repair--tricky even on land--from his own boat while both vessels bobbed in two foot swells...and never dropped a bolt or tool into the water. Also along was Kaya, a local Garifuna fisherman, who provided humor and singing while also explaining the environment to us, and spearing fish or diving for conches for dinner. Both men are great cooks, and the cuisine out there on the edge of the world is just amazing. Conch soup with veggies, sliced bananas, and Guatamala spices, or grilled barracuda and snapper, were perfect, but sort of expected out there. But sushi rolls? With wasabi? They just kept pulling new kicks out of their hats: brie, artichoke hearts, British tea biscuits, cheesecake baked in a Dutch Oven. Somebody wanted tea instead of the daily coffee, and they turn up English tea and a Celestial Seasonings selection. I've never eaten better for a whole week--and all this served on camping plates sitting on sand bars.
At the end of the trip we unpacked in a hotel (hot water showers! cable TV!) then watched a dinner presentation of Garifuna drumming, then joined in the dancing. Kaya had explained the origins of the Garifuna people: black slaves freed by a shipwreck on St. Vincent and interbreeding with the fierce Caribs and gentle Arawaks to produce a unique culture of island-hoppers. People for whom the reef we'd visited is the real world, to whom Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Disneyland might be a dream. It's a matter of perspective, and the more perspective you have, the more real the world becomes. Which is a good reason for dreaming.
