Brenda's Bicycles

NOTE: This is not an official blog posting. I just wanted to post a quick summary of my adventures to let everyone know that I am back from the jungles, safe, emotionally and spiritually energized, but physically tired.

I just got back this afternoon from a fabulous adventure in the tiny Mayan village of Santa Elena, situated in the remote mountains of southwest Belize.

I stayed eight nights in this beautiful little village of 250 residents. We had no electricity, no bathrooms (except outhouses), no showers (except the small stream running through the middle of town), and no water system (I drank boiled water with a strong kick).

I ate three meals each day, with 99% of the food being grown in the village, either in gardens, or simply harvested from edible jungle plants. Five beautiful Mayan families took turns feeding me, serving me in their very humble homes, many with dirt floors, most with thatched roofs. I loved getting to know these beautiful people.

One day, two twenty-something young men took me on the adventure of a lifetime—a five hour journey through the remote jungles, chopping their way through the overgrown trail with machetes, with our destination being a spelunking adventure through two mountain caves where some ancient Mayans once lived.

I came away with many souvenirs—a collection of bug bites, mostly on my lower legs, many of them collected during my sleep in a small guest house. My sleeping quarters had wooden walls, made from jungle trees, having considerable gaps. The roof was thatched, made from palm leaves.

My biggest souvenir was a small scorpion sting that I discovered this morning at 1:30 a.m. when I got up to wander out to my outhouse. I was stung sometime during my sleep. I only found the remains of the small sting: a fresh red scab and a numb area on my left foot, encompassing most of the big toe, the second toe, and a small semicircle about 1.5 inches in diameter around the bite just above the big toe. The numbness still lingers, but I was reassured that it should go away in a day or two. I am grateful that I have not had any associated pain other than the weird feeling that I just visited the foot dentist. It must have been a very tiny scorpion, or one with very weak venom.

I did not go back to bed till after 4:15 a.m. this morning, because I was a little nervous about whether or not my foot might get worse—but I finally crawled carefully under the covers just to get warm in the cool early morning chill. Therefore, I am very tired.

Since I returned to Punta Gorda early this afternoon, I have been very busy meeting new friends, enjoying an ice cold soft drink, buying a ticket for a boat ride tomorrow, and digging through a treasure chest of over 200 emails, plus trying to update Facebook.

I am anxious to begin writing about my incredible adventures very soon, but first, I must travel to Guatemala tomorrow. I catch a boat at 10:00 a.m., with a destination of Livingston, Guatemala. From there, on the next day, I will take a beautiful (so I have been told) boat ride up a remote river to the city of Rio Dulce. Hopefully I can find a comfortable place to settle in for a week or two—a place with internet where I can catch up on my writing. I am anxious to share my stories and photos of an adventure that I will never forget.