Day 39 - Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, Belize

Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (09/02/09)

We were up before dawn at 5.30am to get to the sanctuary at dawn when the wildlife is most active. Unfortunately the main problem with the rain forest is that it rains an incredible amount and the problem when it rains this much is all the wildlife sensibly hides away. Above is the almost useless map of the 700sq mile reserve which Liz photographed for supposed navigation purposes, no Tom Tom out here.

After walking for a couple of hours in pouring rain and thick mud we saw our only land animal of the day, a species of jungle deer, in the distance.

Fortunately the jungle plants don´t disappear in the rain.

We walked along one of the trails to this beautiful stream, one of the advantages of rain and gloom is that there is more water and less light therefore better long exposure photos.

The stream was fed by this waterfall in nicer weather we believe you can swim at the bottom of it however by this point we already looked like we had been for a swim in all our clothes.

Adam could not resist crossing the stream, he believes it is a component of male genetics that you have to do this. And yes he did get one wet foot, but luckily the camera stayed dry!

We noticed these strange trails in some areas of mowed grass.

Incredibly it turned out that it was a leaf cutter ant trail, hard to imagine how many of their tiny feet it would take to wear this much grass down. They were not interested in the grass, the trail of ants disappeared up a very tall tree in which they cut pieces of leaf many times their size and then carried them a huge distance to their nest. They can cause massive damage and even kill trees which has led to the practice in towns of painting the lower half of tree trunks white, a colour which apparently the ants will not go near. The ants do not eat the leaves instead they build a compost heap in the nest on which they grow an edible fungus which seems extremly close to agriculture. Just another Adam amazing fact!

This is an incredibly rare, wet and smelly species found in the jungle. Since this photo was taken it has become extinct in this area.

Sometimes when you look at how amazingly dense the vegetation is you wonder how anyone ever spots any animals - maybe we should have gone to Belize Zoo after all.

This aeroplane crashed into the jungle in the early 70s. Apparently the stranded survivors got so hungry that once they had finished eating the corpses of their friends they actually started eating the aeroplane food ( actually the crew escaped with minor injuries, the plane was a research tool used for tracking jaguars).

We sheltered under one of the wings during another particularly fierce downpour.

The plane was remarkably intact considering it had been left to rot in the jungle for over 30 years. The numbers on what we think was the altitude meter were still clearly legible.

Despite the rain, thick mud, 9 hours of solid hiking, mosquitoes and almost complete lack of wildlife in the wildlife reserve we still had a really good day.

When we got back after a fairly unpleasant cold shower we went looking for dinner, which incidentally turned out to be plain bread and water ( no kidding). On the way we saw this beautiful red bird which put a bit of colour in our otherwise very grey day.

If you double click on this picture to get a slightly larger version it will become clear that this is a collection of more oranges together in one place than you have ever seen before. Incidentally in an insight into what the two of us find to talk about on a dark rainy evening in the jungle we had an ´interesting´discussion about how the emphasis on the word "orange" in the term "orange

lorry" completely changes what you are talking about from the colour of the lorry to the fact that it is carrying lots of oranges. We didn´t realise how boring we were until we wrote this, but we would be interested to have your comments and other examples!