A great start to another exciting adventure on our trip. Today we left Glover’s and took the 4 hour boat ride back, which I slept all the way through thanks to the anti-nausea medicine everyone took. We stopped for a pretty long lunch as there was only one cook at the restaurant, but I took the opportunity to have my last super fresh snapper along with a refreshing virgin piña colada. We then headed out in our vans to make a quick stop at the market before heading to where we’re staying for the night, the Tropical Education Center.
The Tropical Education center is a part of the Belize Zoo and has really nice facilities with cabanas that everyone is staying in for the night. Once we settled in and put our stuff down, we had a great presentation by Borris Avelaro about his research about the Scarlet Macaw, conservation, and why it is important to ignore the toxicity of publishing within academia and sharing your data as soon as possible with others so the species you are studying has a chance at surviving. As soon as we left the classroom, Ava pointed out the first epiphyte of the trip! A Vase Bromeliad. There are actually a lot of these popping up around the site we’re staying at and I’m excited to see what I’ll find at Las Cuevas.

After dinner, we headed out to our late night zoo excursion. Here, we were given a guided tour around the Belize Zoo that only hosts Belize’s native species. Another cool thing about the zoo is that all of the animals are rescued from being pets, confiscations, and other injuries. The zoo is also trying to show Belizeans the animals that they live beside and disprove the myths and superstitions that may surround the animals. We saw jaguars, pumas (both incredibly smart cats), and Quashes (who are related to raccoons) and got to hear the funny noises of the ocelot eating – as everyone pointed out, it sounded very happy yet very angry about eating its food. My favorite animal we got to see was Archie the anteater. He was super active in the trees – I didn’t realize that some anteaters could climb around trees like he did but it was so freaking cute. He also had a huge termites nest that he created his own nest in so he basically has a food source at all times when he’s awake and asleep. Genius. Lastly, we got to feed Indy the tapir who was also very cute. She loved carrots and we even got to pet her when she was distracted by her snacks. She’s also related to horses and rhinos and you can tell this because… Every time we left an animal, the keeper would say “Thank you, [insert animal’s name]” and it was the most precious thing I’ve heard because you can see their connection with the animals that they take care of.

– Sophia