Caribbean cool

Our time volunteering at Barton Creek Outpost was a basic introduction to WWOOF volunteering, if I may be polite. The Outpost itself is not a farm, but a family from Tennessee living in a big piece of jungle, renting canoes and selling food to tourists who come through to visit the cave. One of the foundational principles of WWOOF is organic, which the Outpost is far from. Every meal included several packaged food items, shipped from the U.S. or Asia, and never included something they had grown on their property - the only exception was when we had breadfruit - a big green jungle fruit very much like a potato but softer and doughier - and made breadfruit gnocchi, and when the boys hunted and ate a garobo for dinner (meals carried out by the volunteers). The whole operation was run by generator on two gallons of gas a day - one of our chores said "do laundry as much as possible," so the washing machine ran all day long. This chore was the worst, not becuase it was hard, but because we had to fold mountains of the families personal laundry - kids in the jungle with more mall clothes than I've ever owned - if it was their own chore to wash their clothes in the creek there'd be a lot less of it.
For the first week we worked from sun up to sun down with 1 day off at the end of the week (this is obviously against the rules), but then a schedule of 6 hours was organized, making our time more enjoyable because we could have the afternoon to swim in the creek and hang out in the jungle, we filled many afternoons with poker (we played for money once and it came down to Ian and me, so we called it a draw, haha!) and evenings with idiotic action movies. The volunteers and Edwin, the resident-worker in the garobo trophy pics, the few neighbors they have out there, and the rangers were great people and we really enjoyed their company; but on the sparse days when the owners weren't off in town, they put everyone on edge, barking commands and treating us as if we owed them something (like free work in exchange for room + board isn't enough?) Their bottom line was that we were costing them money, and they had to get as much out of us as possible.
The non-chore type work included picking oranges and squeezing juice, clearing vegetation and trails with machetes, digging up and replanting palms for sale at maket, collecting orchids and bromilliads from the jungle for tropical planter arrangements, serving tourists, etc.

This aside, Barton Creek is a beautiful place far far off down a long rocky road through thousands of acres of orange grove. Several Mennonite communities are tucked into the jungle, and we'd buy gorgeous vegetables from our neighbors, every new volunteer eager to go along for the walk to get a peek at their lifestyle - their farm included an amazing homemade hydro electric dam in the creek that they used to run things like saws and grinders, since the Mennonites don't use batteries to store the energy, it has to go to immediate use.

One night we took a long and laborious hike into the jungle to get to the nearest village, El Progresso Seven Mile, to play soccer with the locals. And on one of our last days we got to take an amazing tour into the cave with the ranger Dennis- we took it at night so there's no bother about other people. We got to go way way farther back into the cave than the tours are allowed, into tight spaces, sitting down and ducking in the canoe in some places under and around stalagtites, we climbed inside, getting a close look and Mayan pottery shards and skulls and bones. It was a beautiful cathedral of sparkling rock formations.

After leaving the jungle, and leaving San Ignacio, we made our way to Hopkins, on the Caribbean coast to stop over for a night on our way to Placencia. Here we are, what a beautiful beach, the most relaxed place to have a birthday! We splurged on an adorable beachfront cabin and a couple of nice meals, as well as the traditional few bars (places like the Tipsy Tuna, the Rumfish and the Barefoot Bar). It's been a most enjoyable treat and I wish we didn't have to leave so soon, but our visas are about to expire! So it's off to Guatemala on the 20th (where there is no Verizon service, so give me a ring soon or stick to email for the next month).