The Black Hole

Today, Seth, Mai and I ventured off to do the Black Hole--a 300 foot repelling expedition in the Belizean jungle. I got up at 6:30, showered, and grabbed a quick breakfast. We then boarded the boat for the mainland. The resort van was waiting for us, and took us an hour into the mountains to a jungle resort. From there, we boarded an old stereotypical run-down bus. We took this a ways into an orange orchard, heading towards the jungle, where we promptly got stuck. Although it is not the rainy season, it has been raining quite a bit over the last couple of days. After five minutes of back and forth, we decided that we had made it far enough, called for a tow, and started walking.

 The jungle was muddy. The jungle was full of mosquitoes. We used DEET. Lots of it. We walked up a steep, muddy path through a dense jungle. It was very slippery, and there were several people who fell down. After about an hour of up and down, we arrived at a spot that they said was the Black Hole. However, we had to wait for the previous group to finish before we could continue, so we had lunch. It consisted of home-made tortillas, carrots, onions, salami, cheese, hard boiled egg, and cabbage--a build-your-own burrito. After lunch, we continued around to the other side.

The Black Hole is a 300 foot deep sink-hole in the middle of the Belize jungle. We were there to repel down into it, and I was up first. I had my harness and helmet on, and was locked onto the repel line. We were using a ladder connection rather than a figure eight, which pretty much meant that you had to force your way down. However, walking down the steep slope to the edge, and then looking down the 300 feet to the jungle below was an adrenaline rush. Walking off the edge, to the "hell-hole rappel"--sitting ,and lowering yourself with nothing to keep your feet on--was also a bit frightening. Really, just hanging there, hundreds of feet above the jungle, surrounded by cliffs and caves, was an amazing experience. I later described the trip as buying drugs. The drug of choice was adrenaline, and I was manufacturing it, but the Black Hole was the catalyst.

 

 

 Since I am writing this post--Mai-Tai in hand--you know that I made it safely to the bottom. I waited for the other people from our island to make it down, taking some pictures of the various caves. Once those of us from Thatch Caye were all on the ground, we left the second group and joined the first group. We were late for our pickup. We made pretty good time climbing out of the Black Hole, but it was still a long and slippery trek back to the bus. From there it was about a two and a half hour journey back to our island. We were so caked in mud that we had to wear plastic garbage bags so we didn't get the van dirty.

   We were greeted with drinks and snacks, which I partook in before heading for a nice long shower--that included my jeans and shoes. We spent a little more time at the starfish bar, which is on a platform over the ocean, before heading towards dinner. I was distracted for a while with the slack line, and then enjoyed a nice meal of freshly caught fish. It was a wonderful day.