Story Frame 45 – The House in Teakettle Village & Other Adventures on the Mosquito Coast

Belize, April 2002

The kids and I were the last ones to leave the plane after it touched down at the small airport in Belize, Central America.

Having lived with the stresses inherent in a post 9/11 Washington DC for eight months, I had decided to tap into the little trust fund my sister had left the kids and take them far away to visit their uncle Lou – Karen’s former husband and best friend until the end of her life.

I had it in mind that Zoë and Leif should experience life in a culture other than their own. Broke as we often were, I wanted them to see a world where people lived for an entire year on less than what I earned in a decent month, which was about $3000.

I also wanted to keep Lou tightly in the family embrace.

This was a real holiday, an escape to a different world. For once, we weren’t going somewhere because of a film project. Nevertheless, films seemed to follow along with us throughout our days there – as if we’d packed them in our suitcases.

Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola visited Belize in the early 1980s, fell in love with the location and bought the abandoned Blancaneaux Lodge, which he then renovated and used as a family retreat before opening his tropical paradise to the public in 1993. Over the years, two more extraordinary Belizean properties would also become part of the Family Coppola Hideaways.

In another film connection, we were heading to one of the locations featured in The Mosquito Coast, a 1986 feature film starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as a married couple, based on Paul Theroux’s 1981 novel of the same name. It’s fun to peruse the cast now and see that Jason Alexander played a hardware clerk and Butterfly McQueen (“Prissy” in Gone with the Wind) had a role as Mrs. Kennywick.

Told from the viewpoint of 12-year-old Charlie (River Phoenix), the story centers on Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), a brilliant but stubborn inventor fed up with the American Dream and its accompanying consumerism. Believing a nuclear war to be looming as a result of American greed, Allie packs up his family and moves them to Central America where he purchases a small village along a river in the rainforests of Belize. Everything soon goes awry.

The Mosquito Coast was a critical and commercial success, attracting Academy Award nominations like fruit flies to a forgotten glass of wine.

But the kids and I weren’t on the run from the US, we were just desperately in need of a mini break from it.

As I stepped out onto the disembarking stairs that had been rolled into place next to our plane, I caught sight of my brother-in-law standing on the airport’s terrace. Lou’s trim white beard and old safari hat were unmistakable. Even in the nearly blinding glare of the sunshine, I could almost see his bright blue eyes. I raised my arm to greet him, and in response he gave a sweeping 180-degree wave back and forth over his head.

The kids and I collected our bags, then piled into Lou’s beat up old Mazda for the two-hour drive west across the scorching jungle landscape of Belize to his farm in Teakettle Village.

Before getting on the road, Lou told us he needed to make a quick stop in Belize City to get a part for his water heater.

“Unless you want to take cold showers,” he said laughing.

“Not really,” I said.

We detoured into the largest city in the country, founded in the mid-17th century by British timber harvesters who liked its coastal location and confluence of rivers and streams. Over time, the British brought thousands of slaves from Africa to Belize to work in the forestry industry.

Belize City in 2002 was not lovely. The buildings lining the streets – a fanciful mix of mostly homegrown architectural thrown together styles – were modest and ranged from shabby to run down. There was nothing more than two or three stories high. Many had shades rolled down across their storefronts against the afternoon heat.

Lou parked the car on a side street and got out. I start to open my door to go with him, but with an uncharacteristically stern expression he told me and the kids to stay put. And so we sat in the car with the windows down (his air conditioning didn’t work), sweating in the tropical heat as we quietly took in the scene around us.

We were parked near a small storefront that opened onto the street and was doing a brisk business selling liquor. Several men, in various shades of intoxication, passed by. One, a shirtless Rastafarian, stopped and stared at the three of us in the car. His dreads, thick and knotted, tumbled down his black-skinned back in a slow race to the sidewalk. The three of us watched silently as he leaned in closer and raised his arm. I smelled the stale liquor on his breath as he stared at me, eye to bloodshot eye, but it was too late to close the window. Because why, I asked myself – I don’t want to be rude?!

He opened his mouth and a torrent of words streamed out, of which I was only able to make out “Book of Revelations” and “de Bible says.”

Not knowing what to do, hoping this was nothing more than a drunken blessing, and that he was not going to harm me or the kids, I thanked him. He stared back at me for a long moment as I sat there sweating and willing Lou to reappear. Zoë and Leif sat wordlessly in the back seat. We played this weird and silent game of Blink until, muttering to himself, he moved on.

“Welcome to Belize, kids!” I said brightly, wondering if I’d made a huge mistake bringing them here.

Eventually, I caught a glimpse of Lou in the rearview mirror as he carefully stepped around the body of a man sprawled on the sidewalk. From where I sat, it was hard to tell if the man was dead or just sleeping. Yeah, perhaps coming here was a mistake.

Lou got into the car, started it and shifted into gear. I told him about the Rasta’s speech.

“That’s why I told you to stay in the car!” he laughed, his Arkansas accent shining through.

Lou turned down a side street, past a man urinating on the sidewalk. Noticing that, he checked the kids’ faces in the rearview mirror and seeing their shocked expressions, laughed again, both amused and perhaps also hoping to put them both at ease.

Moments later, we were out on the Western Highway – one lane in each direction and mostly paved – on our way to the farm in Teakettle Village. Initially, the country was flatter and less jungle-like than I had expected. But the further west we drove, the more interesting the scenery got. Small hills begin to emerge from the ground smothered with trees and vegetation unfamiliar to me. The occasional smattering of dwellings we saw seemed to be randomly tossed by the side of the road, like dice rolled from a shaken cup. Or litter thrown from a passing car.

As I watched the landscape go by, I told Lou I was surprised that it reminded me of Africa. How could that be? I hadn’t been in Africa since I was a child. He said he had a similar first impression to Belize.

Many of the houses were propped up precariously. Or leaning. Some were half-empty shells, only partially built.

“It takes a long time for most people to save enough money to build even a cinderblock house,” Lou explained. “So, they just add to the house they’re working on when they have some money.”

No particular architectural style dominated, but there were touches of Moroccan arches, Spanish wrought iron gratings covered windows, and occasionally Cuban/Caribbean colors brightened up the monotony. I was looking for any signs of happiness or beauty – or anything I could relate to – and I now realize even this description makes it sound lovelier than it was. Few homes had doors. Windows were covered by screens or lattices or louvered shut. Small wooden houses balanced precariously on stilts. Most seemed to be assembled from an assortment of salvaged or scavenged building materials.

“What’s the speed limit here?” I ask, not that Lou was speeding, but because I didn’t see any signs.

“There isn’t one,” Lou responded. “And there are a lot of bad accidents.”

“It’s so desolate along these stretches of highway – how would anyone know if there was an accident at night?” I asked.

“Oh, they find them in the morning,” he said with another one of his easy going, accept-the-world-as-I-find-it laughs that made him such a pleasure to be around.

I was just beginning to relax and feel a little less judgmental when we passed the remains of a small blue car, in pieces by the side of the road.

“That one was two or three days ago,” Lou said. “Three people killed. They hit a bus.”

At mile marker 31-1/4, Lou pulled the car off the highway and parked in front of a modest looking building.

“Hungry?” he asked the kids. We’d been up since 4:30 am for our day of travel and yes, we were.

“Cheers,” the Belizean version, had come into being in late 1995 when the Tupper family left Vancouver and came to Belize to open a restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Lou, who loved good food, had probably smelled it from his farm, miles away.

The kids liked the name and went inside expecting it to look like the television show, which of course it didn’t. We were a long way from Boston.

Lou ushered us to a table in the large, open air back room. Scores of potted Bromeliads created a natural and colorful barrier between the tables and the garden beyond. Photographs and small pieces of handmade art adorned the walls and hundreds of t-shirts, with handwritten messages on them, hung from the ceiling. The kids ordered nachos, then passed the time looking at the t-shirts to see if they recognized where any of them were from.

In preparation for the trip, I’d gotten Leif a couple of disposable cameras and Zoë two or three rolls of film for her camera. Back at the table, Zoë fretted that the airport x-ray machines might have ruined hers.

Lou listened to her, then said, “Zoë, can I give you some advice?”

She nodded.

He smiled and said kindly, “There’s big shit and little shit in life. And that is in the little shit category.”

Zoë looked a bit miffed – not the empathetic response she was looking for from her uncle.

But watching Lou, I blinked back tears. Before leaving for this trip, my mother told me Lou’s son from his first marriage had taken his own life just a few weeks earlier. Watching my own two kids tuck into their food when it was placed in front of them, I couldn’t imagine Lou’s pain. And yet here he was, in the midst of fresh grief, putting his personal feelings aside, smiling at his niece and nephew and generously welcoming all three of us into his world for a week. This was someone who knew only too painfully the difference between big shit and little shit.

Back on the highway, Lou and I passed the rest of the ride with idle, catching-up-on-the-family, chatter, never veering to the dark side. Leif and Zoë listened quietly from the back, staring at the strange new world we were passing through.

We’d traveled more than halfway across the country by the time Lou slowed down and turned north onto Young Gal Road – a dirt and rock-strewn road that took us up through the hills and past a dozen more ramshackle house, each with its own assortment of rusted cars, hammocks, cows, chickens, goats and barking dogs.

Colorful wash hung neatly from a line on almost every porch. There was the occasional glimpse of a Belizean sitting quietly in the shade, an occasional dark arm raised in greeting as we jolted by, bouncing between the rocks and the ruts.

Eventually we turned onto a dirt lane that ran through a hundred-acre orange grove that had originally belonged to Lou’s 400-acre farm, until he sold it the previous year to “the Chinese.” The orange trees gave way to striking groupings of tall palm trees changing the scenery dramatically from clusters of little orange balls to dark green, frondy giants welcoming us into their cool shadows.

We had arrived at the farm.

As Lou’s car lurched to a stop in front of his house in a clearing in the jungle, a skinny, brown-skinned waif in a colorful frock ran out to greet us, hopping up and down in excitement. This was Sylvia, one of the Belizean children Lou had informally adopted. In anticipation of our arrival, she had been busy with her machete; she greeted us with a big smile and two large bunches of green bananas, each one half as tall as she was.

There was just enough time for a quick tour of the house and surrounding gardens before Sylvia threw off her dress and took Zoë and Leif down through the jungle gardens to the river to wash off the heat and travel dust. There, she taught them how to catch tiny little fish with their hands and collect them in an old plastic bucket. Lou’s housekeeper Anna later fried them all up for us for a tasty meal.

By Belizean standards, Lou’s house was quite large – a series of simple but spacious and airy rooms with high ceilings and ceiling fans. Designed by my sister, there were large windows on either side of a cool breezeway that divided the house. As I wandered through it, I tried to picture my sister, who was really more of a city dweller, living here.

A veranda, painted white, framed and supported by dark brown stained tree limbs, ran the entire length of the backside of the house. With its sheltering eaves, surrounded by enormous tropical plants overlooking the Belize River and the jungles beyond, this is where we would spend many peaceful and cool hours in the days to come – ending each with five o’clock rum & cokes at sunset for me and Lou.

Mornings also began on the veranda.

Our first morning, Lou’s Belizean housekeeper and cook, Anna, served up biscuits with banana jam, tortillas, scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes, refried beans and juice. The kids were in jungle heaven.

After eating, Leif established himself on the porch swing while Zoë, her long blonde hair swept up against the heat on top of her head, perched in an old Adirondack chair next to Cheyne, Lou’s snoozing dog, Both kids were under strict orders to spend an hour each day on the homework they promised to do in return for permission to take a holiday during the school year. Much as they tried to comply, they were easily distracted by the exotic new world all around them. I caught Leif with his book open, but head turned down to the river where Sylvia and Lee had set out in a canoe. Sylvia turned and waved a skinny brown arm up at us, a tiny twig fluttering in the breeze.

After the homework hour, Lou decided to take us to the Belize Zoo, thinking the kids would like to see the animals and that I would appreciate learning how it came into being. The zoo would likely not exist had it not been for, of all things, a documentary film.

Twenty years before our visit, Sharon Matola, an experienced big cat trainer and wrangler, was hired to manage twenty animals for a wildlife documentary shot on location in Belize back in 1982.

A former assistant lion tamer at the Circus Hall of Fame, Matola had received jungle survival training during her stint in the US Air Force. After that, she studied fish taxonomy in Belize in Sarasota. She left graduate school for a job as an exotic dancer in a traveling circus in Mexico, hoping to do biological field work as her day job. It was her work in Mexico – and likely the fieldwork, not the exotic dancing – that brought her to the attention of filmmaker Richard Foster who hired her to care for the animals used in the making of his wildlife documentary film.

At the end of the shoot, the director and crew packed up and left, leaving Sharon with the animals. Concerned about re-wilding them, Sharon decided instead to create a home for them. With few resources, she put together animal enclosures and put up a sign by the side of the highway that said “Belize Zoo,” hoping people would pay to see them.

Over time, Sharon learned of the myths and superstitions Belizeans harbored about the native animals now under her care. She also discovered that many Belizeans had never seen these animals in the wild before. She was especially moved by the experience of seeing an elderly man brought to tears while looking at the jaguars. “They are so beautiful,” he said. He had lived in Belize his whole life and it was the first time he’d seen his country’s animals up close.

This and other experiences motivated Sharon to expand her makeshift little zoo into a living classroom and educational facility where both children and adults could learn about their natural heritage. From lion tamer to exotic dancer to zookeeper and animal advocate – Sharon had finally found her calling.

Over time, the Belize Zoo attracted international support and by the time of our visit, had grown to include more spacious habitats for the animals, a visitor center and gift shop, charming black and white hand painted informative signs telling visitors about the animals, a commissary for food preparation and veterinary care. Sharon created children’s books, developed radio programs and wrote newspaper columns. Eventually her outreach efforts included school visits for those unable to travel to the zoo itself. “If we can reach the children,” she said, “we’ve won half the battle.”

Her nearly 40 years of work has had a long-lasting impact on the conservation field. It’s fascinating to me to think all of this began with a single documentary and the animals left behind once the cameras were turned off.

But, of course, this was Central America and not all the animals were in a zoo.

During our first night there, I was wrenched from sleep by the most surreal skin-jarring screaming. I sat up in bed, scared out of my wits, trying to understand what was happening. I looked for the kids. Amazingly, they slept quietly, Zoë next to me and Leif in a makeshift bed next to Lou’s adopted son, Lee, out in the great room.

I pulled on a robe and walked out onto the veranda. The screaming was coming from the jungle on the other side of the river. It sounded like a bloodbath was happening somewhere out there. I was happy there was at least a river separating us.

Gradually it calmed and I went back to bed, still mystified. In the morning, I mentioned it to Lou over breakfast. He burst out laughing.

“Those are howler monkeys you heard!” he exclaimed delightedly. “They don’t always perform for visitors. I’m glad you got to experience them!”

I didn’t quite share his enthusiasm but read up on them later and discovered they are vegetarians who hang out at the very top of the forest canopy. Although the turf-protecting sounds they produce can be heard for miles, they’re actually quite small for monkeys. Their shrieks have been described variously as a “zombie apocalypse” and “a combination air raid siren and heavy metal guitar solo,” the latter the words of a National Geographic writer. And of course, once one gets going, it provokes a call and response with others. Which makes it difficult – at least for me – to sleep through.

Day Two … We have no watches and for the first several days, we don’t even look at clocks. We use nature to tell time. At night, we sleep like Belizeans, with all the windows open. The jungle starts waking up around 4 am with lots of insect noises. Dawn comes an hour later, and with it the birds and their exotic calls to one another. It’s hard to stay in bed much beyond 6 am, at least for me and Zoë. It takes us just five minutes to get dressed. Then we join Lou on the veranda for coffee, which is served very hot and sweet.

“Just another day in paradise!” he announces joyfully each morning, surveying his domain happily.

Breakfast is at 7 am. We wake Leif. Lee and Sylvia appear in their dark blue school uniforms. The farm workers have already stopped in to talk with Lou about the day’s chores.

Lou had retired from a career as a computer specialist working US government contracts and now devoted himself to being a wholesale grower and distributor of ornamental plant seeds, specializing in palm and cycad seeds. His company, Teakettle Enterprises, shipped seeds to resorts, nurseries and clients all over the world.

He was a member of the International Palm Society, an international organization devoted to the study of palms, their culture, conservation, and natural history.

I had always thought a palm tree was a palm tree, but no. Palms are a vast plant family made up of around 2,500 tropical and subtropical species. During a tour of his 300-acre ‘farm,’ I asked Lou how many different kinds of palm trees he had.

“Right now, I have about 123 species. But we don’t sell them all. Some we just keep as pets,” he said, laughing.

Selling palm tree seeds was not a hugely profitable business. But Lou was living his dream and it’s a wonderful thing to spend time in the company of someone doing that.

Each evening, as we sat in the Adirondack chairs on the veranda, watching the twilight silhouettes of the trees after the sun sets, Lou with his feet propped up on the veranda railings, rum and coke in one hand.

“Just another day in paradise,” he said again, almost reverently, each evening looking out over the jungle and the river, followed by a quiet remark on the beauty of this time and how quickly it passes.

Busy with the daily workings on his palm tree farm, Lou offered me a choice of his vehicles to use.

“You can take either one, it doesn’t matter to me,” he offered generously.

I surveyed my choices: 1) a quite beat-up Toyota truck Lou used to drive around the farm, or 2) a beat-up Mazda 4-door.

“I’m not a believer in preventative maintenance,” he said, cheerfully stating the obvious.

Was it really okay for me to be driving my kids around Central America in unreliable cars? I wondered. But there was no choice. So, during the course of the week, I alternated between them. The Mazda had, for reasons that mystified Lou, trouble staying in gear. I found going forward for usually okay, but reverse had its own personality, mischievously playing hide and seek with me. Sometimes I found it in ‘neutral,’ sometimes it was in ‘park.’ And once or twice, I actually found it in ‘reverse,’ something that never failed to take us by surprise.

The kids thought this was hilariously funny and offered suggestions from time to time, making bets on who could guess it correctly.

The Toyota truck had a tricky 3rd gear; sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t.

“Why don’t you skip it and go from 2nd to 4th?” Leif suggested pragmatically one day when I was particularly frustrated with it. I tried that and it worked.

Quite by accident, I discovered 3rd gear snugly slotted against first, and with a gentle 2-finger maneuver, it slipped right in.

In this manner, we lurched around the country, adventure to adventure, only resorting to hitchhiking once when we crossed the border for the day into Guatemala to check out the markets on foot, leaving Lou’s car behind in a parking lot on the other side of the border.

“I’ve been looking for a used Volvo station wagon,” Lou remarked one evening.

“I’ll help you find one when I get back to the States,” I replied.

Day Three … Leif is less comfortable here than Zoë and I are, something Lou clearly enjoys teasing him about. When Leif described the scrambling footsteps he’d heard on the wall of the great room where he slept, Lou told him it was probably just rat bats.

“They get in between the walls sometimes and you heard them trying to get back out,” he said playfully, eyes twinkling.

“Sometimes, a bat will get in the great room, get disoriented and get hit by the ceiling fan. But don’t worry, Leif,” he added. “You chose the right bed. When they get hit, they usually land on the bed Lee’s sleeping in!”

Leif’s unhappiness at hearing this was plain on his slightly sunburned, freckled twelve-year-old face.

“I wish I had a picture of that cockroach we found last week,” Lou continued, spreading his two forefingers about 6” apart.

Out on the veranda, the geckos chortled to one another.

Our third day in Belize, Lou told us we were invited to visit Lee’s private school where he was in 5th grade. It was a small campus of one room white buildings, spotlessly clean and cheerful, and run by a principal from Scotland. Lou had promised a case of cold Fantas to the classroom if we were permitted to sit in on a class, so they were very happy to see us when we arrived.

Lou tried to introduce us to Lee’s teacher, but stumbled over our relationship, not knowing how to describe me.

“What do you call the sister of the wife you are divorced from who has also died?” he said. The teacher smiled but offered no response.

“Well, anyway,” Lou said cheerfully, placing one hand on each of Zoë’s and Leif’s shoulders. “I don’t know what you call her, but I’m definitely their uncle!”

That he claimed my kids made all three of us very happy.

After the introductions, the teacher asked the class to vote whether they would like to do a report on birds or reptiles. Reptiles won. Each child called out which one they would do. Two girls near us argued over who would get to do the gecko. Lee chose a boa. One boy, who’d voted for the birds, approached the teacher’s desk with a plea bargain; instead of a reptile, could he do all of the birds? Leif and Zoë looked at each other in astonishment. That would never happen in their schools, they said laughing. The teacher turned down the boy’s offer but said he could choose just one bird.

Day Four … In the evenings, the kids play jacks together on the floor of the great room. Sylvia is the reigning queen of the game. At ten, she is also the youngest of the four kids.

Sylvia speaks in her own special vernacular.

“I am winning she!” she announces proudly, pointing to Zoë, when I came across a match earlier. Zoë tells me Sylvia got up to 15s while she was still on 2s.

“Doan be watchin’ on me!” she scowled at Lou one afternoon as she wielded a mean old machete that was at least half as tall as she is. We were sitting inside the thatched gazebo watching her as she squatted on the floor in front of a row of coconuts. The machete pinged as she swacked it into the end of one of its intended victims.

“Don’t you give me that snarly face, Sylvia,” Lou laughed. “I don’t want you to lose a finger!”

Still, we can’t take our eyes off her, fascinated by this skinny little girl with the warm brown eyes and dimples and the constant energy she carries around with her that propels her from one idea to the next.

Whack. Whack. Whack. The machete flies as she cuts off the ends of the coconuts and dumps the white coconut milk into a bucket. Whack. Whack. Whack. Sylvia splits open pieces of the shell, all ten fingers intact, and carves out the coconut meat impatiently. Lee passes by and grabs a piece of coconut, then walks away.

“Did he ask if he could have that, Sylvia?” asks Lou.

“No-ah,” she says with another scowl.

Zoë and Leif each try the scooping out but not the whacking. It doesn’t hold their interest and soon they, too, drift off. Sylvia finishes off another 8 coconuts by herself.

Whack! The machete comes a little too close to a drowsing Cheyne who startles, jumps up and starts running at the same instant. Lou has laughed a lot during our visit, but Cheyne’s reaction keeps him laughing for almost ten minutes. Each time he plays it over in his mind, his shoulders begin to shake again.

The sun was so hot that each day was planned with a dip in water – a swimming hole with large boulders to jump from, a river, or waterfalls – somewhere, anywhere. After watching Sylvia butcher the coconuts, Lou decided to take all of us out to Clarissa Falls. Sylvia got into the car with the precious coconut milk carefully poured into two Fanta bottles – one for her, one for her adored big brother, Lee.

I watched all four of them splashing deliriously in the short waterfalls for an hour before Lou gathered everyone up to get pizzas on the way home.

Day Five … It’s our last breakfast together on the veranda. Zoë finishes first and asks to be excused. Sylvia, meanwhile, is still cutting off chunks from a messy piece of cheese.

“Excuse,” she says tapping me on the shoulder and pointing to Zoë’s unused napkin. “May I please have the Zoë paper?”

At the time of our trip, Zoë was fifteen and thinking she would study marine biology at university, leading to a career saving the manatees. That gave Lou an idea. After a week at the farm, he made a phone call to a friend of his, whose name also happened to be Karen – a good sign. Karen was the manager of Manatee Lodge. Located at the tip of the peninsula which is Gales Point Manatee Village, Lou told us it was popular with marine biologists and researchers. Seeing our interest, he booked us a room. From there, he said, we would be able to take a boat ride out to see the manatees.

It was a perfect idea. Lou dropped us off. Tearful farewells (mine), then we settled into our large room and set off to explore our surroundings. A 2-1/2 mile stretch of land that reached out into the middle of the Southern Lagoon, Gales Point serves as a protected area for the endangered West Indian Manatee and is also home to an abundance of birds, plants and animals.

It was a good thing we did that our first evening. Overnight, whatever nasty little creatures we’d somehow injested staged a midnight attack on our bodies. The following morning, all three of us came down with wretched intestinal troubles. None of us felt comfortable being more than a few feet away from a bathroom.

Were they in the ice cubes in the rum & cokes? Or did they latch onto us as we splashed in the river beaches before we knew about the many potty shacks at the end of the piers behind houses, each depositing their contents directly into the Belize river.

Whatever it was, the damage had been done, leaving us to waste our last precious day in Belize, the day I’d promised Zoë we’d take a boat tour to see manatees. In the afternoon, we tried a short boat ride, but even that was too much.

Although Manatee Lodge offered Creole and Continental cuisine, Karen kindly made us simple grilled cheese sandwiches and toast with a side of saltines, which was all we could manage.

Day Seven … The kids are being good sports about it all. Leif and I sprawl in hammocks strung up on the breezy veranda of the Manatee Lodge. He dozes with a cold cloth on his fevered face, his journal and a bottle of water next to him. With water and palm trees on three sides, we are our own peninsula. I write in my own journal, waiting for my stomach to find normal.

Zoë prefers the peace of our empty room inside and being closer to the bathroom. She, too, tries to doze away her nausea.

Curled up in his colorful sling and suddenly awake, Leif hums and fusses with the cold cloth I’d put on his forehead. “I don’t have a tan anymore,” he announces sadly, surveying his outstretched arms from the depths of his hammock. Moments later, he is laughing at the whistles and shrills the bow-tailed grackles make.

After 24 miserable hours, we rallied for our last evening in Belize. Karen walked us down the road from the Lodge and into the tiny little village that is home to the Garifuna – a people of mixed indigenous Caribbean and African heritage. Many of them are likely descendants of the slaves from Nigeria two ships were carrying to the American colonies when the ships were wrecked off St Vincent. The survivors took refuge on this peninsula and created their own unique culture.

Karen introduced us to Ray McDonald, a drummer and former dancer and singer for the Belize National Dance Company and owner of the Warasa Drum School. We walked single file up a long line of rickety stairs to a house precariously balanced on silts. Inside, it was filled with dozens and dozens of drums, most of which he'd made himself. He treated us to a small private concert after which we made our way slowly down the lane, through the palm trees and back to Manatee Lodge.

Day Eight, our last morning… I wake after a peaceful night during which no one got sick. I love the sunrise at 5:30 and the easiness of living here. There are a few clouds on the horizon as I sit on the veranda to dry my hair in the soft trade winds which never seem to stop lofting gently around us. Breakfast is at 7, and then the water taxi which will take us up to Belize City and the airport will be at the dock to pick us up at 7:30 am. I am not ready to let go of this peacefulness, but it’s time to go….

Looking back now, the memories and images come spilling out of me. As I’d hoped, our time in Belize was filled with adventures and life lessons for Zoë and Leif – places and people none of us could have dreamed up in advance. From swimming with iguanas and nighttime canoe paddles on the river, to jumping into waterholes and splashing in waterfalls. From trying to get around in Lou’s beat up old vehicles, to trying to drive a 4-wheeler on the farm, to hitch hiking in Guatemala on an impulsive visit to the local markets and exploring the Maya ruins at Xunantunich. From eating local food and what grew on the trees on Lou’s farm or was caught in the Belize River, to memorable shrimp dinners at a Sri Lankan restaurant, the whole scene in Belize was beyond any of our imaginings. It was just the kind of adventure to open up their minds. And mine.

And the stories Lou told me about Karen that I’d never heard before, all of which were accompanied by his good-natured laugh. How, after he had his wonderful tiki hut built in the garden, the one where Sylvia had chopped coconuts, my sister discovered a snake in the thatch. After that, she refused to go inside the structure he’d put so much work into. Scared of scorpions, she’d woken him up countless nights while the house was still under construction and made him hold the flashlight when she had to pee in the garden in the dark. She’d been a good sport about everything, he told me, until one day it was suddenly too much, and she decided to move back to Florida. Everything he said told me how he still loved her.

Back home, I got our film developed. As we looked through the photos we’d taken, Zoë and I were already planning our next trip back. Not so, Leif.

“Please, Mom,” he said as I tucked him into bed our first night back. “No more third world holidays!”

The last photo from my camera roll is one Zoë took of me during our last hours in Central America. We were aboard a Mexican skiff, a small water taxi, speeding up the coast from Belmopan to the Belize airport.

In the photograph, my short-cropped hair is blown back in the wind. I’m wearing a long blue and green print cotton dress with the beads I bought from a small vender at Xunantonich strung around my neck. My left hand is gripping the side of the boat. It is May 5th, my birthday, and there is a fiercely huge grin on my slightly sunburned face.

A lot of parents take their kids to Disney World. I had taken mine to Belize. I had taken them on an unusual and, at times, not very easy, international adventure. We’d all survived. And hopefully, I’d put something inside them they would never forget.

Mission accomplished.

Footnote: In the wake of our visit, change was already coming to the scruffy little Belize City. And it was coming in the form of – of all things – a film festival.

The Belize International Film Festival was launched in Belize City in 2003, the year after we were there, with a focus on films made in Central America and the Caribbean, in addition to a selection of films from around the world. The festival now focuses on relevant contemporary issues, such as poverty, abuse, and poaching, with a special category for the "Best Environmental Film."

For a few years, Lou tried to interest me in coming back for it but somehow, I was never quite able to manage the timing.

[Photo taken in Lou’s garden on the farm in Teakettle Village.]

Kristin Fellows is a published freelance writer, world traveler, and a well-seasoned documentary film consultant. This tale comes to you from a small farming village in Portugal, where she is still surprised to find herself living.

When not writing, Kristin can often be found listening to someone’s story or behind the lens of one of her cameras.

More about Kristin @ kristinfellowswriter.com