The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Teenage kicks with Mum on a ‘gap year’ in Belize
When Annabel Heseltine went backpacking with her 19-year-old twins, the focus was on conservation, confidence – and freedom
Palm trees cracked in a wild wind as a tangerine sun sank over a deserted Caribbean island the size of a football pitch. After a day sailing and snorkelling, I should have been in heaven but the tiny tent snaking around my ankles was testing my temper; every time I got one peg in, another whipped out. It didn’t help that I was being watched by Mungo and Isabella, my 19-year-old twins, who take no prisoners where their mother is concerned, especially when she is a co-traveller on their gap-year adventure in Central America.
Travelling is the best picker-upper, so when I realised that – post-lockdowns – their confidence had reached rock bottom, I morphed a three-week conservation fact-finding trip to Belize into something more teen-friendly. Negotiations began; a trade-off between caving, tubing and zip-lining and conservation projects and research stations, as well as snorkelling, diving and sailing. While they worried about the embarrassment of backpacking with their mother, I worried about my back. Not to mention whether they would cope with the tropical heat and bites symptomatic of the “frontier type of tourism” as described by Mick Fleming of Chaa Creek, Belize’s original eco-tourist lodge. Could my Aspergic son hack the spicy food? Would they tolerate my tireless quest to see a tapir or a manatee? Could I back off as a mother? I knew I needed to stand back and let them own the trip, not telling them what to do but allowing them to learn from their experiences, good and bad.
A pair of purple silk harem pants challenged those travelling companion credentials and turned me right back into “mum”. I couldn’t help it. At Pook’s Hill Lodge (pookshilllodge. com) we slept on stilted cabanas overlooking the jungle echoing with the screeches of howler monkeys. The next morning our guide, Gonzo, was waiting to escort us through caves where Mayans were sacrificed to the gods when Isabella sashayed out of her straw-roofed cabana wearing those gorgeous but inappropriate pantaloons.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked. She wasn’t listening. After swimming through crevasses so thin that Gonzo told us to keep looking forward so we didn’t get our heads stuck, the silk gave way. Isabella, red-faced, clutched her bottom until Gonzo offered to exchange his khakis for her purple tatters which he tied into a loin cloth.
Just before we entered the huge cave, Gonzo had stopped. “Suspend judgment. Remember no culture is innocent.” An hour later, in a crystallised cavern, we found smashed pots intermingled with stews of human bones; battered skulls of children and adults. These sacrifices coincided with periods of severe drought probably caused by jungle clearance, drawing parallels with current climate change concerns. Realising Mungo had vanished, I felt sick. All it took was a battery failure and he would be lost in the dark inside a mountain with seven miles of tunnels, cliffs and caves filled with deep water. When we did find him not far ahead, a part of me was elated about his disappearance. My cautious son was flexing his independence muscles at last.
The plan was to spend the first nine days visiting lodges, easing the twins into life in the tropics. Then we would rent a car and explore. For the cost of a first-class train ticket from Somerset to London I gave them an aerial view of the jungle as we flew in a six-seat Cessna to Chan Chich Lodge (chanchich.com) near the Guatemalan border to see an ocelot while we were on a night-drive.
But it was at Lamanai Outpost Lodge (lamanai.com), overlooking a 30-mile lagoon, where the conservation-gap year trade-off really began. After dawn risings with our guide, Eduardo, to see birds, iguanas, coatimundi and agoutis, the twins demanded payback. Sandwiching me between them in a bouncy rubber ring whirled fast around the lagoon, their laughter just compensated for my worry about riverbank erosion.
Our fast-paced travel was testing the twins’ stamina. Guides like Gonzo and Eduardo created homes with “new faces, new places, and goodbyes too”, said Isabella, who hated the leaving part. Even an exhilarating night drive, tagging a rare Morelet’s crocodile, couldn’t stem the emotion the night before we left the jungle to explore the second biggest barrier reef in the world.
I found Isabella with her head in her hands: “I am so sorry. I am loving every day but I am exhausted, and I don’t like the sea.” Aged 11 she had been trapped under a surfboard in Scotland; not for long but the damage had been done. For 24 hours, Mungo and I sidled around her murderous looks as she wrestled between her desire to explore and her old fears. I was thinking up a Plan B; jettisoning sea sports, we could hop across the border to Guatemala.
In a last-ditch attempt to change Isabella’s mind we moved to Hamanasi (hamanasi.com), a dive and adventure resort just up the coast from Hopkins, a village where backpackers sleep at Funky Dodo (funkydodo.bz). Insisting that Isabella didn’t need to come, I booked one day’s diving for Mungo and me. But then she met Neil. “You don’t want to worry about the water, Miss Isabella”, he said, eyes twinkling. “I’ll look after you.” Few 19-year-olds could resist such a charming offer.
While Mungo dived with Mikey, Neil and I flanked Isabella’s first entry into a world of sergeant majors, parrot fish and gentle nurse sharks where blue fans waved, fire coral teased and Isabella fell in love. “Mummy,” she said the next day. “Sometimes I wish that Belize was a person, because I just want to hug it.” Still, I had learnt my lesson. If they were to enjoy themselves, I needed to ease off. But before we set off for the lesser-explored Deep South we made one more stop.
Bruce Barcott’s The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw tells of one woman’s fight to save a large and very squawky parrot threatened by a dam. At Red Bank, Mr Sub and his seven sons’ efforts to protect its remaining habitat by guiding tourists hasn’t been futile. Suddenly the air was alive with caws as in pairs these parrots which mate for life arrived for breakfast. Tears trailed my cheeks as I realised I was looking at the very last of these amazing birds.
I spent my last day at the Pelican Beach Resort (pelicanbeachbelize. com) on South Water Caye, another of the small islands popping up along the reef. Proud as I was of what the twins had achieved, I had to face my own challenge as a mother because while I was sunbathing under glistening palm trees, Isabella was busy changing her flight and booking in to the Funky Dodo. When Mungo and I boarded the plane, she wouldn’t be with us. Isabella had decided to stay behind and backpack alone. Mea culpa.
Covid rules Visitors must show proof of full vaccination, or a negative result from a PCR test taken no more than 72 hours prior to arrival, or an approved antigen test taken no more than 48 hours prior to arrival. A test can be administered at the airport for a fee of BZ$100 or $50 (£40)