Exploring the Country

The next weekend we took the newly completed Hummingbird Highway south to Stann Creek Town [now Dangriga]. The town is approximately thirty-five miles from Belize City by water and over a hundred through partly virgin forest by road.

We had to retrace half the road leading to Cayo before turning south onto the new highway. His Excellency the Governor had dedicated the long-needed road the preceding day, but to me it looked like an old, worn-out county road between two off-the-track Michigan towns.

At first we were shocked at the poor grading and paving. But as the road pushed farther into the mountains, through the most incredibly overgrown and tangled jungle, we wondered that it had been built at all. We passed workmen and, watching them, realized that the road quite literally had been paved by hand.

What appeared to be the very first steam roller ever invented, with a funny old tar kettle rattling along in its train like a smelly caboose, moved slowly over the new road. Behind it came the “pavers,” one man spraying hot tar from a hand pipe and a dozen workmen following, broadcasting gravel by the shovelful from roadside piles.

 

During the drive we kept an excited watch for wildlife. Bucher spotted a boa constrictor basking in the sun on the edge of the road. Later near Stann Creek we found two small iguanas when we all got out of the car so that Bucher could take a picture of the children on an enormous mahogany log.

“What looks a little like a pig and a little like a rabbit?” Alex suddenly asked from the back seat of the car on our way home.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Oh, yes it does,” Alex answered positively. “I just saw one.”

Bucher and I joked with him about it, but let him enjoy his fantasy.

That evening, hotel conversation happened to turn to game and an animal locally called a “gibnut,” (technically an Agouti paca, one of the larger members of the rodent family). It was described as having pig-like hooves and ears and sitting in a hunched position like a rabbit. Alex was vindicated, and awoke the next morning to our apologies.

Years later when Queen Elizabeth made her first visit to Belize, she was served gibnut at the state banquet as a special Belizean delicacy. Avid London tabloids picked up the story and headlined
“Queen Eats a Rat,” with an accompanying file photograph taken at another time and in another situation that showed Her Majesty peering downward in utter loathing.