Adventure Mike

The story I’m about to tell you may seem over dramatized or even untrue, but I am here to say I can’t over dramatize the events of this weekend enough. So try to put yourself in my shoes as I tell you the story of adventure Mike and our jungle house. Originally, our group planned to travel to San Ignacio for the weekend and stay the night in order to travel to Tikal in Guatemala the next day. Tikal is a national park full of Mayan ruins and since many of our patients are Mayan, we figured it’d be a good idea to explore their heritage. I set up all the transportation and tour guides (as is in my nature to take control) and Annie, a public health student, set up our housing. After 4 hours of traveling within Belize with our driver Armando, we reached San Ignacio. Annie pulled up the address for our Airbnb and Armando said he never heard of it. This was immediately strange. Armando knew the streets of San Ignacio like the back of his hand. We had the cell phone of our home owner,Mike, so we had Armando call him. After another 15 minutes of driving, we reached a sign that said “Barton Creek”. That was good! That was the name of the road we were given so we must be close! Well little did we know... We started bumping along the side road that no one had ever heard of. At this point, it was probably close to 8pm and the sun had set far long ago. Not a single car passed us or came behind us as we made our way down the winding dirt path. Eventually we hit large rocky hills and our van bumped along like we were on mobile clinic. This continued for 40 MINUTES. At this point, we are DEEP in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing but jungle. We didn’t pass a single house for MILES! Yet every time we called our home owner, he assured us we were on track.. so we kept driving. Eventually we passed a small sign that said “jaguar preserve” and that was comforting (insert sarcasm). The road was dark as night and stranded as ever. This, I thought, is where I die. FINALLY we reached a large sign that read “Adventure Mike’s Place”. Who the hell was adventure Mike and where the hell were we?! The van couldn’t go any farther. The dirt road had become mud and Armando was afraid he would get stuck. We had already asked so much of him for trailing down an abandoned road for close to an hour. We sat on the side, contemplating turning back when suddenly a light appeared ahead! An old, rusty pick up truck came bounding down the lane in front of us. The truck could have been 20 years old for all I knew but it was trailing the rocky path like it had been doing it for ages. “Hey there! I’m adventure Mike!” Said the man in the truck. He was a large white man with a long mustache white as snow and a belly that stuck out like Santa clause. At this point, we are all hysterical because this journey could not get more strange. We exited the van and thanked Armando for practically risking his life getting us this far. Adventure mike said he could take us the rest of the way, but his pick up only had 4 seats and there were 9 of us... Next thing I knew, 5 of my peers and I were hanging onto the rusty side rail in the bed of adventure mike’s pick up truck flying through a jaguar ridden jungle 20 miles deep from any known civilization. This was by far the best night of my life. My hair was blowing in the wind as we sped down the root covered path. Trees with giant palms shot up around us with fruits and flowers I had never seen before. Vines hung everywhere entangling us in a web of mystery and excitement. We let out shouts of laughter as we were tossed back and forth in the bed of the truck. Another 5 miles and mike finally slowed down. A house appeared on the left and a giant pavilion was on the right. We were surrounded by giant tropical flowers and plants as well as large cliffs that seemed to reach the sky. It felt like a dream staring up at the vine covered mountains of the Belizean jungle having no real idea how I ended up here. The house was perfect with a nice bed for each of us and showers with good pressure (which was a nice change). Adventure Mike lead us over to the pavilion which was extremely large and well decorated. His daughter Eden was there making us amazing smelling nachos and burritos. He handed us all a Belkin beer and we cheered to our arrival (and our survival). Once we settled in, we realized how beautiful the place truly was. There were paths through gorgeous flowers and along river beds that seemed completely untouched by humans. Adventure mike showed us a watering hole that lead to a cave that we could swim in and jump into from cliffs. Oh and did I mention we booked this Airbnb for $15 a person each night? As I laid down for bed, I couldn’t believe what I just experienced. I thought we would be staying in a small place in the city of San Ignacio awaiting the adventures of tomorrow. But here I was, in the depths of an unknown jungle, flying on adventure Mike’s pick up truck, and swimming in a Belizean cave. Sometimes you can’t plan adventures... they just come to you.