Come for the Monkeys, Stay for the Emotional Damage

A True Story of an Adventure in Belize

After a very mediocre relationship during COVID with a truly uninspiring man named Kyle, whose greatest passion in life is collecting discarded or lost gloves and hats found on the streets of New York. I find myself single, vaccinated, and dangerously susceptible to bad ideas.

It isn't my finest moment, and let's be real, no one knows what they are doing during COVID times. Most of these relationships founded during lockdown are purely for emotional survival.

"You have to go to Belize," my friend Jenna says over margaritas at her place one night. "There's this eco-resort I went to before Covid. Life-changing. I literally found my inner goddess there."

Inner goddess? Say no more. In a haze of tequila and desperation, I book a solo trip to the middle of the Belizean jungle, chasing some vague idea of spiritual awakening or at least a good tan.

The plan is simple: fly in, get picked up by the resort's driver, live my best boho self-care fantasy in the jungle, and become its queen. How hard could it be?

Very. The answer is it could be very hard.

The first clue is the ride from the airport. Every time I think we are finally turning into the resort's driveway, it is just another dirt road, deeper into the jungle, the trees growing thicker, the sunlight getting dimmer, and my cell service disappearing bar by bar.

By the time we arrive, it is too late to turn back. Even though my fear of being removed from the world I know bubbles up, I am stunned into silence by the beauty of the place. It is a dreamy canopy of green, tropical flowers that look like they belong in a Disney movie and a soundtrack of exotic birds calling across the river. My cabana perches high above the water, framed with polished wood and gauzy white curtains. I can even hear the distant howls of monkeys preparing for bed. It is pure jungle chic.

Or so I think.

As the sun begins to set, I wander to the open-air dining hut for dinner. It is a charming little thatched-roof spot where I drink crisp white wine and convince myself I am a brave, cosmopolitan woman living her Eat, Pray, Love fantasy.

The real jungle, however, starts after dark.

On my way back to my cabana, my sweet hostess insists on walking me along the pitch-black, rocky path. Halfway there, she suddenly grabs my arms and hisses, "Don't move."

This is exactly what you want to hear when you're standing in the jungle with nothing but a dying flashlight in a very flimsy sundress.

"A snake," she whispers. "Very big. Stay calm. If we don't spook it, it will just go on its way."

At that moment, I realized that I had not traveled here to find my inner goddess. I had traveled here to become the jungle's snack.

Somewhere between the snake gliding across the rocks and me peeing a little in terror, I understand this will not be the transcendent, TikTok-worthy self-discovery journey I had imagined.

But I am safe for the moment. I return to my cabana, take a lukewarm shower in a charming (read: aggressively rustic) rock stall, and climb into bed with my travel book, ready to drift off to the soothing sounds of the jungle.

Just then, I remembered that light attracts bugs. And boy, do they not disappoint. No, they terrify.

These are not your garden-variety bugs. No, these are prehistoric units of insects made up of flying, crawling, buzzing things the size of golf balls. They batter themselves against the thin screens, drawn to the light like tiny, angry zombies.

Trying not to scream, I shut off the lamp and pull the sheet over my head. Resigning myself to a night under the covers, I drift off but am woken by a frantic tweeting noise that is not coming from a bird. I turn the light back on and immediately regret it. The floor and my bedspread are crawling with tiny beetles. Above me, a squadron of bats that have apparently been living in the thatched roof swoop down like tiny leather-winged assassins, dive-bombing the bugs and, occasionally, me.

It becomes clear that the bats and I are now teammates.

For the rest of the night, I sit cross-legged on the bed, swatting at beetles with a flip-flop and whispering encouragement to the bats overhead like a deranged baseball coach. By morning, I look like a woman who has gone twelve rounds with the cast of A Bug's Life.

At breakfast, I mention the situation to the staff. They are sympathetic, but one waitress lets it slip that I am one of the first guests back since the pandemic shut everything down. Maintenance? Pest control? The jungle has been running the place just fine without us.

To make up for it, the resort graciously offered me a free massage after patching the roof, holes, and windows. First, I spent a blissful morning basking by the pool, sipping coconut water, eating juicy Belizean fruit, and pretending I was the effortlessly serene woman I had imagined myself to be when I booked this trip. I assume my peaceful self-discovery journey is back on track.

When it is time for the massage, I lay face down, letting the masseuse's magic hands knead the trauma out of my body. That's when I noticed a thin, orderly line of ants marching from the balcony door to the front entrance like they were reenacting The Great Migration across my floor.

"Oh, just let them finish," the masseuse says softly as if telling me to wait for a little rain to stop. "If you disrupt them, they bite."

I don't move a muscle. I don't even sneeze.

Later that evening, after the ants had made their way to hopefully a different cabana, I got ready for dinner. There is a weird musky smell near the seating area in my cabana, but the staff says they have sprayed bug spray. It's probably nothing to worry about, right?

Dinner is beautiful, a sunset meal set atop a cliff for the few solo travelers left. Over too much wine, we swap horror stories. The Brit has a lizard the size of a Labradoodle crash through his balcony and eats his soap. The Californian wakes to a wolf spider the size of her hand lounging just outside her window.

We clink glasses to survival.

Back at my cabana, the musky smell is worse. As I lay in bed, rustling sounds scratch along the walls. Resigned to not having another repeat of last night, I called security. The same guard from the night before arrives with a stick and a can of bug spray. We patch the windows with the only item available, Band-Aids. We spray all the windows and doors with my new jungle friend's poison and then get to the window near the musky smell.

The wall peels from the windowsill when the first spray hits the wood panel.

Thousands of bugs pour out onto the floor like an Indiana Jones Temple of Doom nightmare.

"Please move me," I say calmly without taking my eyes off the new guests of the cabana. The jungle has reclaimed this hut.

Wordlessly, he grabs my bags and relocates me to the honeymoon suite, assuring me it is newly renovated for an upcoming wedding. I don't care; it is clean and sealed. To me, it is the Taj Mahal of Belizean jungle huts.

Finally, tonight, I will sleep. I drift off to the sound of the jungle, the palm fan creating a soothing breeze.

Until scratching wakes me at 3 AM.

Grabbing my flashlight, which I now keep in bed with my cell phone, hiking knife, and a makeshift bug swatter, I tilt the beam upward and lock eyes with a brown possum, trying to break through the thatched roof.

I scream.

It screams.

In full Winnie-the-Pooh fashion, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underwear, I sprint to the bathroom and lock myself in. Only to realize the phone to call security is by the bed. I gird my loins and sprint to the phone, calling security with the promise of their arrival shortly. As soon as I hang up, the hard-working possum, squeezing itself through the roof, wins the battle and falls onto my bed.

Security comes again, this time with a pool net, a stick, and a brief greeting.

"Miss Laura, you're not having a good time." He says with an empathetic and exasperated look.

I'm too tired to cry, and the heat and humidity of the jungle have dehydrated me to the point that I cannot produce tears. Instead, we get to work.

After two hours of trying to catch, release, or, let's be real, kill the little shit, we give up. Sweaty and exhausted, he advised me to stay very still until breakfast.

I sit cross-legged on the bathroom floor, flashlight in one hand, bug spray in the other, singing the only thing that comes to my exhausted brain, Baptist hymns of my youth, softly to myself.

Somewhere between "Amazing Grace" and "Come Thou Fount," I realize this is a kind of self-discovery. Maybe not the type I asked for, but as they say… best-laid plans and all that shit.

Over the next few days, there are more Amishaps: a six-hour jungle hike in the oppressive heat that ends in an accidental mass butterfly massacre with our guide's truck, a river tubing trip through bat-filled caves where I faint from fear during an underwater cave swim. The highlight is that my English gentleman travel companion revives me by feeding me emergency chocolate like a fainting Victorian bride.

When my final morning arrives, I am packed and sitting at breakfast five hours early, ready to leave. By this time, everyone on site has heard of my adventures with nature. The running joke was that I wanted to be Queen of the Jungle, and the animals agreed by trying to make it a reality. I kindly thank everyone and hand out tips to show there are no hard feelings.

The biggest tip goes to Maria, the waitress who switched out my cheap nightly glasses of complimentary wine from the hostess with the good hooch.

I was even offered a free future stay at the resort by the owner, a gesture made with all the hopefulness of someone offering a rain check to a person who had just survived a shipwreck.

With my bags packed and by the reception door, I wander down to the pool's oasis for some final reading and peaceful reflection.

Despite everything, I am grateful. It has been a once-in-a-lifetime trip, the kind you only survive once, and somewhere in the back of my mind, amidst the exhaustion and the trauma, a tiny spark of genuine appreciation flickers.

Maybe experiences like this are the antidote to the soft, spoiled life I am accustomed to in New York City. Perhaps resilience doesn't come from curated wellness retreats, but from moments like these: sweaty, buggy, and ridiculous survival.

I hear footsteps approaching as I am lost in my deep, philosophical musings.

The hostess, smiling kindly, comes to let me know that my shuttle has arrived.

And that's when it happens, the final farewell from the jungle itself.

A giant lizard, easily the size of a small dog, maybe even the same one that terrorized my English comrade, skitters out from the stone wall beside the pool and plunges dramatically into the water with a splash.

The hostess and I lock eyes.

Wordlessly, she gives a slight, embarrassed nod.

Wordlessly, I nod back.

There is nothing left to say.

I grab my bags, climb into the shuttle, and do not look back.

I leave Belize with some perspective, a handful of battle scars, and, hopefully, no jungle hitchhikers hiding in my luggage.

To be safe, once home, I unleash an entire can of Raid into my suitcase and seal it in the bathtub for 24 hours.

Self-discovery? Accomplished.

Pride? Gone.

TripAdvisor Review? Posted.

1/5 Star - Come for the Monkeys, Stay for the Emotional Damage

If you're looking for a spiritual awakening, this is the place. Nothing makes you find yourself faster than sharing your bed with bats, entering a standoff with a possum, and losing consciousness in an underwater cave while strangers feed you chocolate. Ten out of ten would survive again. Bring wine. Bring Raid. Bring a sense of humor.