Five Cans

Most of the travel I've done over the past 11 plus years has been what most website surveys would classify as "couples" travel. You know...me and my girlfriend (in the past) or wife (now and way better) exploring whatever corner of the planet we happen to have selected for the long weekend, few days, week or fortnight (or more) that we have decided to get away for.

But every so often we travel with friends. Alaska. Japan. London. Ireland. Costa Rica. Oklahoma (yes, Oklahoma). Los Angeles. Maybe a few more places than that. Adding another person or two or more is sometimes welcomed. Traveling with others brings a different perspective that you might not recognize while traveling as a couple. I don't want to do it every trip but every now and then, it definitely makes trips better. Remember...I did say "sometimes welcomed".

Group travel can do the same thing, by the way, but it's way more of a crap shoot. WAY more.

I think most of our ideas about travel with friends either evolve from casual conversations with mutual interest or are driven by us (meaning..."we have decided to go somewhere, do you want to come with"). But last year, our friend Bryan mentioned he wanted to go somewhere that we probably wouldn't want to go. Where is this place, we asked? 

"Belize", was the answer. 

Are you kidding me? Belize? Mayan ruins and toucans? We're in! Let's go!!!

Mayan ruins in Belize? Yep, they got 'em. At Caracol.

So we did. We booked four nights in the jungle before heading to the beach for the same amount of time. And I was completely serious about the Mayan ruins and toucans, both of which were very definitely jungle activities. I knew I had a lot of control over visiting a Mayan ruin or two but maybe not so much about the toucans. Here's the thing: I REALLY wanted to see some toucans. 

It should be noted here that Belize would not be our first attempt to see Toucans in the wild. We had expectations around seeing these birds in October 2022 in Costa Rica. And like wildlife quests every so often, we predominantly failed, assuming you don't count seeing exactly one at the top of a tree from a boat for about 15 minutes as "seeing toucans". I don't, although I will admit that encounter was one of the most intimate wildlife experiences I have ever had in my life. 

I also didn't count the aracari we saw in Costa Rica. Close...but not true toucans. I am only dealing with the full species here.

Costa Rica is home to two separate species of toucan. Belize is home to just one. I try to keep my expectations low in situations like this but look...the keel-billed toucan is the national bird of Belize. The northern cardinal is the state bird (or is it commonwealth bird?) of Virginia and we see those birds all over the place near where we live. Belize and toucans had to be like the same thing, right? Right??

Collared aracari, Black Rock Lodge. NOT a true toucan. 

We were told that we might see keel-billeds on our hotel property in San Ignacio or even at the Mayan ruins at Caracol which we visited on our first full day in-country. But two days in to this trip, we'd seen them in neither location. Were they there? We believe they were. At least at Caracol. We heard keel-billed toucan noises, which are like two serrated wooden boards being rubbed together, at that ancient Mayan site, and a guide who caught up with our party told us that she had seen them near the parking lot. Curses!!! We were the first ones at Caracol and headed straight for the jungle to find ruins and howler monkeys after a quick bathroom stop. No toucans at Caracol for us.

That noise, by the way...it's not like any sort of bird noise I'd ever heard. If we hadn't been told that's what these creatures sounded like, we wouldn't have known. It was a far cry (pun intended, I guess) from the yellow-throated toucan we'd heard calling over the jungles of Costa Rica a couple of years or a bit more ago.

If there was any doubt about the possibility of a toucan sighting on our first two days in Belize (and there was), all of that should have disappeared on day three, which we dedicated to birdwatching. And not just by ourselves. We had an expert guide who we felt pretty confident would find us a keel-billed toucan or two in some great location with amazing lighting highlighting all the colors on their beaks and bodies to make for some great photographs for this blog and whatever other purposes we could have possibly considered.

We were even asked by our guide just after our 5 a.m. pickup what we most wanted to see that day (spoiler alert: we said toucans first). This had to be like asking Santa for some loot for Christmas, right? Surely our guide, Richard, would deposit us right in front of a tree full of amazing looking toucans when we got where we were going, right? Right???

It didn't work. We looked. We listened for those boards rubbing together. We saw and heard nothing. Well, not nothing. Just nothing toucan-wise. We searched the parking lot, around the lodge that we were visiting, along the river banks, in the jungle and everywhere else for hours and hours. Seven hours if you must know. Zero toucans. We got the squadoosh and nothing more.

Until the very, very last minute. Or hour, really I guess.

Keel-billed toucan number three. Or three-can if you prefer.

On our way home, we got to a spot on the road too narrow for two cars to pass and while sort of pulling over to allow enough passing space for the vehicle coming the other way to move past us, Richard said something to the effect of "there's a keel-billed toucan in this tree." It's go time! He laid out the plan: pull over in the car; let the oncoming vehicle pass and hope it didn't scare off the bird; get out of the car quickly and quietly so we wouldn't scare off the bird; and watch.

I was the first out of the car (I was sitting on the driver's side on the same side of the road as the tree); spotted the multi-colored bill and the red feathers on the body; focused the camera on the mass of branches in front of the bird; and before I hit the button, it flew. Scared off. We'd never get any closer.

But it wasn't alone. If we did our math right and followed our birds correctly, there were two others and we got the picture above, which was the third we spotted. Was that picture worth all the hard work? All the looking over 2-1/2 days in the hot jungle of western Belize? Yes? No? Maybe? 

Didn't matter. That's all we got. It's out of focus, it's very over exposed or some term that means there's too much light in the background but it's clearly a keel-billed toucan. It was not the encounter we had in Costa Rica. It was nowhere near as personal and the picture, while clearly showing more of the actual bird, is of inferior quality.

We headed back to the hotel; said goodbye to Richard along with a tip for his efforts; and walked back to our rooms knowing we were down to our last day in the jungle side of Belize. And there, right behind our rooms, were two keel-billed toucans in a tree. Right on our hotel property.

How amazing was this? It was pretty cool. I'm not going to lie. We watched them bob their heads, make absolutely no noise whatsoever, hop around a bit between the branches and that was about it. This was certainly not what I imagined. It was fleeting and the lighting was and is pretty terrible. Overcast sky with ton of very light gray backlighting and a whole ton of branches between us and the toucans. Bobbing and hopping. That was it.

Was it better than Costa Rica? Probably not in the wholistic sense of the experience. Sitting on a boat scanning the treetops for a lone yellow-throated toucan calling out over the jungle? Nope, not better than that. But despite the leaves obscuring most of the two birds, this look and these pictures (see below) are better than Costa Rica.

These birds are just incredible-looking. They are very definitely one of my favorite birds on Earth. The colors are just fantastic, and it's not even just about the bills. It's the throat and the eyes and the red feathers on their body (which are not at all visible in the pictures above or below). Although where the bills are concerned, I love the little patch of blue which you can see in the second photograph below.

There's some satisfaction in going somewhere to see something that you might not see and finding it anyway. Am I satisfied to the point where I'm done toucan-searching forever or even for a long time? No way. Not at all. But I don't feel cheated by this experience. I feel like we got them and that's going to have to be enough for this year. I know I'm not done in Central America. I still have Panama to check out and Costa Rica has at least one more visit in her.

I feel like I got what I came for in these five toucans. I'm good this year. The last picture of this post is my favorite. Thanks, Belize.