A butterfly

The second stop on my jungle journey is Chan Chich Lodge, deep in the heart of Orange Walk District, where the bird list runs to an impressive 355 species. It's a five-hour drive from Belize City, over some pretty rough roads (it comes as no surprise that 90 percent of visitors fly there). En route we pass the low hills of Mexico, and rice fields where we are lucky enough to see three jabiru storks. On the dark jungle road to the lodge we flush a squirrel cuckoo from the undergrowth, and are ignored by a rare brocket deer casually browsing in the deep ditch.

Chan Chich is owned by Barry Bowen, the Belikan Beer king of Belize, who owns about 130,000 acres; adjoining protected properties add up to about 400,000 acres of rain forest. Although it has been selectively logged in the past, and many trees bear the diagonal slashes of the chicleros, who collected the sap of the chicle tree for the chewing gum trade, most of it is virtually pristine forest. In addition to the lodge, Bowen is raising coffee and cattle, with an emphasis on ecology. The lodge is run by American expatriates Tom and Josie Harding, who are friendly and well-informed about their adopted country.

The Hardings moved to Belize about 20 years ago, having wintered in Des Moines and found it wanting. Lured by a friend, Tom, who is a carpenter, spent two weeks soaking up the sun, went home, and told Josie to pack. Chan Chich was built in the mid-1980s, from trees felled on site, and opened in 1988. The 12 cottages are built from jungle hardwoods: mahogany, Santa Maria, bullet tree (which was once used to make bullets), cabbage bark, pink milady, nargosthan. The supports and beams are of Santa Maria, of which Tom Harding says, "I had to use it—it was the only wood I could get a nail into without drilling a hole first."

The Hardings wisely, with the experienced help of local bushmen, left the flowering fruit trees that remain in the plaza (plus one cohune palm that defied all efforts—including a diesel fire—to exterminate it). The reward to birders is impressive: afternoon tea on the veranda can yield the sight of half a dozen collared aracaris in a tree only ten feet away; while the bird of paradise and hibiscus often buzz with little hermits or rufous-tailed hummingbirds. A towering African tulip tree, which took a mere seven years to reach its height of 50 or so feet, attracts purple-crowned fairies.