Armed with a mountain buggy and a backpack full of nappies, a writer and mother reveals the struggles of travelling the world alone with a toddler, as seen through the lens of her late-’90s trip to Belize. You can learn more about Natascha and her life as a travelling mother in this episode of the Travel Writing Podcast.
To be honest, I would have preferred to leave my 11-month-old son at home. On the other hand, I don’t think I would have wanted to part with him for the month I needed to update the original Cadogan Guide to Belize, in 1997, so I tried to be as prepared as possible for travelling alone with a toddler in Central America.
I soon discovered that there are only three things that matter: bottom, food, and transportation. Everything else is secondary, although sleeping arrangements are also important. Should I take nappies for the whole trip, or should I buy them out there? Were they going to be available? And at what price? I worked out I needed around 120 nappies for four weeks–a good five kilos to add to my backpack. I decided to compromise: 70 disposables and three washable terry nappies, which cut down on the weight and covered all needs. Nappies would dry fast in the tropical sun, after all. Except on this trip, when the rainy season decided to extend itself for a few weeks.
Happily, food was not a great worry, as Sascha was a very good eater and not fussy at all. To be on the safe side, though, I packed a box of Ready Break as a backup for meals if all else failed. Good thing too, because he ended up living mostly off cereal and bananas. For drinking, I was going to rely on cow’s milk–a month early, according to the guidelines at the time–but that didn’t faze me. I knew from previous trips to Belize that pasteurised milk was commonly available. Otherwise, I would have had to take formula with me. In the event, I took one small tin for emergencies, which did nothing but cause grief when it opened all over the contents of my rucksack after a very, very long day.
Transportation of the baby was a major headache. At just over ten kilograms, he was too heavy for me to carry, especially in temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius and up–on top of a backpack, too. The only answer was a multi-terrain pushchair with high-clearance wheels. I’d seen them advertised in various baby magazines and, lucky for me, I succeeded in getting one free to test drive in the tropics. And what a joy it was to cruise over gaping sewers and knee-deep pot-holes, hotel steps and giant curb stones… not to mention to lightly step on sand and mud, the knobbly tires doing their job perfectly. The thing was so light too–just six kilograms–and portable: the wheels come off in seconds, and the frame could be completely flattened, which made it easy to turn into carry-on luggage, especially if I was lucky enough to find a kind stranger to hold my baby.
The problem of travelling with a newly walking person, however, is that he does not want to stay strapped into his pushchair. He wants to walk and run, but sharp concrete steps jump up at him, wet tiles send him smacking to the floor, and table tops poke his eyes out… It was Sascha’s mobility that caused me the most trouble during our early days. By day two, he had three bruises on his head and one major bump on his forehead, where he slipped in the shower the second I turned away to unpack my bag.
Illness was also a worry. He was too young for the vaccinations for the area, and he quickly found flower beds mixed with broken glass and rusting bottle tops, as well as fetid drains and the small bins used locally for toilet paper. At first, I just could not remember everything at the same time, and he was happily eating with his fingers long before I remembered that I should have washed his hands. Guilt nagged me at night, when I had time to think and worry. But when he wasn’t sick by day five, I relaxed a bit, and my nerves stopped turning my chest to concrete.
The heat was also a problem, and we soon learnt not to go out between 1 pm and 3 pm, when the sun glared mercilessly and the temperature soared well over 30 degrees Celsius. Poor baby: his blond locks clung to a sweaty neck, and his face was ghost-like from sunblock and exhaustion.
The harness I used to clip Sascha into the pushchair was certainly the second-most-important piece of equipment in our luggage. Without the reins that attach to it, I could not have let him walk at all, as he was off and away as soon as his feet hit the ground. Holding onto him during a force six gale in an open sailboat would also have been impossible without the harness.
Our last day in Belize was his first birthday. We’ll take it easy, I thought, and thanked the spirits for allowing us to make it almost a whole month without disaster. At 4 am, he vomited all over the bed. After breakfast, I accidentally got insect repellent in his eye. Then he fell off the bed, bounced against the chest of drawers, and sustained a deep cut adjacent to his eye. I cried, he cried, I cried more. I felt guilty, devastated, scared, tired, and exhausted, and thirty days of paying attention and keeping on top of the situation finally broke me. I sobbed while the kind hotel staff called a doctor. Happily, the cut was in a fold of the eye and didn’t need stitches, and Sascha seemed to recover quickly. In fact, when the doctor had finished with my child, he turned to me and said, “Your son is fine, but I think you need these,” and pressed a sachet of tranquillisers into my hand. I resisted the temptation to take the whole lot.
The next day, we traveled three hours through the jungle by bus, caught a plane to the capital of neighbouring Guatemala, and then caught another plane for the 13-hour flight back to Europe. The woman in the next seat took one look at Sascha’s swollen face and asked, “Is he contagious?” and her husband spent the entire flight getting angry about having to sit next to a baby. Each time Sascha’s hand strayed onto his knee or armrest, he huffed and flicked it off like a tiresome fly. I just smiled. Nothing could touch me after two of those pills. In Amsterdam, we had to change planes yet again to catch a much smaller plane for Norwich airport. It was the end of February, and winds were gusting at wing-tipping speeds. Everyone clapped in gratitude as we landed on a dark and rainy night.
Would I do it again? Preferably not on my own. Would I recommend Belize for travelling with kids? Definitely. But give yourself a break and stay in one place (ideally self-catering), where you can get into your own routine and have all you need, without having to worry about being on the move and packing and unpacking all the time.
