This is as close as I've come to a big cat in the wild. This was the Cockscomb Jaguar Reserve in Belize. We hired a guide in the nearby town. And we went out. They say this preserve has the highest number of jaguars per hectare in all of Central America. Your likelihood of seeing them is still pretty low though. My guide had seen many throughout his time in the park.
Right away we saw this. Within a half hour of entering the park. It was fresh within a day. And I was super excited.
There was my family and the guide so a total of five. My daughter, who was about three at the time still needed to be carried for a portion of this. Her little legs got tired. I noticed that she and I were getting bitten up so I stopped to reapply mosquito spray. The three men in my group kept going. We were about 10 yards away from them. When all of a sudden all the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I knew I was being watched.
To my left in the darkened trees about 5 yards from us were two reflective circles. It caught my eye because they looked like marbles shining back. As I'm staring at them trying to figure out why there are two perfectly round discs reflecting light back at me.... I realize that they're a pair of eyes. And then, I realize that they're high enough off the ground to be something big and they are forward-facing... Which means that they are predator and not prey.
I picked my daughter back up so she didn't look like prey. And I looked away for just a second to call my husband and son over so that they could see it too. And when I looked back, the eyes had melted back into the jungle.
I have no idea for sure what it was. But I know that it was big, it was predator because of the eye position and it was staring us down. When I was reading about this park, they said that chances of you seeing a jaguar are pretty low, but the chances of a Jaguar seeing you was pretty high. I'd like to think that that was my moment. It was a bummer that I wasn't able to see more. They're so elusive. And it was less than 20 feet for me and I still wasn't able to see more than the eyes.
We saw plenty of other cool things that day, including a huge pack of white-lipped peccary, about 200 strong, crocodiles, a wolf spider, and several species of lizards and butterflies. But that encounter is the only one that matters for me that day...
So my search for a big cat in it's natural habitat continues. I'm in the right place for it. I just have to get lucky, and be in the right place at the right time. 12 years ago when we got first got to Costa Rica, we were lucky enough to see a Jagurundi for a split second, as we were on a skytram going up a mountain to begin ziplining. It was climbing up the trunk of a tree and there was a break in the canopy. We got to see it for about 10 ft of the tree. There was no time to think about a camera, let alone get one out... But you bet your ass if I see one and I'm lucky enough to get a picture, I'll share it with the world.
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