goat trees

hola comrades

the beginning of this blog post was written yesterday so please imagine it is still pancake tuesday:

feliz dia de pastel de sarten! i made some (pancakes) for breakfast, we had lime and brown sugar on them and they were delicious. probably a few belizean ants got in the sugar but who cares on pancake day! the last one for our piece de resistance we had chocolate sauce on yum yum! a bit of a diversion from our normal super healthy smoothies for breakfast with super blue green algae and spirulina superfood powder in. it's amazing the superfood powder stuff, it keeps you non hungry for about 7 hours, so usually we just have that then something tiny for lunch and tiny for dinner. but today was a pancake day so we veered from the pickles/combs diet just for once. plus bert has just handed me a vodka and grapefruit juice which is definitely not an allowed substance, especially during blog-writing time, but i had a bit anyway.

last wednesday and thursday passed quite uneventfully, i have been a bit ill with a cold that made me really tired, so i lay around in a hammock on the deck outside (yes we have moved to a houseboat - not really but all these silly americanisms are insidiously creeping into my pure thoroughbred english language) reading my book and looking at the view of the fields and horses and the runway and thinking that it's a nice place to have a hammock. it was squeaking but resourceful bert poured some vegetable oil on to the screw bits and now it's nice and peaceful.

friday 20th
we drove my bike to belize city for a check up, because it's new and i've ridden it a few times thus the cables need tightening up etc. we had put some 3 in 1 oil on the chain which was the wrong type of oil to put on there and they told us off and sold us some of their own oil at their own price. turns out bruce's cycling club bike shop might not have been our best bet for buying a bargain bicycle (hope you enjoyed the alliteration), but i wanted one right now rather than trawling through second hand ones, or driving up to mexico to get it, and then paying import duties (which can be up to 75%, unless you're in the british army training support unit belize - batsub - who are exempt from taxes - we know some of them, but not well enough really to ask them to buy stuff on the cheap for us from america). - anyway - all went fine for it's m.o.t, so we left happy and had some rice and beans over the road.

then we carried on to placencia which is a town in the south on the coast. i've never been to the south of belize so this was exciting. there are 2 dirt road sections of the journey, the first one was really cool, bert showed off his rally driving skills by skidding and sliding all over the place, the road was wide and empty and sandy and wiggly, perfect conditions for handbrake turn skids. i tried it, but my version was a mixture of just braking suddenly and turning the steering right and left rather pathetically (jim i'm sure you can picture it based on previous driving manoeuvres of mine). on the drive we listened to credence cleerwater revival - how did i never know about these guys, they are really cool. we had a bit of phil collins too but he's a bit of a wimp really, all those soppy songs about splitting up with someone. sorry mum i know he's one of your favourites - him and paul simon graceland and pet shop boys introspective was our 3 choices on all and every car journey in mum's car when we were little. oh and enya but that made me seasick.

our reason for visiting placencia was to visit stewart kronan who will help bert with his business. stewart used to own channel 5 tv station in belize, and now owns a humongous patch of land on the peninsula down there which he lives on and is selling the rest off bit by bit in lots, partly for houses and partly for a resort. it's pretty swanky to say the least. they talked business for a bit then we went to a pizza bar where there were some men with guitars playing music. i was quite amazed as one of the men was also the barman and had been sloshing back the whiskies (not very discreetly) behind the bar whilst we ate our pizzas, but he was a great guitarist and singer - you wouldn't know he was drunk as a skunk. they played eric clapton (we had tried to listen to him in the car but the cd was scratched) and i requested wonderful tonight which they did for me. i got to shake the shaker as the percussion section, i think they were pretty impressed with me. they did some crosby stills and nash too. one of the men's surname was nash. i don't know if that was the drunk skunk barman (this is turning into one of those logic puzzles). bert told me that nash of crosby stills and nash used to live on his island in hawaii (kauai), and he saw him in concert there once. the pizza at this place was great, the best yet in belize, which isn't saying much actually. belize doesn't exactly specialise in great food, standard fare is rice beans tortilla and fried chicken with some sort of flavoured sauce squirted on it. fruit and veg here is really tasty though, and they have a mixture between a pear and an apple called a pear apple, or an apple pear, or an asian pear, or a japanese pear, which is very juicy, and should be called a juicy pear, but it already has 4 other names.

it was quite breezy tonight and we all wondered why. we talked about the trade winds, but they are in the south pacific (as in the hawaiian islands) so it can't have been them. does anyone know why they are called the trade winds - presumably because of some sort of trade? ooo just googled it and it's interesting if you look at wikipedia in the etymology bit of the trade wind page. too many words to retype here sorry.

saturday 21st
up early. everyone in this country gets up early. i am slowly getting used to it. we walked on the beach with our coffee. the sea was a bit murky from the non trade winds blowing it around. had breakfast at a cafe in town then wandered around placencia, which is a nice little town, typical belizean, ie wooden shack type houses, lots of little gift shops selling postcards and hammocks, lots of guest houses and internet cafes, lots of americans wandering around whooping at things. some belizean tinkers tried to sell us a little pearl they claimed they had found in an oyster that day, they said to bert he should buy it for me his lovely wife, bert said, actually she's not my wife and in fact i don't really like her so i won't be buying it thank you. then they asked me to buy it for him but i said i didn't like him either. they didn't know what to do so they shook our hands and walked off to sell it to the next person. then we went to yoli's, a bar on the beach, for a cup of tea and to see them as they are friends of bert's. the tea had ants in which was nice. there was a tv so we got to watch some news, it was about obama and his stimulus bill and deals with china. i feel hugely out of touch with what is happening in the world, we have a tv here but only for watching dvds, and i don't find it as easy to understand the news on the internet for some reason, does anyone else have this particular disorder? then we swam in the murky sea, we had to walk on seaweed for some of it which spooked me out again like that time in the river. we stopped at another of francis ford coppola's resorts, the turtle inn. there were some little turtles in a pond, i would actually call them terrapins as i think turtles are really big, but they call them turtles here i guess, and i'm not going to argue with francis ford coppola or he might chop my head off with that apocalypse now fan. the turtle-terrapins were all perched on some rocks having a party.

we headed back to cayo in the afternoon, on the way we stopped to look at a huge boa constrictor that had been run over and dragged to the side of the road and nibbled by flies and vultures. it was huge i've never seen anything like it. bert didn't look as he's phobic of snakes. then we stopped at the cockscomb wildlife sanctuary, it had a picture of a jaguar on the sign so we thought it might be exciting. it's lots of trails in the jungle basically, and there are jaguars around, but if they see you they will pretty much ignore you. quite rude really. i asked the man at the visitor centre if they would attack us (the jaguars not the visitor centre men), but he said not. so we went on a little hike around some of the trails, one went to a waterfall in a little river, which we swam in a bit, but typically i got scared because the water was deep and swirly by the waterfall. i think i am developing a swimming in open water phobia, which is quite bizarre, and i don't know where it comes from. perhaps from some traumatic childhood event which i have forgotten about. then we hiked up a small mountain, well a hill probably but it felt like a mountain to me. from the top we could see victoria peak which is the second highest mountain in belize, it's 3765 feet high, which isn't very high, but is apparently very hard work to climb, especially the last bit, it's all scrambly and practically vertical. we looked at the clouds and trees for a while and ate some pumpkin seeds i had brought with me (part of the diet). bert told me about felling trees and how you have to be careful not to get squashed when they fall down. we kept our eyes peeled for jaguars but still didn't see any.

on the drive back we went through a town called dangriga, it's on the coast a bit further up from placencia. it's a totally black caribbean town, and it felt really foreign and far away, the buildings were kind of crumbly and not much was happening, just men cycling around or sitting on steps and children running around or playing football in a field, and they all really stared when we drove past, like they never get white people there maybe. we were going to stop for some food there but chickened out because we were a bit spooked by it all. we stopped at a bar on the hummingbird highway instead and had some rice beans tortilla chicken and squirty sauce and some great 80s music on the tv, like mc hammer and ice ice baby. the hummingbird highway is a beautiful road that is very twisty and hilly, great scenery as it goes through the mountains and little villages where they speak mainly just spanish as we realised when we stopped to get some water and peanuts and i had to rustle up some by now rusty spanish. it reminded me of south america a bit with it being mountainous and jungly. there are patches of non-jungle on some of the hillsides which apparently is where guatemalans and salvadoreans have chopped down trees to plant beans. not very inconspicuous of them.

sunday 22nd - my first day of work since leaving england?
the 2nd annual belize fly in. at the central farm airstrip up the road from ours. basically anyone who has a little aeroplane or ultralight flies it in to the airport there and you go and look at them. there were some nice little 4 seater aeroplanes and the batsub helicopter, which i sat in and asked lots of questions about. grant, the helicopter man from batsub, is originally from yorkshire i think, and he is very nice and told us loads about it all. they can't land on water, but if they have floats on them then they can like in flying doctors. i asked lots of things which i can't remember the answer to, like what is the propellor made from. i don't actually need or want to know these things but i think it is good to keep people on their toes. they use it for medical emergencies and things like that, grant said that they get lots of pregnant belizean ladies on islands emergencies, they always wait until night to ring the helicopter because during the day there is a plane that can take them to hospital but they have to pay for it, but the chopper is free. so if they go into labour in the morning they have to hold it in all day to get their free helicopter night flight.

bert took the ultralight and was busy all day flying people around, i was the ground crew so kept a list of who was flying and who had paid, and gave bert water to drink when he landed each time. we made a load of money and i got to realise how lucrative this whole flying business is, everyone loves it and it's such easy money for us - bert loves flying and all i have to do is look after things on the ground and be nice to people and take their money from them and put their helmets on and things. wow, compared to sitting in a smelly office looking at a computer all day and spending all my earnings on rent and bills and commuting and being so exhausted from it all that i drink myself into a stupor each week, this will be a dream job for a while. one little boy went up twice as he'd loved it so much the first time, and his dad flew too because he wants to learn how to fly. i talked to some mennonites who were very nice. and to a couple who have a landrover shop next to the airport who live next to the belizean lady who sold all the land that now belongs to the mennonites at spanish lookout, she is 92 and has loads of interesting stories apparently. there was a beautiful sunset to finish the day and they played lots of songs about flying on the loud speakers and i went to look at the old drug plane they have there (there were no drugs left in it i looked), and all in all it was a fun and productive day.

we celebrated by going out for dinner with our earnings and drinking some whisky. as official secretary i have to watch how much we spend, especially as bert has a tendency to want to spend it all immediately on things like a new swanky tin opener, or a set of crystal wine glasses. one thing i have sanctioned that we are definitely going to buy when we have money pouring in is a table tennis table for the house.

monday 23rd
today we drove to spanish lookout to get the car looked at. it's a 4wd chinese pick up truck called a great wall, and the model is a wingle, which makes me laugh. the wheels needed realigning from the bumpy roads, and they washed it all too. i cycled around as the roads there are nice and hilly and then carried on back to cayo from there which was a ride of over 2 hours altogether. good work i thought. on the way i cycled with a belizean man on his beaten up old mountain bike. he was called richard and had cycled the belize cross country one year on his old bike, he did it in 10 hours, the best ones finish it in 4... it's 144 miles, from cayo to belize city and back. there is a female version of it which is half the distance, in may, so maybe maybe i will do it. we cycled past an oil and gas plant where there is always a big flame burning as they burn off the gas, he waved to a friend who works there and i asked why don't they use the gas instead of burning it off it seems a waste. he said they are planning on doing so soon. so that was good, another world resource issue solved by pixmania from her bike. i got to cayo and cooled my feet down in the river then bert arrived in the new shiny wingle and we went shopping. i found my favourite shop yet, it's a stationery and book shop. i bought a new mechanical pencil to feed my pencil obsession, and we got a rough guide to belize book because even though we live here you never know what you might not know about your own country. so far i have learnt that:
belizean territory comprises marginally more sea than land, and for most visitors the sea is the main attraction.
belizeans' recognition of the importance of their natural heritage means that the country now has the greatest proportion of protected land (over 40 percent) in the hemisphere.
it's not possible to see everything that belize has to offer in one trip - and we don't suggest you try.

bert got a haircut at a barbers. there were 3 people ahead of him in the queue, but each one only took 5 minutes, the 3rd one i didn't understand why he was having a haircut as he didn't seem to have any hair in the first place. he was black and might have had some very short black hair on his head somewhere that needed trimming but i couldn't see it. then we bumped into hugh who was our very knowledgeable tour guide from when we went to corocal ruins. he had done some bicycle purchase research for us as we had called and left him a message as his son is a cyclist, so we talked about cycling and he told me to go and see a man who lives over the other side of town who is the president of the belize cycling association as there are lots of rides i can join in with apparently. i am slightly scared as belizeans are quite competitive and real cyclists, so i will do some more of my own training first. we had a drink of orange juice with him, and it was very sour so bert told the waiter the orange juice was very sour, to which he said, oh, well it's natural orange juice sir, and bert said naturally sour yes. here the belizeans are very polite and call everyone sir or madam, and if they know your name they call you mr robert or miss lucy. it's sweet. not sour.

tuesday 24th
pancake day (see top). we went to belize city today to collect marius the lithuanian photographer and his friend/assistant darjius too. they are here to finish shooting for the photobook they are making about belize from the air. you may remember marius from a previous blog, and me telling him he was the rudest person i'd ever met. he seems better behaved now which is nice and i might partially retract my statement, mainly though in case he ever reads my blog more than anything else. on the way we stopped in belmopan, which is technically the capital of belize, even though belize city is the biggest city here. we had to renew our passport tourist visa things, which we did in the immigration office. this was fairly uneventful which was a shame as i was expecting lots of questions and maybe some interviews with important government officials. but they just write your details in a big book then stamp your passport and you give them some money. we then stopped to look at a marina called old belize, there was a huge water slide which looked really good fun but we were in a rush so couldn't go on it. we talked to a man on a boat who had sailed from canada, he was going to guatemala next but wasn't sure as he had heard there was some pirate activity going on there, which i can quite easily believe. then we found brody's the department store place we had heard of as being the best place for buying stuff in belize. it was really exciting, i got 2 national geographic adventure magazines, 2 newsweek magazines, a bottle of heinz ketchup, a bottle of ragu pasta sauce, and 4 cadburys chocolate bars to test the theory that they taste like english cadburys bars. they also sell table tennis tables, blue ones. brilliant. and we got a stove kettle that whistles, it scared bert when we first used it yesterday he was running round the kitchen going argh what is that whistling noise.

we picked up marius and darjius and drove back to cayo, then had dinner with them at the san ignacio hotel which is where the queen stayed when she last visited and where she ate gibnut which is why it is known as royal rat.

wednesday 25th
today. i might go on a bike ride. this morning i spoke to siobhan on skype who is coming over to mexico to do the bike ride in march. she sounded very english. then i spoke to mama pepinillo who misheard me when i said i had found a new spanish teacher who was wearing a beautiful mayan costume, and mum thought i had said lion costume.

any other business:
mum's friend susan ibberson sat and read my entire blog the other day from start in july to finish -it took her 3 hours. i think this deserves a medal. i am very flattered, thank you. i read about a man who had sat and read the entire 13 volume oxford english dictionary from a-z. i can't remember how long it took him, and even though i love linguistics, even i think that is a bit bonkers, it's not got a plot or anything.
we have given up cake for lent.
do you think that people from island countries travel more? like england and australia for example?
there are elections here on 4th march, the party in power is the udp and the opposition is the pup. i don't know anything about the politics in belize at all other than that.
my bottle of ribena has run out. if i was to make a film about that i would call it the last of the ribena.
other music we have listened to recently is the eagles, and nick drake.
didn't slumdog millionaire do well at the oscars?
bert once was in a cable car going up to sugar loaf mountain in rio and one mad brazilian threw another mad brazilian out of the door, they were having an argument.

that's all for now. happy beginning of lent.