sooner than expected here it today´s blog - trying to get as much blog done before the bike ride starts so i don´t have too much to update on at the end of it.
yesterday was day 1 of the ruta maya canoe race. apparently the belize bank team won the first stage, which was 45 miles i think. we were going to get up really early to fly over the start of it at 7am and take photos of it, but it was raining and misty and you can´t fly in that weather, which was a shame. so yesterday afternoon we drove up to chetumal just over the mexican border. we sang along to the white album on the way which was fun. some of the songs are harder to sing along to, like helter skelter. birthday makes me laugh as does rocky raccoon. we went out for tacos at a place bert knew from a previous trip here, then walked along and ate an ice cream, which bert squashed onto my face which was funny. we found a oaxaqueño market (ie selling things from oaxaca), and looked at it, bert bought some chocolate covered raisins, and the man at the stall let me take a wiggly worm sweet too, i said senor, es posible solamente un grusano por favor?, and he let me have it free which was pretty exciting. but it did make my teeth a bit fuzzy so i´m glad i only had the one.
chetumal is a nice clean mexican town, by the sea, but not a really nice bit of sea. there was the usual band practice going on in the local square (trumpets and drumming, almost in tune and tempo), lots of children around with their families having a well behaved friday evening time. i find it amazing that in a country so seemingly well-behaved and proud (there are monuments to national heroes absolutely everywhere), and so family and community orientated, there is also such a huge problem with corruption at every level of society. i think the corruption gene must be deeply imbedded in them to the point that it doesn´t even register as a wrong thing to do. i read this week that the president has sent in 7,500 troops to ciudad juarez, the border town which is in complete drug cartel madness at the moment. there are 6,000 murders a month - which seems so ridiculous i feel sure i must have mis-remembered it, but i´m also sure it is in fact true. the police chief there has had to resign as the drug gangs murdered a police officer every 48 hours until he did, the mayor lives over the border in el paso in the states for safety. calderon, the president, sent the military in as he has said that the police on municipal, state and federal level are so corrupt that he can´t use them anymore. the police force here is riddled with organised crime, and often the policemen join the drug cartels in the end. this isn´t true of police in all of mexico, but certainly in the border towns. i hope calderon gets somewhere near sorting out the mess anyway.
anyway no need to panic as i´m the other end of the country for the bike ride. i am in mexico city now, drinking some mango juice as i write this. my flight was fine, i looked out of the window for most of it, very brave, plus me not looking out of the window won´t mean that the plane won´t crash, so i figure i may as well look. now i know more about flying it doesn´t make me panic like it used to. i had seen the little mexican pilots getting on the plane, one of them had a wheely suitcase with a sticker that said i heart flying. that´s good i thought because if you didn´t you might feel inclined to just turn the engine off halfway through the flight. it was beautiful weather, just right for looking out of the wndow. coming into the airport here is quite amazing, it´s right in the centre of the city so you feel like the plane is going to land on someone´s house, then suddenly you see the runway. we flew over the velodrome (still nobody riding in it, probably that grumpy guard man has padlocked it up even more) and some nice parks, one of them had an absolutely massive stone dog in it, and i mean massive, like you could see even each separate dog toe from the plane. mind you maybe it was just a normal dog and we were that close to the ground. i looked for what it was in my guidebook but there wasn´t an entry under massive stone dog in a park near the velodrome so now i´m thinking my breakfast-starved brain imagined it. one thing i didn´t understand at all (well, other than the just-mentioned dog) was that most of the flight was over the sea - chetumal to mexico city looks fairly inland to me on the map... i started thinking maybe i´d boarded the wrong flight but there is only 1 terminal in chetumal and there was only 1 aeroplane leaving from it, so i didn´t entertain this thought for too long, especially when the huge stone dog appeared.
it´s nice to be back in mexico city, and stepping of the plane into lovely cold morning (9am) weather was the best bit about it. it has since got quite hot, but i have learnt my lesson and didn´t sit in the midday sun like a mad dog or english man. i am definitely feeling the altitude, not that it´s that high at 2400m, but you feel it going up stairs a bit. i decided i would rather travel with other people in future, i have only been here for today and only have to wait until tonight when the macmillan bike ride group arrives, but it reminded me how tiring i found it by the end of all my travelling here before. it´s much nicer to share experiences with people and be able to laugh when things go wrong rather than panic, and just have someone to talk rubbish with. this is by the way my 6th time in mexico city since coming here for the first time on the way to ciudad guzman in october.
i went to the hotel where the group will meet me later. they didn´t know much there, but i know it´s the right place and will return later. i left my bags and went to sit in the park and read a bit of midnight´s children (still going, but very nearly finished). after a while a bird poo´d on my rucksack so i thought it best to leave. i went for a coffee and some breakfast and sat pondering some things for a while (yes, the huge stone dog was one of them). then i went to a bookshop and saw a really good atlas and bemoaned my current poverty and lack of space in rucksack. i stumbled across a strange outdoor art exhibit of cars covered in pottery and sculpted into arch shapes with bicycles going up them. which reminded me of the bus me rod and sarah bullock had seen on our last time here, which was totally covered in knitting - jo molloy you would have loved it, i will email you a photo. i found the main post office which is golden and art deco and beautiful. then i went to the palacio de bellas artes and looked at some murals, by rivera, siquieros, orozco, and camarena. their murals are to be very political, mainly seeming to be socialist with slogans like give us work not charity, and also sometimes quite gruesome and explicit, with people trying to break free from chains, or with knives sticking in them, or animals with freakish faces that represent politicians, or the whole of mexican history in one fell swoop in fact. they are pretty impressive, as was my still existing spanish knowledge when i read the little bits of information at the side of them (there must be one handy word which refers to these little bits of information, does anyone know it?). then i went to see the architectural exhibition on the top floor, lots of architectural plan drawings which i love looking at, perhaps because papa pepinillo is un arquitecto too. this exhibition was all about vicente mendiola quezada who lived from 1900 to 1986. there was a watercolour he´d done of big ben too with a red london bus in it, which was a nice treat. it was probably a routemaster, back in the good old days before over the top health and safety regulations kicked in and bendy buses started appearing. talk about a cycling hazard, and apparently they spontaneously combust, is this true?
that is the news for now. i will go up a tower now to look at a view of the city for a while, then maybe eat a quesadilla then hopefully be able to check in to my hotel so i can sleep before meeting el grupo this evening. i have realised that perhaps the reason my feet hurt here in mexico city is due to the altitude, because i haven´t even walked that much, not as much as i do some days in belize, so i think this must be the reason. it must make them swell up and therefore feel too big for my shoes and therefore hurt.
another thing before i finish that i just remembered is that we got some vegetables from mick fleming´s vegetable garden near chaa creek recently, and we thought one of them was a courgette, but it seemed too big, so we showed it to mick and he says it´s a loofah, and if you leave them on the tree they eventually dry out and become loofahs. we are going to see if ours turns into a loofah, i asked him if it would, and he said it was already a loofah, stupid. i said i know, but i meant an actual loofah you can clean your back with. i always thought they came from the sea, like from a coral reef of something. i will keep you updated.
also, in midnight´s children, he refers to the kolynos kid on an advert on a billboard in india. kolynos was a toothpaste, and i know papa pepinillo was in a toothpaste advert once, so i checked and sure enough he was in a kolynos advert. i´m not sure it would necessarily be him that salman rushdie is referring to, there may have been other kolynos kids, but i thought that that was quite exciting.
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
bubble inspectors
i feel the need to for once explain today's blog title (don't get used to it though, i have to retain a sense of mystery you know). it's quite banal - whenever bert washes up he does it the american non-eco friendly way ie keep the tap running the whole time with no plug in thus wasting both water and fairy liquid, then pile up the bubbly dishes in the next sink along, to be rinsed off with more global warming hot water later. i say why not just fill the sink up and wash them that way and the bubbles can go to hell, but he insists that if any bubbles are left on the plates they can mutate in your stomach when you next eat from them and then kill you. i ask if they have bubble inspectors in america. then laugh as i like the sound of bubble inspectors. anyway, there you have an insight into a typical conversation over here.
to begin at the beginning of where i left off
wednesday 25th
went on a bike ride. and a walk. saw some birds with tails like this /\ like swallows. i think they are called frigate birds. there are loads of different types of birds in belize, and lots of bird watching goes on. didn't see any gibnuts sadly. bert spent the day with marius the lithuanian photographer, trying to sort out things like his phone and his computer, which he can't do his photography without. the verdict was the computer was broken, so marius would have to return to miami to the apple shop to get a new one tomorrow. marius has previously made a photo book of lithuania, called unseen lithuania, which has drastically improved tourism to the country and the profile of the country in general, and he got the equivalent of an obe from the prime minister at an award ceremony recently. his book is
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=unseen+lithuania&x=17&y=20
thursday 26th
we took marius to the airport with his sidekick darjius. we stopped at a roadside coconut stall on the way and drank some coconut water which was nice. there were some sugar canes there too which you can chew on, but we didn't. and also the coconut man tried to sell us some marijuana which we didn't want either. after dropping him off we went to brody's again, and this time i bought some pesto! some chocolate buttons! a kitkat! i looked at some shorts too in the clothes section, and asked the lady there how the sizes worked, and she helpfully explained that small was smaller than medium, and medium was a bit bigger than small. well, perhaps i asked a stupid question.. then to the bike shop to stock up on energy gels for my bike ride. they were all out of them as there are lots of events going on like bike rides, and there is also the ruta maya, which is a 150mile canoe race (which starts tomorrow in fact and goes for 4 days - people come from all over the world but they aren't able to beat the belizeans yet). the bike shop is proving to be a little bit stupid, but with it being belize you have to forgive them i suppose. the amount of times a day that i have to excuse belize for being a little bit stupid ... it is a hard place to live sometimes, and not very straightforward. but it does have beautiful birds and now kit kats too.
we came back with darjius and went to sit around at the pool up the road at mick fleming's resort, chaa creek. this is a really beautiful eco lodge place, mick and his wife lucy have been there for 32 years, at first it was a little farm, and they canoed their produce up to town to sell it - read more here in this daily telegraph article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/centralamericaandcaribbean/belize/4296025/Belize-Just-the-spot-for-an-idler-Indiana-Jones.html
they have just built the pool recently and it is proving very popular. if we go there when it's a bit cloudy it's great as nobody will be in it and i can do lengths, as it's 60 feet long (around 20m). it's an infinity pool and the water splashes off the edge when you swim fast, down into the kiddy pool, haven't managed to drown any kids yet though. the only problem is the tiles around it get a bit slippy but some of the workers were sweeping the water off the tiles this time.
friday 27th
darjius drove back to the airport to get marius who had successfully bought his new computer from the apple shop. he had also bought us an i-tripp which is a device that means you can play your ipod in the car, so now we have more choices than the scratched phil collins, eric clapton and steve miller band cds. on their way back to san ignacio we had asked mariusdarjius to stop at pepperland, which is a place with a very well manicured lawn, which is locally famous for it's peppered chicken. we had excitedly ordered our chicken 2 weeks ago and had been counting down the days until we could have our pepperland chicken. but in typical belize style, they had no recollection or record of our order. i had even gone to the trouble of writing them a letter for mariusdarjius to give to them in case of any confusion regarding our order, but maybe this confused the matter more. anyway, thankfully there were some chickens left, so mariusdarjius successfully procured one for us.
meanwhile we went to the pool again, then walked back home as we were carless. i despaired that this was going to take us hours, and in the midday sun was envisaging us being burnt to a crisp and almost dead, but in the end it was a really nice 45 minute walk. we played animal vegetable mineral on the way. i introduced the extra categories of country and fruit. a typical round goes like this: bert-are you an animal?me-no.b-are you a vegetable?me-yes.b-are you a potato?me-no.b-are you a carrot?me-no.b-are you a red pepper?me-no.bert you are meant to ask other questions to narrow down the options of which vegetable i am, like are you green, rather than just guessing all the vegetables one after the other.b-oh. are you green?me-no.b-are you an onion then?etc etc.
when the car and mariusdarjius returned we set off for blancaneaux lodge, up in the pine ridge forest. well, down i should say as it is south of us. bert and marius flew there (there is a runway there) so they could do photos en route, and me and darjius drove with the luggage and extra fuel for the ultralight. it's a 10 minute flight, and around a 1 hour and 20 minute drive, through san ignacio then up a pot-holed road with pot holes big enough to lose your whole car in. this then turns into a dirt road and goes through some nice little mayan villages, one called cristo rey which means christ the king. driving here is quite something, in villages there are speedbumps which spring upon you with very little or usually no warning, and can be very steep; out of villages the roads are riddled with the aforementioned pot holes and people and dogs/cows/horses. you have to keep your wits about you. after a while on this road you come to a little gate where a man pops out of a box and asks you nicely where you are going and you write your name and origin (i wrote england, but i wonder if i should have just written san ignacio) on his list, then he opens the little gate for you and you carry on. this is the beginning of the pine ridge forest so i suppose they want to know what you are doing there and for how long. then after another 20 minutes of dusty road and lovely pine trees you arrive at blancaneaux lodge. i have been here before, it's the francis ford coppola place with the apocalypse now fan.
we all had pizza for dinner, it was really good pizza, maybe even as good as the one we had in placencia last week. i looked in the gift shop as is my wont, just so i know what my options are, and in case there are any good maps we should stock up with. i like having maps around me and one day will wallpaper a whole room in my house with them, though i am aware this is quite a cliched idea. we went for a mini swim after the pizza in the horseshoe-shaped hot tub. there was one stray leafcutter ant at the side of the horseshoe pool, walking up and down with a little piece of leaf on his back, i didn't know it was possible to feel sorry for an ant until i saw him there all alone. the nights in the pine ridge get very cold, and the mornings, as we are higher up there. i enjoyed this sudden return to actual fluctuating temperatures and wished i lived in the mountains. though i'm sure i'd find a reason to not like it, like it would be too hilly or there'd be too many trees. the next day at breakfast there was an american couple like this, they ordered the fruit plate but only with melon and papaya please, the waiter said oh it comes with pineapple, bananaIONLYWANTPAPAYAANDMELONISAID. oh yes ok that's fine - the staff are all trained to be very friendly and polite, but bert and i decided that if that was us we would have brought them the whole plate and told them to shove the pineapple and banana. ANYWAY. then they discussed how they had much preferred the bread at their last resort, he said wasn't it great that last bread we had, it was kinda fat bread wasn't it, you know, kinda fat. she agreed it had been great, and yeah kinda fat bread. i can't picture what they meant by fat bread and zoned out of my eavesdropping as far as was humanly possible which wasn't really possible as they were those kind of people. anyway, such is life. i had 2 soft boiled eggs for breakfast, with hash browns. and didn't complain about any of it, other than that the egg white was too white, the egg yoke was too yellow, the hash browns weren't actually brown and my orange juice was orange.
saturday 28th
was a well deserved day of rest, like lots of my days seem to be these days when not driving on bumpy roads. i sat on the balcony of our villa and read my book, and some of my newsweek magazine which i had bought at brody's. i learnt about the russian, iranian and venezuelan petro-czars potential falls from power, and how the price of oil is $37 compared to last summer's high of $148 a barrel. luckily i only need small amounts of oil for my bike chain, so this shouldn't affect me too much. i also learnt there are some riots in moscow due to unemployment, and that sarkozy wants to let french people work as many hours a week as they want, and that north korea has made a multistage weapon that could reach the west coast of america, which seems quite scary to me.
then we swam in the river a bit, it's a really clean and clear mountain river, so i didn't freak out about not being able to see the bottom as this time i could, and i could tell there weren't any sharks or crocodiles there. then we had a cup of tea and got bitten by lots of little bugs because we were sitting outside. in the villa there was a burst pipe and water had poured all over our lounge from behind the fridge, it was hot water though which makes no sense to me that that should be coming out of a fridge. then bert and marius did more flying/photographing, and i went for a run on the appropriately named runway. i learnt an important lesson which was don't go running until you have digested your cup of tea properly otherwise it will give you cramp and also slosh around in your stomach. i managed to run for 30 minutes though with a few minutes rest in the middle. that night we had pasta for dinner. there are some things on the menu there called things like mrs coppola's famous chicken, which sound nice, and i wonder if they really are her recipes? incidentally the much-feted pepperland chicken did not live up to its reputation and we left it in the villa fridge on leaving.
sunday 1st march
white rabbits white rabbits. we packed up and left to go up north to a place called gallon jug. apparently it was named that because they found bits of jug type pottery in the region when they started working there on the mayan ruins. we first drove back to our runway here (i took advantage of this stop to get some chocolate buttons from the fridge at home), then carried on to gallon jug. when you look at gallon jug on the map it is only a short distance north east of us. but then when you look at the roads, you see you have to go to belize city on the east coast, then up north to orange walk, then back down a little road at the end of which is gallon jug. we thought blimey this will take around 6 hours and it really isn't very far away (kind of like driving from leeds to manchester but having to go via london as there is no connecting road between leeds and manchester). but a friend of bert's had told us there was in fact a forest road that goes directly there but isn't marked on the map and only should take 2 hours. hooray. but it is prohibited to use it without a permit. uh oh. but he had procured us a permit. hooray. but we also would need a guide to show us the way. uh oh. but he had a guide sorted to go with us. hooray. so we went to pick up melvin, who is originally from guatemala, but used to work at gallon jug and now works in san ignacio for this friend of bert's, who was our guide.
a few more pot-holed roads later, you get to the beginning of what is called the yalbac reserve, which is the protected forest you need the permit to pass through. although technically we had a permit, we did not actually have it with us after some standard belizean muddle that afternoon. uh oh. it took 15 minutes of melvin talking to the gate keeper man, who only spoke spanish, in order to get in to the yalbac. we offered money but he said no, no, tengo un sueldo (i am paid) - what a good man, uncorruptable in such a sea of corruption. i think it's technically the first time i've offered a vaguely official person a bribe. we explained how important it was we got to gallon jug as we had the fuel for the plane for the photoshoot for the belize photobook. he didn't really care about that, but eventually he gave way as he knew melvin and knew the names of the people we were talking about who had granted us the permit. hooray. then lots more dirt road with lots of holes and trees overhanging, but darjius drove this bit. hooray. i had been thinking along the way that it seems like the beginning of a joke, but i couldn't think of a punchline - a lithuanian, a guatemalan and an english person were driving through the forest in belize...
gallon jug is a little village and a farm and ranch and it has a coffee factory, and a saw mill. it is owned by barry bowen, the richest man in belize, who also owns the belikin beer brewery, and a shrimp farm in placencia, and the distribution rights for coca cola, fanta etc in belize. he has a runway and a little aeroplane. he owns 370,000 acres of land, all mainly thick jungle, but also this bit and the chan chich resort. chan chich means little bird, and that was where we stayed for 2 nights. it was beautiful, and the food there is the best food i've had in belize, and maybe in the whole world. i guess beautiful surroundings and jungly noises and a bumpy forest road adventure all add to the taste, like when you are camping and you make beans and egg on toast for breakfast on your little campfire but it tastes like the best thing you've ever eaten because you're outside and you've managed to cook it on your little gas cooker in the wild after a night in your tent. like ray mears would, except he would have done it underwater in the arctic whilst also building a house out of ant poo and with only one arm because of surviving a grizzly bear attack in the previous series.
me and bert went to tie down the glider in case of wind or rain overnight, but on the way to the airstrip the weather cleared up nicely and became blue blue skies so we decided to go flying. i had a skirt on, and sandles - not ideal flying clothes, but we found a sock in the car and i put a cloth bag on my other foot to keep it warm. we didn't have headsets so couldn't talk to each other either. it was really cool flying around over the jungle and over a little village called sylvester where they were out playing sunday evening football. everyone looked up and waved. we flew low over some little lakes with waterlilies in them and birds flying along them.
monday 2nd
another relaxing day for me, while bert and marius flew and photo'd. they get up very early to fly, like from 6am to around 9 or 10, as that is when the light is best for photos, as there are more shadows on the land because of the angle of the sun, which adds to depth perception in the photos. then they come back, and fly again around 4-6pm when there are shadows again. during the day we read our books, then went cycling along a forest trail which became a bit too foresty and there were loads of tree roots to negotiate, and one of us fell off but i won't say who. it wasn't a serious fall and he will still be able to fly ultralights. oops that gave it away. i went for another run, without a cup of tea first, and it was much nicer than the blancaneaux run. during the afternoon marius also photographed lots of the people that work at chan chich as he is including portraits of all the different types of people of belize in the book too. i had to get them to fill in release forms, and write their names big so they could hold them up in the photo so we know who they are. this was fun, and they enjoyed it too. my favourite was veronika from the kitchen with her blue headscarf and only a few front teeth still there, i spoke to her in spanish. i hope her photo gets in the book.
bert and marius went for the evening flight and took photos of the lodge, and the lakes nearby. i went cycling for a while on a mountain bike, down the road from the resort back to the farm area where the airstrip is, this turned out to be a 30 minute ride alone, and i managed to spook myself out by wondering what were all those strange jungly noises, there is dense jungle at either side of the road. i kept looking with my beady eyes (or at least with the one long-sighted beady eye) to my right and left, but didn't spot any man-eating jaguars. i cycled around the ranch/farm area, through some more jungly paths, saw lots of deer, and lots of wild turkey with amazing iridescent feathers. they landed - bert and marius, not the turkeys, they don't seem to leave the ground actually - and we drove back to the lodge and had more amazing food, and a swim, and heard some howler monkeys howling throughout the night. they sound like dinosaurs, their howling is so loud and eery, but the swishing of the branches as they swing through the jungle so soothing like waves.
tuesday 3rd
banana and walnut pancakes for breakfast. then we pack up and leave, me darjius and melvin in the car still without the punchline, bert and marius in the glider. i drove the bumpy road this time, and on arriving at the gate man, we gave him a little bottle of rum and a packet of cigarettes that darjius had brought with him. he had no trouble accepting our gifts which was reassuring after the strange rejection of our monetary bribe. the rest of the journey passed uneventfully, we dropped off melvin at his little wooden house then i dropped darjius at their hotel in town, then went home for some more chocolate buttons. then back to the hotel to help with the photoshoot of the people. we had rounded up a family of mennonites who are friends of bert's as frank, the dad, is also a pilot, they live up at spanish lookout and are lovely people, really friendly. there are 6 children altogether but only 4 came for the photoshoot, plus the mum. also my spanish teacher (though i still haven't had a lesson yet) came along in her mayan (not lion, mum) costume. and some others too, including the champion unbeatean ruta maya canoe race canoist, armin lopez. he had muscly arms. more flying for bert and marius then a business meeting and that was the end of that day.
wednesday and thursday 4th and 5th
i shall merge them into one as i am tired and there isn't too much to say. mariusdarjius left back to lithuania on wednesday. i unpacked and half re packed for mexico, whence i fly on saturday. i'm not sure that is the correct usage of whence but it seemed the correct word for what i wanted to say and it's not often you get to use whence especially on a blog. we cleaned the car and my bike. bert got upset when some dust blew back onto the super clean car. i had asked at some point in the rather military car cleaning proceedings what the point was of polishing it so earnestly when we live on a dirt road and dirt would get straight back on it. i took particular delight in reminding him of this question when the dirt blew back onto the car after around 1 minute of driving along. at least we know it was once super clean i suppose. we watched mama mia which is quite a bizarre musical film based around abba songs and set on a greek island. my first reaction was oh my god i can't watch this drivel, but i became hooked after the first few abba songs, and was so into it i nearly cried by the end.
so i fly to mexico city on saturday morning very early from chetumal, the town just over the border, to meet the macmillan bike ride group that night for the ride which starts on monday. i'm not sure when i will next have chance to blog, but given the length of today's blog you are probably pleased to hear that.
over and out from pepperland pickles xx
to begin at the beginning of where i left off
wednesday 25th
went on a bike ride. and a walk. saw some birds with tails like this /\ like swallows. i think they are called frigate birds. there are loads of different types of birds in belize, and lots of bird watching goes on. didn't see any gibnuts sadly. bert spent the day with marius the lithuanian photographer, trying to sort out things like his phone and his computer, which he can't do his photography without. the verdict was the computer was broken, so marius would have to return to miami to the apple shop to get a new one tomorrow. marius has previously made a photo book of lithuania, called unseen lithuania, which has drastically improved tourism to the country and the profile of the country in general, and he got the equivalent of an obe from the prime minister at an award ceremony recently. his book is
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=unseen+lithuania&x=17&y=20
thursday 26th
we took marius to the airport with his sidekick darjius. we stopped at a roadside coconut stall on the way and drank some coconut water which was nice. there were some sugar canes there too which you can chew on, but we didn't. and also the coconut man tried to sell us some marijuana which we didn't want either. after dropping him off we went to brody's again, and this time i bought some pesto! some chocolate buttons! a kitkat! i looked at some shorts too in the clothes section, and asked the lady there how the sizes worked, and she helpfully explained that small was smaller than medium, and medium was a bit bigger than small. well, perhaps i asked a stupid question.. then to the bike shop to stock up on energy gels for my bike ride. they were all out of them as there are lots of events going on like bike rides, and there is also the ruta maya, which is a 150mile canoe race (which starts tomorrow in fact and goes for 4 days - people come from all over the world but they aren't able to beat the belizeans yet). the bike shop is proving to be a little bit stupid, but with it being belize you have to forgive them i suppose. the amount of times a day that i have to excuse belize for being a little bit stupid ... it is a hard place to live sometimes, and not very straightforward. but it does have beautiful birds and now kit kats too.
we came back with darjius and went to sit around at the pool up the road at mick fleming's resort, chaa creek. this is a really beautiful eco lodge place, mick and his wife lucy have been there for 32 years, at first it was a little farm, and they canoed their produce up to town to sell it - read more here in this daily telegraph article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/centralamericaandcaribbean/belize/4296025/Belize-Just-the-spot-for-an-idler-Indiana-Jones.html
they have just built the pool recently and it is proving very popular. if we go there when it's a bit cloudy it's great as nobody will be in it and i can do lengths, as it's 60 feet long (around 20m). it's an infinity pool and the water splashes off the edge when you swim fast, down into the kiddy pool, haven't managed to drown any kids yet though. the only problem is the tiles around it get a bit slippy but some of the workers were sweeping the water off the tiles this time.
friday 27th
darjius drove back to the airport to get marius who had successfully bought his new computer from the apple shop. he had also bought us an i-tripp which is a device that means you can play your ipod in the car, so now we have more choices than the scratched phil collins, eric clapton and steve miller band cds. on their way back to san ignacio we had asked mariusdarjius to stop at pepperland, which is a place with a very well manicured lawn, which is locally famous for it's peppered chicken. we had excitedly ordered our chicken 2 weeks ago and had been counting down the days until we could have our pepperland chicken. but in typical belize style, they had no recollection or record of our order. i had even gone to the trouble of writing them a letter for mariusdarjius to give to them in case of any confusion regarding our order, but maybe this confused the matter more. anyway, thankfully there were some chickens left, so mariusdarjius successfully procured one for us.
meanwhile we went to the pool again, then walked back home as we were carless. i despaired that this was going to take us hours, and in the midday sun was envisaging us being burnt to a crisp and almost dead, but in the end it was a really nice 45 minute walk. we played animal vegetable mineral on the way. i introduced the extra categories of country and fruit. a typical round goes like this: bert-are you an animal?me-no.b-are you a vegetable?me-yes.b-are you a potato?me-no.b-are you a carrot?me-no.b-are you a red pepper?me-no.bert you are meant to ask other questions to narrow down the options of which vegetable i am, like are you green, rather than just guessing all the vegetables one after the other.b-oh. are you green?me-no.b-are you an onion then?etc etc.
when the car and mariusdarjius returned we set off for blancaneaux lodge, up in the pine ridge forest. well, down i should say as it is south of us. bert and marius flew there (there is a runway there) so they could do photos en route, and me and darjius drove with the luggage and extra fuel for the ultralight. it's a 10 minute flight, and around a 1 hour and 20 minute drive, through san ignacio then up a pot-holed road with pot holes big enough to lose your whole car in. this then turns into a dirt road and goes through some nice little mayan villages, one called cristo rey which means christ the king. driving here is quite something, in villages there are speedbumps which spring upon you with very little or usually no warning, and can be very steep; out of villages the roads are riddled with the aforementioned pot holes and people and dogs/cows/horses. you have to keep your wits about you. after a while on this road you come to a little gate where a man pops out of a box and asks you nicely where you are going and you write your name and origin (i wrote england, but i wonder if i should have just written san ignacio) on his list, then he opens the little gate for you and you carry on. this is the beginning of the pine ridge forest so i suppose they want to know what you are doing there and for how long. then after another 20 minutes of dusty road and lovely pine trees you arrive at blancaneaux lodge. i have been here before, it's the francis ford coppola place with the apocalypse now fan.
we all had pizza for dinner, it was really good pizza, maybe even as good as the one we had in placencia last week. i looked in the gift shop as is my wont, just so i know what my options are, and in case there are any good maps we should stock up with. i like having maps around me and one day will wallpaper a whole room in my house with them, though i am aware this is quite a cliched idea. we went for a mini swim after the pizza in the horseshoe-shaped hot tub. there was one stray leafcutter ant at the side of the horseshoe pool, walking up and down with a little piece of leaf on his back, i didn't know it was possible to feel sorry for an ant until i saw him there all alone. the nights in the pine ridge get very cold, and the mornings, as we are higher up there. i enjoyed this sudden return to actual fluctuating temperatures and wished i lived in the mountains. though i'm sure i'd find a reason to not like it, like it would be too hilly or there'd be too many trees. the next day at breakfast there was an american couple like this, they ordered the fruit plate but only with melon and papaya please, the waiter said oh it comes with pineapple, bananaIONLYWANTPAPAYAANDMELONISAID. oh yes ok that's fine - the staff are all trained to be very friendly and polite, but bert and i decided that if that was us we would have brought them the whole plate and told them to shove the pineapple and banana. ANYWAY. then they discussed how they had much preferred the bread at their last resort, he said wasn't it great that last bread we had, it was kinda fat bread wasn't it, you know, kinda fat. she agreed it had been great, and yeah kinda fat bread. i can't picture what they meant by fat bread and zoned out of my eavesdropping as far as was humanly possible which wasn't really possible as they were those kind of people. anyway, such is life. i had 2 soft boiled eggs for breakfast, with hash browns. and didn't complain about any of it, other than that the egg white was too white, the egg yoke was too yellow, the hash browns weren't actually brown and my orange juice was orange.
saturday 28th
was a well deserved day of rest, like lots of my days seem to be these days when not driving on bumpy roads. i sat on the balcony of our villa and read my book, and some of my newsweek magazine which i had bought at brody's. i learnt about the russian, iranian and venezuelan petro-czars potential falls from power, and how the price of oil is $37 compared to last summer's high of $148 a barrel. luckily i only need small amounts of oil for my bike chain, so this shouldn't affect me too much. i also learnt there are some riots in moscow due to unemployment, and that sarkozy wants to let french people work as many hours a week as they want, and that north korea has made a multistage weapon that could reach the west coast of america, which seems quite scary to me.
then we swam in the river a bit, it's a really clean and clear mountain river, so i didn't freak out about not being able to see the bottom as this time i could, and i could tell there weren't any sharks or crocodiles there. then we had a cup of tea and got bitten by lots of little bugs because we were sitting outside. in the villa there was a burst pipe and water had poured all over our lounge from behind the fridge, it was hot water though which makes no sense to me that that should be coming out of a fridge. then bert and marius did more flying/photographing, and i went for a run on the appropriately named runway. i learnt an important lesson which was don't go running until you have digested your cup of tea properly otherwise it will give you cramp and also slosh around in your stomach. i managed to run for 30 minutes though with a few minutes rest in the middle. that night we had pasta for dinner. there are some things on the menu there called things like mrs coppola's famous chicken, which sound nice, and i wonder if they really are her recipes? incidentally the much-feted pepperland chicken did not live up to its reputation and we left it in the villa fridge on leaving.
sunday 1st march
white rabbits white rabbits. we packed up and left to go up north to a place called gallon jug. apparently it was named that because they found bits of jug type pottery in the region when they started working there on the mayan ruins. we first drove back to our runway here (i took advantage of this stop to get some chocolate buttons from the fridge at home), then carried on to gallon jug. when you look at gallon jug on the map it is only a short distance north east of us. but then when you look at the roads, you see you have to go to belize city on the east coast, then up north to orange walk, then back down a little road at the end of which is gallon jug. we thought blimey this will take around 6 hours and it really isn't very far away (kind of like driving from leeds to manchester but having to go via london as there is no connecting road between leeds and manchester). but a friend of bert's had told us there was in fact a forest road that goes directly there but isn't marked on the map and only should take 2 hours. hooray. but it is prohibited to use it without a permit. uh oh. but he had procured us a permit. hooray. but we also would need a guide to show us the way. uh oh. but he had a guide sorted to go with us. hooray. so we went to pick up melvin, who is originally from guatemala, but used to work at gallon jug and now works in san ignacio for this friend of bert's, who was our guide.
a few more pot-holed roads later, you get to the beginning of what is called the yalbac reserve, which is the protected forest you need the permit to pass through. although technically we had a permit, we did not actually have it with us after some standard belizean muddle that afternoon. uh oh. it took 15 minutes of melvin talking to the gate keeper man, who only spoke spanish, in order to get in to the yalbac. we offered money but he said no, no, tengo un sueldo (i am paid) - what a good man, uncorruptable in such a sea of corruption. i think it's technically the first time i've offered a vaguely official person a bribe. we explained how important it was we got to gallon jug as we had the fuel for the plane for the photoshoot for the belize photobook. he didn't really care about that, but eventually he gave way as he knew melvin and knew the names of the people we were talking about who had granted us the permit. hooray. then lots more dirt road with lots of holes and trees overhanging, but darjius drove this bit. hooray. i had been thinking along the way that it seems like the beginning of a joke, but i couldn't think of a punchline - a lithuanian, a guatemalan and an english person were driving through the forest in belize...
gallon jug is a little village and a farm and ranch and it has a coffee factory, and a saw mill. it is owned by barry bowen, the richest man in belize, who also owns the belikin beer brewery, and a shrimp farm in placencia, and the distribution rights for coca cola, fanta etc in belize. he has a runway and a little aeroplane. he owns 370,000 acres of land, all mainly thick jungle, but also this bit and the chan chich resort. chan chich means little bird, and that was where we stayed for 2 nights. it was beautiful, and the food there is the best food i've had in belize, and maybe in the whole world. i guess beautiful surroundings and jungly noises and a bumpy forest road adventure all add to the taste, like when you are camping and you make beans and egg on toast for breakfast on your little campfire but it tastes like the best thing you've ever eaten because you're outside and you've managed to cook it on your little gas cooker in the wild after a night in your tent. like ray mears would, except he would have done it underwater in the arctic whilst also building a house out of ant poo and with only one arm because of surviving a grizzly bear attack in the previous series.
me and bert went to tie down the glider in case of wind or rain overnight, but on the way to the airstrip the weather cleared up nicely and became blue blue skies so we decided to go flying. i had a skirt on, and sandles - not ideal flying clothes, but we found a sock in the car and i put a cloth bag on my other foot to keep it warm. we didn't have headsets so couldn't talk to each other either. it was really cool flying around over the jungle and over a little village called sylvester where they were out playing sunday evening football. everyone looked up and waved. we flew low over some little lakes with waterlilies in them and birds flying along them.
monday 2nd
another relaxing day for me, while bert and marius flew and photo'd. they get up very early to fly, like from 6am to around 9 or 10, as that is when the light is best for photos, as there are more shadows on the land because of the angle of the sun, which adds to depth perception in the photos. then they come back, and fly again around 4-6pm when there are shadows again. during the day we read our books, then went cycling along a forest trail which became a bit too foresty and there were loads of tree roots to negotiate, and one of us fell off but i won't say who. it wasn't a serious fall and he will still be able to fly ultralights. oops that gave it away. i went for another run, without a cup of tea first, and it was much nicer than the blancaneaux run. during the afternoon marius also photographed lots of the people that work at chan chich as he is including portraits of all the different types of people of belize in the book too. i had to get them to fill in release forms, and write their names big so they could hold them up in the photo so we know who they are. this was fun, and they enjoyed it too. my favourite was veronika from the kitchen with her blue headscarf and only a few front teeth still there, i spoke to her in spanish. i hope her photo gets in the book.
bert and marius went for the evening flight and took photos of the lodge, and the lakes nearby. i went cycling for a while on a mountain bike, down the road from the resort back to the farm area where the airstrip is, this turned out to be a 30 minute ride alone, and i managed to spook myself out by wondering what were all those strange jungly noises, there is dense jungle at either side of the road. i kept looking with my beady eyes (or at least with the one long-sighted beady eye) to my right and left, but didn't spot any man-eating jaguars. i cycled around the ranch/farm area, through some more jungly paths, saw lots of deer, and lots of wild turkey with amazing iridescent feathers. they landed - bert and marius, not the turkeys, they don't seem to leave the ground actually - and we drove back to the lodge and had more amazing food, and a swim, and heard some howler monkeys howling throughout the night. they sound like dinosaurs, their howling is so loud and eery, but the swishing of the branches as they swing through the jungle so soothing like waves.
tuesday 3rd
banana and walnut pancakes for breakfast. then we pack up and leave, me darjius and melvin in the car still without the punchline, bert and marius in the glider. i drove the bumpy road this time, and on arriving at the gate man, we gave him a little bottle of rum and a packet of cigarettes that darjius had brought with him. he had no trouble accepting our gifts which was reassuring after the strange rejection of our monetary bribe. the rest of the journey passed uneventfully, we dropped off melvin at his little wooden house then i dropped darjius at their hotel in town, then went home for some more chocolate buttons. then back to the hotel to help with the photoshoot of the people. we had rounded up a family of mennonites who are friends of bert's as frank, the dad, is also a pilot, they live up at spanish lookout and are lovely people, really friendly. there are 6 children altogether but only 4 came for the photoshoot, plus the mum. also my spanish teacher (though i still haven't had a lesson yet) came along in her mayan (not lion, mum) costume. and some others too, including the champion unbeatean ruta maya canoe race canoist, armin lopez. he had muscly arms. more flying for bert and marius then a business meeting and that was the end of that day.
wednesday and thursday 4th and 5th
i shall merge them into one as i am tired and there isn't too much to say. mariusdarjius left back to lithuania on wednesday. i unpacked and half re packed for mexico, whence i fly on saturday. i'm not sure that is the correct usage of whence but it seemed the correct word for what i wanted to say and it's not often you get to use whence especially on a blog. we cleaned the car and my bike. bert got upset when some dust blew back onto the super clean car. i had asked at some point in the rather military car cleaning proceedings what the point was of polishing it so earnestly when we live on a dirt road and dirt would get straight back on it. i took particular delight in reminding him of this question when the dirt blew back onto the car after around 1 minute of driving along. at least we know it was once super clean i suppose. we watched mama mia which is quite a bizarre musical film based around abba songs and set on a greek island. my first reaction was oh my god i can't watch this drivel, but i became hooked after the first few abba songs, and was so into it i nearly cried by the end.
so i fly to mexico city on saturday morning very early from chetumal, the town just over the border, to meet the macmillan bike ride group that night for the ride which starts on monday. i'm not sure when i will next have chance to blog, but given the length of today's blog you are probably pleased to hear that.
over and out from pepperland pickles xx
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