on yer bike

monday july 5th
what a lot has happened since writing my last blog update which i never got round to publishing at the time, 16th june, but have posted today before this one. we now are in a new house, with cable tv and thus able to keep up to date on what is happening in the world. the main thing that will be happening in the world for us during july is watching the tour de france which started this morning with lance coming in 10th in the time trial in monaco. not bad for a comeback after cancer, retirement and a broken collarbone, but i guess he wanted to do better. me and bert will bet on who wins each day, we didn’t get it right today, but i did bet contador, so i get 3 points as he came 2nd. cancellaro won today and got the yellow jersey and a green one too. bradley wiggins came 3rd, he’s english. sastre who won last year’s tour came around 20th. it has inspired me to go for a big bike ride which i will do after writing this.

how’s that for a shorter first paragraph siobhan.

and a 2nd one. here is the 3rd one:

saturday 20st june
bert drove caribbean island broker doug to belize city as the weather wasn’t good enough to fly him. we had had a really nice dinner with doug and his family the night before at chaa creek, doug said he had woken up with a bat on his face one morning there which obviously was quite disturbing. on his way back bert called me to say he had found a ton of 2nd hand furniture for sale at the side of the road, and negotiated a really good price to buy it all, but wanted my approval (as secretary and treasurer of all things business and non business). hmm i said let’s check the bank account spreadsheet, which was still not too healthy, magically no money had appeared. so we didn’t buy the whole lot, but we did buy a fridge as we figured we really need that for our new unfurnished place. he drove it back and we dropped it off at the house, then we decided after lunch that we could stretch to also getting the really nice table and chairs otherwise all we’d have would be a sofa in the lounge. so we drove all the way back to just outside belmopan to get the table and chairs. bert told me to play it cleverly and pretend i didn’t like it or want it and pretend it wasn’t as good as another table we had seen, in the hope they’d lower the price from the already low 700bzd. instead i instantly said gosh it’s really nice how much do you want for it? bert asked me how i liked it compared to the other one, nudge nudge. i said oh yes well i suppose it’s not so nice is it. then i whispered to him – what am i supposed to be saying, am i doing well? the end result was we bought it for 700bzd, i’m just no good at that sort of thing – negotiating/lying whatever you want to call it. it rained on the way home but the furniture man had given us some plastic to cover it with in the back of the truck. we also bought a frozen chicken for dinner – we wanted a fresh one but you can only get frozen here – we asked the man is it fresh – he said it was on thursday (today was saturday). it tasted good after some roasting in the oven.

sunday we earnt a bit of money flying people around who were at the bne company party across the road at the mystic jungle bar. bne is belize natural energy, and each year around this time they have a party for all the staff to celebrate the day 4 years ago when they discovered oil in spanish lookout. when you go past bne in spanish lookout (the area where the mennonites live) there is an eternal gas flame burning, seems like a waste of gas they could be using, speaking of which we still haven’t managed to light the pilot light in our oven so each time we use it we turn it on or off at the valve on the little gas bottle on the floor next to it. we have burnt our fingers quite a lot from lighting the hobs with matches and battled with its either way too powerful gas coming out and blowing out your attempts to light it, or tried to turn the gas down which inevitably turns it off as you go just a little bit too far to the left, and you have to start the whole process again and burn some more fingers. i suppose these little things are sent to test us. we also don’t have hot water, which is absolutely fine, i don’t even notice it – it’s too hot to want a hot shower, and you can wash up with cold water fine. we boiled the kettle to help with clothes washing the other day, which we did in a stone sink outside and hung up behind the house near the mango tree. we have mangoes, rose apples (really tasty, small apple type fruits but with a slight flowery fragrance), and some other lychee type fruits, all very tasty.

monday 22nd we hung out with marius and darjius from lithuania, marius the photographer, back to do some more photo shoots, but the weather not behaving and he only got in the air for about an hour in the end. we swam at the pool at chaa creek, and ate some melon and ice cream in the evening and looked at the current updated draft of his photo book. mariusdarjius seem to be on better behavior this time around compared to last time. in the morning we had met with mr jose contreras, of civil aviation, to discuss ultralight related business. this had gone well, he is a sweet man, knowledgeable and not overly bureaucratic, seems like he wanted to help with everything we’re trying to achieve. more on this later.

tuesday 23rd we went with mariusdarjius to tikal, in guatemala. they were going to go anyway, and bert had never been (i went with abi last year), and they offered to pay the expenses rather than go with a tour group, so we took them up on the offer. crossing the border was the first experience, and in keeping with everything you expect here in belize/guatelama. you do your passport control. then you tell a different man you are in a car. they need photocopies of your licence, ownership document, passport photo page and passport page that has been stamped with today’s date. they don’t have a photocopier. a man helped out at this point, not a government worker but a random helpful border person, obviously helping out in the hope for some cash from us. he took us over the bridge to a photocopier. we gave them the documents to copy. the passport page had been stamped with the date 3rd february 2009. the helping man said it would be ok without a copy at all, so we trot back across the bridge. it’s boiling hot and humid remember. the car official man won’t accept no photocopy of the passport date page. we tell him the passport stamping man got it wrong. stamping man is still sitting there, so we go back to him with our passports, and he scribbles out the wrong date and stamps the right one. he giggles in what would be a cute way if it wasn’t a huge inconvenience as we now have to go over the bridge to the photocopier again. but we smile and attempt a giggle as you have to stay on your best behavior with these people as unfortunately they have power. one more bridge crossing later we present the car man with the copies, and ask him why doesn’t he have his own copier? we take a form to the cashier and pay it, then come back to the car man. then go back to the car and stick a sticker in the car windscreen. the helping man says he thinks there is one more fee to cross the bridge in the vehicle, but it won’t be much at all. we tip him and say thanks. we drive across the bridge. the fee is 150quetzals, which is 20 usd which is a big fee. i ask her in spanish what it’s for, and if there will be any more on the way to tikal. it’s for crossing the bridge, and no there won’t be more. i get cross at all this, even though mariussdarjius is covering the costs. it’s such a faff. helping man said it has recently got all stricter, relations with belize and guatemala apparently being to blame as they have got worse recently.

we drive to tikal, the first 20k on very bumpy rough road, but soon come across road making machines, which have been mending the rest of the road, so i guess soon the whole road will be paved and nice. made me think of our friends max and mike the cyclists who came to stay as they would have had to ride along that dusty dusty section of road. we get to tikal and pick up a guide, josue. mariusdarjius shows him the belize book which he likes. he gives us a whistle stop tour of tikal as we only have 2 hours or so there as they wanted to get back to fly and take photos if the weather stayed good. tikal was the same as it was last time i went. impressive and interesting and nice to have a guide to talk to about it all. the history channel were there making a documentary about it. marius said they were using old camera equipment and said how it is interesting these days with film/tv etc as the emphasis is on authenticity instead of quality – like how people can send in mobile phone clips of things to the news, and 5 or 10 years ago everything was all about top quality and more and more realism in things whereas.

we drove back uneventfully, crossed the border cheaperly, took the car sticker off the windscreen and gave it to car man, noticed stamping man was still there and gave him a nod. wondered yet again how he could have stamped our passports that wrongly when basically his one job for his whole life is stamping the date in people’s passports. 3rd feb is a bit different to 23rd june. if we hadn’t have noticed i guess they could have whacked a big fine on us coming back in as we would have technically have overstayed our 30 day allowance in guatemala. perhaps that was the plan, but doesn’t seem too foolproof as it seems they scan in the barcode of your passport in their computers, which would show we’d only been there an afternoon. anyway, go figure – this is belize. in blood diamond the film, they say tia, meaning this is africa, ie as an explanation (or not) of why things are like they are there. so we will start saying tib.

wednesday i saw the cornerstone kids, then did some business related things in town, involving wondering where the rain had gone again, it’s so hot here. i went to the post office to pick up my parcel i had received from mammamia pickolita in inglaterra. this was a supreme example of tib. the post office is small and has hand written notices saying all parcels leaving the country will be inspected, and there is a 5bzd fee parcel wrapping fee. there is a small opening in the metal fence that protects the workers from the parcel posting public, through which you put your head and speak to them about stamps and other smaller than parcel things. there is another ‘booth’ where they deal with parcels. there is one man that works in the post office, and about 5 men behind the scenes, who sit at desks looking at screens or sorting out envelopes. there are lots of envelopes and packages on the floor, and there are some wooden pigeonholes with letters written on them and some shelves with parcels on. the one post office man deals with both queues, ie the one just for stamps and suchlike, and the one for parcels. when bert went to post a parcel to his cousin vic in america recently, it took him 2 hours. firstly, how? and secondly, why did you put up with it? were my questions. this time there was only 1 other post office customer – not a busy day then – but it took me 35 minutes to get my parcel. post office man opened the other lady’s parcel she was picking up, looked through it (all of this done very slowly as he is a bit slow), then decided what to charge her for picking it up. he charged her 14 bzd. i protested on her behalf – but it’s second hand clothes sent from her family, why is there such a fee? another lady had arrived in the other queue, and she tut tutted too. the slow man explained slowly it’s a customs fee. but if she was crossing the border with this parcel of second hand clothes, there would be no charge would there, she would just cross the border? why does it matter that it is coming in via the post etc, plus the main point is is it’s only second hand clothes, it has no real value. he said there was some makeup in the parcel which is worth someting. maybe there was. then i realized i ought to stop making a scene as he might whack a big fee on my parcel. he sellotaped up makeup lady’s parcel and gave it to her once she’d paid her fee, to him, but at the other booth, where the sellotape wasn’t, so he slowly walked back to the parcel booth where the sellotape was. good, my turn. but no - he left to deal with the lady in the other queue. technically i was next obviously as other lady had arrived after me, but seemingly he figured if you keep switching from one queue to the other it is fairer. getting the picture as to how it took bert 2 hours to post a box? bert had driven off to do some other jobs by now by the way. the other lady was asking a ton of questions involving typing numbers into calculators and then asking more questions. slow man was slowly answering them. my blood pressure was going up quite quickly and i was having another michael douglas falling down hallucination. the thing that is difficult is that you have to maintain your politeness and friendliness to these people otherwise they will only make your life harder. in this case it’s only the matter of picking up a parcel, but imagine how this translates to bigger issues like what we’re going through with civil aviation and ministers of tourism, and security etc etc. anyway i smiled and asked nice questions about customs and things, and told them my parcel was just a few old books, which it mainly was. i waited for slow man to fill in his form. he charged me 95 cents. result. i paid it at the other booth, then returned to the other booth for sellotaping duties. i said have a nice day (they love that shit here), and left. tib.

i really enjoyed opening my parcel properly later that night and looking through all the stuff mammamia had sent – lots of books, and lots of dvds, the ones you get free with newspapers, starring jeremy irons in his younger days, or katharine hepburn and donald sutherland etc. sadly we don’t have our dvd player anymore as it was previous landlord’s but i’m sure we can watch them on our computer. also in the package was a little bird who you squeeze and he tweets a real life chaffinch birdsong. i’ve hung him up and squeeze him most days, it reminds me of my garden at home in yorkshire even though i would never have gone and sat in the garden and listened to chaffinch birdsongs. funny how nostalgia works.

thursday we did various moving house and other things, including watching tons of michael jackson death coverage on our new cable tv in our new house. i feel sorry for him, not now he’s dead as you can’t really, but while he was alive, being called a freak and persecuted and everything he went through, it all stemmed from his childhood not being a normal one, and being beaten and who knows what else by his father. i guess he spent his whole life wanting approval and acceptance as he never got it from his father. that’s my pop psychology theory anyway.

another thing that happened was that on our way back home from town, we passed a really nice looking vw westphalia campervan going the other way. wowee, we promptly turned the car round and fled after them. we came alongside them as they were turning into a campground up the road and smiled at them, and thought gosh they must think we’re mental. we followed them in and said nice van – thanks, said patrick (that was his name). i asked if they’d swap it for our truck. yes, he said. really? err, what, i didn’t actually hear you, he said, and turned his engine off, and then said no when i asked the question again. we got out and had a chat with them and apologized for chasing them, but that we had been trying to find a van just like theirs on ebay recently, and would they consider selling it to us after their trip, which was presumably to argentina? yes they would. we left them alone for a while, but went back to see them later with some beer (they had invited us, we weren’t stalking them still at this point). they were patrick and anna, he’s from switzerland, she’s from germany, they’d bought the van in california, spent 3 months in mexico and were headed to patagonia, at which point they were planning to sell the van and carry on back to europe, van-less. this could work out very well indeed we told them, obviously depending how business goes here etc. we swapped travel stories and looked at their blog (very nicely furnished with way more photos than mine, have a look - it’s in german mainly though – www.60liter.blogspot.com ). it was a 1985 water cooled westy, resprayed pale yellow, all the interior re-done, new upholstery etc etc, in really good condition, and they paid a good price for it. we will keep in touch. they hadn’t met many other campervans along the way, in fact none i think, apart from at one campsite, an exact same van, in exact same colour, which really freaked them out. they made friends with that one, it was a mexican and an argentinian, but they had paid $400 for their van and it had basically blown up and they had spent the rest of their savings for the trip on just getting it mended in guadalajara and were now looking for jobs again so they could save up and carry on their trip. poor them – but important lesson to be learnt from that story.

friday 26th we went to belize city for a meeting with civil aviation again, at the airport. it’s pretty cool to go for a meeting at an airport cos normally at an airport you’re getting on a plane which obviously is something i don’t like doing, so i don’t think of airports as nice places. this one isn’t particularly nice, but i suppose i mean it’s nice to have the edge taken off my visit to an airport. anyway on the way there i saw a gym called belly flat, and when i stopped for a roadside emergency wee on the western highway i looked up and there was a sign saying trespassers will be persecuted. we got to our meeting with no persecution. we gave mr contreras, the director of civil aviation, a cd of photos of the best of photos we’ve taken from the plane, or ones from marius too for his book. he loved them, we looked at some of them with him, and the other 2 guys in the meeting, a mr carter, and mr interiano, their costa rican consultant who was visiting for a while to sort some other things out. there’s one photo on there of when bert and marius landed on a road near lamanai (some mayan ruins)as they had to wait for the light to improve for photographing, but would run out of fuel if they kept circling. a load of mennonites appeared and looked at the plane and marius got some really cool photos of them and the plane, we told mr contreras the story, then they pointed out that perhaps it’s not advisable to be landing on roads. oops we said (well we said the more official version of that which is gosh yes sir, of course that isn’t something we ever normally do, only in emergency situation like this), and made a mental note not to show them any more incriminating photos of the plane in compromising situations ha ha. other than that the meeting was very positive and bert was appointed president of the belize light sport aircraft association, and he will work closely with them on writing the regulations for controlling ultralight activity in belize, which is very useful for us as it gives us some leeway to make things go the way we want them to.

weekend of 27th june
we moved the rest of our stuff to the new house. the new house is only a few minutes down the road, further west towards the guatemalan border, and nearer the little village of succotz where we sometimes go to the shop to buy milk and eggs, but which is more expensive than the stores in cayo, and the chinese family that run it can’t understand english and get really shouty. once we bought some bananas there and we’d asked is it 10 bananas for a dollar (as this is normally the price for bananas here), and they said yes, then when we took them to the counter he said no i say eight no ten. we said oh you said eight. no i say eight. he shouted so loud it made a little breeze that ruffled our hair, like in a cartoon. it was amusing and slightly over the top we thought. also in succotz is where we sometimes go and swim in the river, it’s the mopan river and is generally murky so you can’t see the bottom but i have learnt to be less freaked out by this. yesterday i met bert there after riding my bike which was nice, as whenever i cycle past it on the way to the border i wish i could jump in it. you see whole families there doing there washing and having little picnics and all swimming in their tshirts, like they do in mexico. we washed our car there once on the way back from our big road trip, as a final diversion from going home which we didn’t want to do. we borrowed a bucket from a man and used the river water, we gave the man a beer in exchange for his bucket. anyway, we aren’t in succotz, but a little bit closer in our new house. the next town along is benque viejo, which is basically the border town. they are building a whole new free zone there, a duty free area where they sell the same old shit they sell in shops in belize and guatemala, but at a slightly cheaper price. it doesn’t make it any more desirable.

cool things about our new house are that it is not a 5 minute drive down a really bumpy and dusty road to get there, it is just off the main road (western highway), but far back enough not to be on the road. so i can do my cycling straight from the house without needing a lift to the road. we have a big garden front and back of the house, with really nice trees, and tons of birds tweeting all the time. luz and jan live next door in the big house, and there is a third little house still available for rent, but closer to the road. it used to be theirs but they sold it to brendan, an irish man who lives here and has a nursery behind where we live. we will get some plants from him hopefully soon. luz and jan have a gardener/diy man called francisco, he is from mexico from merida. he helped us put up a table in the office and we invited him to dinner, and he came for dinner – he speaks on spanish, and bert speaks only english, and i speak a little bit of both, so i was translater. we made him pasta with tomato sauce and vegetables, which is a common dinner theme here. he liked it as he had seconds. then we gave him some chocolate cake too – i had eaten most of it earlier in the day and it was really nice but made me feel a bit sick as it was really rich. other cool things are that we have cable tv as you know, so i can watch sport and news hooray; there are 3 parrots that live in a little cage and they speak and make funny noises. one morning bert went out in his underwear to the car and suddenly heard beunos dias, and ran back inside then realized it was the parrots talking to him.

monday and tuesday 29 and 30 june
did house things. i cycled but got a puncture so gave up after 30 minutes. i made macaroni cheese which was nice. it rained. we went mental writing regulations and long winded things for civil aviation. i slept badly as i could hear bugs all over the house and whenever i woke up i looked out of the window and convinced myself there were people or bugs or frogs there about to get in the house (i guess this is what happens when you’re getting used to the noises of a new house) - i made bert get up to see if there was a frog in the bathroom but there wasn’t. we watched old tour de france bits on cable tv and got really excited about the prospect of watching it all, with lance doing his comeback. we talked about michael jackson a bit. i cycled inside for an hour while the tour de france bits were on, and pretended i was going as fast as them up hills – this is a good idea and inspires you to do more exercise.

wednesday 1st july
drove to belize city for our next meeting with civil aviation, armed with our new version of the regulations for ultralight activity. we didn’t know how many people were going to the meeting, and consequently hadn’t done enough copies as there were 5 of them in the end. we had written some letters they needed from us and stamped them with our company stamp – they absolutely love all that stuff here, like the more over the top and official looking it is the more they love it, even though nothing in reality is actually very official at all and they are all taking bribes all over the place. apparently the last president left having stolen 50 million dollars from the government, but was acquitted and left alone and went off to live happily ever after in bali, and the current government have sold off tons of world heritage unesco protected land here for their own personal gain i believe and then pretended they didn’t realize it was protected land. hmmm. there is currently a coup going on in honduras, as i’m sure you’ve heard about too, yesterday the ousted ex president flew his plane back from the states and tried to land in honduras, couldn’t, then tried nicaragua then el salvador – what a mess. hopefully it won’t turn into civil war. it’s kind of exciting living in third world places and it’s kind of funny (not in a patronizing way) seeing how different they are, but quite quickly the novelty and cuteness of it all turns into incredulity at how weirdly and slowly and backwardsly, they do things, and it makes me realize yet again how lucky i am to be from a civilized modern generally law abiding country with a justice and legal system and health system and police force that work to some extent, at least to an extent that you can trust enough to use, and that if corruption and underhanded behavior get found out, generally this will be dealt with. i’m not saying that is always true and that everything works properly in england at all, just that here corruption is an expected and endemic part of how the country is run and thus you cannot rely on things going according to a certain procedure like you can in a first world country. bert read me out from his scarlet macaw book the other day this, on the same topic:

corruption is a virus that enters the system from the top down. michael ashcroft brought more than the concept of corporate offshoring to belize. he introduced the idea that fair play is a sucker’s game. in any society, lawful behavior depends on social enforcement. if everyone decided to rob and steal all at once, there wouldn’t be enough police to stop us. what does? other people. it’s like jaywalking, stand on a corner with 5 strangers. the light is red. everyone waits. then one person sprints across. he shows it can be done. 2 others follow. suddenly those of us standing on the kerb don’t feel so much like upstanding citizens. we feel like chumps. that’s how it is with corruption. once the top people get away with it, the floodgates open. “government is the omnipresent teacher”, us supreme court justice louis brandeis once remarked. “for good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. crime is contagious. if the government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.” in the halls of belmopan, ministers who didn’t cut secret deals and line their pockets weren’t the good guys. they were the suckers.

anyway, our meeting consisted of bert talking lots about the stuff we’d been working on, them listening and asking things, me taking notes, and nothing concrete really getting done except a time and date arranging for the next meeting - good to know meetings take the same format whether in first or third worlds then. having said that, it was in fact a very positive meeting, and later that day we also met with mike singh, the ceo of tourism and aviation, who put us in touch with the ceo of national security who we needed to talk to about getting the go ahead to put floats on another plane called the air cam, which is a 3 seater open cockpit ultralight. currently float planes are banned in belize due to drug trafficking problems in the past. we called this man, lloyd gillett, and arranged a meeting for the next day. we drove home in very good moods about how well everything had gone. we bought some new pans for our new house to celebrate.

thursday 2nd july
we drove to belmopan to meet with lloyd gillett, the ceo of national security. he used to be a pilot and was very interested in what bert had to say and was totally in favour of the float plane. this was very good news. he told us a story about how he was the official pilot for the queen when she visited belize in 1985, and they told him to be prepared as she would bring a gift for him. so when they had lined up by the plane after he had flown her back to the airport from where she was going to fly home to england, she came and shook his hand and said thank you for being such a good pilot, and she gave him a signed picture of herself. as he had been prewarned about this, he had brought a signed picture of himself too, and gave it to her. years later when he was in london doing some training there, he went on a visit to buckingham palace and when he had finished looking around and being very impressed with everything there (apparently there is a pure gold elephant there), he asked one of the guards why wasn’t his picture on display that he’d given her that day in belize. the guard said oh sir it’s because it’s on display in her bedroom. and apparently it was, and prince philip had asked her why do you have a framed picture of a man that looks like denzel washington on your wall? and she said oh i just liked the frame, and that was the free picture that came with the frame. and then the year later lloyd was sent a letter saying he had been awarded an obe. and sure enough on his business card it says obe. he was a brigadier general in the army too, so even though this story all sounded very strange, it must be true. he said it was true a few times. and showed us the picture, and a picture of the picture he’d given the queen. we left him our posters and a flyer and some other information about the air cam and went off to have a coffee. he turned up in the café we were in and came to talk to us some more, i think he really liked bert and his stories about flying.

after this we went and registered the name of our new association (the belize light sport aircraft association) at the belize company registry place. the lady in the office there has lots of printed out sayings on her wall which we read while we waited for her to find the right form for us to fill in. the sayings are some of them very enlightening and some a little bit silly, here is a selection:
don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is, had to begin where he was
forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for youself
families are like fudge – sweet with a few nuts

thursday and friday 2 and 3 july
watched tennis, got frustrated that we have a channel called the tennis channel which showed old davis cup matches instead of current wimbledon matches – managed to watch dementieva v williams which was really good and federer v has which also was, but they didn’t show murray v roddick. swam a bit at chaa creek.

saturday 4th july
happy independence day, and the start of the tour de france! inspired by this, i cycled 1 and a half hours, then swam in the river in succotz. we had dinner with bryony who is mick’s daughter and lives at chaa creek, and her husband sergio, who is from paraguay and works for oas which is the organization of american states, ie of all the countries of north central and south america. bryony had made really nice curry. sergio told us that in 1976 there was a war between el salvador and honduras which the oas had intervened with and stopped, it only lasted for 100 hours the war.

sunday 5th until now
we have been working on the things we need to write for our next civil aviation meeting, which is this friday. this is very boring and makes bert go a bit mad as he really hates paperwork, especially in this heat. have also been cycling and have eaten lots of vegetables from mick's vegetable garden.

that’s all i have to say for now. i hope you are all well. i hear there are heatwaves and floods in england, sounds interesting, at least you can use the floods to cool down from the heatwaves. i’m going cycling now. adios amigos xx