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
Thursday, 26 February 2009
mexican fisherman
here is a little anecdote/joke thing that i got from hermano pepinillo and it really tickled me and amused me mainly due to its trueness
The Fisherman and The Investment Banker
The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The fisherman replied, only a little while.
The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish?
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.
The American then asked, "but what do you do with the rest of your time?"
The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life."
The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."
The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"
To which the American replied, "15-20 years." "But what then?"
The American laughed and said that's the best part. "When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions.. Then what?"
The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
vive la revolution
hello all and happy belated valentines day from big fat fatty pickles. sorry for what i think has been the longest blog gap in blog writing history. our internet broke as some horses had wandered into the satellite dish and broken the connection, but it is mended now.
life is gibnutting along here in belize. bert is still finalising the ultralight business, and until that starts and the money starts rolling in - which it will as there are lots of rich tourists here who will want to spend their money on going on an ultralight tour – we have been watching dvds and going on walks and eating cake from our favourite cake shop. i have spotted quite a lot of gibnuts, they are always running away from the camera though so no award winning photos so far.
i have also done a lot of bike riding on my new bike, today’s was 2 hours – in the midday sun with no suncream, typical english person sun-related mistake (i didn’t learn from the mexico beach sun-related mistake obviously, and now have red arms and legs like a half lobster). the road surfaces here are very hard, and the proliferation of speed bumps in towns and general holes in the road makes the cycling experience a bit bumpy and painful at times, and i wonder how long until a crack appears in my bike. there are dogs and other cyclists to dodge and for some reason lots of belizeans cycle on the wrong side of the road which is a bit unnerving and a whole new obstacle to look out for. once you are out of the towns though, the road just goes and goes until the next town and you can really go for it – no traffic lights or roundabouts to speak of (there is one police stop but they don’t care about cyclists). one thing that definitely slowed me down today was the huge headwind i was riding into for the first hour. i have come to take the importance of the wind very seriously these days, bert lives his life by it as it controls how much flying you can do per day. he is constantly spying on the windsock on the airstrip with his binoculaurs.
anyway cycling is a big thing in belize, they take it very seriously. they have their version of the tour de france, the tour of belize. admittedly not quite as long (err maybe just 150 miles in fact), and won’t be featuring lance any time soon, but it’s pretty cool to be in a cycling inclined country. i have seen lots of lycra-d men, and one woman, on nice looking bikes, and one day we saw the whole santino team out training. you get lots of friendly waves and nods while riding, and a van delivering water threw me an extra bottle when i stopped to do some stretching today. i propose we build a velodrome here to support the habit, but i’m not sure how much this would cost to make or whether i’d be allowed to call it the picklodrome.
we have watched a lot of films, and below are my opinions and percentages:
in bruges: totally cool and bizarre english film about not very good hitmen, drugs, dwarves and belgium. colin farrell does quite a lot of crying in it. 78%
fidel: the untold story: hugely enlightening and fascinating documentary about castro made by a big castro fan. as someone who didn’t know anything much at all about castro, other than that he has a brother called raul, and lives in cuba, i now know a lot more. and am very much on his side. it’s amazing what cuba has achieved considering their total independence from most of the world – amongst other things they have produced artists, writers, musicians (buena vista social club), they are regularly top 10 olympic medal winners, they have 100% literacy rate. [obviously i am a fickle pickle and if i was to see a castro documentary by someone that did not love him then i would probably be just as much anti him as i am now pro him] [actually i’m not sure i would but all i mean is i’m sure there are reasons to not like him too] . 95%
the curious tale of benjamin button: too long, and not particularly convincing. interesting idea though and i liked the clock that ticked backwards. wasn’t sure of the relevance of placing it during the new orleans hurricane, other than was it to do with things not being everlasting, or the fluidity of time or something? 56%
21: entertaining film about a bunch of clever m.i.t maths geeks who learn how to count cards and play the blackjack tables in vegas and win hundreds of thousands of dollars on the weekends, and how this impacts on their normal geeky maths lives in boston during the week. in typical bert style, turns out he used to hang out with these guys in cabo san lucas, and they asked him to join their gambling team. you have to have a really good memory to succeed at this, and be good at maths. i pointed this out to bert, but he stated moral issues as the reason he hadn’t agreed to it. whatever the reason, it’s a good job he didn’t as he would no doubt have ended up with all his teeth smashed up with a hammer by the vegas security guards who would have spotted him counting the cards quite quickly.65%
love in the time of cholera: beautifully filmed (set in cartagena, northern columbia, not sure if filmed there or elsewhere in south america) and acted (javier bardem) adaptation of garcia marquez novel. i haven’t read the book so can’t comment on how faithful the film is to it, but will do. can somebody post it to me? 96%
burn after reading: recent coen brothers’ film, a mixture of funny and ridiculous. best scene was the last one where the cia are analyzing what had happened: let’s make sure that never happens again then – yes sir, good idea – what exactly did just happen – i have no idea sir - ok, good. apparently this film was not a satire against the cia, but i don’t believe that. 68%
a time to kill: although i really don’t like sandra bullock, this film is so good that even her presence couldn’t ruin it. court room drama about a black man who murdered the 2 white men that raped and left for dead his 10 year old daughter. it is in mississippi, and all the jury are white, so he hasn’t got much chance of being acquitted. matthew maconohi (phonetic spelling as i can’t spell his stupid surname) makes an amazing summation speech asking the jury to imagine how they would feel if the girl had been white. 90%
the queen: i had watched some of this on a mexican bus in spanish last month, but hadn’t understood it. i found it really interesting and very sympathetic towards the queen, who i now like a lot. my granny on mama pepinillo’s side used to look so similar to the queen that someone once asked her for her autograph. i can’t remember the outcome of this, what was it mum? 91%
revolutionary road: by sam mendes of american beauty fame. similar in the sense of strangling suburban claustrophobia, this time in 1950’s southern america. kate winslet and leo dicaprio play the leads, and not on a sinking ship this time. really disturbingly good portrayal by kate winslet of hopelessness and emptiness. won’t spoil it by telling you what happens but you should watch it. 90%
the wrestler: i wasn’t properly watching this at first as i was busy writing this blog update, but i became more engrossed in it as it went on. peculiar film and i would never have thought i would find a film about wrestling interesting, nor have i ever wondered about wwf wrestlers’ private lives, or their health. did not enjoy the bit where he had big staples in him. mickey rourke is amazing, i think he won an award for this? what else has he been in, me and bert couldn’t remember? 90%
the kite runner: wasn’t kabul beautiful back in the days, what a shame. very interesting we thought, and sad too. 85%
on friday we got up at 6am – quite an achievement for me – to go for an early morning ultralight flight. there is lots of fog here in the early mornings, called convection fog – which is made because the dampness from the rains last week is made to rise up from the ground by the temperature difference between night and day, and it stays low in the valleys because of a temperature inversion – (i hope that is clear) – and we flew up through the fog to the blue sky on the other side, which was a bit eery being in a cloud of fog for nearly a whole minute. bert knew where the sun was and flew towards that, like icarus but not as high and without the wax. we flew up to blancenaux lodge (francis ford coppola’s), past a house that bert said belongs to icolas cage, who is francis ford coppola’s nephew apparently. i tried to see if he was in but we were too high up. we had some breakfast at the lodge, there is a runway there. some little bugs bit us, they are called something like bataliss, they are tiny and you get a little injection mark from them. a man in the foyer was asking where the famous fan was. i didn’t understand this question so we followed him and he pointed out a ceiling fan which ffc used in apocalypse now, in the first scene where there’s a man in bed and the fan is swooshing round and it becomes the noise of the helicopter above. i took a photo. we flew back through some bumpy wind that had appeared. and then i went on my lobster bike ride.
my parcels of clothes from mama pepinillo arrived safely. one had been sitting in the post office for a while for some reason. i had thought this was missing forever so it was a relief to find it – 2 parcels on one day – we celebrated with some cake. all my clothes from pre leaving england still fit! slightly too well (post cake) but there you go. very exciting.
the little wooden house is sinking into the ground, so that now when we need to lock the door, we have to prize it up with a screwdriver underneath it to make it reach the lock. there are little geckos that live in the house, they eat the spiders and flies inside. we think there is one per room, they are territorial. sometimes you see them scuttling around, but mainly you just hear them occasionally making a little quacking clicking noise to say hello. i don’t think they are related to the sinking of the house. i would more likely be suspicious of the teeny tiny ants.
we went to a town called spanish lookout, where lots of mennonites live. it is very hilly so will be good cycling training. the mennonites speak a strange german based creole. they have long beards (the men), and hats, and wear clothes like in little house on the prairie – dungarees, braces, flowery dresses (the women), sensible shoes. they have a good supermarket there - i bought some special k and found a cadburys dairy milk bar, which tasted quite good, almost like a real one you’d get in england. we are going to go back for a jigsaw puzzle this week, good for keeping away alzheimers, as are sudokus which i have taught bert how to do. he is getting better at them. last shop-based comment: apparently there is a shop in belize city called brodys where they might sell ribena. we are going on a pilgrimage there soon.
we met a man in a big house near our yoga place called mr hobbs, he is from england, from lewisham, so he liked that i had lived in crystal palace as it is nearby. he has been in the british army all his life, and now lives here with his belizean wife. he makes lime juice and after we’d walked around his property he gave us some lime juice, it was really good.
i am halfway through midnight’s children by salman rushdie. bert is reading 7 years in tibet. i would have loved to see tibet as it was before the chinese massacred it and the dalai lama left to india. apparently the chinese have proposed they find the next lama and it is a chinese one. i don’t think that will work very well. i saw the dalai lama in the royal albert hall before i left, someone asked him what makes him laugh, and he told a story about a really small boy with really big feet and how that had really made him laugh; and about somebody doing hail marys with rosary beads, and the rosary beads broke and spilled all over the floor but they carried on hail marying. heinrich harrer who wrote 7 years in tibet died in 2006 which is a shame as bert would like to have met him. incidentally bert was the first person to hanglide off mount everest in 1981, from basecamp, 18,000feet, with oxygen. he was going to write a book about all the mountains he has been the first person to fly off – mount fuji, and mount cook too, and the first person to cross the alps in a hanglider, and the gulf of mexico in an open cockpit plane. ok this is my blog so that’s enough of bert and his firsts, i don’t know why he hasn’t contacted norris mcwhirter yet to get in his record book.
there is a lake in nicaragua which is the only lake in the world to have sharks in it, this is because it was part of the ocean originally, i suppose then the sea levels dropped and it became a lake and nicaragua got a bit more coast line. i mention this because we bought a very cool map of central america from the ffc lodge (it has the best gift shop which is also where i once bought the amazing write-on-anything-and-upside-down-and-on-the-moon-too-if-you-can-get-there biro) for our collection of central-america-abilia, and it has lots of interesting facts on the back of it. i will keep throwing these facts in to the blog randomly just to add some spice and unpredictability.
in around 3 weeks time i am doing my macmillan cancer support bike ride from one coast of mexico to the other (thankfully the thin bit). i don’t feel very prepared for this, despite the bike rides i’ve done recently. if you would like to sponsor me though you still can, my website is www.justgiving.com/picklesmexico i have made my target amount of 3000 pounds already. i am planning on doing their central america ride in november, so if you want you can wait and sponsor me for that.
yesterday we went swimming in a river. it gave me the fear because it was a bit murky and i don’t like not knowing what is underneath my feet. the bottom was really muddy and the mud stuck to your feet, and there were trees and branches lying in it, which spooks me out like shipwrecks do. one of the branches hit my arm underwater which made me scream. there were little fish which nibble you too. all in all i didn’t enjoy the experience and was a real cry baby about it all (according to bert anyway). we had a picnic there too but on the river bank. i pointed out that the bank on the other side was much prettier, and then realized that was a living example of me always thinking the grass is greener on the other side. in this case i’m pretty sure it was though. typically it was much harder to get to.
this is all my updating for now, i hope you have found it both entertaining and informative. i think overall i would give it 70%.
Friday, 6 February 2009
gibnuts
here is a gibnut
http://www.belizezoo.org/zoo/zoo/mammals/gib/gib1.html
we see them running around the fields here around dusk time. i would like one as a pet but i don't know if you can keep them in your house.
http://www.belizezoo.org/zoo/zoo/mammals/gib/gib1.html
we see them running around the fields here around dusk time. i would like one as a pet but i don't know if you can keep them in your house.
miscellaneous
this morning in belize is misty and cold, i am in fact wearing leggings and 3 layers of jumpers, and thick woolly socks. maybe if i was to venture outside i would warm up but it is still breakfast time so i am not ready to go outside yet.
some things of note that have happened this week:
i found a stationery shop that sells the twizzly mechanical pencils i have been searching for. i had given up the search long ago, but there they were here in san ignacio, so i bought six of them.
we found an amazing cake shop and have been eating cake. my favourite so far is the carrot cake, but the chocolate one is good too.
i boiled some eggs for 10 minutes the other day and they were still quite soft. once i boiled some for 4 minutes and they were hard. what is happening? does belize have separate laws of physics? or bionic chickens?
i bought a new bike (thank you overdraft facility) in belize city. it isn't anything exciting but it's great to have a bike again, and it is blue! it is in the lounge on a turbo trainer, and you get a dvd with it which shows a bike road race. i suppose you can play it while you're turbo training and pretend you're in the race. i'm only going to do that if i can win.
i saw an ambulance which was called BERT. it stands for belize emergency response team.
we went to a yoga class in a jungle lodge up the road yesterday. consequently am a bit sore today, but it was a really good class, so i will go every week now. i nearly had a big giggling fit when we were doing the tree which is balancing on one leg and everyone wobbles around. need to practise that one. met some nice english girls there too which was cool.
watched the film a time to kill, which is brilliant.
we went to belize zoo. i wouldn't normally go to zoos these days, but bert (not the ambulance) wanted to go. it is in fact totally amazing, and only has animals there that are native to belize, and that have either been rescued, or saved from being ill, or donated etc. there is a problem jaguar programme which is the jaguars in the wild kill lots of the sheep, so they try to get them and put them in the zoo so they can't kill sheep anymore. here is what we saw, in no particular order
- a harpy eagle - what an amazing eagle, they have the best eyesight and hearing in the whole animal world, and eat anteaters and iguanas. they are massive and the most impressive bird i have ever seen. they can spin their heads round 180 degrees which is very disconcerting.
- an anteater - not being eaten by a harpy eagle. he was digging around inside a log getting ants out to eat. he had long fingers which he used as well as his snout thing to get to the ants. there are loads of ants in belize so he should be fine. i might get one and put it in the kitchen here.
- scarlet macaws - there are only around 200 of these left in belize. bert has seen some when he flew up to chulillo dam, but at the moment i think they are still on holiday. they are beautiful, bright red, blue and yellow. they were sitting on branches pecking each other.
- jaguar - he was called junior, and was 2 years old. his dad was asleep on a high up branch in a tree. for 100 belize dollars you could get in a little cage and pet junior and feed him. bert wanted to but we didn't have 100 dollars, plus i didn't think it was a good idea. i think junior had been brought up by people so he was very tame, but still. his paws were huge, you wouldn't want to be swiped by one of them.
- ocelots - these are pretty much thin versions of jaguars it seems. they were prowling around their enclosure. (all the animals in the zoo have loads of space in their enclosures by the way).
- gray fox - he was eating a mouse when we saw him the second time. the first time he was just walking around. he was very cute, with nice sleek gray fur.
- crocodiles - they were slumped around a bit of water, asleep i suppose. they don't move much. they look very prehistoric like dinosaurs. we saw their teeth, they don't fit in their mouths when they close them, they look pretty sharp.
- some really smelly pigs, called warrees i think. they were hairy too. like warthogs i suppose. they really did stink.
- a tarantula in a glass box. they are venemous but don't bite humans, they are timid by nature apparently. whatever.
- some howler monkeys - we have seen these in the wild too. they are cute. i think i might be over my monkey phobia, but i wouldn't like to test it by getting too close to any. they weren't dressed in clothes or drinking cups of pg tips at least.
- a puma - he was asleep and a bit far away, so nothing to say about him.
- a keel-billed toucan, very impressive. and some aracari toucans, which are the same as the ones we saw at caracol that day.
- other birds like turkeys, storks (they were busy delivering babies), and a hawk eagle.
- there was a gibnut enclosure but they come out later in the day. they are my favourite belizean animal. also there was an otter house but they must have been having a siesta too.
all in all it was brilliant, and we bought a mug with a macaw on it and the words belize zoo.
also this week i listened to a cd of the steve miller band and was very impressed. they did a famous song, can't remember what it's called.
some things of note that have happened this week:
i found a stationery shop that sells the twizzly mechanical pencils i have been searching for. i had given up the search long ago, but there they were here in san ignacio, so i bought six of them.
we found an amazing cake shop and have been eating cake. my favourite so far is the carrot cake, but the chocolate one is good too.
i boiled some eggs for 10 minutes the other day and they were still quite soft. once i boiled some for 4 minutes and they were hard. what is happening? does belize have separate laws of physics? or bionic chickens?
i bought a new bike (thank you overdraft facility) in belize city. it isn't anything exciting but it's great to have a bike again, and it is blue! it is in the lounge on a turbo trainer, and you get a dvd with it which shows a bike road race. i suppose you can play it while you're turbo training and pretend you're in the race. i'm only going to do that if i can win.
i saw an ambulance which was called BERT. it stands for belize emergency response team.
we went to a yoga class in a jungle lodge up the road yesterday. consequently am a bit sore today, but it was a really good class, so i will go every week now. i nearly had a big giggling fit when we were doing the tree which is balancing on one leg and everyone wobbles around. need to practise that one. met some nice english girls there too which was cool.
watched the film a time to kill, which is brilliant.
we went to belize zoo. i wouldn't normally go to zoos these days, but bert (not the ambulance) wanted to go. it is in fact totally amazing, and only has animals there that are native to belize, and that have either been rescued, or saved from being ill, or donated etc. there is a problem jaguar programme which is the jaguars in the wild kill lots of the sheep, so they try to get them and put them in the zoo so they can't kill sheep anymore. here is what we saw, in no particular order
- a harpy eagle - what an amazing eagle, they have the best eyesight and hearing in the whole animal world, and eat anteaters and iguanas. they are massive and the most impressive bird i have ever seen. they can spin their heads round 180 degrees which is very disconcerting.
- an anteater - not being eaten by a harpy eagle. he was digging around inside a log getting ants out to eat. he had long fingers which he used as well as his snout thing to get to the ants. there are loads of ants in belize so he should be fine. i might get one and put it in the kitchen here.
- scarlet macaws - there are only around 200 of these left in belize. bert has seen some when he flew up to chulillo dam, but at the moment i think they are still on holiday. they are beautiful, bright red, blue and yellow. they were sitting on branches pecking each other.
- jaguar - he was called junior, and was 2 years old. his dad was asleep on a high up branch in a tree. for 100 belize dollars you could get in a little cage and pet junior and feed him. bert wanted to but we didn't have 100 dollars, plus i didn't think it was a good idea. i think junior had been brought up by people so he was very tame, but still. his paws were huge, you wouldn't want to be swiped by one of them.
- ocelots - these are pretty much thin versions of jaguars it seems. they were prowling around their enclosure. (all the animals in the zoo have loads of space in their enclosures by the way).
- gray fox - he was eating a mouse when we saw him the second time. the first time he was just walking around. he was very cute, with nice sleek gray fur.
- crocodiles - they were slumped around a bit of water, asleep i suppose. they don't move much. they look very prehistoric like dinosaurs. we saw their teeth, they don't fit in their mouths when they close them, they look pretty sharp.
- some really smelly pigs, called warrees i think. they were hairy too. like warthogs i suppose. they really did stink.
- a tarantula in a glass box. they are venemous but don't bite humans, they are timid by nature apparently. whatever.
- some howler monkeys - we have seen these in the wild too. they are cute. i think i might be over my monkey phobia, but i wouldn't like to test it by getting too close to any. they weren't dressed in clothes or drinking cups of pg tips at least.
- a puma - he was asleep and a bit far away, so nothing to say about him.
- a keel-billed toucan, very impressive. and some aracari toucans, which are the same as the ones we saw at caracol that day.
- other birds like turkeys, storks (they were busy delivering babies), and a hawk eagle.
- there was a gibnut enclosure but they come out later in the day. they are my favourite belizean animal. also there was an otter house but they must have been having a siesta too.
all in all it was brilliant, and we bought a mug with a macaw on it and the words belize zoo.
also this week i listened to a cd of the steve miller band and was very impressed. they did a famous song, can't remember what it's called.
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