Thursday, Nov 22
Finally I have forced myself to sit down and write this post. I could blame it on the Caribbean, but I won't. It is just my general laziness. We are currently in tobacco Caye, Belize. This is an island that is about 5 acres or so, but Mike thinks it is more like 3 or 4. It is surrounded by a barrier reef, and there is nothing here except a bunch of ramshackle cabins for tourists to stay in. We pay a flat price that includes all our meals. Right now we are the only people at our little cabin cluster – very private. Our cabin is right on the beach, about 30-40 feet from the water's edge. We will be here until Sunday.
Since we don’t have much in the line
of internet here, I am writing this offline. When I finish, I will
take it up to this marine science lab (the only thing here besides
the tourist cabins) and use their internet for a fee. Then I will
post it. So I am not sure, as I write this, exactly what I reported
last time I wrote . I think I was leaving Belize city for Orange
Walk Town. Or maybe we were already there and leaving for San
Ignacio. I just don't remember. Anyway, it has been a great tour of
Belize.
In Orange Walk, we took a boat tour to
the ruins at Lamanai. The boat ride itself was fascinating – we
saw all kinds of birds, a rather tame spider monkey, and even a
crocodile. Once we got to the ruins and were hiking through the
jungle to get to the site, we saw a family of howler monkeys.
After Orange Walk, we went to San Ignacio, right on the Guatemalan border. (The people there who live on hills can see Guatemala from their houses, for real). We walked to one set of ruins that was close to town, that has the distinction of being the oldest continually inhabited site in Belize. (Most of the sites here in Belize are not as fully excavated as the sites in Mexico, but here you can climb all around them and go inside through tunnels if they have them.) San Ignacio was a wonderful little town – we fell in love with it, making it our favorite place in Belize, even beating out the Caribbean beach places. One interesting thing we did while on a horseback ride to yet another ruin site, was to eat gibnut for lunch. Fot They weigh about 10 -12 pounds and have nice golden brown fur with white racing stripes. I looked up a picture on Google to see what I was eating. It is quite a delicacy around here. The locals refer to it as “the royal rat” because Queen Elizabeth ate it when she visited Belize. If I had not known what I was eating, I probably would have guessed pork, except for the suspiciously small bones. It was served sort of stewed, with beans and rice like everything here.
Another thing we did while in San Ignacio was to go in a hike through the jungle, then through a cave that is filled with Maya artifacts. We had to do a 40 minute hike that included wading through a river a couple of times, then swimming through the rive to the mouth of the cave. For most of the cv you are hiking in water and at times swimming if you are short enough. The water was absolutely crystal clear. We had to go over, under, and around boulders, squeezing through these narrow passages in the cave. We all had helmets with miners lights, and I am glad I did because I whacked my head a couple of times while looking at my feet and not ahead of me. When we got to the dry part, we had to take our shoes off and walk around in socks. There were bones, intact skeletons, pots and other artifacts. And even a skeleton that had turned into a sort of crystal. We were not allowed to even bring cameras in, let alone take pictures. It really had an effect, everyone was very reverent and it sort of felt like being in church.
After leaving San Ignacio, we went to the town of Hopkins for Garifuna Settlement Day. Unfortunately, Mike got sick with some sort of flu, and we didn't really get to see much of the celebration. And to top it off, the place we were staying had no running water. We had to use a bucket to flush the toilet, and with Mike being sick, well, lets just say it was not a good time to lack indoor plumbing. There was no way to even take a shower. I did get to hear some of the drumming, but otherwise, I pretty much had to just take care of Mike, and he was really sick. I was beginning to think I would have to get him to a doctor, but right about then he started to get better. And in addition, I did not want to go about by myself, because I was constantly fending off men. Seriously, it got really annoying and I was not flattered because it was absolutely ridiculous, half of these idiots were my son's age. It wasn't threatening in any way, just truly annoying, almost like trying to get away from a time share salesman.
And the icing on the cake was the place where we stayed. I am not going to write a Trip Adviser review, because I can't give a good review and I don't have the heart to write a bad one. The place itself has seen better days, but all the guesthouses here in Belize are sort of rundown by our standards. And lots ottimes the power and plumbing can be dicey – welcome to the third world. But this was too much. Our room s under the house and it was kind of funky and interesting although very dark. There were no bugs at all, not even mosquitoes, and a fan kept it nice and cool. Our hostess is about my age and is originally from New York. She has spent most of her adult life living in the Caribbean, running restaurants and hotels. She has a boyfriend named Elvis, a tall, skinny Rastafarian -type guy. Well, Elvis was drunk the entire time we were there. The woman nagged him all day long to help her out with things – it was like listening to someone scold a lazy teenager to clean his room, except she called him things like “stupid fucking asshole”. He didn't seem to care very much. The water thing was a huge pain in the ass, because every time I needed a new bucket of water, I had to enter into their drama to get more. She also had an injured foot from some strange episode that included a moving car. I hid out reading while keeping an eye on Mike, and even skipped dinner and breakfast to avoid dealing with them. Even when Elvis was not around, she complained about him or went on long rambling monologues about things I really would have been happier not knowing. No boundaries whatsoever! Otherwise, she was a really nice woman, sort of a Ladies of the Canyon Earth Mother type. She offered up her services as an herbal healer for Mike, and had he not started getting better, I was going to take her up on it. And I must say she was an excellent cook! But all in all, I was not sorry to leave. I think what was once eccentric and fun loving has changed to dysfunction and alcoholism. (I would seriously have given Ol' Elvis the boot a long time ago.)
Now, as I said in the beginning, we are ensconced at Tobacco Caye in a little cabin. We do have running water, but no hot water. No problem. There are a bunch of boat tailed grackles fighting over a coconut outside my porch. There is no sound other than birds and surf. This island has no cars or motor vehicles of any kind, not even electric golf carts. When it is time to eat, Nelda rings a dinner bell we can hear anywhere on the island. Last night we had conch (pronounced conk) steaks cooked in some kind of wonderful seasoning. I have never had conch like this, only in fritters, and it was really good. I am not getting sick from the food anymore, thank goodness. We will be here until Sunday, then maybe a night in Dangriga so Mike can tour the Marie Sharp Hot Sauce factory, then back to San Ignacio and off to Guatemala. I sure do understand why all our friends are so interested in crossing through the canal and getting to the Caribbean. This is the proverbial tropical paradise.
“I never change, I simply become more myself.” (Joyce Carol Oates)
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