Belize City

February 10-12. We spent our last 2 nights back in the Best Western Biltmore in Belize City. Sunday we just relaxed. We swam in the beautiful pool and played cards, cribbage, and read.


Monday we spent $1.50 on the bus into Belize City and then $15 for a taxi for about a 10 minute ride to Old Belize. This a very good small museum covering the history, ecology, and culture of Belize. Outside there were videos showing these areas plus tourism. They even provided a guide to talk about the exhibits. (This was a good complement to the things we had already learned.) Some new things we learned. 1) Major exports: sugar (60% of exports), mahogany, citrus (mostly oranges & grapefruit), bananas, and fishing (lobster & conch). 2) 42% of Belize's plants have some medicinal value. 3) Sugar cane makes molasses, then brown sugar, then white sugar, and then rum. 4) From the 1600's to the 1800's mahogany was logged and taken by boat to England to be made into fine furniture. Caribbean and African slaves were employed in this. Their families remained and became one of the ethnic groups, caribe. 4) The first car in Belize City was in 1903 but there were very few until the 1970's because people couldn't afford them. 5) The other ethnic groups are Creole, a mix of African slaves and European; Mestizo, a mix of Spanish and Yucatan Mayan; Mayan (3 main groups); and Garifuna, a mix of former Nigerian slaves and Carib Indians from St. Vincent. In the same location was Cucumber Beach, a beach and "water park" with a slide and bouncy water thing. It was a school day so was empty but looked like it would be fun to go to.














A Ride with Natives: Someone had told us that no bus went to the museum. When we got there we asked if the bus stopped there. It did. We waited with 2 other men for the bus to go back to Belize City. After about 5 minutes a car stopped because the driver knew one of the men. They both were getting in the car when the man asked where we were going. We said the swing bridge in Belize City. The driver said he was going very near there. So, here we were basically hitchhiking without the thumb and in a foreign country - not something we'd think of doing in the US! But it was a lovely drive and good conversation. The driver was probably in his mid thirties and a videographer for a TV station and a Catholic Church. He also worked on other movies in Belize. He was very articulate and was one of the only natives we met who didn't have a British accent.

We walked over the swing bridge, famous because they actually swing the center perpendicular so tall boats can go through. There were lots of boats on the open water side of this bridge.


We could've gotten food from one of the many street vendors but chose to go to Big Daddy's in the Commercial Building next to the bridge. It had been recommended by Slickrock and Frommers. It looked like a family thing with homemade food. Here's our delicious salad, stew chicken, rice and tamale.


There was a great grocery store about a 10 minute walk from the Biltmore called Brodie's where we got our food. Sometimes we had a sandwich for breakfast because that's all they had! We were very flexible. We just needed to eat. One night we opted for a Chinese restaurant a little further down the Northern Highway. Tuesday we headed to the airport and said goodbye to Belize. It had been a very good trip. I've already started a list of things to see and do on the next trip some day.

Belize-Slickrock Adventures

February 3-10. One of the highlights of our travels so far was spending a week with fun people on a 13 acre island and playing at water sports in the turquoise water.

We couldn't have been a more congenial group. We all started at the Best Western Biltmore in Belize City with a group meeting with a guide and then dinner. The next morning was breakfast and a 2 1/2 hour trip to Long Caye in Glover's Reef. (The Biltmore is a really nice hotel. The courtyard and pool are beautifully landscaped. We liked it so much that we decided to stay here for the 2 days following our island trip.)

Slickrock is headquartered in Moab, Utah and is a very well-organized sports adventure "camp". (They also offer half island trips and half land adventure trips.) The guides were great, the equipment was great, and the setting was heavenly. The cabanas were rustic, we used compost toilets, and solar heated outside showers (very cool) and the island used wind and sun power. The cost seemed a little high but you got a lot for your money. It was well worth the price! The guides even guided us in snorkeling, helping us locate cool fish and enormous lobsters. And we loved sleeping with our screen-less windows open listening to the surf breaking 10 yards from the cabana!


Belize's reef is the second longest in the world. (Longest is Australia's Barrier Reef.)

Staff: Joelle, originally from Montreal and now from Victoria, B.C., was our head guide. She was assisted by Eduardo and Jose, both from Belize. They were super. Besides being very competent and patient they were also very personable. The guides even gave us very interesting short talks on geography, coral, fish, and Mayan history. There were 2 Belizean women who cooked all the meals.

Sports: Sea kayaking, surf kayaking, snorkeling, windsurfing, and scuba (for a reasonable fee). I had the most fun windsurfing. It was the best windsurfing week of my life!! And the diving for Sandy was awesome! (For safety, we had to wear helmets for windsurfing! Not a big deal.)

They gave us instruction and then let us do our thing. But they always offered guided activities. There are so many patch reefs nearby that we could swim or kayak to a different one twice a day if we wanted to. Other activities included a guided nature walk, low tide exploring and beach volleyball. Here I am with Rosemary after we kayaked 3 miles each way to a neighboring island to explore the marine research center and snorkel. I found by the end of the week kayaking a distance was much easier.





Some underwater things we saw besides coral were a barracuda, nurse shark (both harmless), octopus, and a hawksbill turtle. There also were numerous beautiful fish (we identified 35 varieties) and huge lobsters (since no one can fish in this preserve). (The last 3 pictures are thanks to Julie who had an awesome camera.)






























At one end of the island was an osprey nest on a tall frame that had been constructed for their nest. They had two babies which were fun to spot. Usually, though, when we got too near, the mother would start squawking and the baby would duck down. Notice the sneaker at the bottom of the nest. (Thanks to Jennifer for the great picture.)







Other common things on the island were iguanas that lived in the rocks and scores of hermit crabs. We even witnessed the changing of shells. About 30 crabs ganged up on a bigger crab, got it out of its shell and killed it. Then one of them took over his shell and all of the oher crabs moved up to a larger shell!

On our low tide walk we found lots of brittle stars under the rocks.














Here's the dining room (with a sandy floor) where we had all of our delicious meals! They were so good I took home a few of the recipes. We especially loved the Lime cookies, Creole Shrimp and Key Lime Pie.










The people on our week were so much fun to be with. We all got along great. Their friendship really added to our enjoyment of the week.

Here are some scenes from gorgeous Long Caye and us showing how much we loved our week.

Belize (Days 5-12) Part 2

2) Tikal, the ancient Mayan city in Guatemala. This was quite an involved and long trip (7:30-5:30). One person takes you to the border. You go through customs. Another person with a guide picks you up on the other side. An hour of the trip was a unpaved road that was horrendous, full of potholes and puddles since it rained all night. The University of PA in conjunction with Guatemala have excavated a huge amount of Tikal. It was really amazing to think that this was big city at one time and then deserted by 1200 AD. The Jaguar temple is the one used on Guatemalan paper money. There were up to a million Mayans living here at its peak. Our guide was really good and shared with us lots of great information about the customs and lifestyle of the ancient Mayans. They managed to build many beautiful cities all over Central America all without using the wheel. They knew about the wheel but just didn't use it. The ceiba tree was sacred as they felt it represented the layers of the upper world as well as the layers of the under world.






































Besides the temples we saw some other interesting things: a chicle tree which had at one time been harvested for chewing gum (see the diagonal slashes), a man raking with the "original rake", the nest of the Montezuma Oro Pendula, and the most unusual insect we have ever seen, the Peanut Headed Lanternfly!





















Here are some pictures of northeastern Guatemala which look basically the same as the area around San Ignacio: sprouting tree trunk fence posts, solar panel on a post for electricity, a typical house, an unusual painted thatched house, and the border crossing. Guatemala is a much poorer county than Belize. There are many more people and about 40% illiterate. Just four years ago they started a plan to get parents to send their kids to school half days by giving them a free lunch. High schoolers also go only 4 hours a day. The kids are expected to work their family's land and sell their crops.










































3) Tropical Wings Museum, David Simpson's house (our guide), Macal River canoeing. This is a really great natural history museum of Belize-very clear, hands-on and good for kids (and adults). They had a little butterfly garden where we saw the famous Blue Morpho among others. (There's another Butterfly Farm around here too. This one is much smaller with many fewer butterflies than the the place in South Deerfield.) Later I read that they had a medicinal plant trail and hummingird feeders but no one told us about them. Here are both sides of the butterfly.


Here are some contrasting landscape pictures on our way to David's house on the Macal River. He has to paddle a canoe back and forth to get there. His father bought this property many years ago and it has undisturbed Mayan ruins on it!! Very cool! You can see the 4 hills (temples) facing a courtyard.


One of David's guide friends helped paddle the canoe. It was a very pleasant day. We saw ant nests in trees, many iguanas, and numerous bats. We stopped at Chaa Creek Resort and did a self-guided walking tour of their medicinal plants (for a small fee). It was really interesting to see what the Mayan shamans used. We loved the story about the Black Poisonwood tree. When the Mayans were invaded by the Spaniards it wasn't uncommon to tie the enemy to this tree. The bark caused a much worse rash than poison ivy!! Talk about torture! (We were sitting in the canoe with no seat padding for almost 3 hours, just a bit longer than we would have liked. They were vague on how long we'd be in the canoe.)














4) Self-guided Tour of Xunantunich. This is the most adventuresome thing we've done so far. We took a 75 cent bus to the next town to visit a Mayan ruin. The only way to get to the ruin was by crossing a hand-cranked ferry! Then we walked 1 1/2 miles on, surprisingly, a paved road!! This site was done very well. They had a great museum which showed a scale model of the city and pictures of how the stelae's would have looked in their original form. (This is in stark contrast to Tikal where there were no visuals at all.) This city was inhabited much later than Tikal, about 630-1000 AD. It was the same set-up with temples surrounding a plaza and also a ball court. The game was played with a rubber ball, (from a rubber tree) you can't touch the ball with your hands or feet. The winner was honored by being sacrificed. If you were sacrificed it was guarantee that you were going straight to the upper world (heaven) and that was a very good thing.


Here are some other things commonly found in Belize. A bus stop. They have raised crosswalks across the highway. They're called "Pedestrian Ramps". It is common to see people, even young children, riding in the back of pick-up trucks.