In transit

Just a quick note to let y'all know I'm not dead, I'm in transit. Fishing, snorkeling, etc. was a blast--once I get home I'll give ya the scoop!

Tien

P.S. I caught my barracuda!

Inca ruins, the Blue Hole

Today, Patrick (my guide) and I went off to see Xunantunich, the second-largest Inca ruin in Belize. It's not one of the big Inca sites--Tikal, 2.5 hours away in Guatemala, is supposedly much more impressive--but it was damn impressive nonetheless. One massive stone temple, at least 4 stories high, a large courtyard, and several partially excavated smaller structures. The scale was amazing--I hadn't envisioned such a giant mass of stone. Now I really, really want to see the "big" Inca ruins. It's too bad I won't get a chance on this trip. (Life is too damn short, dammit.)

I'm amazed by the engineering, especially since the bottom layers appear to be haphazardly arranged bits of rock. I wouldn't have expected it to hold up under the enormous weight of the upper layers. It must have been damn, damn impressive when it was first built...the estimates are that it was built in 800 AD and abandoned by 1100 AD. I have a hard time imagining anything that old. Angkor Wat was incredible and beautiful (and very well-preserved), but it only dates back about 600 years. 600 years I can imagine, but a thousand?

Anyway, verbal descriptions can't do justice to the place, so I'm going to post photos once I get back. But to really "get" it, you have to go there yourself...the sheer scale of the place is hard to feel from a photo. I got vertigo several times on the way up (especially since it was a narrow staircase with no handrails).

And this is a minor ruin.

Now I must see Chichen Itsa...and the other great Mayan sites...aack! Life is so short. But I still must see them before I die. And the Great Pyramids, and...

Here's a link to a webpage about Xunantunich.

We had an interesting moment on the way over to Xunantunich. I got to go on a hand-cranked ferry. The road crosses a small river, and a small wooden ferry takes the car and passengers across. The ferry is not paddled or motor-driven, however; there are cables running across the river, and a small winch is used to pull the ferry along the cables. I tried cranking it (traveling tigresses must stick their paws into everything) and it was surprisingly easy. I conned the ferryman into letting me crank it all the way across. (He probably thought I was nuts, but it was fun.)

As I was getting ready to board the ferry, Patrick suddenly said, "Hey! You want to take a photo of that iguana over there?" I looked over, and damn! there was a GIANT iguana standing not ten feet from me. Unfortunately, as I got the camera out, he lumbered off the grass and climbed lazily up a tree, whereupon I noticed another enormous iguana in the same tree--on the same branch. Two iguanas on one branch created a little iguanajam, and I snapped a photo.

(I am becoming darkly suspicious of all trees. Even the most innocuous-looking one could be secretly harboring iguanas...! I am scanning them all as I pass.)

At any rate, we made it up and over the ferry to the ruins. I asked Patrick about a lot of trees on the way--he pointed out several that had edible fruits, and I tried one--tart, a little astringent, but not bad at all, though there was only about 1/16" of fruit over a giant seed. There was also an intriguing tree called "Monkey's Ear", which had giant brown seed pods in the shape of a flat curl (thus the name "Monkey's Ear"), and beautiful black-and-red-striped seeds inside that I've seen in local jewelry. Patrick said there was a close relative of this tree with hypothermic properties. If you rub the seeds, they get really hot--hot enough to burn. The local kids used to have fun suckering each other into touching the seeds (dropping them down people's shirts, etc.).

On our way back from the ruins, we stopped by a butterfly-rearing house, where the guy apologized and said he only had four or five species right now, as it was the worst possible season for butterflies. (We're now near the end of an exceptionally long dry season, and the hot dry weather is forcing many species into hibernation.) He had some beautiful blue morphos, though, and giant owl butterflies. I asked him how they got their name, and he picked one up, gently opened its wings, and showed me an owl's face! Two big brown "eyes" on the underside made the owl's eyes, and the fat bottom half of the body made a perfect owl's beak. I took a photo, which I will post later.

He also showed me their butterfly-rearing center--how they collect the eggs, hatch out the caterpillars, and rear them to the chrysalis stage, at which point they put them in the butterfly house. This is not a commercial butterfly farm--they're breeding them strictly as an educational display. (I was a bit disappointed, as I had been hoping to buy a few butterflies as paperweights, etc.) I was fascinated by the whole thing--I hadn't realized there were so many species of butterfly in Belize. The morpho larvae were particularly beautiful--bold shades of yellow and maroon. The owl-butterfly caterpillars looked like giant green slugs--but kinda cute in their own way.

The last stop on the trip was the Blue Hole. It's a tiny lagoon set in lush jungle--a clear, shallow sandy slope (with six-inch fish darting about) leads gradually down into a deep blue swimming-hole lined with limestone formations. It's wonderful for swimming--especially after a hot day among the ruins. I spent at least twenty minutes frolicking in the water, chasing the tiny sandy fish, and sitting on a crinkly piece of limestone, gazing down into the blue water.

(It was SO nice to be able to bathe in fresh water. The drought here has been so bad that I've been taking very spare showers--just enough to wet down and rinse off. Being able to soak in fresh water and get clean--really clean--was wonderful.)

Tomorrow Patrick and I are going fishing and snorkeling--he promised Tricia (my landlady) fish for dinner, and I want to catch and eat a barracuda. Tonight, Tricia went out looking for breadfruit for me (I was curious about it and wanted to try some)--once I get back, I'll find out whether she succeeded.

Conch are also very common in the waters around here, and we're going to try getting some...Patrick assures me that conch soup is very tasty, and he wants to take a photo of me diving for one. LOL! I'll be happy if I can just catch a barracuda.

Oh, and there are reputedly 30-40 pound grouper in them there waters, too.

I'm still debating what to do about Friday. I don't have to be at the Belize City airport until around 3pm, but the only bus out of Hopkins leaves at 7am. I'm highly tempted to wait a little later, then bribe Tricia into hitchhiking to Dangriga with me. I've never tried hitchhiking before, and think it would be cool to try. (Almost everyone hitchhikes around here, because there are so few buses.) But I'd rather not try it on my own (especially since I don't understand the protocols yet), so I think I'll try conning her into coming with me. A "hitchhiker's guide", if you will--but, alas, only to Dangriga, not the galaxy. ;-)

From Dangriga I plan to fly to Belize City, then to Guatemala, then home. I've already achieved my primary goal, which is to get a really stunning tan, the kind to make all my once-and-future coworkers jealous. And have a great time, of course.

Tien

Iguanas, and the river

I have turned into a crazed iguana stalker.

Iguanas, you see, live in trees. I had never realized this before, having only seen them in terrariums, and, hilariously, once in a kiddie wading pool at the International Reptile Breeders' Association show in San Diego...there were dozens of baby iguanas skittering around the bottom of the wading pool, and enthusiastic six-year-olds would lean precariously over the edge of the pool, waiting for an unsuspecting baby iguana to come within reach, then teeter over the edge, grab, and come up with a baby iguana. I had never before seen "bobbing for iguanas", but I think it would make great Halloween entertainment.

...uh, where was I?

Right. I was on the river, in a boat, and Patrick, my guide, suddenly pointed thirty feet up into a tree and said, "Look! An iguana!" I looked up, couldn't see a damn thing, followed his pointing finger, still couldn't see anything, and FINALLY, just as we were going by, saw it: a giant male iguana, at least four or five feet long, draped insouciantly over a branch, complacently happy in his iguana-hood.

I was floored. Iguanas can climb trees! They live thirty feet off the ground! They don't spend all their time in terrariums! And man, that was one honkin' big iguana.

After that, I started looking for iguanas as we floated downriver. I couldn't see any, couldn't see any, couldn't see any (even with Patrick pointing them out), and then...hey! Is that an IGUANA??

Sure enough, I'd spotted a big old male sunning himself in a tree. After that I started scanning every passing tree, and found a total of five iguanas. And now I know: iguanas DO grow on trees. LOL

We saw quite a bit of wildlife on the river trip. My crocodile hopes were dashed (apparently the crocs weren't croc'ing today), but we saw blue heron, yellow flycatchers, plover, a hawk and two vultures. And then there was the magical moment when Patrick cried out, "Look! You see that toucan flying over there?" And by God, there WAS a toucan there. I'd never seen one outside the zoo.

We also saw a parrot fly by. I'd seen parrots in the wild once before, in Rewalsar/Tsol Pema, India, in a surreal moment: I was standing at the top of a ridge, in a bamboo forest wreathed in fog, and saw many blunt-headed, green birds flying by. It took me a moment to realize that yes, I was standing there, at the top of the world, watching parrots fly by.

This was like that, except on the river. It was a lovely parrot, too, green with a red head. I love the way parrots fly--they have a distinctly bullet-shaped profile, very cool.

The vegetation along the river was also varied. I am fascinated by mango trees--they grew wild along the river, and Patrick told me there were twenty or thirty varieties of mango at least. I of course must try every single variety--especially a particularly beautiful purple-blue mango that leaned out far over the water--but unfortunately, most of them weren't ripe yet. It's just the beginning of mango season.

There were also wild cashews growing along the river! I hadn't realized that cashews are native to Belize, but they apparently are...I recognized the distinctive fruit immediately. I was tempted to ask Patrick to come in a little closer so I could pick a couple of cashew apples, but remembered in time that the flavor is, well, not too good.

We saw breadfruit trees--"like potato, but better", and a tree fruit called wild grape that tastes like blueberries. Patrick informed me that iguana was called "bamboo chicken" locally, and that both iguana and iguana eggs were tasty, but they weren't eaten anymore. There were a few other edible foods whose names I can't remember.

(If it sounds like I was obsessed with food, I was. It was nearly sundown, and I hadn't eaten since breakfast.)

I am fascinated with the number of wild fruit trees here. In the U.S., there aren't many fruit trees growing wild--if it's a fruit tree, odds are it was planted and odds are it's a specially bred variety. Along the river bank, they grow lushly, and seemingly without premeditation.

There were plenty of other trees along the river, probably the most photogenic being the mangroves. They rise up out of the water on their elevated roots, and have long, bean-like fruits which drop off into the water and float--often for amazingly long distances--until they find a new spot to sprout in. There were also emery trees, mahogany, and ceiba trees (which are the national tree of Guatemala).

Sadly, we saw no crocs and no manatee, but I was so thrilled about the toucan (and the iguanas!) that I wasn't too disappointed. And the iguanas looked so cool while sunning themselves on branches. Henceforth I shall check every passing tree for iguanas. :-)

Tomorrow I'm going out to see some Inca ruins and a lagoon called the Blue Hole; Thursday, we go out fishing and snorkeling. Friday, I head (regretfully) home.

Tien

More on sand dollars

This is fascinating. Sand dollars are actually very flat sea urchins (weird, eh?). The rough "hairs" are actually miniature spines (sea urchin spines), and they have little tube feet they use to walk around and keep from getting buried. The hole in the center is a very powerful mouth, and the five little "doves" that fall out of broken sand dollars are teeth. The five gills make up the five-petaled "flower" on the top of a sand dollar.

Most sand dollars live about 30-40 feet under the ocean, in the subtidal region (so you have to dive to see them). They're quite abundant at that depth, though. It's quite unusual for them to be so shallow (here they're only 2-3 feet underwater), but there isn't much tidal variation here, and the slopes are long and gradual, so they get water all the time. They either feed by moving around on their little tube feet and eating whatever's underneath them, or by sticking themselves vertically in the sand so water washes through them. The little "grooves" in live sand dollars are actually feeding areas, where food gets trapped in mucus and moved along to the mouth by little cilia.

Now I have to go find another sand dollar and take a closer look at it. I'd love to dissect one, but that would be kinda rude. (I might do it anyway, but curiosity isn't a very good excuse for taking a critter apart, IMO. If it isn't hurting me and I don't want to eat it, I'd rather live and let live.)

However, I think someone brought a live (now dead) sand dollar to the inn yesterday--I may ask them if I can dissect it, since it's there anyway.

At any rate, I'm sure that's way more than you ever wanted to know about sand dollars, but dang, they're cool.

Today the waters are a bit rough, so I'm going out on a river tour in an hour or two. I'm torn about what to do over the next few days--there's snorkeling/fishing, but there's also an Inca ruin and a very beautiful lagoon (the "Blue Hole") that would be another good day trip. Either would be $150 for the day, which is a big chunk of change, not sure I can really afford that and the river trip. I may ask the guide if he can bring it down a little for the two-day package. Or I may just soak up the cost; I'm only going to be in Belize once, and I fly home (actually, to Guatemala) on Friday.

If I can find someone else to go along, of course, it'll be cheaper. Even one other person would bring the cost down a lot.

Anyway, I'm off to prep for the river trip...

Tien

Diving, and sand dollars

Went diving this morning. The reef is GORGEOUS--lots of coral everywhere, moray eels, bright yellow-and-blue fish that flash as they swim by, schools of tiny electric blue fish. Sea fans, purple tube-like coral, brain coral, big lobsters with wavy antennae, small coral shrimp, and eagle rays flapping by. Awesome, awesome experience. (The Similan Islands were a little nicer, but this is still incredible.)

That said, I wasn't in much shape to appreciate most of it, as I spent a good chunk of my time concentrating on not drowning. I hadn't been diving for two years, so little details like breathing through your respirator, clearing your face mask, etc. were a bit rusty. At one point, when my mask flooded, I nearly panicked completely--almost started gulping water before I remembered I could clear my respirator and breathe through it. Two or three (very long) minutes later, I finally remembered how to clear my face mask. After that I managed to enjoy the rest of the dive.

Unfortunately, on surfacing I ran into more trouble--couldn't catch my breath, and was gasping rapidly by the time they got me onto the boat. My lungs hadn't fully recovered by the time of the next dive, so I missed it, staying on the boat (alas--they saw a bunch of eagle rays!). And then, to top it all off, I got severely seasick on the way back. There's a great irony in throwing up *just* as the boat is docking. I think I must have offended the sea gods or something.

To recover from all that unpleasantness, I decided to go wade in the ocean for awhile--which is delightful: blood-warm, gentle waves lapping at you, shallows that slope very gradually out to sea. And sand dollars. Lots of sand dollars.

This is how you hunt sand dollars: you go wading out until you find a mud flat (i.e. not sand), then shuffle your feet along the mud as you frolic in the water. Eventually, your foot hits something flat, round, and hard, you reach down (getting knocked over by a couple waves on the way), and you pick up a sand dollar.

This is not a bleached, nice white sand dollar. It's a live sand dollar, kelp-green, covered with bristly green "hairs", and usually sporting a couple tiny, translucent crabs clinging to the bottom. It feels rough when you pick it up, but they don't bite or sting or anything.

So what do you do with one, once you find it? Well, you can dry it out and bleach it, or you can etch it with muriatic acid to produce a very beautiful geometric pattern (natural to the sand dollar), and you can then paint it. I collected three sand dollars in short order--mostly because they were so much fun to hunt for. But, on further reflection, I decided that they probably needed to be sand dollars much more than I needed them to be ornamental kitsch, and released them back into the ocean. (I don't have a huge problem with killing a creature for food, but I think it's *extremely* rude to kill some poor critter just to get a souvenir that will wind up in a dusty box somewhere. If it were something I'd deeply treasure, I might reconsider.)

I suppose it was a bit disrespectful of me to play sand dollar frisbee while returning them to the water--but dang, it was fun. They do fly quite nicely, and it got them further out to sea. I was tempted to try skipping one, but enough is enough. (Besides, I'm lousy at that kind of thing.)

So now, having encountered a real live sand dollar, I must look up everything I can find about sand dollars. I know almost nothing about them--how they manage to stay on the bottom, how they keep from getting covered, what do they eat/what eats them, can they move on their own? and all the other interesting things about the critters. I had never really thought about them before, having only seen them as pretty shells, but now my curiosity's been piqued. It's always different meeting something in living color--live sand dollars are WAY more interesting than bleached shells.

And I'm definitely going to look for more of them (it's such a thrill when your questing foot meets one), but strictly on a catch-and-release basis. They are SUCH cool critters.

(One of the beautiful things about travel is that it makes you look at old things in new ways...I had never really thought about sand dollars before!)

Anyway, given today's excitement, I think I'm going to skip diving tomorrow. If the weather is nice, I'll probably go on a fishing/snorkeling tour with a private guide, and if the weather is not so nice, I'll probably go on a river tour. Fishing/snorkeling gives me the opportunity to catch and eat my own barracuda, which would be kinda cool, and see a lot of marine life while snorkeling (hopefully with less histrionics than diving). The river tour sounds equally nice--float down the river, lots of animals (including crocodiles!), lots of interesting plants. My private guide has led tours for the local high-end resorts for nine or ten years, and is now freelancing, so he knows a lot about the local ecosystem, animals, etc. I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm not sure what happened while I was diving. I had the flu up until a week or so ago, so it's possible it was affecting my lungs--or I might have gone too deep for a first dive. If anyone knows about those symptoms when diving, please post a comment and let me know. I may try diving again near the end of the week--this time, with Dramamine. I really do enjoy diving, but not when seasick/having breathing problems.

Tien

P.S. Still no armadillo. *sigh* I wonder if I could con my guide into taking me armadillo-hunting? It would be pretty cool to see a wild armadillo...

In Hopkins

Just a short note to say that I made it to Hopkins, a sleepy little town near Dangria, in the central coast of Belize, and am going diving tomorrow. I plan to dive for the next three days, then move on to San Ignacio in western Belize--but haven't really decided yet. I may well decide to spend the next week here.

To my delight, I have discovered that one can (occasionally) get armadillo around here, and am trying to lay my hands on some. I've had the innkeeper put in a request with a guy who goes hunting a lot. I guess the town is too small to support an armadillo farm. LOL

I'm also trying to find a guide who is willing to show me around the Jaguar Reef Reserve, which is a wildlife preserve wherein I will probably not see jaguars, but lots of other cool stuff.

Oh, and I may take up windsurfing.

Tien

The Cashew Festival

I'll apologize in advance if I'm a little incoherent today. After last night's roach episode, I did eventually get to sleep, but under the circumstances slept rather less well than usual, and I'm still a bit frazzled. (I have been trying to convince myself that a roach is simply a beetle, and a two-inch beetle crawling over you isn't anything to panic over, it's merely annoying. I have thus far completely failed. Beetles I can deal with. But roaches are roaches, and no matter how hard I flex it, I just can't convince myself they're anything else.)

Anyway, I managed to catch the bus up to Crooked Tree (pop. 800) today, and made it to the festival without incident. It's a pretty small operation--fifteen or twenty stalls, a live band, some minor prizes--but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in diversity. You can buy all kinds of cashew products--fudge, cookies, jam, syrup, and wine. The last three are made from the cashew apple--the fruit, not the nut.

Cashews are nearly unique in the botanical world in having the seed outside the fruit. A cashew has a fleshy fruit, the cashew apple, and at the bottom dangles the cashew nut (inside shell and hull). The nut is easy to twist off the end of the cashew apple--it's only cursorily attached. The nut has some rather nasty irritants associated with the outer shell (this is why some people are allergic to cashews), which are removed during the shelling process.

The cashew apple looks a bit like a small, somewhat withered yellow bell pepper. It's hollow inside, like the pepper, but is soft and juicy, with a stringy interior. It is not going to win any awards for flavor--when I bit into one I found it astringent, and oddly musky-tasting--but it is sweet, and quite juicy.

Regarding cashew wine, the less said the better. Actually, some of the cashew wines are moderately drinkable (as Paul Simon famously said, "all right in a limited sort of a way, for an off night"), but Napa isn't exactly quaking in its boots. I'm bringing one small bottle home with me; if you want to delve further into its secrets, get in touch with me once I return.

I did see one very unusual thing while I was there, though: one of the band members was playing a "drum" composed of three tortoise shells! He had the three dangling from a belt attached to his waist, and played them just as you would any other drum. It was astonishing the different range of sounds he produced--hollow clicking sounds, deeper-throated knocking noises, depending on which tortoise he was playing and where on the scutes he was drumming. I got a photo which i'll post once I get back. I was fascinated, and spent half an hour watching and listening to him.

I should mention that Belize is musically a very gifted nation, with a wide variety of instruments and a strong music tradition. I am unfortunately a complete musical illiterate, so I can't give you an adequate description--but if you are a music junkie, come to Belize. It's basically a Caribbean rhythm, but with variations.

I did have one very bizarre moment today, musically speaking. The DJ was playing a song over and over which was hauntingly familiar, but which I couldn't place. It drove me crazy for several repetitions, then I suddenly recognized it as "Father Abraham", a British nursery rhyme I'd learned from a pair of British nannies one drunken night in Laos. It's rather like the Hokey-Pokey, and goes

"Father Abraham
Had seven sons
Seven sons had Father Abraham
And they never laughed
And they never cried
All they did was go like this:"

followed by waving about whatever random body part is indicated for that verse (adding body parts cumulatively as you go).

If you try to imagine a bunch of Westerners in backwater Laos, dining with a hilltribe so isolated that children have never seen white people, singing "Father Abraham" and waving their arms and legs drunkenly about while the Lao whisky goes around yet another time, well...that was THAT evening. I'll never forget the British nannies who taught it to us, either. Mary Poppins would have had a heart attack--tattoos, body piercings, drinking and swearing. These weren't no namby-pamby prim-and-proper nannies--these were punk nannies.

At any rate, just as I realized that the tune was "Father Abraham", it dawned on me that the refrain was "Scooby-Doo, we love you". I THINK someone was trying to mix the Scooby-Doo theme with "Father Abraham".

The mind reels.

Fortunately, most Belizean music isn't like that--it's a refreshing, original Caribbean mix that's very enjoyable, even to the musically illiterate ear.

I unfortunately missed the cashew-processing demonstration, which is happening tomorrow--I had been hoping to see how they remove the irritating oils and extract the cashew. It was great to taste the cashew apple, though.

Speaking of tastes, I finally got my hands on gibnut today! Gibnut is an animal generally described as "a 60-pound rat" (I thik technically it's an agouti), and is one of the "interesting" foods native to Belize. I had almost resigned myself to not finding it, as it's a wild game animal and thus not on most restaurant menus, but found it in a stall at the festival. It has an interesting flavor...I had it barbequed, and the taste and texture were very similar to slow-cooked pork ribs, but with an odd, soapy flavor. Maybe a bit like cilantro, but without the "green" flavor. On Tien's exotic scale, it tasted better than rat, scorpion, mealworms, and moth pupae, but not as good as dog or grasshopper. (I'm still sorry I didn't try bat. *sigh* Everyone makes mistakes.)

However, I can now say that I've eaten a R.O.U.S. (Rodent of Unusual Size), which is certainly something. Together with the cashew apple, it's been a pretty adventurous day.

Off to bed (perchance to catch up on non-roach-infested sleep)--

Tien

The power of the pocketbook

I arrived in Belize City at 8pm last night, well after dark, and took a taxi straight to the guesthouse. It turned out to be a ratpit, but as I was only going to be there one night, and one does not wander around Belize City after dark, I resigned myself to the wind blowing through the stuck-open window, the people on the verandah blowing smoke into my room and talking loudly next to my window, and the light streaming in from the hallway. I pulled out my silk sleep-sack (I don't know where these rat-pits get their sheets--coarse, rough, AND worn to pieces), stuck in earplugs, and tossed and turned, trying to get to sleep.

Then I felt a rustling, and looked up. A giant, two-inch roach had just scuttled across my body, and was regarding me curiously from atop my shoulder.

I leaped out of the bed with a yell, grabbed a book, and went after that roach in a flurry of wild swipes. I missed, and it skittered away.

Well, that was THAT. I hastily gathered my bags, ran downstairs, and fled. Traveling tigresses are intrepid, but even I have my limits--I am NOT sharing my bed with roaches. I found a high-end hotel in the guidebook, and at 11pm, I made it to the Princess Hotel, a hotel-cum-casino that would do Club Med proud. I paid a princely sum for it ($96 U.S., or $10/hour for every hour I spent there), but was it worth it? Hell, yeah. I could sleep in the assurance that no roaches would be peeking over my shoulder.

So now I've spent more for one night's accommodation than I did for the entire previous WEEK of hotel stays, but at least I and my clothes are roach-free. Egad.

Anyway, I'm headed up to Crooked Tree for the Cashew Festival, and am hoping to make it OUT of Belize City today and down to Dangriga and diving, but it seems likely I'll have to spend another day in Belize City. Grump.

Tien

Bus ride to Belize City

Sometimes it seems like all of Belize is burning.

As I rode the bus from Punta Gorda to Belize City, every few miles we would pass another fire. Charred stumps, withering branches, a small bush crumpling slowly into flames--and everywhere the char, seared earth and dying coconut palms. Even at night, plumes of white smoke rise into the sky, illuminated by the eerie orange glow of the flames. Everywhere, the air smells of woodsmoke.

This is slash-and-burn agriculture at its worst, and I feel only vaguely reassured that Belize is an environmental "success story": 36% of the country is set aside as nature preserve, and it is considered one of the best-preserved countries in Central America. If this is the *best*, what are the other places like? I try to picture the great fire, 5 acres a day in Belize burning into a desolation of white ash, and it boggles my mind. And to think of the 2.7 MILLION acres of Amazonian rainforest burned every year...it's too much to imagine. I see acres and acres of jungle, crumpling slowly into flames as the ashy landscape expands, and the fire burns, and burns, and burns.

I am still amazed that Belize is considered an environmental success. I can't imagine what the other places are like.

Tien

Well, I'll be darned.

I did meet with Belize's Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries today. (He's also the area representative for Toledo district.)

I had just about dismissed the whole thing as the made-up story of a delusional old man (he'd be neither the first nor the last such person I've met), but he turned up this morning with the guy himself! (I will never, EVER doubt my improbability field again.) I was totally not expecting this visit, and in fact was sitting quietly at the breakfast table carving myself a new set of double-pointed bamboo knitting needles when they arrived. One does not normally receive high government officials covered in wood shavings, but life is full of new and novel experiences. (Besides which, he was in shorts and a T-shirt anyway, so it wasn't exactly a formal meeting.)

It was interesting hearing what he had to say on tourism and development in Belize--he's certainly well aware of the issues w/r/t tourism in the Toledo district. One interesting thing he said was about the villages. Yesterday, while touring the cacao plantations, Greg had mentioned that the government was issuing land grants of 30 acres to anyone who applied. I had wondered why they were doing a homestead act, but it turns out to be an environmental issue. The indigenous people are doing tremendous damage to the environment using traditional slash-and-burn practices (yesterday's devastation being an example), and it's estimated that they're burning 5 acres a DAY in Toledo District. When a given plot of land is exhausted, they move on to the next one (which is traditional for slash and burn). The government is trying to get the villagers to stop their nomadic (and very destructive) lifestyle, and towards that end is offering each of them ownership of 30 acres. The hope is that they'll stay put on that land, and not move on to burn more.

They're also doing projects to help them grow beans and rice. I asked why not cacao, since it's so profitable, and he said it's because of the organic farming requirements--it requires a lot of compost to keep the land fertile, and the farmers haven't been willing to apply the compost. (Greg, the cacao guy, brings them sacks of compost in his pickup, but they still have to haul it all the way to the field--which may be a long way--and spread it.) So after a few years, the soil is no longer fertile, and then they run into trouble with disease etc. They're working on convincing the farmers that organic farming is much more than "don't add chemicals".

Anyway, the net of the conversation was that Chet's ideas were too grandiose (which was obvious to me as a project manager), he needed to start smaller, BUT if he was able to come up with funding, the minister of agriculture etc. would ask the prime minister to match the funding. Which is a great opportunity, of course. I told Chet that if he put together a really solid project proposal, with a mission statement and precise detail on exactly what he planned to do, what budget he proposed, and so on, I'd see what I could do about getting him funded. (He claims only to need a small amount of money, about $30K--I think the actual bill would be much more, frankly.)

I'd guess that the odds of my actually receiving a good, solid proposal are probably about 2% (Chet is not the most organized person in the world), but stranger things have been known to happen, and I think his ideas vis-a-vis cultural and environmental preservation would be great to implement. I'm not getting any further involved until I get a solid proposal, though--if they can't get their act together enough to write a good proposal, there's no way they'll be able to implement it once funded. So that's my test; we'll see what happens.

I'm boarding an express bus to Belize City in about half an hour; it takes about four hours to get there, so I'll arrive about 7pm. Tomorrow I'll do a day trip up to Crooked Tree for the Cashew Festival--which I expect to be interesting--and then I'll head south to Hopkins (a little town near Dangriga), and spend a couple days diving. After that, I've been advised to go to San Ignacio (in Western Belize) and play around a couple of days--there are horseback tours into the jungle, a major Inca ruin, and several wildlife preserves to visit.

By the way, as you may have guessed from earlier hints, I've started my latest travel shawl. It will be an orange, brown, and gold striped silk shawl, which I intend to call "Tiger Lily". And started on hand-carved bamboo needles, too. :-)

Tien