One, two, three: move your stuff!

The Brockton Triangle neighbourhood yard sale was on Saturday. We had marvelous weather for it, probably one of the nicest Saturdays in Toronto since my birthday.

At our house some neighbours, Len and Kessa, set up their own yard sale, while we put out boxes of knickknacks and clothing for free or a donation to the Parkdale Foodbank. Tristan spent Friday afternoon baking cookies at his Aunt Sarah's house (yummy chocolate oatmeal macaroons) and set up a cookie and freezie stand in front of the next door neighbour's house. On the other side the two neighbours immediately adjacent also had a lot of stuff for sale on display, so our area was a hotbed of activity. And since Gretel was one of the chief organizers of the entire event, we also displayed a Yard Sale Headquarters sign on the house.

Every time I looked out my livingroom window (upstairs, facing the street), there was a crowd seen on the road below. Kids and dogs played in the street, adults had to walk in the street to get by. And as for the cars that usually speed down our street, they were brought to an excruciating crawl. Some enjoyed it, smiling and waving as they went by. Others were clearly irritated by all that pedestrian activity in their rightful territory.

I watched as a one irate driver made a very dangerous pass of the car in front, at a crowded intersection just past our house. Our street is not a throughway, it is only two blocks long and entirely residential, yet some drivers feel it is their right to use it as speed-demon shortcut.

I wandered around the neighbourhood looking at the other yard sales on, but decidedly ours was the best place to be, with multiple sellers around for chatting, cookies and freezies for nibbling on, and hordes of customers for selling to. I am sure Tristan raked in a small fortune! And after doing a rough count, Gretel thinks we may have raised over a hundred dollars for the foodbank. I am really looking forward to going to the foodbank this week with our haul.

It was kind of funny to watch everyone's garbage get hauled out and sold to neighbours. All the old clothes and furniture and odds and ends got moved from one house to another, and bits of cash flowed in the opposite direction. Some sellers were in awe of what people would actually pay good money for!

At the end of the day a truck came around and collected everyone's leftovers and carted it away for charity. By 5pm you would almost never have known that the event had happened.

I bought an old rocking armchair and a CD writer for my ancient desktop computer (its current CD writer has long since ceased operations). Simon, who sold me the CD writer for one dollar, also said he is due to upgrade to a new computer, and will keep me in mind for passing on his old one. Which is worth even more than the CD writer!

To make room for my new chair, I had to dispose of one section of my old couch, the section that Dobbie and I each claimed as "Our" spot.

Isaac helped me move the couch section downstairs and out to the kerb and then to move the chair into the vacant space. And within half an hour some neighbours came by asking if we would mind if they took it away. Brockton Triangle musical chairs...

A steel bookcase and an old child carseat also disappeared from our kerb sometime after that.

I installed the CD writer and it appears to work fine, yay! Now I can use CDs on the desktop computer!

Birdsong at dawn

I woke up early this morning and decided not to bother trying to go back to sleep. Got dressed, made tea and toast and returned to bed to read.

Outside I could hear robins chirping. They seem to come on full bore right around dawn (sun rises around 6:00am, but it's light an hour before that), then settle down as the morning light strengthens.

Yesterday morning I heard the cardinal that has been hanging around, and later in the afternoon I heard a red-winged blackbird. There are at least two other birdsongs I cannot identify, I look for the songsters when I hear them, but I cannot see them.

In Belize the grackles were ubiquitous. They are loud, they start at the crack of dawn (same time as Toronto, but closer to sunrise), and they have a variety of cackles, whistles and whoops.

The tropical version of a crow, only a little more mellifluous.

Notice that this grackle appears to have only one leg? Actually he had two, but one was malformed so he kept it tucked in.

The "short" version: my holiday in Belize

This is the first in a series of posts about my trip to Belize, April 26 - May 5.

Follow the links below to see more detailed descriptions of each day's events...

I got home from Belize in the wee hours of May 6, and it seems to have taken me a couple of days to get back on track. Or more, I feel like I'm still working on it.

Anyway, the trip was wonderful, I enjoyed just about every minute of it. Except possibly some of the weird dreams. None I can remember but it sure seemed like there were a lot of them, mostly very weird.

Great little country, wonderful scenery, great trip, learned a lot, met lots of nice people, travelled with a nice bunch, just can't say enough good things. You can Belize it! As they say...

I took a lot of pictures. Several hundred on my digital camera and a couple dozen or so on film cameras that only got sent off for development today. Not holding my breath on those ones: one camera was a disposable underwater camera which I'm sure was fine but my underwater picture-taking skills are pretty sketchy, and the other was an ancient instamatic with almost-as-ancient ASA 400 film in it. I think the camera functioned OK, but the film, well, who knows.

Summary of trip:

(follow the links to more detailed descriptions)

April 26 - arrival and after-dark visit to Belize zoo (they have a lot of nocturnal animals, best seen after dark)

April 27 - bus trip to Dangriga and boat trip to Cocoa Plum Caye, practice our kayak exit and re-entry skills (I've done OK on this before but this time I totally panicked and flailed around; luckily my skirt was loose and all that flailing was successful), then set out on 4 km paddle to Tobacco Caye.

April 28 - kayak and snorkel around Tobacco Caye, funky little island, very fun place

April 29 - kayak and sail (our kayaks were equipped with removable sails; we could sail when the wind was up in the right direction - no keel so no sailing close to or into the wind) to Water Caye and snorkel there

April 30 - kayak to Carrie Bow Caye and visit the Smithsonian Institute Research Station there, snorkel, return to Water Caye for after-dark snorkelling

May 1 - kayak and sail first to a mangrove swamp for mangrove snorkelling, then to a sand flat in the middle of the ocean for lunch (the water was less than a foot deep) and more snorkelling, then kayak back to Cocoa Plum Caye, to stay at the luxurious Thatch Lodge

May 2 - boat back to Dangriga, bus to San Ignacio, near western border with Guatemala

May 3 - cave adventure at Mayan sacred cave: Actun Tunichil Maktun (I may have that name wrong), dinner with some Swedish women I met there

May 4 - bus to Belize City, water taxi to Caye Caulker to spend last day doing nothing at all in a very tourist-y kind of place with son Sam (well, he was in a bit of a funk so we went for a long walk in a very untourist-y swamp to hash it out; swamps are good for something ;-)

May 5 - flew to Belize City to catch flight home. Missed my Houston connection and got a late flight back to Toronto, arriving in the wee hours of May 6.

The first bus trips (April 26, 27) were in tour buses, but the rest were in public buses, an adventure in itself. Very cheap but very crowded, I was often the only white person. Nice thing about Belize though is that just about everyone speaks English, and since I don't speak Spanish, I really appreciated that. Just about the only other whites I ever saw were either tourists or Mennonites, and the ones I saw were the more traditional ones, they looked rather like Amish. The public buses are all old school buses, no doubt retired from North American school systems.

Initially had a bit of trouble with the snorkelling, my mask leaked, the first replacement our guide gave me fogged up but the second replacement worked fine. Thanks Omar! But snorkelling is so wonderful, I absolutely love it. I hear good things about scuba diving too, but for now I'll stick to the snorkelling. You get to float around in these amazing plant and animal communities and they hardly take much notice of you. They see you and they watch you, but they don't get too worried about you being there. It's kind of funny to watch the fish tip themselves sideways so they can look up at you, but they don't swim away. Imagine walking through a forest where all the animals are out wandering about paying no attention to you --- deer, foxes, rabbits, wolves, mice --- such a sense of being part of nature!

Saw the most amazing octopus on our night snorkel, he/she glided over the bottom, enveloping rocks as he went over them, changing from cream to turquoise and back to cream colour again. He was so graceful! So beautiful! So mesmerizing!

Grew new biceps with all the paddling!

Got a tiny bit of a tan, although I am pretty relentless with the sunscreen.

It was really hot, or for me it was really hot. Mostly around 30C every day, maybe 27C at night. My son pointed out that the official motto of the country is "Sub umbra floreo" (under the shade I flourish), which he translated loosely as "we do better in the shade". He said, you have to wonder about a country that takes that as their motto! It did seem very laid back. Jamaican reggae music and rasta culture is very popular there, the phrase you hear the most is "No problem!"

Culturally and ethnically Belize is quite a mix: Mayan, Mestizo (Mayan-Spanish mix), Kriole (African-European mix), Garifuna (African-Arawak-Carib mix), Chinese, Mennonite, and a few others. Our guide Omar for the kayak trip was Kriole, our guide Ben in the Mayan cave was Mestizo. Most folks speak more than one language, English is the official language (and the language of school instruction), Kriole the most common.

Adventures in seeing

I've been catching up on my internet reading.

Mostly I read other blogs, I think I have a "milk route" of about thirty blogs I like to keep up on. Besides the ones I list over on the right:

- Some are about knitting (e.g. - Mason-Dixon, Knitspot),
- Some are eco-rants (e.g. - Little Blog in the Big Woods, Archdruid Report) or political rants (Ran Prieur, Vanity Press - they're not so political really, that's just how I categorized them at the time),
- There's only one food-related blog I follow regularly (Pioneer Woman) but a couple of others I check occasionally,
- A couple of photo-blogs (daily dose, Shorpy),
- A whole lot of elder blogs (e.g. - Serene Ambition, A Little Red Hen),
and
- A few I haven't categorized, they're just interesting (e.g. - Mathilda's Anthropology, Rebecca's Pocket).

[this is not an exhaustive list!]

Yesterday I put my contacts on instead of my glasses. Normally I wear glasses because:

(a) I've needed glasses most of my life, and
(b) they're easier to slap on than contacts.

In my 30s and early 40s the contacts were nice, it was a revelation to see the world "unframed" and in full colour. But with the onset of later life vision changes, the contacts became more and more difficult. With glasses I could get progressive lenses that allowed me to see both close up and in the distance without difficulty. But with contacts I had to do something called "mono-vision" where one lens is adjusted for seeing close up and the other for distance vision. That worked well at first but has become progressively more problematic. And the new contact lenses are thinner and more difficult to put in.

However, for snorkelling in Belize I needed to wear the contacts because I can't wear glasses inside a snorkel mask and I don't want to invest in a prescription mask. And I was pleasantly surprised by how easily the contacts went in and how well I could see with them. So I thought I'd try to wear them more often at home.

All I can say is, snorkelling is a whole lot different from viewing the internet on a computer.

The mono-vision contact lenses rely on your brain to sort out the two different images you get from the different lenses. For distance, this works OK, but for close-up it's a bit more work. And what I am noticing is a sort of flickering effect while looking at a computer monitor, that makes reading a little harder. I can do it, but it feels like work and I am inclined not to spend too much time working at reading the screen. Which is perhaps a good thing.

It's not exactly flickering, it's hard to describe exactly, but I am guessing it is caused by my brain trying to switch rapidly back and forth between the two images it is getting. Which gives everything a kind of ephemeral, unreal feel to it. Makes "reality" seem a little less "real".

Not unlike what you see wearing those glasses they give you for viewing 3-D movies. A kind of surreal glow to things.

But I couldn't wear them for Thursday night knitting, just not good enough close up vision and by evening my eyes were starting to feel very dry and tired.

Back in Parkdale

This post is not going to be about my trip to Belize, but I will get to it soon. I do have a bunch of things I want to say about that trip.

However...

...This is the first picture I took, at the Belize International Airport.


Welcome to the tropics!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I've been back for two days now and am just starting to get organized again. Seems like the first day was just a daze of disorientation and the second day pretty much taken up with catching up and my foodbank shift. I still haven't managed to get out to do some grocery shopping.

I did start my To Do list for getting ready to go to Nova Scotia though. My plan is to leave here around mid-month, but that's next week and my list is long so I think end of the month is more realistic. As long as it's May though.

I had fun at the foodbank, telling folks about my trip and getting caught up with goings on there. Amy is back, she was away for six weeks travelling in Central America, everywhere except Belize! When I came in she was washing the floor, something she often does on her shift.

I am caught in a bit of a dilemma about giving out food. On the one hand I am aware of how many people are lined up and trying to make the quantities of food last so everyone gets some, but on the other hand we ought to be generous to folks until the supply is gone. And often, I look at the shelves and make a mental calculation based on how much I see there, only to find out mid-shift that actually we have a whole lot more in the basement that we can use up. I never know how much of the stuff in the basement we can use now and how much is for other days of the week that the foodbank is open.

I've been leaning toward making the food last, but one patron yesterday called me "hard" and Dennis said to me that he believed we should be generous with the folks at the front of the line because they waited a long time and ought to be rewarded for that. So I'm thinking about that. It's a complicated issue, I haven't really gone into all the details, suffice to say I might try the "generous" route next time.

One guy came in and told us that he had just gotten out of jail that day, so I did load him up with food, even stuff we were reserving for families with kids. And Robert went down in the basement and dug up some special treats for him. I like that, kind of celebrating his big day.

I mentioned to Daphne, our shift team leader, that I hadn't gotten around to buying groceries yet so she insisted that I take some foodbank food. We had some stuff donated by Costco, large trays of some kind of pasta dinner, french fries, and fruit salad. But we couldn't distribute it because we didn't have containers to serve it in. I was trying to figure out how to take some of the Costco stuff since it was probably going to go to waste anyway. Dennis came up with the idea of using one plastic bag as a kind of glove/serving spoon, and another plastic bag to scoop the pasta into. So I did that for the pasta and the french fries, and Dennis did too (to take a break from cooking). Daphne found some chocolate pudding tubs for me, and I took a loaf of German rye bread (not even expired yet!!!) that was left over at the end of the shift.

It's not great food but it beats shopping and cooking when you're tired. And it makes me feel like "one of the guys" to be eating from the foodbank too. Don't make a regular thing of it because I don't want to take food that other folks need way more than I do, but don't want to be stand-offish about it either.

Changes in Phelan and Dobby

Since returning home I'm noticing a couple of amusing things here.

One is Phelan, my youngest grandson. He is at that stage (he's two) of rapidly learning to talk. And in the ten days I've been away I can hear how much his vocabulary and grasp of communication has improved. Quite impressive.

Before I left he was repeating everything you said, now he is making up with his own sentences independently.

Today he is experimenting with changing my name, from Granne to Grannie. This is a change I don't particularly want to encourage, I like Granne just fine. But he is being quite deliberate about it, as if he made a decision to improve upon my name by the addition of another syllable.

The other is Dobbie, the boxer pup. He's noticeably bigger and starting to look more doggish and less puppyish. He is also visiting me more often, now that Bunny is gone.

Before I left for Belize but after Bunny left, he would come to the foot of my stairs and wait to be called up, but now he comes up on his own. Usually for short visits, he is not inclined to stay up here even when there is no one downstairs.

Downstairs is his home and he appears to know that.

But when he comes up for an extended visit, he immediately moves into "my" spot on the couch.

Hmmm.

Going to have to educate him on that.

That's My spot, not Yours.





The other thing he does is try to climb into my lap and lick my face when I am sitting at my computer.

Like, pay attention to Me, not that silly box.

Home again home again jiggedy-jig

I'm home. Got in around 1.30 this morning, after one of those misbegotten missed-flight-out-of-Houston scenarios. Wonderful time in Belize though.

Thought I had a doctor's appointment at 9.30 am today so I did not sleep in, and it turns out the appointment was really for 12.30 pm. So spent the day mostly unpacking in a daze.

Anyway, more later. Maybe even pictures if I ever get them downloaded (uploaded?) from the camera.

Belize trip: day 9

This is my last day in paradise. Our flight out of Belize is at 11am, we have to fly out of Caye Caulker at 8.30 to make it. No problem with 8.30am, I've been getting up at 5 or 6am ever since I arrived here. This time we have breakfast at the Happy Lobster, where the service is a little more timely. We sit by a window and fool around with my camera, taking close-up pictures of each others' eyes and mouths.

We return to Popeye's, pack up and catch a golf cart taxi out to the airport, right next to the swamp we were walking in yesterday.




It's a six-seater Tropic Air flight over the coral lagoons and mangrove islands between Caye Caulker and Belize City.

As it turns out our flight to Houston is delayed due to bad weather in Houston, so we have an extra hour to hang around the airport. Sigh. As a result, I end up missing my flight from Houston to Toronto, but fortunately Continental Airlines already has me booked on the next flight to Toronto even before I arrive in Houston.

I was dreading Customs at the Houston airport because the last time I did a trip to Belize the line-up for Customs was very long and agonizingly slow. I did make my connecting flight but I had to run for it. This time however, there was no line-up and I was through Customs in no time at all. But I did miss my flight nevertheless.

I spend a little time in the huge Houston airport with Sam before he catches his flight to Seattle, where he will meet a friend in Sam's truck to take him home to D'Arcy. I call Isaac and Gretel to let them know I will be late. My flight to Toronto is delayed, waiting for a connecting flight full of passengers for this flight. I arrive in Toronto after midnight, but Isaac is waiting for me and that is the end of my wonderful trip to Belize.

The last time I went to Belize was in 2006, I spent almost the entire trip on Lighthouse Reef at a base camp from which we went out every day to kayak and snorkel in different locations. One day we went to the famous Blue Hole, a popular scuba diving site that can be seen from orbiting satellites. I learned a lot from our guides about the natural history of the coral reefs of Belize, the fish, the corals, the many different kinds of creatures living there. We lived in plastic coated canvas tents the size of small cabanas, that were waterproof but very hot when the window coverings were closed. Also our cooks were marvellous, we ate unlimited amounts of great Belizean food, washed down with good Belikin beer. By the end of the trip though we were craving fresh water to wash in, and much appreciated our last night in a hotel to wash up and luxuriate in real beds with fresh clean sheets.

On this trip, I spent more time on mainland Belize learning about the culture and history of the country, and for the kayak and snorkelling part of the trip we were moving around to different coral islands (cayes) and staying in lodges that were, with one exception, luxurious in comparison to the Lighthouse Reef accommodations. The food was very good but not in the unlimited quantities that I experienced at Lighthouse Reef. I felt I was battling hunger for much of the trip. I didn't feel I learned quite as much about the natural history of Belize, except for the time spent at the Tropical Education Centre and the Smithsonian Institute. But that was offset by all that I learned about the history and culture of the country, and the different kayaking and snorkelling experiences.

Seeing the Mayan sacred cave was a very unique and interesting experience. Sam had to choose whether he would send me to see Mayan ruins or the cave because of the limited time I had, and in the end chose the cave because of its uniqueness. It was also interesting travelling on the public buses between Dangriga, San Ignacio and Belize City. After my trip to the cave I bought a little book of Mayan history that gave a little background to what I had seen. There are so many Mayan ruins in Belize that they actually outnumber buildings currently in use. They estimate that at the height of Mayan civilization, there were around a million people living in this country, now there is only about a quarter of a million people. So Belize was once a thriving urban centre, the landscape must have been far different from what it is today.

The peak of Mayan civilization happened several hundred years before Europeans arrived in the Americas. By the time they did, Mayan civilization had pretty much "disappeared". Not that the Mayans themselves disappeared, but many of the urban centres had been largely abandoned to jungle. The long drought of the Post-Classic period was a significant blow to that culture.

Belize itself was formed after a treaty signed between Spain and England ending the long war between them in the 1500s? 1600s? Sorry, I'm a bit weak on dates. England had employed buccaneers to harass the Spanish in the Caribbean and needed to find some new form of employment for them, they negotiated this tract of land to give to the buccaneers in hopes they would find legitimate ways of making a living. Then called British Honduras, it was a kind of retraining program. The pirates who took the government up on the offer did indeed find a lucrative living there, cutting and exporting timber from the jungle. British Honduras remained a British colony right up until the 1980s, primarily because Guatemala disputed the legitimacy of this old treaty. But eventually the right of this small country to exist independently was recognized and they took the new name of Belize to celebrate their nationhood. There are several theories about the origin of the name, but it is an old and traditional alternative to British Honduras.

Both my trips to Belize have been wonderful, and I do hope to have the opportunity to return.

Mayans still form a significant part of today's Belizean population, and of course many have intermarried with other ethnic groups to form the Mestizo population of the country. Many Mayans and Mestizo from neighbouring Guatemala are moving into Belize as well. Being close to the border, you see the difference in crafts, building styles and culture between traditional coastal Belizean and inland Mayan and Latin American culture. You don't see as many of the houses on stilts inland, but you do see a lot of Mayan textile crafts. Souvenirs are different, San Ignacio has a lot of Mayan masks and woven fabric, Dangriga and Belize City have a lot of wooden crafts made from local hardwoods. Caye Caulker has a little of everything, being much more of a tourist site.

Back to trip summary
Back to day 8

Belize trip: day 8

Today I leave San Ignacio to go to Caye Caulker to meet Sam. I have an early breakfast of coffee and toast at Cafe Cayo and then go to the bus depot to catch a bus to Belize City. The bus travels back to Belmopan where more people are picked up and then on to Belize City. At Belize City I catch a taxi to the water taxi wharf and get a ticket to Caye Caulker. The water taxi holds some twenty odd people going to Caye Caulker and San Pedro. After just over half an hour we arrive at Caye Caulker. Sam is staying at Popeye's which is right by the wharf, in fact I see it from the water taxi before we pull into the wharf so I know exactly where I am going.

Sam was watching TV when I arrived. He had a very nice room with air conditioning and TV, and he had all the blinds drawn. He arranged for me to get the room next door, for free. It's large and airy, with a nice view and a big shower, but no TV. Not that I want to watch TV.

We walked around a bit looking for a place to have breakfast (for Sam) or lunch (for me), the place Sam liked was closed so we ended up going to the Bamboo Grill. This restaurant is facing the ocean on the leeward side of the Caye, it has no floor except the sand of the beach, and in part of the restaurant the seats are actually swings suspended from the roof. Service was really really slow. To entertain ourselves we watched the dogs wandering around and hanging out under some of the tables.

Before lunch we had gone to a bank for Sam to withdraw some money from a bank machine. There was a dog sleeping on the steps of the bank. A man pulled up in a golf cart and started petting and talking to the dog. It was not his dog but he knew the dog. He said that all the dogs around have owners but people let their dogs run free and they certainly do. The dogs that were in the restaurant were hanging out there in hopes of being fed scraps, but they did not beg and weren't particularly obnoxious.

It was amazing to see dogs everywhere, uncontrolled and unobtrusive. I don't remember seeing dog poop either.

In San Ignacio I had seen a lot of dogs as well, but they were in bad shape. Many were mangy and many of the females were obviously nursing puppies somewhere. But they also were not obnoxious. They seemed gentle and polite, just not very healthy. Most of those dogs had no owners, hence the mange and the many nursing mothers. But on Caye Caulker the dogs appeared healthy and I saw no nursing mothers.

Sam returned to his room after lunch and I wandered the streets of the Caye for a bit. They are all sandy, and the main mode of transportation was either a golf cart or a bike. Lots of taxi golf carts. May is past the main tourist season which is a good part of the reason why my room at Popeye's was free.

On the windward side of the Caye is where most of the residents live, also where the fishing boats are moored. They supply all the restaurants with fresh fish and conch. There are piles of fish traps which look like crab or lobster traps in the Maritimes of Canada.

I returned to Popeye's and dragged Sam out for another walk, this time through the mangrove swamp at the north end of the Caye. There is a trail, and we pass by several large homes, some occupied, some for sale, most likely to North Americans. Sam was not in a particularly good mood and we ended up talking about what was bugging him. Eventually we reached a point where the trail became mostly mud and water which we waded through to get back to "civilization". By that time we had pretty much hashed out Sam's irritations and life goals. Hopefully a productive talk in a rather appropriate environment, a swamp.

The houses we saw on our walk in the swamp were large, with the main floor on the second storey. The lower level was usually concrete and overhung by the main floor. So the owners or residents could see the ocean over the mangroves, and catch the breezes on hot days. Technically they all had ocean frontage, but most of it covered by mangroves.

Sam booked us a flight from Caye Caulker to Belize Airport first thing next morning. For dinner we went back to the Bamboo Grill and once again the service was painfully slow. We almost left without eating.

And that was our day in a tourist paradise! I have to say it was somewhat boring, I am not particularly a tropical beach and bar kind of person, give me a kayak or a cave any day!

Back to trip summary
Back to day 7
On to day 9...

Belize trip: day 7

I was up early to get ready for the Mayan sacred cave tour. I had eggs, beans and fry jack at Hanna's and got packed for the trip to the cave. I met the five other women going on this tour in front of the Pacz Tours office, two Americans from Colorado and three women from Sweden. The van that we were supposed to go in wouldn't start so we waited for Pacz to find another van for us. the half hour delay proved to make a big difference.

It took almost an hour to drive to the head of the trail to the cave. Our guide Ben sat in the back with me so I got to ask him a few questions. I asked him about the different ethnic groups in Belize, what exactly was the difference between Kriole and Mestizo. He said Mestizo were handsome, like himself (Mestizo are Mayan and Spanish, Kriole are African and European, usually English). I saw a clearcut and asked Ben if they did tree planting here. Ben said that people who cut trees don't like to plant them, just as people who plant trees don't like to cut them. So no, they did not do tree planting here. At the trail head we parked and Ben handed out helmets and lunches and directed us to an outhouse before the half hour hike into the cave.

The cave is called Actun Tinichill Maktun and the tour is referred to as the ATM tour. We walked along a path through the jungle, fording several streams along the way. Ben pointed out some buttressed fig trees, which are some of the oldest trees in Belize. He said the oldest trees in Belize are around 500 years old. The soil is very thin, hardly any humus and very shallow roots, so trees are easily damaged or toppled by storms and hurricanes in the rainy season.

Eventually we arrived at a picnic spot full of people. It was Saturday, a day when schools often send students on this tour, so it was a busy day at the cave. Our half hour delay meant we were right in the thick of it now. There wasn't even room for us to sit down to eat our lunches. But some of the schoolkids moved out to give us space.

After eating lunch we donned lamps for our helmets and Ben took all our cameras and valuables to go in a drysack that he would carry for the first part of the trip into the cave. The mouth of the cave has a small river coming out of it, the only way into the cave is to swim. By Belizean standards the river water is very cold, for us it was about the temperature of a Canadian lake in the summer. We would be swimming and wading half a kilometer into the cave before we climbed up higher out of the water. Then Ben would give us our cameras. Ben was concerned about the time so he wanted us to go quickly, even passing some of the school groups ahead of us. We had to be careful about what we touched, some of the rock formations were very delicate and should not be touched.

Actun Tinichill Maktun was used by the Maya as a sacred cave in what is known as the Post-Classic period (around 1000 AD?), when Mayan civilization was going into decline. In those days there was drought and this cave was dedicated to the rain god; sacrifices were made here to the rain god to bring back the rain they needed. Before the drought the river at the mouth of the cave would have been too high to get into the cave at all, but during the drought they could and did get in. After the Mayan collapse the rain came back and for many centuries the cave was once again inaccessible, so the artifacts inside were untouched until relatively recently.

We emerged from the water into a huge cathedral-like cavern. Dotted through the cavern were the remains of large pottery urns that would have held sacrificial materials. But there were bones as well, human sacrifices to the rain god, even children. The last part of the tour in the cave we had to take our shoes off and proceed in our socks to avoid doing damage.

Artifacts were scattered on the floor of the cave, with bits of reflective tape marking them so you didn't step on them. In some places tourists had already broken artifacts and remains by stepping on them.

I asked Ben how long Mayan civilization lasted and he saluted me: "We're still here." Good point.

Pots were for the most part plain, undecorated except for a spider monkey on one pot. The pots stood right side up, sideways and upside down representing heaven, earth and the underworld, and smashed to release the spirit power of the sacrifice.

Some of the stalactite formations were like pipe organs; when you hit them they gave off different tones. ceremonies in this cave were probably accompanied by flute music and drumming.

Rock formations in the cave were black manganese rock (hard and rounded edges), white dolomite (chalky), and calcite crystalline stalactites and pillars.




At the end of the cavern we ascended a ladder into a smaller chamber containing the bones of a child and the Crystal Maiden, a female skeleton spread-eagle on the floor.

On the way back we retrieved our shoes and then had to descend a steep cliff. It seemed much harder to descend than to ascend, you didn't want to look down too much. Ben showed me where to put my hands and feet with each step, and then directed me to show the next person, and so on. We each directed the person behind us how to come down the cliff. We swam and waded back to the cave entrance and hiked out to our van. We arrived back in San Ignacio just around 5pm. The American women were staying at a lodge outside of town but the Swedish women were at a hotel just down the street from me so they invited me to have dinner with them at Cafe Cayo, across from Hanna's.

I very much enjoyed dinner with the Swedes. Another American couple from New York joined us and we compared notes about our ATM tours. They had gone on Friday and had a better tour in the sense that it was much less crowded and their guide took more time to explain things to them.

They learned that the archaeologists studying this cave allowed these tourist visits because they needed the money to continue their research, but they ran the risk of doing damage to the caves. Apparently they have secured a substantial grant to do their research so it is likely that the tours will be stopped because they won't need the money any more.

Certainly you'd never see such a tour in the US or Canada, where artifacts are left on the ground in the open and anyone can walk through, touch them, even break them. And, parts of the cave are somewhat dangerous, there are no guard rails or security measures, we North Americans would never allow such tours due to liability issues.

Back to trip summary
Back to day 6
On to day 8...

Belize trip: day 6

We packed up all our stuff and had a buffet breakfast of eggs, bacon, beans, fry jacks, fruit, yogurt and coffee. After a quick round of group photo taking we got into the little motor boat that would take us all back to Dangriga. It was maybe a half hour trip. We pulled up right on the beach in front of the Island Expeditions office.

All our dry bags were unloaded onto a big tarp and we quickly transferred our stuff from the dry bags to our own backpacks and suitcases. Everyone except me was catching a flight to Belize City, so after trips to the washroom and hugs and goodbyes they got into the van and headed off to the airstrip.

Sam had arranged for me to go to San Ignacio to see a Mayan sacred cave, while he went off for the weekend to Caye Caulker. I would be taking a bus to Belmopan, the capital city of Belize, and then catching another bus to San Ignacio. Sam would be flying to Belize City and then taking a water taxi out to Caye Caulker. I would be joining him there in a couple of days and then we would return to Belize City together to catch a flight home.

Sam drove me to the bus depot in the Island Expeditions van where we thought we might have lunch, but as it turned out the bus was about to leave so I got my ticket and boarded the bus.

The bus was an old school bus but it had a video screen at the front and for the entire trip played music videos, mostly Spanish American, although there was one reggae tune at the beginning. I had a bench seat to myself and could watch the scenery go by on the Hummingbird Highway. There was one man driving and another who was the conductor, he collected money from the passengers. I was the only white person on the bus which made me feel a bit strange.

At one point we had to take a detour from the highway. The bus went off the paved road onto a very rough dirt road into the bush. It drove very slowly along this road until we came to a river, and then we drove right through the river to the other side, getting back onto the highway very shortly after that.

In Belmopan everyone got off the bus. The depot was chaotic, with young boys and women running around selling food and drinks to people already on the buses there. They walked around the buses, calling out and waving what they were selling, and people on the buses would reach through the windows for what they wanted. A beggar woman on crutches at the doorway of the depot kept coming after me for money, lifting her skirt and pointing to her knee to indicate her crippling disability.

There were some Mennonites waiting for a bus at the depot. They all wore heavy cotton clothes in blue or green, the men had beards and big straw hats, the women had long skirts and kerchiefs on their heads.

I thought I was waiting for a bus that had "San Ignacio" on the front but that turned out not to be true. A bus came in and many people, including all of the Mennonites crowded onto it. I stood by, taking pictures, and then finally asked someone when the bus to San Ignacio was coming. He pointed at that bus. I quickly put my camera away and ran over with my backpack. A man took my pack and indicated that I should get on the bus.

There were no seats left and the aisle was full, but still people crowded on. Seats that normally held one or two people now held two or three. The aisle was so packed that you didn't really need to hold on, the tightly packed bodies would hold you up. And of course you couldn't see out the windows at all. No music videos here! But I was glad I got on at all.

The conductor had a sidekick, the two men wended their way through the packed bus to collect ticket money. A very large woman was standing near me, it was quite the feat for the two men to get by her. There was no place for her to get out of their way, the seats were so packed that she couldn't even have sat in anyone's lap! But somehow it was done and the conductor collected his ticket money.

Eventually enough people got off that I could sit down. There were three young Mennonite women sitting near me, they seemed like teenage girls anywhere, chewing gum and whisper-chatting the way young girls do. The Mennonites got off in different places, they usually had a horse-drawn wagon or buggy tied up near the bus stop to continue their journey back into the jungle to their farms.

I got off the bus at San Ignacio, it would continue on to the Guatemalan border. Sam told me to look for Pacz Tours, they were taking care of my accommodation as well as the Mayan sacred cave tour. I got directions to the street Pacz Tours was on, then asked again where their office was but couldn't find it.

Eventually I stopped a woman on the street and asked if she knew where it was and she said she was walking that way and would take me to it. I had walked right by it and just not seen the sign. I am so grateful that English is the official language here! And that folks are friendly and helpful.

Pacz Tours had a tiny office on a narrow street, but it backed onto the courtyard of Pacz Hotel. I was shown through the courtyard to a small cabin with a porch.

The cabin was plain, but it had its own bathroom, windows all round, a TV and a large fan. Good enough! It was late afternoon, so after unpacking and showering I went out to wander around and buy some groceries for dinner. I also bought a few souvenirs to bring home.

I got various bits of advice, that I should eat at Hanna's and I should look for Amigos bus company to get a cheaper trip to the water taxis in Belize City. I did both, the dinner at Hanna's was fine (rice and beans and chicken!) but Amigos was closed. I decided to stick with what I knew, the bus depot. The TV didn't work so I read and went to bed early.

Back to trip summary
Back to day 5
On to day 7...

Belize trip: day 5

Today we are up early to pack to leave Water Caye. Breakfast is eggs and fried beans with fry jack, a delicious deep-fried bread. Our trip today includes kayak sailing and snorkelling in a mangrove swamp. I am not really looking forward to snorkelling in a swamp!

Before leaving, Omar gave us a talk on mangroves. There are four kinds, red, white, black and buttonwood.

The red mangrove is the one that grows on the shore, it is characterized by its prop roots giving it a tangled appearance at the base.

The buttonwood has the largest trunk and is cut for lumber. The white and the black are smaller trees with white and black wood respectively. Only the red mangrove grows directly in the water, the others are a little further back from the shoreline. All of them but the red mangrove in particular are able to shed salt through their leaves.

We had a good wind, the kayak sailing worked well. Essentially, we just sat back and sailed to a mangrove island. Sam did the sailing. I let him do the sailing because he has never sailed before and I have.

Sailing a kayak is different from sailing a sailboat, there is no keel so you cannot sail close to the wind and you have to compensate for drift, the wind pushes the kayak as well as the sail. But still a most enjoyable experience!

We sailed into a channel in the mangrove island to a spot where Omar anchored and we tied up to his kayak. We got into our snorkelling gear and out of our kayaks into the waist-deep water. Sam lost his mask! At first I thought he was joking, but no, he really had dropped it and lost it. So we all started looking for it. A tough job in all the eel grass and muddy water, we searched and searched and could not find it. Omar then jumps into the water and picks it up off the bottom immediately. I dunno, eyes of a condor I guess.

We swam to the edge of the swamp and essentially drifted along at the edge, examining the roots of the mangroves. Underwater they are covered in sponges of many different varieties, no bare roots at all. Small worms and fishes. On the bottom, upside-down jellyfishes. They look like the underside of jellyfishes, as if their backsides are permanently attached to the muddy bottom. Very odd. Once we saw them they were everywhere, I could hardly believe we had been walking over them only a few minutes before. I don't think any of us put our feet down on the bottom again after seeing them. It was an eerie world in the mangrove roots but we didn't see anything particularly spectacular there.

We returned to our kayaks and again sailed on, out of the island swamp and into the open sea. Omar had the only single-seat kayak which was not outfitted with a sail, but he of course had no trouble staying ahead of us. At a certain point in the middle of the ocean, he stopped and got out of his kayak, appearing from a distance to be walking on the water! It was a sandbar, only inches below the surface. Here we all stopped and Omar got out burritos for lunch. As we all stood ankle-deep in the water we ate delicious burritos. He pulled out some apples too, but they were soft and tasteless, none of us ate them. Some things, the tropics are just not good for!

After lunch we snorkelled again, our last snorkel of the trip. We saw many fish, including skates and french angelfish (--->).

We saw one amazing sting ray, about three feet in diameter with a tail over six feet long. It was lying on the bottom and at first was hardly visible, being the same colour as the sand. We watched as it appeared to be digging a hole beneath itself by simply flapping its "wings". In short order there was a hole about a foot deep under the ray. I have seen these mysterious holes in the sand bottom before, now I know how they are made!

We took down our sails and continued on by paddle, as we now had to change direction into the wind. We were headed back to our starting point, Cocoa Plum Caye. Omar, Matt and Daisy were in the lead while Josh, Carol, Sam and myself dawdled behind. We were talking back and forth between kayaks when suddenly Josh and Carol's rudder just fell off into the ocean. Unfortunately Carol did not have the paddling skills to steer without a rudder. They careened wildly, paddling in great zigzags as Carol attempted to compensate for the lack of a rudder. Omar, Matt and Daisy continued on obliviously, while Sam and I watched helplessly.

We decided to paddle back to see if we could find the rudder in the relatively shallow water, in hopes that we could re-attach it and they could steer again. Amazingly, we did find it and were able to retrieve it, but clearly the metal had snapped and it was not re-attachable. In the meantime the others finally noticed that we were not with them, so Omar paddled back to see what had happened. Sam and I continued on to meet Daisy and Matt while Omar led Josh and Carol. Daisy and Matt were waiting under a wharf out of the sun, so we paddled in beside them and waited too, like a pair of moray eels watching for prey to swim by.

The final leg of the trip was through a fairly heavy sea and high wind, so Omar switched places with Carol, giving her the single-seat kayak with a rudder and Omar taking over steering the rudderless kayak. Needless to say this was no problem for him! Josh and Omar just took off like bats out of hell, they were at Cocoa Plum a good ten minutes before the rest of us.

Much later at the bar, we commented on Omar's paddling strength, but Omar said it had nothing to do with him, Josh had had enough of paddling troubles and was totally focused on getting back to land. Omar steered, Josh paddled like a driven man with a single dream: solid land under foot! Well, as solid as sand might be.

We were met at the beach by the manager of the Thatch Lodge, a yet more luxurious lodge than the previous one. We settled quickly into marvelous thatched cabanas on stilts over the water, each with its own deck, two hammocks, and a delightful shower. On the door a mysterious sign asking us to ensure that the inner door is firmly closed otherwise Rocky will get in. We each wondered who Rocky was and what he might do if he got in. Our host informed us that Rocky was the resident raccoon, formerly allowed the run of the island but after too many forays into guest cabins was this year confined to a cage.

Thatch Lodge is a work in progress, marvelous cabanas and casitas, a great bar and dining room, and a jungle complete with wild animals, coati mundis and agoutis, rabbits and of course the formerly-free Rocky.


After showers and unpacking, we convened at the bar for pina coladas and chat. Later in the evening a great dinner of chicken and rice and salad and wine. There was also a party of Guatemalans who arrived by motorboat staying in the air-conditioned casitas. An internet connection allowed those of us who wanted to catch up on email, but I didn't. Why go back to the "real world" any sooner than I have to?

After dinner we would have stayed on in the bar but all the good seats were taken by the Guatemalans, so we retired to Matt and Daisy's deck for more chat under the stars on our last night. We have had such a good time and gotten so close, we all regretted that our time was up.

Tomorrow morning a boat will pick us up to take us back to Dangriga, the end of the trip. Carol and Sam and I will stay on for a couple of extra days, Matt and Daisy will fly home to Atlanta very shortly after arriving in Dangriga.

Back to trip summary
Back to Day 4
On to Day 6...