abelina the chocolate queen

we just got back from a trip to punta gorda, down in the toledo district, further south than where we are in placencia. i have always wanted to go down there as it's all rural mayan villages and more traditional and less touristy etc. we took a little ice chest with us, mainly so we could take the chocolate brownie supply without it melting. one of the 3 brownies got some water in it when the ice melted, but the other 3 were fine, you'll be pleased to hear.

we passed through lots of villages with thatched roofs, and washing hanging out, and little children hanging out, standing looking at us or just standing around, pigs wandering around, and chickens with skinny legs. we quickly noticed that toledo is the district with the most well mowed lawns in belize. they are not mowed actually, they are chopped with machetes, you wouldn't believe how short they get that grass it's amazing. we had a few discussions about where to go and what to do, we had a moon guidebook and 2 maps, like proper tourists, even though we do in fact live here. we stopped for lunch (i have re-become vegetarian so i just ate the rice beans fried plantain and beans - no stewed chicken for me anymore: i will still eat fish as it doesn't have arms and legs, that's the rules). we bought a few little baskets, these baskets are made from a palm called jipijapa, they boil the leaves, dry them out, and then weave them into baskets/place mats/tortoises etc. i have become obsessed with these baskets and can't stop buying them. i figure that's fine as it's all supporting the local mayan families that make them, and there is a lot of skill involved.

the southern highway that you take down through toledo is a really nice newly paved road, built with help from the kuwait arab economic fund, weirdly enough. i wonder about these strange alliances you seem to find here in belize. i hear rumours that the road is supposed to carry on and go to guatemala, thus making a 2nd road border crossing - the only one currently is up in cayo in the north west. this would be pretty cool, but would potentially hugely affect the largely untouched beauty and ruralism of the toledo district, and perhaps not be a good thing in that respect. we shall see - i hugely doubt it will happen anytime soon, with this being belize and all that.

after a few wrong turnings and bad signpost experiences and finding the first place we tried to stay at was closed, we found tranquility lodge. this appeared closed too, so we sulked a bit then wandered around and found a swimming hole. the water was murky so it took me about 15 minutes to actually get all the way in after checking all around for monsters. as we had been standing there reviewing the situation there was a big rustling across the other bank of the river and an iguana going about 40mph flew out of the jungle and did a spectacular dive into the river. see robert, THAT is why i don't want to get in there, all sorts of things could be swimming around or about to attack us from above. you have to consider what that iguana was running so fast away from - there could be a jaguar right behind it. there wasn't, but you do have to be constantly on guard, there can be danger all around you if you just look for it you know. anyway, it was pretty nice to swim although a few fish nibbled my legs and some suspicious looking twigs floated past.

we discovered tranquility lodge was in fact open, the owners were sleeping. they awoke and came to find us at the river. turns out that i thought i had found 2 pretty unusual names recently - kitty fox and candy powers, as mentioned on last blog. the owners of this place are called the nales. what else would you name your son if you were mr and mrs nale, other than rusty. yes it was rusty nale. and his wife sheila, which isn't funny. they were very lovely people, and full of information of how to run a resort as they had used to run a hotel in san pedro. they do some work with the villagers there and had a good gift shop supply of jipijapa baskets, which i was pretty excited about.

that night we went to punta gorda for dinner. it is known in belize as pg. you will remember i had found a large tanker in big creek called lucy pg, well i guess it was from punta gorda. we ate some fish and rice and looked at the sea, and also at guatemala and honduras over the other side of the sea. we talked to teresa our waitress, who has 9 brothers and sisters. this is quite common here to have huge families like that. i guess it's a safer bet that they'll all be able to help look after the parents if there's more of them. pg is a cool little seaside fisherman town, like placencia but a lot less touristy and americanised and developed. we liked what we saw of it. friendly people.

on arrival back at tranquility lodge we encountered a local man brandishing a machete on our little road, which was a bit unnerving to see in the dark, he was just standing there... sheila and rusty had gone out so the caretaker was there at the lodge - he had his crazy guatemalan marimba music on at such full blast that robert had to scream at him to get him to turn it down. suddenly tranquility lodge felt a little bit horror film esque. this wasn't helped by a huge thunder and lightning storm which lasted most of the night, complete with rain coming in through the thatch and dripping on our heads. all was fine in the morning, and it was a really nice place to stay apart from that strange little interlude. we got some good ideas for our resort and some good info from sheila and rusty. i love the whole thatched roof rustic cabin style, but unfortunately that isn't going to be the look of the cabins on the island. i hope to one day live in a thatched cabin, but don't think it'd work so well in england where you need central heating and insulation etc.

after breakfast we bought some more baskets, and then went to lubantuum, a local maya ruin site. it means 'place of the fallen stone'. you have to drive to san pedro, a mayan village off the main road, through some dirty pot holed roads. lubantuum was first discovered/excavated in the late 1800s, by a man called william gann, who brought his dynamite and blew the top of the temple, presumably to see what was inside. i'm pretty sure whatever was inside got blown up too. he wasn't what you'd call an actual archeologist, and people must have got pretty cross with him about that dynamite incident. we climbed on the rubbly piles of stones, commenting on how wobbly they are, and how surprising there were no signs saying don't climb on the ruins. when we got down we saw a sign saying don't climb on the ruins. oops. nobody saw us though. we spoke to the ticket man on the way out, who was full of information about the site. we bought some clay whistles he'd made, based on original clay whistles from that area. he played one for us, he was pretty good. he told us about a crystal skull they'd found there, which was quite a mystery as to what it was and why it was there. there is one in guatemala too apparently. the lady who found it there was the daughter of the next archeologist who worked there, and perhaps they planted it there for her to find as it was her 16th birthday. she is dead now, but it has been passed on to her son i believe.

after all this we went to machaca hill lodge down the road, which is a swanky resort by a river, in the jungle. it has a pool and a nice restaurant, and they brought some garifuna drummers up for the evening which was very impressive. the main drummer guy was doing workshops for kids over the summer and there were 2 young kids with him who had only been learning for 2 months and were amazing. then we ate dinner and then went to sleep, to be woken up by a whole load of howler monkeys outside in the jungle. robert told tim the noise was jaguars fighting, and tim believed him as he has never heard howler monkeys before. i told robert he was pretty mean to do this, but he said that when he first got to belize that's what some people had told him that noise was so it was fine to tell tim too. it was quite funny but then we had to tell tim they weren't jaguars, i think he was a bit disappointed.

so this morning we did a little tour from machaca lodge. it was to a maya ruin called nim li punnit, which is up the road from lubantuum, and is pretty cool too. it was discovered in 1976 when they were doing some oil exploration in the area. it means big hat, as the king of that site, as depicted on the carvings there, has a big hat on all the time. there were some really well preserved stelae (carved stones) there, with lots of still undeciphered mayan glyphs. i guess maybe they'll never decipher them, which is pretty crazy. we saw some leaf cutter ants, and an avocado tree, a guava tree, and a tree that grows a red fruit known locally as knife and fork.

after this we went to see how they make chocolate in a local village called san felipe. first we had to shell the cocoa beans, that abelina had previously roasted in the oven. then you winnow the shelled beans away from the bits of shell remaining, by throwing them in a bowl in a special way so the bits of shell fall on the floor. when we tried it the beans fell on the floor too. then you grind the beans on a metate, which is a volcanic rock stone. abelina said her metate had been in the family for over 100 years. you have to grind them 6 times to get them very fine, we just did it 3 times as it takes a while. then you have ground up cocoa paste, which you can dry out through cheese cloth to make cocoa butter, and cocoa powder. we bought some chocolate wine (around 8%, very sweet, like pudding wine) and i got a recipe for chocolate brownies to make with our chocolate paste. this was all really interesting. we will buy her chocolate to sell on our island.

after all that we went back for lunch at machaca then a swim then had to leave to come back home and get back on with all the work we have to do for the resort. it was very interesting to see a whole new part of belize, and especially to see it as a tourist with a guide, it made a nice change to do something like that with a guide rather than to just drive around and discover things for yourself, and it was all good research to see how different resorts work and run and what activities they offer and prices and food etc. there is a lot to think about now, and we really have to get on with it. we have to do a business plan, and think about hiring staff and furnishing the place and what prices to offer and what activities and how to advertise and market it. eeek all a bit serious and responsible, but hopefully fun.

anyway, aside from all that excitement, when we got back to placencia tonight we bumped into a really cool couple we had bumped into on our way out of town on saturday morning. they are cycling from san diego to santiago, and writing a blog about it (www.ericandmerilee.blogspot.com). they are brother and sister - me and tim thought they were, but robert said they had to be a couple. wow they must be really good friends as well as brother and sister to do that journey together, i think if i did that with my brother we would last about 2 days before we'd fall out, even though we like each other. they are going to pg next, then on the boat to guatemala and further south. i was jealous, as usual, as that is what i really want to do. one day it will happen, you can't always do what you want the whole time i guess, and at least for now i can save up some money with this job to buy a really good touring bike....

i got totally bitten by mosquitoes in toledo and have been itching constantly for the last 2 days. going to do my hurricane check now before bed. pictures to come of all our adventures the last few days. bye for now xx