national perspective

just to add a bit of contextualisation i have put a map of belize above. at the very moment of writing, i am in belize city which used to be the capital. the capital is now belmopan, a boring town full of government offices full of unsmiling government officials ready to stamp government forms with rubber stamps. belmopan is higher up and further inland than belize city and thus more hurricane resistant. today it rained for an hour in belize city and the streets were totally flooded, little children waded around in murky dirty water, sewers were spewing up through the depths, it was pretty unhealthy, but nobody really minded it seemed. it's just part of life here, these things happen and they just sit around and deal with it. they don't bother making the sewerage or drainage any better, through lack of money or lack of initiative who knows.  there is currently quite a lot of dengue fever around, it is caused by stagnant water producing a bacteria which mosquitoes then pick up and transmit. we have been covering ourselves in deet to keep the mozzies away. the symptoms you get come out worse at night, the same time the mozzies come out. weird huh.

you will also see placencia further south, which is where we mainly live. it is a long peninsula, quite vulnerable really. if a tsunami came along we could start running to the other side of town but there is a lagoon there so it wouldn't help much. i would probably just run to the amazing ice cream shop, run by an italian couple, on the main street.

north of placencia is dangriga, which is one of the first places the garifuna people settled. they came over originally from africa as slaves to work in venezuela and colombia on the sugar plantations. then they revolted and ran away to san vicente, an island in the lesser antilles (what are antilles does anyone know?), where they were then chased off, and they eventually came up the coast of central america to belize and honduras and the mosquito coast of nicaragua. we bought a nice table in dangriga, and lots of lumber to build a new stairway in placencia with, and also some pirated dvds - one was the michael jackson this is it film, but with russian subtitles, and filmed a bit wonkily in the cinema. also in dangriga they have a garifuna settlement day in november where they do some really cool drumming and dancing.

south of placencia is a place called monkey river which we tried to get to on a boat the other day but the waves got all wavy and we had to abandon the trip. this was the one where i thought it would have been nice if jesus had appeared and calmed the waves, but no such luck. robert said if it had got worse we would have put our life jackets on. tim said we'd just swim to the nearest desert island for the night. i said humph i really don't like this boat ride. i'm not sure why monkey river appears on this map, as i don't think there's much there, other than a man who has an engine for sale. big creek, which is marked next to it, is also nothing other than a port really. there are 4 places round there - big creek, monkey river, mango creek, and independence, and they are all basically the same place. if someone says big creek and you don't know where they mean, they just say well it's the same as monkey river, which is the same as mango creek or independence. oh, you say, i'm truly enlightened now.

to the left (also known as west) you will see san ignacio where we spent the last weekend. this is where we lived last year, it's a few miles from guatemala as you can see. it is in the district of cayo. i like cayo a lot, it is very pretty and has good little hills for cycling, and an amazing cake shop. it is also inland far enough for hurricanes not to be a real threat, and it is our hurricane escape plan destination. there is a ruin there called xunantunich, me and tim rode horses to it yesterday. my horse was called jack, and went pretty slowly and a bit sideways. he liked stopping to eat grass. tim's horse was dutch, that was his name not his nationality, he went fast, and one of his stirrups broke near the end of the ride, so then he went slow again in case tim fell off. he wanted to go fast all the time, he was that kind of horse. i think all horses like running, it's what they would do if they could just do whatever they wanted all the time. mick was telling us you have to file down horses' teeth every so often otherwise they get too big and they can't eat the grass. i asked him what they do if there's no vets around to file them, do they just stop eating grass and die. he said i was a trip.

half moon caye is the shape of a half moon, and lighthouse reef has a lighthouse on it. the blue hole is a large blue hole, a sink hole in the ocean, a very famous diving spot. i hear that it isn't actually that beautiful it's just quite unusual. there isn't much to see the deeper you go they say, the fish are all higher up. jacques costeau dived there back in the day, in fact was maybe the first person to dive there. 

our island is somewhere between the y of monkey river and the e of placencia, in the gulf of honduras. it's pretty far out, but there are other islands around not too far from it. in the north of this map you will see a large cruise ship in the sea there. there is a beach in placencia in town that is full of trash, apparently the cruise ships just dump their trash overboard, and this could be the result of it. they get fined robert says, but the 3rd time they're caught they get shut down, so they say, but i bet they just pay them off and keep dumping their trash. this is all speculation by the way and might be incorrect but doesn't it make interesting reading. who needs true facts when you can just make things up. or perhaps not, as it might be true. who could possibly know in a country like this.....

well i hope you feel geographically educated now. if you have any questions about my map please let me know. that's all for now from belize city.