the power of fleetwood mac

so there we were driving along in the little pt cruiser (also known as pt loser, though i like it, much easier to drive than those big manly trucks they like out here). we were listening to rumours, the cool guitar bit at the beginning of never going back again. i was still trying to figure out what fleetwood mean by 'lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my thing' from the 1st song. anyway i was watching the side of the road go by, wondering how long til the next bit of rain and there it was, a trek road bike standing at the side of the road, all alone. i thought it must be a mirage. then i thought it must be just a bike and there must be a rider somewhere that owns it. then i saw a little sign on it saying for sale. stop! i said. what! said bert. a bike a bike, i said. for sale!!! a bike for sale! turn the car round! so we did, and we bought it, and now i have a bike again. it's nothing particularly fancy, but it's in good condition and was a good deal. the owner had ridden it not very far, but had got sore hands and couldn't use it anymore. me and robert had recently earned some commission money on tree wrap sales (see blog 1), so it was good timing to find it. i had been calling around people we know that are bike-related to see what's out there, and there had been nothing yet. i took it riding with mick up in cayo which is where we were headed, and it's pretty nice, we did 20 miles up and down hills, the route we used to do when we used to live out there - to the guatemalan border then to town.

so this is what's known as good luck i guess. previous to this positive sign, the only other strong sign i had received was when a dog walked over to our house in belize city and lay down and died. roberto said possibly he'd been poisoned. this i took as a negative sign - why had he chosen our house? it was a bit like the lamb's blood/king herod story i thought. anyway nothing bad came of it, and the wheel of fortune has turned again and brought a bike. the dog was taken away by the council within 24 hours, which super impressed me. and reminds me of a cat that died outside our house in putney once (actually technically it was wandsworth, but you know how it is). i covered the dead cat in a tea towel and called the council who said it's pest control's domain. so while they figured out their bureaucracy, the poor little cat lay there for a few days getting flies on him. someone knocked on the door to tell me there was a dead cat on my doorstep, i said i know, i'm waiting to have him picked up.

which reminds me of the joke about the man with a banana in his ear and a man tries to tell him he's got a banana in his ear, but he can't hear him as he has a banana in his ear. i think this was one of dad's favourite jokes once. then it was surpassed by the one about beckham and his new thermos flask with a choc ice and a coffee in it.

anyway - it turns out they're prospecting for gold in the maya mountains, down south here in belize. we met with rafael and derek from the a conservation group who monitor and protect the chiquibul forest reserve, which is a huge forest/park system here. it includes the chalillo dam, the controversial dam that flooded one of the remaining scarlet macaw nesting grounds, and which the book 'the last flight of the scarlet macaw' is about. there are now 3 dams up and running, the mollejon, and the vaca being the other 2. they provide most of the power for belize, other than at peak times, when they have to buy extra power from mexico - which they don't like due to bad relations between the 2 countries, as always. rafael was a mine of information about lots of environmental things (including the gold mine). we were meeting with them because robert had had an idea to fly our resort guests up to the chalillo, where they could put a dock in, and then go kayaking up the rivers, and see amazing wildlife. they seemed to like the idea. they struggle to do enough work up there to protect it and monitor it, due to lack of resources and money, as is always the case. rafael knew the school where i'd done 2 weeks of spanish in guatemala, bio-itza, opposite flores on the peten lake. him and derek were really nice and interesting, i noticed that derek took his key lime pie home and didn't eat it at the table, perhaps he wanted to share it with someone.

on the subject of guatemala, there is currently a huge tropical storm pummelling guatemala city, along with volcano pacaya erupting, just 30k away from it. this is making a not very nice combination of volcanic ash plus rain = a sticky gooey cement like substance. that was the volcano we'd climbed last year, it's always active, and i'm surprised they hadn't anticipated the eruption, it seems like they have the capability to do that. anyway, as always, it's the worst off and most incapable to cope with it places that seem to get hit by these disasters, and i hope it doesn't wreck things completely over there. it's affecting salvador and honduras apparently too.

this morning there were 2 doves sitting on our fence, which i took as a good sign. the other day when we stayed up at chaa creek, a gecko poo narrowly missed my hand and landed on the bed. i took this as a good sign too.

hopefully we should be down in placencia this weekend, as work should be finished on the house here. this will make life nicer, as it's not so nice in this area. it's actually ladyville, which is where the british army have their base, alongside the belize defence force. they are further up the road so we haven't seen them. ladyville has a post office, and a mexican food place, a gas station, and a bank. and some random hardware shops. it's nothing to write home about other than to say that it's not very nice. it's where the international airport is. our house here is on the water, and last night there were some huge fish splashing around. when the lightning lit up the sky and sea i thought it must be a person doing some night time swimming, but it was a huge fish. a tarpon i think. you can hear the crabs during the night, they come out of their holes in the back yard, and click their claws together and scuttle around.

ps have just started reading cloud atlas by david mitchell. i like.


hope you enjoyed the pictures on the last 2 blogs. bye for today. x

1000s more words

a purple flower. bzzz bzzz.

a joke on the wall in our local pizza shop. it took me a while to get it, and then i laughed out loud.

we didn't see the bad dog referred to in the sign. phew.

me chaperoning the groceries to placencia. that's 7 trays of eggs you can see, sitting on 100 pounds of flour, next to a gigantic box of corn flakes. only one egg was smashed in the making of this photo.

a fan palm at close quarters.

cap'n robert. aye aye. 

a typical scene in cayo - a bus, some mud, an umbrella, a girl watching the world go by. we were eating a chicken burrito at lucy's mexican food stall. if i had my own bus i would paint it that colour too.

oi wot you looking at. i think that's what he said, but it might've been pieces of eight.

meow. a local jaguar (pronounced in american as jag-wah, not jag-you-eye-err) (ditto nicarag-wah when referring to nicaragua). he lives at an inland resort called banana banks where we stopped to see the owner, a fellow montana-wah.

a bird hanging out. he'll sick up his bird food if he's not careful.

ginny this one's for you. see how adeptly he uses his tail as a limb. gross. he was on a chain so there was no risk of monkey bites.

me petting a small deer at banana banks. i seriously did not know there were deer in belize until this moment. i felt like i was in narnia-wah.

mick fleming on the right, me in the middle with new (used) bike and in a strange about-to-go-cycling pose, and rolly on the left, who works for mick mending bikes. more to come in the next blog update.

a 1000 words

 robert made me a lovely necklace from these flowers, i think they're called primula, but that seems like it's the name of that cheese you get in a tube?

 happy cactuses! i think the one in front has just been prickled, and the one on the right has farted.

 

 horses at the belmopan agricultural fair. neigh neigh.

 tweet tweet! a birdie that came to have breakfast with us at the river camp at chaa creek. silly birdie that glass is for your orange juice.

 sunset in placencia. nothing funny about that.

 iggy pop! in our back yard.

 our local fruit and veg shop. i always wonder if those bananas hanging up are real, if so they must have to re hang new ones every couple of days or they'd be stinky and covered in flies, and they never are. they could be plastic perhaps.

 james bus line! could we use it in the wedding proceedings somehow jim?

 an old hospital on the way down the hummingbird highway.

 children cartwheeling on the beach in placencia.

 a beautiful flower. oh i wish i was a bee.

 boat's eye view of our house in placencia. we sit on the screened in balcony and have coffee in the morning.

 a cloud and a tree.

 a different cloud and some other trees. one of them is very drunk and being sick in the sea.

 if you look closely you will see this shop is called 'fair brothers pawn'. bet you didn't know belizeans had such a sharp sense of irony.

  a small fish that got caught on my fishing rod on our barge trip back from the island. the hook had somehow got stuck in his back, he hadn't taken the bait. not very impressive fishing. he was alive and we threw him back you'll be pleased to hear. i don't like fishing and will try to avoid it in future.

me walking in the jungle with our guide at lamanai. sarah you will like this one as the foreground palm leaves are in focus, and the people in the background are blurred.

me and the lamanai guide sheltering from the rain under a palm leaf. it was pretty exciting but i don't think the rain or the excitement is visible in this photo.

a picture

this is me and robert at lamanai. robert thought that was a parrot on his shoulder but it's my water bottle. i resized this picture to see if it uploaded faster, and it did, so i will put some more on soon.

hiss hisssss

yesterday we came back to the house to see roberto and felipe throwing stones and hitting something with a stick. it was a snake! he was fast and was wiggling round and standing up on his tail - he was big, maybe 3.5 feet. they'd been trying to kill him a few times, but he was too fast and slippery snake like. felipe said he's a water snake - probably he's come up out of the water from all the rain recently (silly snake he should love the rain if he's really a water snake). he wibbled off down one of the crab holes after being attacked and we poured some gas down there and set it on fire (this didn't make the house explode too). haven't seen him since, but he may just have found a different hole in the underground hole network under the house. am hoping the gas made him pass out. i've never seen an unconscious snake, i wonder what it looks like, maybe his little tongue will be poking out and he'll have gone all green. we will see if we start to smell anything and then we'll know he's dead i guess.

yesterday was also commonwealth day. what this means i don't know. if anything just an excuse for a holiday here for them. the banks and government offices were closed, and apparently there had been a queen's birthday parade down town. was it her birthday? funny england doesn't have a holiday for this, but belize does.

sunday we went to lamanai outpost lodge, up north on the new river. you drive up and park by the boat dock and they take you around an hour along the river to the lodge, which is wooden thatched cabins coming up out of the jungle. very nice and cosy. extremely noisy in the night with the squeaky cricket bugs, and the howler monkeys - seemed like they were right on our doorstep. we met with mark, the owner, a guy from australia who's been here in belize for 20 years. he had SO much information (notice capital letters) about running a resort, especially on an island. i was overwhelmed, but noted it all down for future reference. we went to see the mayan ruins of lamanai, a few minutes down river. lamanai means submerged crocodile. it was really cool to see some ruins, as i haven't seen any for a while and was thinking that was silly seeing as we're here amongst all these ruins. there used to be around a million mayans in belize in the days of the ancient mayans, now there's only 270,000 people in belize, and they're not all mayans at all. weird huh. 

other than that, not much to report. work continues on the house here in belize city. slowly, as this is belize.... rain has stopped for now, but i'm sure there'll be more soon. i got to wear my rain coat which was very exciting, it totally kept me dry which was good as sometimes they aren't as waterproof as they say they're going to be.

over and out. x

1 down, 8 to go

we came back from hatchet caye on sunday afternoon on the barge to placencia. we put 3 deckchairs out on deck and a crate of beer, and a fishing rod. i was in charge of the fishing as i'd done so badly last time. this time i got a bite but lost it, and was a bit scared i'd be pulled overboard by it so didn't try too hard to reel him in. after 10 minutes of our journey a speedboat appeared full of island workers, they had noticed we'd forgotten the keys to the little ponga we were towing behind us and sped out to throw them over to us. good they'd noticed, as we hadn't. the barge plodded along through the little waves (sea much calmer than outward journey), it took around 3 hours to get back (18 miles, i guess it went at 6mph, when it's loaded it does about 3mph). it was really nice to sit and not be splashed and all you can see around you is sea and the odd island and clouds above and the sun setting amongst them. it was getting dark as we got in sight of land - felt like returning to a huge metropolis after 2 days of island life.

doug told us that they have to put boundary lines up around the island so they know where the property ends. after that it's known as the queen's land. interesting. wonder what she plans on doing with all that water - putting all her swans in it maybe? she is still on the banknotes here too. i think it's a bit strange, but i guess we still have some kind of hold here, i'm just not sure what, or how much. doug also told us that under every island there is always a layer of freshwater. it's from when it rains, and the freshwater sits atop the saltwater due it's being less dense. there is a well on the island, the workers drink straight from that layer of fresh water apparently, but doug says it's fairly brackish and not great. the house on the island has quite severe earthquake damage. remember the quake from blog 1, well hatchet is only around 70k from what was the epicentre, off in honduras's bay islands. alex, an island worker, was on hatchet when it happened, and was petrified. there's huge chunks of walls that fell down, and cracks everywhere and a big roof leak.

i liked being out there and eating our dinner off concrete blocks for chairs, and a large wire spool for the table. the bugs and heat weren't bad due to the wind, but that wind seemed to be bad during the night. i awoke intermittently to listen to it and check whether it was changing pitch and whether that meant an incoming hurricane. i've picked up a hurricane leaflet from the bank which i will memorise cover to cover so i know what to do. from first reading it seems you're meant to stay calm and get in a corner of a room and read a book and wait for the eye to pass over you. i'm having trouble picturing myself in such a serene state of calmness but will work on it. it also said don't bother taping up your windows, and don't leave your pets outside, as it's a certain death trap. they'll be much happier curling up with a good book in the corner too i imagine.

i wondered whilst out there how it affects your state of mind to live on a remote island. all you can see is sea, and birds, and palm trees, a few other islands far away. when all the work is done and we're resident there, there'll be times when it's only us, and maybe a few other island caretakers. my mind went a bit bendy the couple of days we spent there, especially at night, as i imagined us 18 miles out in the sea, with just sea and darkness all around. robert said he's used to it as he lived on hawaii which is 2500 miles from land, for 15 years. i told him i'm a landlocked yorkshire person and am not used to it. england is an island so i do have that on my side. i think it will be an interesting philosophical experiment on myself to see what happens to my mentality. by the way i'm not allowed to call it a desert island, as it's not deserted.

we met matt, the cook who we buy all the groceries for, and went through some grocery logistics with him. he seems nice, and a good cook, though the meat on day 2 was a bit chewy, i had to give mine to robert,who ate it but it hurt his stomach. we had oats for breakfast, and chicken rice and beans for another dinner. we talked to jim, the architect. we got talking about solar power, i said the energy that comes from the sun is immense and must be able to power the world many times over. he said no it's not and no it can't. i said the problem is you can't store solar power. he said yes you can, in cells. i said i was going to investigate both those facts we'd disagreed on.

back in placencia we fixed our flat car tire at the road kill tire shop, and sorted out an internet connection to the house there that comes in via guatemala, thus bypassing the BTL monopoly and with no blocks on skype and other things. BTL was owned by lord ashcroft previously, now it's back to the government again. i see in a paper i read in the police station earlier that cameron has named hague foreign secretary, and hague is best buddies with ashcroft. ho hum said the paper, let's see how that affects anglo-belizean relations. there are quite a few newspapers here and i'm still determining which is my one of choice - the belize times is a massive anti-government paper. the government is the udp (united democratic), the previous was the pup (people's united). i don't know the differences, but last year it changed to udp as everyone was so sick of pup, but it's just as bad if not worse now it seems. according to the belize times the government are all criminals, pilfering funds, and giving land and money to their cronies etc etc. i guess they learnt a lot from british rule. it is pretty sad that a country lets it people live in this kind of state - roberto, one of our workers, has to pay a 500bzd parking fine, as he forgot to pay the original ticket, and how can your average belizean afford that kind of thing, and why should they when it's all about lining government workers' pockets. that's why i don't feel too bad doing all the customs duty dodging because why give more money than necessary to the government that doesn't know how to spend it sensibly and responsibly.

that reference to the police station by the way was nothing serious, we had to make an insurance claim on our car and it needed a police report. a nice officer took our info and asked for lots of other info, i suppose to try and catch us out and whack us in jail. he filled in a form for us and then told us to go belmopan and fill in the same form as that was the station that would deal with it. he had only done it there in ladyville to save us time. but they would probably need us to do it there in belmopan too. i don't see how that saves time in the end. he said they might be able to fax the form to belmopan so we don't have to fill it in again. i thought, i severely doubt that will happen. the room was green and grotty, electrical wires poking out, posters all wonky, one phone that rang off the hook - but whenever they answered it there was nobody there. robert spotted a grotty fingerprinting pad on the other desk with a little ink pot next to it. state of the art it was not.

this morning we had some breakfast down town whilst out doing errands, and met a man also having breakfast, who was from grassington in yorkshire. i said ooo mum and dad sometimes go to the grassington festival. he said yes i moved away when that started, it totally ruined the place, made it a tourist destination. i said sorry on mum and dad's behalf. he was in belize doing a medical trial about diarrhoea medication. he told us in great detail what he had to do, including bagging it up and taking it to the doctor here if it did occur, for further tests. he had answered an ad in the daily telegraph, and was being paid 1500 pounds for it, and expenses. not bad i guess, if a bit strange as a holiday activity choice.

it's been absolutely pouring with rain the last few days. it poured so hard last night it felt like being inside a speaker full of white noise. every so often it let up a bit and i'd go back to sleep. all of downtown is flooded streets, roberto's son roberto junior couldn't go to school because it was flooded. he hung out here with us, he's only 13. we put camelot the musical on for him, i think he liked it, but he may not quite have understood it. he fell asleep at one point. the other day he watched fly away home, about the ultralights teaching the ducks to fly, and he liked that one. i also got him to help me do some accounting sums - he had told me maths was his favourite subject so i thought i'd put this to the test.

tomorrow we're off to placencia with the groceries and a tumble dryer. i have been playing my guitar some more, have moved on to streets of london by ralph mctell, i like this one but find playing an f chord quite hard. i bet even eric clapton said that sometimes.

bye for now from pickles land x

a fish called wanda

so today we went out fishing in the little ponga. i didn't catch any, but it was an interesting experience as i've never done it before. we didn't use rods, you just throw the hook line and sinker overboard and feed it through your hands until it hits the bottom (around 30 feet where we were). then you wait til you feel a tug and then yank it back up. that's the trick, knowing that a fish has bitten and it's not just the pull of the current. i kept pulling the line back out to find the bait had been eaten but there was no fish there, so basically i just fed the fish. which i think is quite a nice activity too, it made me feel like i'd done a good deed. robert and doug and matt all caught some which i think we're eating for dinner tonight. i did actually get a really big bite at one point but couldn't pull it in as it was hurting my hands and i starting squealing help help. i got the hook in my finger at one point, then one of the fish doug caught hit me on the knee which grossed me out a bit, then i got pretty seasick and my line got all tangled, so we came back and i lay down for a bit.

turns out i can't post pictures until we upgrade the internet speed out here. i can do it but it shuts down the connection if you do too much uploading, so i will do it later.

yesterday before we left for hatchet, me and captain robert went out on the ponga from the placencia house along to the boat gas station. we filled up and then came back and had a look around further up the shore. there’s some nice houses and some cute palm trees and lovely flowers and trees. we need to investigate what trees will grow out on hatchet, at the moment there’s lots of palm trees but not many flowering trees.

the other day we met a nice girl, who is the sister of one of the island workers. she told me there is yoga and pilates in downtown belize city, so i’m going to investigate that - 6am or 630pm every day. the 6am one is best, but let’s see how i do at getting up at 5am. we tend to get up at 6 when the sun shines through the windows, so it wouldn’t be that terrible to do an hour earlier.  she had a swedish husband for a while and lived in sweden and luxembourg, then they both came back to belize, but he couldn’t hack it so left after 6 months. i can’t imagine 2 more polar opposite cultures than belize and sweden, and am not surprised.

this week i learnt some beer and economy related facts. the main belizean brewing company is called belikin beer and is owned by the bowen family (remember barry bowen, the richest man in belize, died tragically in a plane crash 2 months ago - we met him in blog 1 and sold him some pics of his shrimp farm). red stripe, which is imported from jamaica, by the girl-who-does-yoga’s family company, was doing pretty well and starting to challenge belikin. so belikin whacked a 40% import tax on red stripe, thus making it have to way more expensive than belikin. thus it’s not much competition anymore. a few years ago another beer company, let’s call them blue stripe as i can’t remember who it was, was becoming successful, so belikin did a campaign which was - hey belizeans, bring in 2 empty blue stripe bottles and we’ll give you a free belikin beer!  soon belikin owned all the blue stripe bottles so they couldn’t bottle any more beer, and thus went out of business. (presumably they must have also banned the imports of glass bottles too). getting the picture? KT tried to import some nice bamboo furniture from the states for the house in belize city that we’re renovating. she couldn’t as you need a permit to import bamboo to belize, as it grows here already, and that would be too much like competition. there are 2 permits only, and they are owned by hummingbird furnishings, in belmopan, and mirab, in belize city, thus creating a total furniture monopoly and really high prices - we got 4 curtains and a curtain rod from hummingbird, it was 1905 bzd (approx 1000 usd). same with the mozzarella and cheddar cheese import bans currently in place, to help the mennonites. all it does is keep the prices extortionately high and means belize remains quite closed off and small minded. there is a total ban on any mexican imports too. sounds like mexico is quite rapidly descending even further into total chaos at the moment and is becoming unsafe for tourists, which is a real shame.

this week also saw the reappearance of marius, from blog 1 - the photographer that robert made the heavenly belize book with (see www.heavenlybelize.com). he launched the book earlier this year, and it’s selling very well. he brought a fellow lithuanian with him, who played my guitar very well, as it turns out he’s  a musician/composer. he lives in LA and had a huge knuckleduster silver ring on each finger of his right hand. i thought that must make guitar strumming pretty heavy work. he looked like either a rock star or gangster, didn’t take off his shades the whole time he was in our house and it was dark outside.

pirates of the caribbean

this is our island! we came over today on very rough seas, doug said it was the roughest he's ever come over in and he's made a lot of boat trips out here. what an initiation. johnny depp/captain jack sparrow is not here, but otherwise all is amazing, and pirate like. there are 30 or so workers, tents, diggers, excavators, it's basically quite a building site, but beautiful. tonight is windy, we have had our pasta dinner, with concrete blocks as chairs, and a huge wire spool for a table. we brought all the groceries, minus the eggs which come on the barge tomorrow which is much smoother. they would have been scrambled eggs for sure. we wrapped all the food in bin bags, which one by one flew off during the journey. matt, the cook, said the watermelons are a bit bruised inside. i said so are we.

more soon, think we're here all weekend, and it seems the internet here lets me post pictures so i'll do some pictorial updates. didn't get a good picture of the whole island as it was too bumpy on the boat, and the waves were drenching us. if it calms down we will go fishing tomorrow so will get some then.

bye from tracy island/hatchet caye for now x

thunderbirds are go

today chris showed robert his thunderbirds dvd so he can get an idea of what it's all about as he's never seen it before. i think he liked it. i think that's the general theme for the island - tracy island kind of thing, full of cool toys. i can't divulge too much of the plans as it's all so exciting and i want you to be all dying of suspense.

we still haven't had a good sighting of perhaps the crocodile (i've name him perhaps due to his elusivity (that's a new word i've just invented)). we did see a big iguana with a yellow and black stripy tail, and another thinner iguana next to him, in the back yard. there are also in the yard these big holes, i figured they were just weird holes for whatever reason, but if you look in them there's ginormous crabs down there - felipe (one of the workers) says they're good to eat.... i'm not gonna risk putting my hand in one of those holes though to try and get one out for dinner.

talking of dinner we went to a restaurant called celebrity last night for dinner. robert and i had gone in there last year trying to sell them some aerial photos, but they weren't interested and it seemed to be run by a turkish mafia gang. i was pleased to find another of my preconceived belize-based ideas was wrong, and that they are actually very friendly and the food is good. i had snapper and potatoes and a beer - the waiter giggled when i ordered my beer, perhaps because i'm a girl and it is a strange thing to order a beer. i asked robert why is he laughing at me, but robert didn't know either. i had been panicking about dinner as i figured chris might start kind of interviewing me as i have never actually been interviewed for my island managing job - robert had when he came out in february. i had been preparing interview style answers all day in my head, and breaking out into a sweat at the thought of it all. none of that happened, as is 99% the case with things i worry about (like planes falling out of the sky, rabid dogs biting me, earthquakes, tsunamis etc - you name it, i've worried about it - i think i inherited mum's worrisome gene).

i'm worried too that i've been a bit repetitive on my blog, i hope not. in case i haven't mentioned it, here is the situation so far - we'll be living in belize city until the house here is completed, then we'll move to the placencia house and finish a few things there, then we'll renovate the main house out on hatchet caye (tracy island), and in between this we'll start marketing the resort and robert will start flying ultralights which will also be a good way of spreading the word and getting to meet resort owners we could do package deals with. we should be out on the island with the resort up and running by january now - the sea wall construction and dredging will take a while.

i will get a bike somehow in the meantime and do some riding - it's been 2 weeks since i got here, and i've done no exercise in that time. my excuse was it's too hot and no one except mad people would go out running in it - but i saw a lady running past the mexican food place, and one running along our road, so bang goes that excuse, as they didn't look mad. KT was saying how her and all her family were certified (in the context of telling us a diving story and meaning they were certified divers), and barbara (chris's english girlfriend) said do you realise that in england that means that you're all insane? once KT went on a night scuba dive and was looking at all these amazing sea glow worm things in the sea, and when she got out she found they had all stuck to her and it took her 4 days til the last one was out of her hair. gross. i'm never going diving. apparently the sea glow worms come out the night after a full moon.

today it rained a bit, we were in habet and habet, a hardware store, getting some paint and plywood, so we avoided it. i haven't had chance to wear my nice new rain coat yet, i'm determined to wear it in the next downpour we get because it's so nice and it was half price. when you go to habet and habet, a man in the carpark points out where he wants you to park, then gives you a ticket and you get it stamped by the store to prove you went there. at scotiabank there's a car park pointing man too, he gets quite irate if he points you to a space and you go to another one. we once parked in what he said was the managers' space - robert said we're more important than the managers, we're the customers. he wasn't having any of it and made us move. the best was at benny's hardware store we drove up on a new bit of their forecourt and the 4 of them that were sitting around dozily suddenly leapt up and pointed us back down to the other bit of carpark. one was so mad i thought he'd have a cardiac arrest. i guess they take their jobs seriously sometimes in belize.


we're going out to hatchet on friday with the groceries, this'll be my first time there. apparently they have high speed internet so i'll try to post some pics whilst there. we will meet the workers and the cook that we get the groceries for, so that'll be pretty exciting.


i have played my guitar some more, i am learning wonderful tonight by eric clapton, it's going well so far. if i get good i'll do some concerts on hatchet caye.

going to take KT to the airport now, chris and barbara left this morning, so it'll just be me and robert, and the 2 iguanas, and perhaps the crocodile, and the workers. we might go for a pizza tonight, we found a pizza place round the corner, plus they're working in the kitchen sanding all the woodwork down so we can't really cook today. which is fine with me.

let me know how the cameron clegg machine is getting on. hasta luego picolitos x

elusive crocodile

so it seems my by proxy vote didn't change the world.... shame. now ashcroft and his evil ways will be even more protected.... he's not popular here with normal belizeans. i found out he lives in the fort george area, which is downtown belize city where the radisson hotel also is. it's the nicest part of belize city, which isn't saying much. the radisson hotel now has a french style cafe where we sometimes go for chocolate croissants and coffees.

this week we've been really busy working on the house renovations here, and getting groceries again for the island workers. that was the usual palaver of hot busy days driving round the city, me with the map trying not to lose the plot, dropping off shopping lists, picking them up later, in which time the cook from the island had called with various additions to what we'd already ordered. why would he suddenly at the last minute need 10 eggplants (aubergines), a bunch of mushrooms and 10 avocados i don't know and he didn't get them. it took us about 10 different stores to find a box of barley, and the cous cous he ordered still eluded us, even at tommy's crazy wholesale store. we were sweltering in the heat and slightly lost all the time and frazzled so we stopped for a chicken sandwich in a shop on the waterfront (that makes it sound quaint - it's not) where the fan kept falling over and there was a belizean constantly sweeping the floor like an eternal punishment. it wasn't exactly fast food but it was tasty and it got me over my code-red hunger level 9.5 situation. it seems not everyone has the same nervous breakdown when they get hungry like i do, but once it's gone beyond hungry level 6 it's pretty much game over for me within the next 10 minutes.

the house is coming on well - we have a newly painted very bright red roof, the guys are painting the walls now and installing new doors, we have a shipment coming in this week with the oven and microwave and various things from the states. we have been learning about the ins and outs of the customs bribing process, it's quite complex and i can't divulge too much about it. we have been buying bits of furniture and vases (pronounced in american english to rhyme with face which always makes me laugh). it's not exactly a building site but there's still a fair bit to be done, cupboard doors, new front doors, more furniture etc.

friday we drove our groceries down to placencia again, to go out to the island on the barge. it takes the barge around 4 hours to make the trip over there - it's 18 miles and i guess it goes at about 4 mph.... when they put the excavator on it that's out there at the moment there was a near death moment when it nearly capsized - they had to get a bigger barge in from guatemala in the end. they are still working out there adding acres to the island, dredging sand up and building a sea wall around it. we had a whole carful of groceries on this trip - the cooler of frozen chicken and pork and steak had to be tied to the roof as there was a coolerful of veggies already in the car plus 3 of us and boxes of corned beef, salad cream, 42 eggs (none broke as far as i know) pineapple tang (i don't know what that is). you should've seen the testosterone flying around as robert plus 3 other meat shop worker belizeans all tried to show off their knot tying skills to tie the meat cooler down. very amusing. the car had a kind of warm onion smell to it which wasn't pleasant, plus at times there was also the added aroma of gas which seemed to be leaking from the exhaust into the car. despite this, the journey was fun, we listened to paul simon's graceland and some simon and garfunkel, saw a really bright yellow tree, picked up some curtains from belmopan for the placencia house, got lots of other stories from KT about various dodgy experiences they've had in the island selling business in belize. KT is doug's wife, and they are the real estate agents who sold the island, and she gets her name in capital letters on the blog, which is a rare thing. they are really nice - i told KT her and doug are the most straightforward people we've met in belize - she said that is hardly saying much.

we also met the island owner this week, and his girlfriend - he wants a tortoise sanctuary on the island, so my new challenge is to source 10 tortoises, and figure out how to get them here without going through customs with them....perhaps i can put them in a scuba tank and pretend to be a diver...

spotted this week:
a certificate at scotiabank that reads: country of the year awarded to: belize. on what grounds we wondered?
our truck we sold when we left belize last year! we recognised it from the scratches on the back that we got when we picked up some guy and his bike.
perhaps a crocodile in the water by the house - we are on a sea canal here, and some mornings the croc floats past, robert says you see his nose, then more of his back, all bumpy. we thought we saw him, but it could have just been tarpons (big fish), it's hard to know. we got our cameras ready but it was always a false alarm this week. 

watched 2 films so far - the time traveller's wife - pretty rubbish; and american graffiti - pretty cool, old coppola film staring ron howard of happy days fame.

not much else to report, it's all pretty busy and hot here. am listening to fleetwood mac as i write this, a new discovery for me, and what a discovery. i've played my guitar a bit this week.

mozzarella and the mennonites

update from saturday:

today’s newly discovered quote (g k chesterton): the traveller sees what he sees; the tourist sees what he has come to see.  

on friday we went round belize city buying supplies for the island workers with our guide and helper, homer. great name - he is neither greek author nor fat yellow cartoon character. he served in the belize special forces working on anti drug operations, and in plymouth and the states. he got shot in the thigh by one of his own soldiers who he was training to plant grenades but who freaked out and his gun went off. he now has one real leg, one fake one, and is a taxi driver and our helper, probably amongst various other things. he used to cycle and had 5 bikes at one point and dreamt of riding in the tour de france. he knows everywhere to go in belize city to get what we need for the best price, and all the street names which is an especially elitist and vital piece of knowledge. 

first stop was heritage bank to pick up our kitty money via a cheque sent from america. heritage bank was all shiny walls and black tiled floors and power dressed cashiers, like something from an 80s pop video. next stop was a different branch of heritage bank to cash the cheque - it would be too straightforward for the same branch of heritage bank to both issue and cash the cheque, this being belize. next on our tour was tommy’s distribution services, a non-sales-tax-charging warehouse packed floor to ceiling with boxes and bags of contraband groceries from mexico, salvador etc - kit kats, colgate, various horrendously bad for you packets of sweets, chips, noodle soups full of e numbers. a new item for me was a bucket of pigtail. i asked homer what is pigtail - it’s tails of pigs he said. i hope this isn’t something i’ll be expected to eat. at this store if you want an official receipt you pay the gst (general sales tax - 12.5%) and they submit that receipt to the government at tax time; if you’re happy with no receipt or a scrawled piece of paper with the total on, you don’t pay the gst and they don’t declare the sale. it’s a fairly easy decision when you’ve got a budget to stick to, and by golly after 2 days here i’m as corrupt as the rest of them. i asked homer howcome the government don’t close them down or insist they declare all their sales - he said the government take what they need from the store as payment for turning a blind eye. 

we went to smiling meats, and met matthew smiling and he was smiling by name and smiling by nature. he has jamaican ancestry and used to cycle, once won the belize cross country (happening next sunday: a race twice across belize - 144 miles, or once across it if you’re a girl - he asked if i would do it but i said sadly not). he said he’d look into finding me a good cheap bike, or getting parts and building one for me. he had tons of cycling trophies around his shop. we put in our meat order and arranged to pick it up later.  we went to wellworth and left them our list of other bits - curry powder, lee and perrins, hot sauce, pan scrubbers etc. homer asked them if they can source a supplier of polo mints as i had told him i’m addicted to them. i thought - that is the action of an ex special forces man - and gave him a medal. wellworth had trouble finding the 15 lbs of mozzarella cheese for us: the government  aren’t allowing imported mozzarella at the moment so that there is no competition for the belizean mennonites who make their own mozzarella. apparently mennonite mozzarella is not as nice as the imported stuff but it seems a (totally uncharacteristally) fair decision from the government - i will see if there is some ulterior motive behind it - there must be…. 

we bought plumbing parts for the workers back at the house: elbows, tees, coupling, c-clamps, pvc pipes. these are the type of things that occupy men’s brains i now understand. that’s why they can’t wash up or change sheets and pillowcases or do the hoovering or write lists. 

our last bit on the shopping list was to collect 5 lamps and 2 shower curtains from the airport that had been flown in for the house. this involved paying amerijet (the freight company) around 3 times as much as the value of the items, then standing in a disorderly queue of other people, watching a forklift truck move pallets of boxes around a large warehouse. they find your things for you and then you tell a different man how much the total was. we guessed as we had no idea and no receipt - robert said 245, but didn’t specify what currency, could’ve been greek drachma for all they knew. the man wrote down 915.20 on his receipt, using carbon paper to make a copy (carbon paper  - what a blast from the past, reminds me of mum typing documents on a typewriter about 20 years ago - it probably doesn’t exist anywhere anymore except in huge quantities in belizean government departments). we got in a different queue headed towards a door behind which was another official man with a stapler and rubber stamp and computer. there was a sign saying absolutely only one importer in this room at any one time - no exceptions! we hovered by the door every time it opened to get a blast of air conditioner as we were starting to wilt in the mid afternoon heat. i kept sending robert back to the other man to try to ask him why he had written down 915.20 instead of the amount we’d actually told him. turns out they add the freight cost you’ve paid and you get taxed on the whole total, not just your item total - but our fabricated total plus the actual freight total didn’t make 915.20. the mormon missionaries we met in the queue didn’t understand the system either, and i felt bad for taking god’s name in vain after i realized they were mormons, though i don’t know what mormons believe in - a giant moomin or moron or some kind of combination of the two? god works in very mysterious ways in this country. the lady infront of us had around 10 forms and was in there for about 30 minutes, we were watching through the door. the man’s stapler broke and he whacked it on the table, then stamped a few more forms, got some more carbon paper out, did some stuff on a computer. when we had our turn i stamped our forms for us for a kick, he didn’t say whether we needed to or not. they absolutely love rubber stamping things here, nothing exists until it’s been rubber stamped.  i surreptitiously  took a photo of the handwritten poster on the wall listing customs percentage charges - various figures, with 4 special categories at the bottom - jewellery, watches, guns, cosmetics. your cheapest option of these is cosmetics at 67.2%, with guns coming in at an astonishing 100.2%. our total owing to mr rubber stamp was 368 bzd - more than the actual total of the goods (we later found out from doug we’d overestimated the price by around 100 greek drachma). we said - blimey mr rubber stamp where does that money go - he sighed and rolled his eyes - we said, seriously what does the government do with it, the roads here are rubbish, to name but one thing - he said i know i know i know, it goes in their pockets. we bid him good day and went on our merry way with our lamps and shower curtains. seriously - you think we have a hard choice between cameron clegg and brown and that england’s going down the drain - bear this belizean mayhem in mind before despairing too much. 

today we drove down to placencia in the south, which is the nearest town to where hatchet caye our island is. there were tons of police stops en route, they check your car tax sticker on the windscreen and then wave you on. i guess if you don’t have your car tax sticker up to date you give them some beer money then they wave you on. we won’t be out on hatchet caye for a few more months, but will be living in a house in placencia once work is completed up in belize city. we brought down the contraband groceries and dropped them off with alex who takes them out on a barge to the island. alex and his girlfriend cherimay live on the bottom floor of our house here. the house is right on the water - placencia is a very long thing peninsula [interesting etymological fact: peninsula comes from latin 'paene insula' which means 'almost an island'], with ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other - full of big american owned houses and resorts in various stages of construction (and various stages of money laundering no doubt) and painted tropical colours. there is a little mayan village called seine bight that you come through on the way down the otherwise fairly swanky peninsula, and thus have the obligatory weird feelings about the rich/poor native/foreigner divide. 

i have to admit i had forgotten what belize is like, in both its negatives and its positives. we drove down the hummingbird highway which runs north to south and is stunningly beautiful with its rolling jungled limestone hills of funny shapes and sizes, mountains off in the distance, tropical birds narrowly avoiding your car as they dart across the road, rural spanish villages, crap bumpy roads, diversions where bridges have washed out and still haven’t been rebuilt, banana and citrus plantations, pick up trucks full of people hanging on in the back, cute little kids trying to cycle along while carrying a box of eggs, crazy chinese store owners who cannot speak a word of english and shout manically at you if you ask them something that they can’t answer by typing numbers in a calculator and showing you the screen. robert has updated me on various belizean stories - barry bowen the richest man in belize (we met him in blog number 1) has died in his private plane out on san pedro; out on blackbird caye (of blog 1 fame where we visited the oceanic research society) a small plane was found in the water, the pilot dead - the next day pilot and plane had vanished - quite a vanishing act, but an important one when it’s a known drug drop off location; someone we know whose island we had stayed on turns out not to own the island at all and has now also vanished………….. it’s all intrigue and scandal, and that’s not even all of it. i’m quite enjoying it, contrary to expectations, it’s cool to be busy and working towards something that could be pretty exciting, and i much prefer placencia to san ignacio where we were before. even belize city has an unexpected appeal now we have all that inside information on where to get what and how. i am however also missing home, and the new shed, and cups of tea and cake, and the mild weather. 

over and out, happy belizean labour day - to our chagrin (note first usage of the word chagrin in blog) the bank was closed today so we couldn’t pick up our next cheque… but to cheer us up there is a big agricultural fair in belmopan all weekend so we’ll get to see some cows and pigs tomorrow.

ps - monday afternoon's mini update - having trouble uploading pictures but have taken some good ones, you'll have to use your powers of imagination for now. internet here, like most things, is slow. we went to the agricultural fair yesterday which was pretty fun, but very hot - it's around 102 degrees F here at the moment so you drip with sweat after 2 minutes in the sun. thankfully the rainy season will come within the next month. more soon.