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.