the other day at the market at maya beach we bought some dvds, one of them was the weatherman with nicolas cage. we haven't watched it yet, but for the last 12 hours i've been obsessing about satellite pictures on the belize weather bureau website, and the tv is staying on the weather channel all night long. there is a tropical storm/depression 270 miles away, south east, heading north west. robert says a tropical storm is really nothing to worry about, it's not even a category 1 hurricane. robert was in a category 5 hurricane in north carolina once, and was fine. but robert is like that he has all these stories like his life is one big action movie, starring tom selleck. i'm just not used to this extreme weather nonsense. i prefer category 5 drizzle or fog or just plain old grey skies then sunny a bit then rainy again then who knows what it's english weather ooo isn't it weird and unpredictable, but at least it doesn't keep you awake at night worrying about your roof flying off or a tsunami going through your kitchen.
anyway isn't that ironic nicolas cage. and did you know that nicolas cage is the nephew of francis ford coppola, who owns some swanky resorts out here. apparently coppola first came to belize to try to persuade belize to become a high tech communications hub. i don't know what that really means, i imagine lots of phone boxes everywhere and phone lines. i read it in my new moon handbook to belize, which incidentally is a pretty good guide book, full of interesting facts.
we're in belize city today as we came up to collect robert's son timothy. i have met him before in new mexico where he lives - last year when we drove monty the motorhome through the states - and he had swine flu so we couldn't hang out with him. he is quite like robert, he's the same size and shape. we went to watch his plane land at the airport and then tried to spot him getting off it. i don't normally watch planes land because i don't like them, but it's actually quite good fun and a bit weird as they are so large and just appear out of the clouds and plop down onto the ground without the world ending. it does amaze me quite a lot. i think if i watch enough of them landing it'll act like a vaccination against being scared of them.
so anyway we are watching the weather channel as i mentioned. it's showing some parts of the states where there are always tornadoes - tornado alley i think they call it. why would you live there, knowing that tornadoes go there all the time? why? why? it must be really cheap rent is all we could think of. our tropical storm is apparently going to affect honduras, nicaragua, cuba, jamaica, and the cayman islands. so i think we'll be fine.it's headed towards the yucatan peninsula in mexico, to check out some of the mayan ruins probably. i wrote a hurricane survival kit list today, we need to get lots of water and tins of beans and a tin opener, and some blankets. i said we should get wellies and socks too, but they laughed at that. we would go west to chaa creek near the guatemala border and we'd be fine there. they're predicting a really active hurricane season this year but they always say things like that don't they.
in other news i am now reading a book called i, rigoberta menchu, which is a book about a guatemalan lady who survived the genocide there in the 70s/80s, and is kind of a political activist about it all now. it's making me want to go back to guatemala and do something useful, in a kind of i want to save the world type way. i am still also reading the italo calvino book, and that vietnam book.
in work related news, the workers have finished fixing the dock in placencia. we got the shopping list from the cook out on the island and we sent him the vegetables already, which he complained about, he said they were there too early. jeez there is no pleasing some people. so we ordered the chickens for monday, but they arrived today, so i guess he'll complain about that too.
i cycled yesterday morning, and knocked a good few minutes off my previous time. last night i dreamt about scorpions scurrying around all night, not sure what that means. i had eaten some cheese with my dinner which probably didn't help.
ok well that's all my updates for today. will be watching england lose to germany on sunday. adios x
Friday, 25 June 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
flying iguanas and other things
hi fans, i am back, sorry for the delay in writing. i was waiting to have lots of interesting experiences to share with you all, and here they are, in order of excitement - most exciting first, then less and less exciting as you read on. i know you're meant to retain the suspense to keep people reading but i thought i'd try the opposite. just to contextualise things, we moved from belize city last monday, down to placencia, which is much nicer - a little relaxed village on the sea.
so this week we met russ malkin, who although he isn't a household name is quite famous (or at least in my book). he is the guy that made the show the long way round with ewan mcgregor and charley boorman, then the long way down, and one called by any means. long way round was what i watched and inspired me and james/jim to go on that macmillan bike ride to peru back in 2006, which consequently led to me leaving england altogether etc, so turned out to be quite life changing. russ is now making a book called 101 adventures, where he's going round the world doing adventures and putting them into a book. check out his website, www.bigearth.co.uk . robert took him flying in the ultralight which he loved and we hope will be up on his website soon. he was there with his girlfriend victoria who is very cool too and used to work for nike in textile design, and had met lance armstrong and worked on his cycling kit design. how totally amazing is that.
these are pitahayas growing in mick's vegetable garden at chaa creek. he has 25 acres there where they grow most of the veggies for their resort. he knows a lot about gardening and farming.
the eponymous hero of this week's blog is flying iguana. the workers caught the iguana from the house there (you saw a picture of him on an earlier blog), and put him in a box, with little holes so he could breathe. we put bits of tomato in there for him, that's what they like supposedly. then we took him to air cargo at the municipal airport and sent him off to placencia. the air cargo guys thought this was funny. i actually thought the whole thing was very unfair on flying iguana (f.i), and said so, but was overruled by men who don't have as many emotions, particularly the empathy ones, as women. since landing in placencia, f.i went out to hatchet caye on the boat, and was put in a cage so none of the scraggly island dogs ate him. a worker left his cage door open one day and he has now not been seen since. i hope he has swum far off to another island and started a new life away from human beings.
robert and i went to the belize museum in belize city. this has 5 sections: mayans, people, geography, insects, pirates, i think are the categories. the museum used to be a prison, i stood in one of the old prison cells and got a cold shiver up my spine. they used to kill prisoners by dropping them from heights it seems. i learnt that some of the island names out here are named after pirates - bannister island is one such island. and the word bucanneer means 'one who uses a boucan', which is a grill for roasting meat - like a bbq. this was what they did before being driven from this trade and becoming pirates. cool huh. there was an amazing butterfly and bug section upstairs, and some amazing ancient mayan ceramics and jade things.
we stopped here for a swim on the hummingbird highway, there were no bugs and the water was really cold and refreshing.
whilst in belize city we also visited dr valdez the eye doctor, as robert had an eye infection. dr valdez showed us a ton of pictures of eyes from his huge eye book, eyes with different types of diseases in different stages of disease. then he looked at my eye as i had spotted a strange thing on it. he said it had some disease, and asked if i'd like to see pictures of that disease from his book. i said no thanks i don't actually like your book of eye pictures. he didn't seem to mind. then he zapped my eyelid with nitrogen to get something off it, which was vaguely unpleasant and i kept twitching, which annoyed him. he was a very nice man actually and really knew his eye stuff, which i always appreciate as i have funny eyes.
we visited hopkins, a town not far from us in placencia. it has a library/book swap place (below pic), so i will be going back there. it's a very cool little beach town, seemed like a nice balance of not too many tourists, and lots of natives.
whilst pondering things one day recently, i came up with an idea. i had read in one of the newspapers that hilary clinton had said that latin america really needs to do more to address its rich/poor divide, and make some socially useful economic use of its rich investors. i got to thinking that if you could persuade and/or forcibly insist that each rich investor gives a small portion of his money to the country, you could do a lot of good. for example if you come to belize to benefit from the tax breaks you get here, and to build a resort/buy an island etc, and get richer, you should have to donate to a foundation that provides free education to all belize's children. given that the population is only around 320,000, there can only be around 150,000 school age children i figured, and it doesn't cost much to put each one through school (it is a lot to your average belizean, but i don't think it'd take much to raise it from the rich people). i had a lisa simpson moment of imagining my entire opening speech in support of my new foundation, the belize education for all programme (belefa for short, not very snappy i know, but a minor detail). i imagined it would be like that bit at the end of that film scent of a woman where robert de niro (or al pacino? i never know) does that amazing speech and everyone is stunned at how amazing it is. i will email ms clinton later tonight with my idea.
we met an english couple cycling from cancun to panama. they had bought cheap touring bikes and will just leave them in panama. good plan i thought. they were cycling in the midday heat, we stopped to chat and offer them water. they were really nice, from london. headed to dangriga to get a boat to honduras.
i have cycled a few mornings up the placencia road. it's really nice and traffic free mostly, as i go at 530am. anyone that knows me, knows just what a huge effort it is for me to get out of bed at any time of day, let alone 530am. but the benefits of doing 20 miles cycling in the morning are just too good to not do it. the road has quite a lot of speed bumps which are a necessary annoyance. i am logging my times over the week to see if i get faster or slower. i made robert drive me down the road really slowly with the speedometer zeroed out so we could take distance measurements, as i don't have a bike computer anymore so never know how far i've really gone.
robert in a bad mood.
we have been going to a yoga class round the corner from our house. it's run by a really nice canadian girl called belinda. robert fell asleep in the relaxation bit you do at the end, which you're not supposed to do, but luckily for us he didn't snore. a new yoga position to me was one called happy baby, where you lie on your back and hold your feet with your hands like a happy baby. ha ha. my legs shook a lot today as i am quite unfit these days and haven't done yoga for a long while. we will go most mornings so it should get easier.
we met a guitarist at the sunday market up the road in maya beach. he is travelling from his home town of guadalajara all the way to chile, just busking to get enough food and travel money. i thought he was really talented, and liked his plan, so bought a cd from him to help out. we also bought a really good chocolate/cashew nut brownie, which was the best brownie i've had in this continent. we got the leaflet from erin, the lady who makes them, and the next day i made robert call her and order a whole batch, as i couldn't stop thinking about them. we're allowed one each a day, i've had mine for the day, but robert is saving his for after dinner, so maybe i'll swipe it when he's not looking.
a truck of oranges on the hummingbird highway.
today i swapped my cloud atlas book, which i've finished and which was amazing, for a book about a girl that hitch hikes through vietman. i might cycle through vietnam one day so it is good food for thought. am still reading if on a winter's night a traveller which is still ace. the book swap man in town here is called bob the poet and he regaled us with 2 poems of his, they were totally cool. belinda the yoga lady had done a little reading from a famous yoga swami this morning too, so it has been somewhat of a literary performance day today. hers was about how youth and age is a state of mind not an actual thing.
other interesting snippets of information:
mum got a hole in one at captain's day at the golf club! amazing. she then had to buy everyone a drink, i guess this is the tradition in golfing. seems a pretty strange one, as they should be all buying you drinks i would think, but she didn't mind. plus if everyone there had bought her a drink she wouldn't have been able to stand up. the most mum ever drinks is a whole glass of wine, or maybe a shandy. must be where i get my sobriety from hey mum.
a tortoise we found near the sittee river. i could see robert thinking how nice he'd look on our island, but i told him no way are you putting this little tortoise in a box and putting him on a plane. helie does he remind you of tommy?
it was father's day on sunday, as it was in england too. we took the 3 workers here for a boat ride round the bay, and also sherrimae and her daughter jazira. they live downstairs, jazira is very cute, but always climbs around everything, and gets in our car and generally makes me a bit nervous that she's going to fall over or break something. she brought a little bag with her on the boat trip, i don't know what was in it, but little children like to do that i think, so they can be like grown ups.
sherrimae, wearing her grandfather's hat - very cool, and jazira with her little bag with things in it
.
i am writing a song called i am a boat. i am trying to figure out the chord sequence at the moment. it's inspired by all the boats round here. i like it, but robert gets upset that i'm teasing boats in general, and he takes boats quite seriously because they have engines, and he is a man, and men like engines and things with engines.
a man was shot on the steps of the courthouse in belize city the other day. crazyness. he had been a witness in court that day, and as usual who knows the ins and outs of these things that happen in belize, but they gunned him down and he died, then they scarpered.... we heard the news when we were in smiling meats one morning getting our ground steak and bacon for the island, and didn't believe it but there it was in the newspapers so you betta belize it.
this is felipe, one of the workers - we brought him, roberto and jorge down with us from belize city to work on the dock here at placencia, and do some other bits that need doing. felipe is from salvador originally, jorge from honduras, and roberto from belize.
we watched the bucket list, a film with jack nicholson and morgan freeman. it's pretty good. there's a bit where morgan freeman says that the ancient egyptians when they die, get asked at the gateway to the afterlife, 2 questions. these are: have you found joy in your life? and have you brought joy to others?
we also watched an education, which i thought was ok - fair to middling. a bit contrived but an interesting plot.
some interesting clouds.
tomorrow is england against slovenia, it's on at 8am here - i will probably chose cycling and yoga over wasting 2 hours watching england do something rubbish.
me cycling on the hummingbird highway last week.
tonight we're having fresh fish for dinner - robert got some fresh red snapper from the fishermen on the pier.
so this week we met russ malkin, who although he isn't a household name is quite famous (or at least in my book). he is the guy that made the show the long way round with ewan mcgregor and charley boorman, then the long way down, and one called by any means. long way round was what i watched and inspired me and james/jim to go on that macmillan bike ride to peru back in 2006, which consequently led to me leaving england altogether etc, so turned out to be quite life changing. russ is now making a book called 101 adventures, where he's going round the world doing adventures and putting them into a book. check out his website, www.bigearth.co.uk . robert took him flying in the ultralight which he loved and we hope will be up on his website soon. he was there with his girlfriend victoria who is very cool too and used to work for nike in textile design, and had met lance armstrong and worked on his cycling kit design. how totally amazing is that.
the eponymous hero of this week's blog is flying iguana. the workers caught the iguana from the house there (you saw a picture of him on an earlier blog), and put him in a box, with little holes so he could breathe. we put bits of tomato in there for him, that's what they like supposedly. then we took him to air cargo at the municipal airport and sent him off to placencia. the air cargo guys thought this was funny. i actually thought the whole thing was very unfair on flying iguana (f.i), and said so, but was overruled by men who don't have as many emotions, particularly the empathy ones, as women. since landing in placencia, f.i went out to hatchet caye on the boat, and was put in a cage so none of the scraggly island dogs ate him. a worker left his cage door open one day and he has now not been seen since. i hope he has swum far off to another island and started a new life away from human beings.
robert and i went to the belize museum in belize city. this has 5 sections: mayans, people, geography, insects, pirates, i think are the categories. the museum used to be a prison, i stood in one of the old prison cells and got a cold shiver up my spine. they used to kill prisoners by dropping them from heights it seems. i learnt that some of the island names out here are named after pirates - bannister island is one such island. and the word bucanneer means 'one who uses a boucan', which is a grill for roasting meat - like a bbq. this was what they did before being driven from this trade and becoming pirates. cool huh. there was an amazing butterfly and bug section upstairs, and some amazing ancient mayan ceramics and jade things.
whilst in belize city we also visited dr valdez the eye doctor, as robert had an eye infection. dr valdez showed us a ton of pictures of eyes from his huge eye book, eyes with different types of diseases in different stages of disease. then he looked at my eye as i had spotted a strange thing on it. he said it had some disease, and asked if i'd like to see pictures of that disease from his book. i said no thanks i don't actually like your book of eye pictures. he didn't seem to mind. then he zapped my eyelid with nitrogen to get something off it, which was vaguely unpleasant and i kept twitching, which annoyed him. he was a very nice man actually and really knew his eye stuff, which i always appreciate as i have funny eyes.
we visited hopkins, a town not far from us in placencia. it has a library/book swap place (below pic), so i will be going back there. it's a very cool little beach town, seemed like a nice balance of not too many tourists, and lots of natives.
whilst pondering things one day recently, i came up with an idea. i had read in one of the newspapers that hilary clinton had said that latin america really needs to do more to address its rich/poor divide, and make some socially useful economic use of its rich investors. i got to thinking that if you could persuade and/or forcibly insist that each rich investor gives a small portion of his money to the country, you could do a lot of good. for example if you come to belize to benefit from the tax breaks you get here, and to build a resort/buy an island etc, and get richer, you should have to donate to a foundation that provides free education to all belize's children. given that the population is only around 320,000, there can only be around 150,000 school age children i figured, and it doesn't cost much to put each one through school (it is a lot to your average belizean, but i don't think it'd take much to raise it from the rich people). i had a lisa simpson moment of imagining my entire opening speech in support of my new foundation, the belize education for all programme (belefa for short, not very snappy i know, but a minor detail). i imagined it would be like that bit at the end of that film scent of a woman where robert de niro (or al pacino? i never know) does that amazing speech and everyone is stunned at how amazing it is. i will email ms clinton later tonight with my idea.
we met an english couple cycling from cancun to panama. they had bought cheap touring bikes and will just leave them in panama. good plan i thought. they were cycling in the midday heat, we stopped to chat and offer them water. they were really nice, from london. headed to dangriga to get a boat to honduras.
i have cycled a few mornings up the placencia road. it's really nice and traffic free mostly, as i go at 530am. anyone that knows me, knows just what a huge effort it is for me to get out of bed at any time of day, let alone 530am. but the benefits of doing 20 miles cycling in the morning are just too good to not do it. the road has quite a lot of speed bumps which are a necessary annoyance. i am logging my times over the week to see if i get faster or slower. i made robert drive me down the road really slowly with the speedometer zeroed out so we could take distance measurements, as i don't have a bike computer anymore so never know how far i've really gone.
we have been going to a yoga class round the corner from our house. it's run by a really nice canadian girl called belinda. robert fell asleep in the relaxation bit you do at the end, which you're not supposed to do, but luckily for us he didn't snore. a new yoga position to me was one called happy baby, where you lie on your back and hold your feet with your hands like a happy baby. ha ha. my legs shook a lot today as i am quite unfit these days and haven't done yoga for a long while. we will go most mornings so it should get easier.
we met a guitarist at the sunday market up the road in maya beach. he is travelling from his home town of guadalajara all the way to chile, just busking to get enough food and travel money. i thought he was really talented, and liked his plan, so bought a cd from him to help out. we also bought a really good chocolate/cashew nut brownie, which was the best brownie i've had in this continent. we got the leaflet from erin, the lady who makes them, and the next day i made robert call her and order a whole batch, as i couldn't stop thinking about them. we're allowed one each a day, i've had mine for the day, but robert is saving his for after dinner, so maybe i'll swipe it when he's not looking.
today i swapped my cloud atlas book, which i've finished and which was amazing, for a book about a girl that hitch hikes through vietman. i might cycle through vietnam one day so it is good food for thought. am still reading if on a winter's night a traveller which is still ace. the book swap man in town here is called bob the poet and he regaled us with 2 poems of his, they were totally cool. belinda the yoga lady had done a little reading from a famous yoga swami this morning too, so it has been somewhat of a literary performance day today. hers was about how youth and age is a state of mind not an actual thing.
other interesting snippets of information:
mum got a hole in one at captain's day at the golf club! amazing. she then had to buy everyone a drink, i guess this is the tradition in golfing. seems a pretty strange one, as they should be all buying you drinks i would think, but she didn't mind. plus if everyone there had bought her a drink she wouldn't have been able to stand up. the most mum ever drinks is a whole glass of wine, or maybe a shandy. must be where i get my sobriety from hey mum.
it was father's day on sunday, as it was in england too. we took the 3 workers here for a boat ride round the bay, and also sherrimae and her daughter jazira. they live downstairs, jazira is very cute, but always climbs around everything, and gets in our car and generally makes me a bit nervous that she's going to fall over or break something. she brought a little bag with her on the boat trip, i don't know what was in it, but little children like to do that i think, so they can be like grown ups.
.
a man was shot on the steps of the courthouse in belize city the other day. crazyness. he had been a witness in court that day, and as usual who knows the ins and outs of these things that happen in belize, but they gunned him down and he died, then they scarpered.... we heard the news when we were in smiling meats one morning getting our ground steak and bacon for the island, and didn't believe it but there it was in the newspapers so you betta belize it.
we watched the bucket list, a film with jack nicholson and morgan freeman. it's pretty good. there's a bit where morgan freeman says that the ancient egyptians when they die, get asked at the gateway to the afterlife, 2 questions. these are: have you found joy in your life? and have you brought joy to others?
we also watched an education, which i thought was ok - fair to middling. a bit contrived but an interesting plot.
tomorrow is england against slovenia, it's on at 8am here - i will probably chose cycling and yoga over wasting 2 hours watching england do something rubbish.
tonight we're having fresh fish for dinner - robert got some fresh red snapper from the fishermen on the pier.
Monday, 7 June 2010
danger dogs
hi fans
so on thursday i cycled 16 miles in 96 degree heat, at 2pm. hmm not probably the best planning, but i'll be darned if i can make myself get up at 5am just to avoid the heat. i am not programmed to awaken before at least 7. i cycled the first part of the hummingbird highway, robert drove behind me with the hazards on. i will put a photo up once i have figured out how to photoshop my bum to a smaller size, robert taking photos from 1 metre behind is not the most flattering photo angle. it was fun despite the heat, i had to keep stopping to get fresh cold water from my backup vehicle, and afterwards jumped into a river to cool down, which made it all worth while.
we spent the weekend down in placencia. we went out for some food and drinks, and i realised i hardly ever drink and get drunk anymore. that's probably the 2nd time this year i've been drunk. unless i just can't remember or am in denial, both of which are highly likely too. talking of distorted realities, we watched a beautiful mind on sunday, what an incredible film, i haven't stopped thinking about it since then. directed by ron howard, of happy days fame. i think russell crowe must have got an oscar for this film? i don't want to spoil the plot for anyone that hasn't watched it, but most of you probably have as you are more up to date than me. we also watched the secret life of bees, which was interesting, and isn't a david attenborough documentary despite what the title might lead you to believe.
2 things that made me famous this week: i found out from our friend patrick that i had been on tv here in belize, when we were at the oil drilling talk last week they had been filming, and patrick had seen me on tv later that day. he said i looked interested and like i was concentrating really hard. sounds about right.
and secondly, they have named a star after me, you can read about it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3492919.stm
not only is it a star, it is a star made of solid diamond. classy. i hope it isn't a gigantic conflict diamond from sierra leone. i bet somebody will try to make a spaceship to go up there and mine it. in fact if nobody has already started on that idea, i might do it myself - robert could be the pilot, and we'd take a dog too as it seems they always do that to see how dogs react to things in space. robert said probably they just bark and wee on the instruments. robert also says that if you're a meat eater but aren't prepared to do the killing yourself, that makes you like the mafia, who get other people to do their dirty work. he is full of wise little sayings like that. remember the one from blog 1 - melon: eat it alone, or leave it alone!
whilst having a beer at seakunga in placencia we met a man from west norwood, just round the corner from where i used to live in gipsy hill. he also had conjunctivitis, which robert has at the moment. isn't the world full of strange coincidences. he helped himself to the drinks behind the bar until he obviously could stand up no longer and tippled off to his cabin on the beach. seakunga is owned by a canadian guy called a-j. he takes people on kayaking trips on rivers in belize. he was telling us about a film called the grizzly project where a guy spends 200,000 us dollars making a suit that will protect him in a grizzly attack. it's made from kevlar and a kind of diving bell helmet, and massive tyres for arms and things. his friends try to prepare him for the onslaught of a grizzly by driving their car into him, throwing a tree at him, and shooting him. he survives all that but when he tries to walk along he realises there's a design flaw as he can't walk on uneven ground. sounds pretty funny.
i was going to cycle today but i don't like the look of the traffic here on the northern highway. i will continue reading my book cloud atlas instead, it's pretty exciting.
on the oven at our place in placencia, there is a button that says 'stop time'. do you think it really does??
so on thursday i cycled 16 miles in 96 degree heat, at 2pm. hmm not probably the best planning, but i'll be darned if i can make myself get up at 5am just to avoid the heat. i am not programmed to awaken before at least 7. i cycled the first part of the hummingbird highway, robert drove behind me with the hazards on. i will put a photo up once i have figured out how to photoshop my bum to a smaller size, robert taking photos from 1 metre behind is not the most flattering photo angle. it was fun despite the heat, i had to keep stopping to get fresh cold water from my backup vehicle, and afterwards jumped into a river to cool down, which made it all worth while.
we spent the weekend down in placencia. we went out for some food and drinks, and i realised i hardly ever drink and get drunk anymore. that's probably the 2nd time this year i've been drunk. unless i just can't remember or am in denial, both of which are highly likely too. talking of distorted realities, we watched a beautiful mind on sunday, what an incredible film, i haven't stopped thinking about it since then. directed by ron howard, of happy days fame. i think russell crowe must have got an oscar for this film? i don't want to spoil the plot for anyone that hasn't watched it, but most of you probably have as you are more up to date than me. we also watched the secret life of bees, which was interesting, and isn't a david attenborough documentary despite what the title might lead you to believe.
2 things that made me famous this week: i found out from our friend patrick that i had been on tv here in belize, when we were at the oil drilling talk last week they had been filming, and patrick had seen me on tv later that day. he said i looked interested and like i was concentrating really hard. sounds about right.
and secondly, they have named a star after me, you can read about it here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3492919.stm
not only is it a star, it is a star made of solid diamond. classy. i hope it isn't a gigantic conflict diamond from sierra leone. i bet somebody will try to make a spaceship to go up there and mine it. in fact if nobody has already started on that idea, i might do it myself - robert could be the pilot, and we'd take a dog too as it seems they always do that to see how dogs react to things in space. robert said probably they just bark and wee on the instruments. robert also says that if you're a meat eater but aren't prepared to do the killing yourself, that makes you like the mafia, who get other people to do their dirty work. he is full of wise little sayings like that. remember the one from blog 1 - melon: eat it alone, or leave it alone!
whilst having a beer at seakunga in placencia we met a man from west norwood, just round the corner from where i used to live in gipsy hill. he also had conjunctivitis, which robert has at the moment. isn't the world full of strange coincidences. he helped himself to the drinks behind the bar until he obviously could stand up no longer and tippled off to his cabin on the beach. seakunga is owned by a canadian guy called a-j. he takes people on kayaking trips on rivers in belize. he was telling us about a film called the grizzly project where a guy spends 200,000 us dollars making a suit that will protect him in a grizzly attack. it's made from kevlar and a kind of diving bell helmet, and massive tyres for arms and things. his friends try to prepare him for the onslaught of a grizzly by driving their car into him, throwing a tree at him, and shooting him. he survives all that but when he tries to walk along he realises there's a design flaw as he can't walk on uneven ground. sounds pretty funny.
i was going to cycle today but i don't like the look of the traffic here on the northern highway. i will continue reading my book cloud atlas instead, it's pretty exciting.
on the oven at our place in placencia, there is a button that says 'stop time'. do you think it really does??
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
power to the idiots
yesterday we went to a talk arranged by btia (belize tourist industry association) about the offshore oil drilling going on in belize. this was an interesting insight into the current situation (i was previously oblivious), and a glimpse into how belizeans deal with these situations. there weren't many people there. our friend mick fleming was there from chaa creek. there were various different speakers, all a bit mumbly but worthy nonetheless, except for audrey matura-shepherd, the attorney, who was excellent and made me want to be a lawyer, the same way watching alley mcbeal used to do. she said law is not about the truth, it is about getting the best attorney and getting all the evidence, and using both those things to your advantage. she pointed out numerous loopholes in belizean law, that leave the country open to greedy companies ready to exploit their natural resources. the general population are consistently uninformed and exhausted by corrupt politics.
the deal with the oil drilling is that only the government can exploit the petrol, alongside the drilling companies, they share the profit. there is no such thing as common law in belize (i may have got my terminology wrong in my haste to take notes), which means you can't get together with other people of your ilk (eg a group of hoteliers) and bring a case against the oil companies for potential harm to your businesses. you can only bring a public nuisance case if the attorney general deems it fit, but guess who the attorney general works for - the government. he is very unlikely to bring a court case against himself. there is a minister of petroleum, but he doesn't need by law to be an expert on petroleum. he can also designate his responsibilities to a civil servant of his choice, who again doesn't need to be an expert, or in fact to know anything about petroleum. they are given superpowers, but have no knowledge or expertise with which to back up their superpowers - thus the title of today's blog. there is no mandatory independent governing body to oversee all this activity and to vet the contract bidding process. there is no mandatory environmental trust fund that the oil companies have to pay in to, for contingency funds in the inevitable case of an oil spill. there simply isn't the manpower or wherewithal in this country to deal with this properly, leaving it wide open to total exploitation and disaster. belize inherited its laws from england, and simply hasn't ever changed or adapted them to meet their own specific needs and to protect them properly.
when you look at the size of belize (small), and the rate and size of oil spills even in the case of huge, professional oil drilling companies like bp (big), and the fact that there is no contingency or monitoring in place, and the fact that belize relies almost entirely on the tourism created by the reef and marine life, you realise that all it will take is one oil spill and there goes the majority of belize's tourism based economy, and therefore there goes belize, more or less. as audrey pointed out, not many tourists want to come to see a black reef full of dead fish.
that is my synopsis of the situation. as so often happens in developing countries there is total mismanagement of natural resources. one man commented that we don't want belize to become like nigeria where you have rebel gangs venting their frustration at not benefitting from their countries natural resource wealth, and taking the law into their own hands. hopefully it won't come to that, and this meeting will be the start of a proper process of bringing the government to task on how horrendously corrupt and inefficient it is.
in other news - jorge, who works here at the house, caught 2 of the crabs from outside our house. they are really big and really blue, i'll put a picture up next time. robert tried to get one of them to nip me but i ran off screaming. tomorrow we're going to placencia and i will cycle some of the hummingbird highway on the way there. robert will drive behind me with the hazards on. bye.
the deal with the oil drilling is that only the government can exploit the petrol, alongside the drilling companies, they share the profit. there is no such thing as common law in belize (i may have got my terminology wrong in my haste to take notes), which means you can't get together with other people of your ilk (eg a group of hoteliers) and bring a case against the oil companies for potential harm to your businesses. you can only bring a public nuisance case if the attorney general deems it fit, but guess who the attorney general works for - the government. he is very unlikely to bring a court case against himself. there is a minister of petroleum, but he doesn't need by law to be an expert on petroleum. he can also designate his responsibilities to a civil servant of his choice, who again doesn't need to be an expert, or in fact to know anything about petroleum. they are given superpowers, but have no knowledge or expertise with which to back up their superpowers - thus the title of today's blog. there is no mandatory independent governing body to oversee all this activity and to vet the contract bidding process. there is no mandatory environmental trust fund that the oil companies have to pay in to, for contingency funds in the inevitable case of an oil spill. there simply isn't the manpower or wherewithal in this country to deal with this properly, leaving it wide open to total exploitation and disaster. belize inherited its laws from england, and simply hasn't ever changed or adapted them to meet their own specific needs and to protect them properly.
when you look at the size of belize (small), and the rate and size of oil spills even in the case of huge, professional oil drilling companies like bp (big), and the fact that there is no contingency or monitoring in place, and the fact that belize relies almost entirely on the tourism created by the reef and marine life, you realise that all it will take is one oil spill and there goes the majority of belize's tourism based economy, and therefore there goes belize, more or less. as audrey pointed out, not many tourists want to come to see a black reef full of dead fish.
that is my synopsis of the situation. as so often happens in developing countries there is total mismanagement of natural resources. one man commented that we don't want belize to become like nigeria where you have rebel gangs venting their frustration at not benefitting from their countries natural resource wealth, and taking the law into their own hands. hopefully it won't come to that, and this meeting will be the start of a proper process of bringing the government to task on how horrendously corrupt and inefficient it is.
in other news - jorge, who works here at the house, caught 2 of the crabs from outside our house. they are really big and really blue, i'll put a picture up next time. robert tried to get one of them to nip me but i ran off screaming. tomorrow we're going to placencia and i will cycle some of the hummingbird highway on the way there. robert will drive behind me with the hazards on. bye.
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