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.
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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.
1 comment:
Bob the poet reminds me of Nick the Greek!
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