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
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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.

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??

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 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.