We had Christmas eve dinner at Martha's, an excellent restaurant in San Ignacio. I had delicious tamales made of chaya, the local spinach. One of the tour members from Switzerland brought fabulous chocolates for everyone. The tour guide brought champagne. Everyone sang a Christmas song from their country. The Swiss offered O Tannenbaum, the French offered Joyeux Noel, one of the Americans sang Jiggle Bells, but Steve and I got the biggest round of applause for Elvis' Blue Christmas. It was certainly a Christmas celebration like none I've ever experienced.
Christmas day we went to Mountain Pine Ridge Preserve, listed in a book called "1,000 Places to See Before You Die". We had been warned that pine beetles ate 80% of the trees, but we went anyway. We went swimming in a river with nice waterfalls, but I didn’t think this place had anything on West Virginia or Maine.
We spent 2 nights canoe camping on the Belize River. We saw a flock of a hundred green parrots noisily squawking in their trees, then taking flight for a few circles together, and landing in the tree again. This was repeated over and over. It seemed like a game to them. A kingfisher sings a song that sounds like a squeaky version of the canyon wren's descending trill. I also saw a wood rail and grey hawk. The first night, I went to our tent and found a 5 inch black and white spider on the zipper. Needless to say, I was very careful to keep the zipper shut tight.
The guides from Tony’s River Tours are a macho bunch who carry machetes to clear our camp sites. They are amazingly quick, and can cut grass with each stroke of the machete, even though the machete is one sided. They smoke marijuana after lunch and dinner and drink rum all night. This may explain how one guide managed to tip over a canoe in an eddy on this wide and perfectly flat river. Our cooking pot and most of the dinner plates went to the bottom of the river. One of the dunked tourists is a lawyer, and I think Tony’s River Tours hasn't heard the last of this incident.
By now we are so used to spotting green (orange) iguanas and black spiny tail iguanas lounging in the tree tops, they don’t provoke such excitement anymore. These guys fall out of the trees a lot more often than you would expect, crashing through the branches and hitting the water with a SPLAT. Fortunately, they can swim, so this is usually just an inconvenience for them.
25 miles up river from San Ignacio, a Canadian company called Fortis has constructed a hydro electric dam called Chalillo. Efrain at Crooked Tree grew up in San Ignacio, and managed a hotel there a few years ago when international celebrities like Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Kennedy Jr were trying to stop the dam. He says Cameron is not nice, but Leonardo is.
Efrain says the whole project stinks of government corruption. Fortis bought the rights to the river from the Belize government, claiming that the dam would reduce Belize’s dependence on electricity from Mexico, and lower utility bills. Local residents and international opponents of the dam point out that the dam will flood 2500 acres, including the only nesting site for a subspecies of the scarlet macaw in Belize, as well as the homes of jaguar, tapir, and unexcavated Mayan sites. It will ruin eco tourism on the Macal River. The water quality on the river has already declined, and the mercury levels in the fish in the river have increased.
The Belize government got a conscience long enough to notice that Fortis’ geological assessment of the dam site was inaccurate, and ordered an independent assessment, which was never done. The dam was completed in November 2005 on an active fault. Various sources say the dam is constructed in limestone, sandstone or shale, but everyone agrees that it is not on granite, as Fortis’ assessment states. Failure of the dam, and destruction of San Ignacio seem inevitable to some. However, very little water is accumulating behind the dam, so hydro power production is a long way off, if it ever occurs.
Nevertheless, Fortis has control of the electricity industry now. Electricity rates in Belize are now 20 cents per kw, the highest in Central America, compared to 6 cents per kw in Mexico and 4 cents per kw for Fortis’ Canadian customers. And we thought Halliburton had a monopoly on cynical exploitation of developing countries.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Actun Tunichil Muknal, Belize
We spent 4 nights at the Midas Resort in San Ignacio. Everyone else stayed in their funky little cabanas, but somehow Steve and I lucked out and got the master suite. I guess the owner is out of town, so we're staying in the main house. The bedroom is huge, with a California king bed, tiled walls and floors, a gigantic bathroom and lots of room for us to spread out the considerable junk we need to travel. We didn't tell anyone about our luck, but we enjoyed it. If we went back to San Ignacio, I would stay at Martha’s Guest House instead.
We took day trips out of San Ignacio. The tour of Actun Tunichil Muknal ("Cave of the Crystal Maiden") with Mayawalk tours ( was the highlight of the trip so far. Jimmy, the owner of Mayawalk, came to our hotel to tell us about the various tours we could take with his company. He bragged and prattled so much, that most of us became skeptical of his claims and a few got nervous. One person asked how safe we would be on this cave tour. Jimmy scared and confounded us further by telling us that British army was standing by to provide air support if needed. Belize, which was a colony called British Honduras until the early 1980s, still has Queen Elizabeth on their money and the British army helps defend Belize from Guatemala’s attempts to move their border east to San Ignacio.
Anyway, Actun Tunichil Muknal has become very popular since being featured in National Geographic. This is a limestone cave that was used by the Mayans starting about 750 AD as a ceremonial site. A river runs through the cave and we had to swim across a pool to enter it. We were wading or swimming or climbing up rock walls or crouching through low passages the whole time we were there. There are unbelievably beautiful stalactites and stalagmites of white, rust and black. One of the chambers is at least 80 feet tall and 200 feet long. The whole cave extends 3 miles. We only went a half mile in, but spent three and a half hours being astonished.
There are no lights, stairways or handrails. The only modern addition to the cave is a ladder we climbed to gaze at the chamber of the Crystal Maiden, a sprawling female skeleton that sparkles with calcite deposits. She seems to have been thrown into this chamber by the terrified Mayans as a sacrifice to their gods.
Drought and poor hunting conditions lead the Mayans to believe their gods were unhappy with them. They believe this cave was the entrance to the underworld, where their gods lived. If you look at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, you can see how they could think they were looking at the roots of the trees of life. The Mayans tried desperately to appease the gods, who demanded ever more precious sacrifices. The bravest heroes of the tribes would spend months purifying themselves to approach the gods. They entered the cave respectfully terrified.
The themes of the sacrifices were corn, blood and water. It's another concept about which I'm unclear, but I want to look into it further. First pottery and food were offered, as well as metates. All were ceremonially broken, and they are still lying on the cave floor just as the Mayans left them. The drought got worse, and the Mayans offered animal sacrifices, then babies, children and teenagers. The calcified skulls and remains of 14 humans are still there for us to see.
The water level in the cave has risen since the sacrifices were made, and the relics and skeletons are being covered with calcite. We have to walk single file on the rock dams to avoid stepping on any cultural artifacts. Unfortunately, not all visitors approach the cave with the proper reverence and care, and a skull has been carelessly crushed. This site is really too special to have the public blundering through it.
Our guide, a local man named Raenon who has adored all things Mayan since he was taken to a Mayan site on a 4th grade class trip, has lead tours here for 11 years, and is very concerned that the cave will have to be closed to the public because there is not enough regulation, so the limestone formations and artifacts are in jeopardy.
It's a sad situation that the government doesn't seem to care enough about this site to properly regulate it. There is no licensing of guides, and while there should be no more than 6 visitors per guide, the rules are flaunted, and destruction is occurring. Even worse is the desecration of the holiness of the site. We feel extremely fortunate to have seen this completely unique place while it is still open to the public.
There were 2 guides for our group of 10 tourists, which is a good reason to take Mayawalk rather than another tour group that might be $15 less. Mayawalk has only licensed guides, and they comply with the cave restrictions on group size and behavior. The other guide in our group, Carlos, has a tattoo on his arm: "Royalty in Exile". It’s possible that he is just that.
Flores and San Jose, Guatemala
I like the island town of Flores, Guatemala very much. Located in Lago de Peten-Itza, it was the location of the largest active Mayan ceremonial site at the time of the Spanish Conquistadors. In their usual way, what the Conquistadors couldn't understand, they destroyed, so there is no trace of the site now. Instead, you find an charming island city so small you can walk around the perimeter in about an hour, which we did.
The cobble stone streets are medievally-narrow and wind up the steep hill toward the Spanish mission style church and its plaza. In the plaza was an artificial Christmas tree with the word Gallo and a stylized rooster head where there would be a star on a Christmas tree at home. We soon learned that Gallo is the Guatemalan beer, and Gallo sponsored the tree. Gallo, by the way, tastes like Budweiser. Everything here is sponsored by something. The town rotary, for example, is sponsored by the Rotary Club.
The cobble stone streets are medievally-narrow and wind up the steep hill toward the Spanish mission style church and its plaza. In the plaza was an artificial Christmas tree with the word Gallo and a stylized rooster head where there would be a star on a Christmas tree at home. We soon learned that Gallo is the Guatemalan beer, and Gallo sponsored the tree. Gallo, by the way, tastes like Budweiser. Everything here is sponsored by something. The town rotary, for example, is sponsored by the Rotary Club.
We have seen orange and yellow crotons growing as hedges in many places, but this is the only place we saw poinsettia bushes. We stayed in a nice hotel (Sabana) with a balcony looking over the lake and the rusted tin and palm thatched roofs of the city. Palm-thatched roofs used to be only on the homes of the poorest people, but now the palms are in short supply and a special building permit is needed to build a palm roof, so only the wealthiest people can have palm thatch now. The 2 to 4 story buildings are painted every imaginable pastel color, and it's all very picturesque. It's also very touristy, with interesting shops, good restaurants, and high prices.
They use little 3-wheeled, 3-seat vehicles with canvas roofs for taxis here. The sidewalks are narrow and start and stop unpredictably, so we end up walking in the street. The first night in the city, we were walking in the street and were startled by one of these speeding 3-wheelers. The driver hit his warning alarm, which sounds like a baritone saying "Gaaaaaaahhhs" in an ascending song, followed by a bleat of the horn. We jumped out of the way, which we figured was the purpose of the warning. Steve learned that those particular 3-wheelers are not taxis, but propane gas distributors who race around the city like ice cream men. They run at all hours of the day and night, blasting their "Gaaaaaaahhs" warning. They are driving so fast and recklessly, I don't know how their customers can catch up with them.
One night we were eating with the group in a restaurant, and heard music in the street. We ran outside to see a procession lead by women carrying a male doll and female doll. It was unclear if the dolls were Mary and Joseph or a bride and groom. Children were in the procession tooting on whistles, adults kept the beat with maracas, and bringing up the rear were 4 men carrying a huge wooden xylophone played by 3 men as they walked along.
We took a boat ride across the lake to visit a real Guatemalan town, San Jose. Here pigs and chickens wander around the steep unpaved streets. We took a Spanish lesson from some locals who support themselves by teaching Spanish to the turistas. I realized that I am one of only 3 in our group of 12 who is mono-lingual. Of course, the other 2 are also from the US. Again I felt that I can not be a citizen of the world if I only speak English, and I renewed my resolve to learn Spanish.Itza is the name of the local Mayan tribe. Like the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines, years ago children were forced to learn English and forbidden to speak their native language. Still, the Mayan language survived and the locals now practice a mixture of Catholicism with the old traditions.
San Jose is trying to develop itself as a center for herbal medicine production and sale. Their website is
The weather has been very cooperative. It usually rains only at dawn. There was a downpour while we were in the medicinal plant garden, but we were next to a palm roofed ramada, and we ducked in there to don our rain gear. The rain ended after 15 minutes. Aside from the gully washer as we boarded the bus in Belize City, we haven't seen any rain. It has been in the 80s and quite nice.
Tikal and Yaxha, Guatemala
We got off the river trip this morning, got cleaned up, ate some good food, and now I'm in Eva's Restaurant in San Ignacio, on the west side of Belize. They've got some wonderful blues playing and I'm feeling fine.
In the last letter, I said we were planning to see the sunrise from the top of a pyramid at Tikal ("Place of the Voices"). Don't believe it. When the park opened at 6 AM, the sun was already up and we were a long walk from any pyramid. Still, it was a wonderful day.
Tikal is one of the largest excavated Mayan ruins anywhere. It is certainly the most famous, and justifiably so. There is way more than can be seen in a day. We walked through some lovely second growth forested areas that were completely logged by the Mayans. The temples are just spectacular. Built of limestone, they are very steep and were intended to get the Mayans closer to their gods. They were also used for various ceremonies, including human sacrifices. At least, that's what the archaeologists claim, but there are new studies that indicate everything that archaeologists thought they knew about the Mayans is wrong.
Anyway, I climbed four pyramids, the tallest being about 120 feet. They don't let you climb Temple I, the one you see in the photo at Maya Queztal Restaurant in Tucson. Sometimes you climb right up the short-tread, high-riser steps, sometimes you take a staircase that's almost a ladder. The views over the tree tops from one temple to the next were breathtaking. I chanted a mantra together with Daya and Sherri, a couple of women in the group, and we felt vibrations in our chests. There was definitely a magical spirit there.
As I stood at the top of one temple, I saw a vulture standing at the pinnacle of another ruin a half mile away. He had his wings spread and was slowly turning in a circle to face each direction. He seemed to be well aware of the majesty of the place and of himself.
I saw a black headed trogon, a collared aracari (a toucan), rufous tailed jacari, a rufous headed woodpecker and a black vulture. We saw a beautiful rust red coatimundi (a raccoon relative) just 10 feet off the path, eating a possum he pulled out from under a log. He was completely unconcerned about us and kept munching while our cameras snapped.
As you probably know, the Mayans were into solar time in a big way. We were at Tikal the day after the winter solstice. If we had been there on the solstice at sun rise, we would have seen the sunrise directly over a particular marker. Other markers locate the sunrise on the equinox and winter solstice.The Mayan 5,000-year calendar will end December 22, 2012. Venus will pass in front of the sun. I am not sure what will happen then, but I get the impression the Mayans expect it will be big.
There were some modern Mayans in the Grand Plaza burning copal incense and making offerings. Yes, Mayans live among us today, although the Guatemala government killed about 100,000 in the 1980s with the support of the US government. The nearby town of San Antonio is the only town in Belize where everyone speaks Mayan, in addition to Spanish and English. It was also the home of the famous Mayan medicine doctor, Don Elijio Panti, about whom I read in the wonderful book, Sastun. His little concrete block office is right next to the highway, not in the jungle as I pictured.
Steve did not want to get up at 4 AM so he could go get to Tikal with the rest of us at 6 AM. After much delay and confusion caused by our inept tour leader, he was able to get to Tikal around 11 and miraculously, he and I found each other in this enormous park. We ate lunch and then he rushed off to try to find another group from our tour company that just happened to be visiting Tikal in the afternoon. He joined their tour while the rest of us went back to the hotel. He got a much better guide, who showed him about 15 new birds that I would have loved to have seen. Then they saw the sunset from the top of a pyramid. He lucked out in a big way.
We are told that the television show "Survivor" taped a series called "Survivor: Tikal" but it wasn't really taped there. It was taped about 40 miles east at another park called Yaxha (pronounced Yaksha), meaning Blue Green Water. The excavated part of this site is much smaller than Tikal. It was "discovered" by archaeologists about 20 years ago, and the excavation was only started about 12 years ago. It was interesting to see the site in its various stages of excavation and restoration. Mostly the site looks like a lot of closely spaced, symmetrical hills about 50 feet high, sides at about 60 degree slope, and covered with trees. It is amazing to think of a pyramid, and maybe bodies or jade carvings or other treasures under each.
We also saw spider monkeys there. Unlike the howler monkeys, the white faced spiders jump from one tree to another and can hang from their tails, but they are just as entertaining as the howlers.
After Yaxha, we had lunch at the lovely El Sombrero, an open air, thatch roof patio with hammocks, tables, chairs and books. Log sections are set in the floor. There are cabins to rent here. It would be a very relaxing place to stay for a few days. http://www.ecosombrero.com/
In the last letter, I said we were planning to see the sunrise from the top of a pyramid at Tikal ("Place of the Voices"). Don't believe it. When the park opened at 6 AM, the sun was already up and we were a long walk from any pyramid. Still, it was a wonderful day.
Tikal is one of the largest excavated Mayan ruins anywhere. It is certainly the most famous, and justifiably so. There is way more than can be seen in a day. We walked through some lovely second growth forested areas that were completely logged by the Mayans. The temples are just spectacular. Built of limestone, they are very steep and were intended to get the Mayans closer to their gods. They were also used for various ceremonies, including human sacrifices. At least, that's what the archaeologists claim, but there are new studies that indicate everything that archaeologists thought they knew about the Mayans is wrong.
Anyway, I climbed four pyramids, the tallest being about 120 feet. They don't let you climb Temple I, the one you see in the photo at Maya Queztal Restaurant in Tucson. Sometimes you climb right up the short-tread, high-riser steps, sometimes you take a staircase that's almost a ladder. The views over the tree tops from one temple to the next were breathtaking. I chanted a mantra together with Daya and Sherri, a couple of women in the group, and we felt vibrations in our chests. There was definitely a magical spirit there.
As I stood at the top of one temple, I saw a vulture standing at the pinnacle of another ruin a half mile away. He had his wings spread and was slowly turning in a circle to face each direction. He seemed to be well aware of the majesty of the place and of himself.
I saw a black headed trogon, a collared aracari (a toucan), rufous tailed jacari, a rufous headed woodpecker and a black vulture. We saw a beautiful rust red coatimundi (a raccoon relative) just 10 feet off the path, eating a possum he pulled out from under a log. He was completely unconcerned about us and kept munching while our cameras snapped.
As you probably know, the Mayans were into solar time in a big way. We were at Tikal the day after the winter solstice. If we had been there on the solstice at sun rise, we would have seen the sunrise directly over a particular marker. Other markers locate the sunrise on the equinox and winter solstice.The Mayan 5,000-year calendar will end December 22, 2012. Venus will pass in front of the sun. I am not sure what will happen then, but I get the impression the Mayans expect it will be big.
There were some modern Mayans in the Grand Plaza burning copal incense and making offerings. Yes, Mayans live among us today, although the Guatemala government killed about 100,000 in the 1980s with the support of the US government. The nearby town of San Antonio is the only town in Belize where everyone speaks Mayan, in addition to Spanish and English. It was also the home of the famous Mayan medicine doctor, Don Elijio Panti, about whom I read in the wonderful book, Sastun. His little concrete block office is right next to the highway, not in the jungle as I pictured.
Steve did not want to get up at 4 AM so he could go get to Tikal with the rest of us at 6 AM. After much delay and confusion caused by our inept tour leader, he was able to get to Tikal around 11 and miraculously, he and I found each other in this enormous park. We ate lunch and then he rushed off to try to find another group from our tour company that just happened to be visiting Tikal in the afternoon. He joined their tour while the rest of us went back to the hotel. He got a much better guide, who showed him about 15 new birds that I would have loved to have seen. Then they saw the sunset from the top of a pyramid. He lucked out in a big way.
We are told that the television show "Survivor" taped a series called "Survivor: Tikal" but it wasn't really taped there. It was taped about 40 miles east at another park called Yaxha (pronounced Yaksha), meaning Blue Green Water. The excavated part of this site is much smaller than Tikal. It was "discovered" by archaeologists about 20 years ago, and the excavation was only started about 12 years ago. It was interesting to see the site in its various stages of excavation and restoration. Mostly the site looks like a lot of closely spaced, symmetrical hills about 50 feet high, sides at about 60 degree slope, and covered with trees. It is amazing to think of a pyramid, and maybe bodies or jade carvings or other treasures under each.
We also saw spider monkeys there. Unlike the howler monkeys, the white faced spiders jump from one tree to another and can hang from their tails, but they are just as entertaining as the howlers.
After Yaxha, we had lunch at the lovely El Sombrero, an open air, thatch roof patio with hammocks, tables, chairs and books. Log sections are set in the floor. There are cabins to rent here. It would be a very relaxing place to stay for a few days. http://www.ecosombrero.com/
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Belize City, Belize
We left Crooked Tree after 4 nights and went to Belize City. As the guide book says, it is not a tropical paradise. Still, there were 2 notable events there. We saw the Swing Bridge in operation. It was amazing. The bridge is an historic structure, maybe the only like it in the world. It is supported by a cylinder under the middle of the bridge. Sail boats can’t get under the bridge, so they line up until someone decides there are enough boats to warrant stopping the car and foot traffic on the bridge so the bridge can be swung parallel to the river and the boats can get through. This is accomplished by putting chains across the road on both sides of the bridge to stop the traffic on the bridge. Then 5 or 10 minutes go by while the bridge operators try to get people to stop running and biking across the bridge. Finally they give up on trying to stop the human stream and about 10 men and a few small boys go to the middle of the bridge, where they have a gigantic, 2 armed key. Half push on one side of the key, half push on the other, and the bridge swings 90 degrees. Still people are running across the bridge as it moves, and squealing as they jump through the quickly narrowing gap between the bridge side walk and the bridge support on the bank. It was pretty cool.
We then saw hundreds of starlings noisily congregating in Battlefield Park for the night. Their almost-deafening, cacophonous whistling and shrieking as they jockeyed for space in the trees and wires was delightful.
We met the members of the guided tour we will be with for the rest of our trip, and took a public bus to San Ignacio. The local busses are old Blue Bird school busses from the US. I may have ridden on one of these as a little girl. Now they are crammed with humanity, luggage and live chickens carried in bags. Fortunately, we didn’t take the chicken bus; we took a somewhat nicer express bus with a luggage compartment underneath. The express only stopped once, at the fruit and vegetable market in the capital city, Belmopan.
There we saw Mennonites, conspicuous among the black and brown faces with their white skin, beards, straw hats and overalls. The Mennonites have been inbreeding since they arrived in the 1950s from Mexico, and their gene pool has gotten too shallow. We are told that a few years ago they took out ads in the paper looking for light skinned mestizos to breed with their young women. We couldn’t find out whether the mestizos were invited to join the community, or were they strictly intended to reduce the incidence of birth defects among the Mennonites.
Once we got to San Ignacio, we were eating lunch on the front porch of Eva’s, and who should drive by but Sam Tillet and two of the birders we met during our stay in Crooked Tree. Talk about a small country.
From there, 12 guests, plus driver and guide were packed like sardines into a small Toyota van. The driver said the van was designed for little Japanese people, not the overgrown Americans and Europeans.
We are pleased that the group is not just Americans. There are also people from Switzerland, France, Belgium, Finland and Canada. The Americans are from NC, NV and of course AZ.
We crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala, and left behind English, miles, roads strewn with trash, Belize dollars and dogs with intact tails and entered the land of Spanish, kilometers, people who take more pride in their country, Quetzales and bob-tailed dogs.
I like Flores, the island city where we are now, a lot. But we are leaving at 5 AM to see the sunrise from the top of the Mayan pyramid at Tikal, so enough for now.
Hasta luego
We then saw hundreds of starlings noisily congregating in Battlefield Park for the night. Their almost-deafening, cacophonous whistling and shrieking as they jockeyed for space in the trees and wires was delightful.
We met the members of the guided tour we will be with for the rest of our trip, and took a public bus to San Ignacio. The local busses are old Blue Bird school busses from the US. I may have ridden on one of these as a little girl. Now they are crammed with humanity, luggage and live chickens carried in bags. Fortunately, we didn’t take the chicken bus; we took a somewhat nicer express bus with a luggage compartment underneath. The express only stopped once, at the fruit and vegetable market in the capital city, Belmopan.
There we saw Mennonites, conspicuous among the black and brown faces with their white skin, beards, straw hats and overalls. The Mennonites have been inbreeding since they arrived in the 1950s from Mexico, and their gene pool has gotten too shallow. We are told that a few years ago they took out ads in the paper looking for light skinned mestizos to breed with their young women. We couldn’t find out whether the mestizos were invited to join the community, or were they strictly intended to reduce the incidence of birth defects among the Mennonites.
Once we got to San Ignacio, we were eating lunch on the front porch of Eva’s, and who should drive by but Sam Tillet and two of the birders we met during our stay in Crooked Tree. Talk about a small country.
From there, 12 guests, plus driver and guide were packed like sardines into a small Toyota van. The driver said the van was designed for little Japanese people, not the overgrown Americans and Europeans.
We are pleased that the group is not just Americans. There are also people from Switzerland, France, Belgium, Finland and Canada. The Americans are from NC, NV and of course AZ.
We crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala, and left behind English, miles, roads strewn with trash, Belize dollars and dogs with intact tails and entered the land of Spanish, kilometers, people who take more pride in their country, Quetzales and bob-tailed dogs.
I like Flores, the island city where we are now, a lot. But we are leaving at 5 AM to see the sunrise from the top of the Mayan pyramid at Tikal, so enough for now.
Hasta luego
Lamai and Sam Tillet's, Belize
On the plane we sat next to a woman who was born in Belize and left when she was 15 to move to the US. She hadn´t been back in 30 years. She was bringing her two teenage daughters to Belize for a month so they could, she said, "experience their heritage¨. At the top of her list of anticipated heritage experiences was a visit to the Princess Hotel in Belize City, which is said to rival anything in Las Vegas. By the sour attitudes of her daughters, we could see they had every intention of getting revenge on their mother for subjecting them to this heritage experience. One of them put her shirt over her nose when she got off the plane. We wonder whether they are still here.
I haven´t counted the new additions to my birding life list, but it´s a lot. Brown jay, clay colored robin, red lored parakeet, aztec jay, tropical mockingbird, collared and magnolia warblers, the aptly named melodious blackbird, yellow headed vulture, ringed kingfisher, blue grey tanager, blue grey gnatcatcher, pale vented pigeon, forktailed flycatcher, black cowled oriole, bare neck tiger heron, black bellied whistling duck, spot breasted wren, jacana, social flycatcher, and the big prize, the gorgeous apricot-colored black collared hawk. I also saw a wood stork, the bird who delivers babies. He has been very busy in Belize.
"Pikni da po pipple riches".
Literally, Children are a poor man’s riches
Meaning, Children are often all that a poor man has a lot of, and having many children is widely regarded as a kind of investment against being helpless in old age.
At night as we sat on that lovely deck at Sam Tillet´s we could see fireflies. Can you imagine, fireflies in December? Their lights seemed to come in various temperatures, because there were blue, white and yellow varieties.
Sam Tillet drove us to the New River, pointing out a yellow headed vulture and a roadside hawk along the way. The roadside hawk is usually on a wire next to the road. Sam pointed out a similar looking hawk at the New River landing and told us it was a riverside hawk, but we could see by his smile he was kidding. We took a high speed, noisy, polluting boat that eroded the shore with its one foot high wake on a 90 minute ride to a Mayan ruin called Lamanai (¨Submerged Crocodile¨). There are questionable aspects to this eco tourism.
Snail kites and anhingas hung out by the river. We saw some wonderful Mayan pyramids, one of which we could see from the boat, towering above the jungle. We climbed that one, about 100 feet tall, and got a great view. We also saw a howler monkey family of 3 adults and a baby doing acrobatics about 20 feet directly above us. They seemed to be showing off, and were as curious about us as we were about them.
Along the river, we passed a Mennonite community called Shipyard. Now numbering 4,000 members, they moved there in the 1950s from Mexico to escape the taxes and military. They are responsible for most of the beans, rice and cheese consumed in the country. They don´t believe in electricity or any of its consequences.
Also at Lamanai was the Give and Take Tree. It has spikes that have a mild poison that causes a painful rash. The tree also provides the cure for the rash, in a substance in its bark.
In several places we have seen leaf cutter ants. They make a trail across a yard or across the hiking path, completely removing all vegetation in a corridor about 4 inches wide. They are carrying parts of leaves back to their nest. The ants are about a quarter inch long, but most carry leaf pieces at least twice as big as they are. If they are transporting green and yellow leaves, it is quite a pretty spectacle as they trudge with their parasols. They follow the path by sense of smell, so if our mean guide Ruben scuffs the path with his shoe, they run around frantically until one ant picks up the scent and gets everyone going the right direction again. In their nest, specialized ants of a different caste are in charge of tending the leaves and cultivating a fungus, which is what the ants eat. They are the world´s first farmers. We even saw them working at night. I think of Ed Abbey´s comment that he never had much respect for ants. The formic life, scoffed Ed.
I was sad that there is plastic trash along all the roads and shores we saw in Belize. The citizens seem to have no respect for their lovely environment. Even Ruben, the guide on our birding walks in Crooked Tree, who has lived in the village all his life, opens a piece of candy and throws the wrapper on the ground. Pathetic dogs also abound. There is a bill board on the highway showing a jaguar washing her kittens. The caption is "Our idea of litter". I hope the citizen education campaign catches on.
At Crooked Tree, most of the guests at Sam Tillet´s were birders. One of the women said her husband was an SOB. Spouse of Birder, which I supposed is not quite as bad as being a football widow, but almost. She noted that birders are compulsive. Some keep lists of birds seen in a county, state, and country, as well as any other imaginable category, like a list of bird observed defecating. She said she even knows of people who keeps lists of birds seen on TV and in movies. One of the saner birders, a lawyer from Houston, told this woman she needed to get a life.
The cook at Sam Tillet´s gave us some delicious plum jam, made from the golden plums in the tree next to the observation deck. We ate the same plums that the kiskadees and blue grey tanagers enjoyed.
I saw a bird called the greyish saltator choking an entire blue morning glory blossom into his mouth as if he were stuffing a parachute. He did it again and again. I guess those flowers are a delicacy to him.
Other new birds spotted at Crooked Tree included ringed kingfisher, jacana, common yellow throat, green kingfisher, and mangrove swallow, as well as birds I’ve seen before: grooved bill ani, American redstart, common ground dove, yellow bellied sapsucker, vermillion flycatcher, little blue heron, great blue heron, green heron, tri-color heron, kingbird, boat tailed grackle, hooded oriole, turkey vulture, rose breasted becard, cardinal, coot, pied billed grebe, lesser and spotted sandpipers, catbird, red winged blackbird, white ibis, limpkin, osprey, killdeer, and great egret. Sometimes the cattle egret also stand on the backs of horses and pick bugs out of their hides. Ruben tried to tell us they were horse egrets, but we weren’t buying it.
Ruben took us on a night walk. We felt like intruders on the animals who were awaken by our flashlights. There’s a nightjar called the common pauraque that sleeps on the road at night. Ruben blinded one with his flashlight and was able to pick him up. The poor bird hissed and showed us the expanse of his huge mouth. Steve and I felt guilty about harassing the critters and decided to refrain from any more nightwalks.
Crooked Tree is named for the cashew for which it is famous. There are also guanacaste trees, which look sort of like a bonsai on a 50´ tall trunk. It´s the tallest tree around. We are not in the jungle. Rather, this is the coastal savannah. There are grasslands and some forests of rather small trees including pines, palms and papayas, and some of the trees have been completely enveloped and killed by strangler figs. Even cactus can grow here. There is a sort of prickly pear under the coconut trees at Sam´s. There is also a parasite called snake cactus that drapes itself in the trees.
I haven´t counted the new additions to my birding life list, but it´s a lot. Brown jay, clay colored robin, red lored parakeet, aztec jay, tropical mockingbird, collared and magnolia warblers, the aptly named melodious blackbird, yellow headed vulture, ringed kingfisher, blue grey tanager, blue grey gnatcatcher, pale vented pigeon, forktailed flycatcher, black cowled oriole, bare neck tiger heron, black bellied whistling duck, spot breasted wren, jacana, social flycatcher, and the big prize, the gorgeous apricot-colored black collared hawk. I also saw a wood stork, the bird who delivers babies. He has been very busy in Belize.
"Pikni da po pipple riches".
Literally, Children are a poor man’s riches
Meaning, Children are often all that a poor man has a lot of, and having many children is widely regarded as a kind of investment against being helpless in old age.
At night as we sat on that lovely deck at Sam Tillet´s we could see fireflies. Can you imagine, fireflies in December? Their lights seemed to come in various temperatures, because there were blue, white and yellow varieties.
Sam Tillet drove us to the New River, pointing out a yellow headed vulture and a roadside hawk along the way. The roadside hawk is usually on a wire next to the road. Sam pointed out a similar looking hawk at the New River landing and told us it was a riverside hawk, but we could see by his smile he was kidding. We took a high speed, noisy, polluting boat that eroded the shore with its one foot high wake on a 90 minute ride to a Mayan ruin called Lamanai (¨Submerged Crocodile¨). There are questionable aspects to this eco tourism.
Snail kites and anhingas hung out by the river. We saw some wonderful Mayan pyramids, one of which we could see from the boat, towering above the jungle. We climbed that one, about 100 feet tall, and got a great view. We also saw a howler monkey family of 3 adults and a baby doing acrobatics about 20 feet directly above us. They seemed to be showing off, and were as curious about us as we were about them.
Along the river, we passed a Mennonite community called Shipyard. Now numbering 4,000 members, they moved there in the 1950s from Mexico to escape the taxes and military. They are responsible for most of the beans, rice and cheese consumed in the country. They don´t believe in electricity or any of its consequences.
Also at Lamanai was the Give and Take Tree. It has spikes that have a mild poison that causes a painful rash. The tree also provides the cure for the rash, in a substance in its bark.
In several places we have seen leaf cutter ants. They make a trail across a yard or across the hiking path, completely removing all vegetation in a corridor about 4 inches wide. They are carrying parts of leaves back to their nest. The ants are about a quarter inch long, but most carry leaf pieces at least twice as big as they are. If they are transporting green and yellow leaves, it is quite a pretty spectacle as they trudge with their parasols. They follow the path by sense of smell, so if our mean guide Ruben scuffs the path with his shoe, they run around frantically until one ant picks up the scent and gets everyone going the right direction again. In their nest, specialized ants of a different caste are in charge of tending the leaves and cultivating a fungus, which is what the ants eat. They are the world´s first farmers. We even saw them working at night. I think of Ed Abbey´s comment that he never had much respect for ants. The formic life, scoffed Ed.
I was sad that there is plastic trash along all the roads and shores we saw in Belize. The citizens seem to have no respect for their lovely environment. Even Ruben, the guide on our birding walks in Crooked Tree, who has lived in the village all his life, opens a piece of candy and throws the wrapper on the ground. Pathetic dogs also abound. There is a bill board on the highway showing a jaguar washing her kittens. The caption is "Our idea of litter". I hope the citizen education campaign catches on.
At Crooked Tree, most of the guests at Sam Tillet´s were birders. One of the women said her husband was an SOB. Spouse of Birder, which I supposed is not quite as bad as being a football widow, but almost. She noted that birders are compulsive. Some keep lists of birds seen in a county, state, and country, as well as any other imaginable category, like a list of bird observed defecating. She said she even knows of people who keeps lists of birds seen on TV and in movies. One of the saner birders, a lawyer from Houston, told this woman she needed to get a life.
The cook at Sam Tillet´s gave us some delicious plum jam, made from the golden plums in the tree next to the observation deck. We ate the same plums that the kiskadees and blue grey tanagers enjoyed.
I saw a bird called the greyish saltator choking an entire blue morning glory blossom into his mouth as if he were stuffing a parachute. He did it again and again. I guess those flowers are a delicacy to him.
Other new birds spotted at Crooked Tree included ringed kingfisher, jacana, common yellow throat, green kingfisher, and mangrove swallow, as well as birds I’ve seen before: grooved bill ani, American redstart, common ground dove, yellow bellied sapsucker, vermillion flycatcher, little blue heron, great blue heron, green heron, tri-color heron, kingbird, boat tailed grackle, hooded oriole, turkey vulture, rose breasted becard, cardinal, coot, pied billed grebe, lesser and spotted sandpipers, catbird, red winged blackbird, white ibis, limpkin, osprey, killdeer, and great egret. Sometimes the cattle egret also stand on the backs of horses and pick bugs out of their hides. Ruben tried to tell us they were horse egrets, but we weren’t buying it.
Ruben took us on a night walk. We felt like intruders on the animals who were awaken by our flashlights. There’s a nightjar called the common pauraque that sleeps on the road at night. Ruben blinded one with his flashlight and was able to pick him up. The poor bird hissed and showed us the expanse of his huge mouth. Steve and I felt guilty about harassing the critters and decided to refrain from any more nightwalks.
Crooked Tree is named for the cashew for which it is famous. There are also guanacaste trees, which look sort of like a bonsai on a 50´ tall trunk. It´s the tallest tree around. We are not in the jungle. Rather, this is the coastal savannah. There are grasslands and some forests of rather small trees including pines, palms and papayas, and some of the trees have been completely enveloped and killed by strangler figs. Even cactus can grow here. There is a sort of prickly pear under the coconut trees at Sam´s. There is also a parasite called snake cactus that drapes itself in the trees.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Crooked Tree, Belize
I'm in the office of Sam Tillet's Hotel in Crooked Tree in northeastern Belize. We've been here 3 nights and will leave for Belize City tomorrow. Steve and I had to go through the despicable george bush international airport in Houston on the detestable continental airlines. I recommend you avoid both. The airport in Houston was closed the day before we went through there due to a storm, and there was chaos for the next few days. We arrived in Belize City, and got in line with dozens of other travelers to make a lost baggage claim. None of our luggage or camping gear had arrived. We do not travel light, and feel very attached to every item in our bags. We dreaded the idea of having to buy all new clothing and camping gear. Fortunately, the guided tour doesn't start until Tuesday, so we have 4 days in Crooked Tree to wait for luggage.
Sam Tillet is the most famous birder in Belize, which is why I chose to stay here. He grew up on the property where the hotel is located. There were 11 children in his family and 13 cousins lived next door. Crooked Tree is a remote village of 900 souls located on an island in the middle of a large lake. Most of the houses are cinder block, or poorly constructed wood frame. It's not unlike the poorer parts of Tucson, except the frame houses are on stilts. It is one of the best birding spots in Belize.
The hotel is rustic, built on stilts in the old style of hairy bamboo. We have a palm-thatched roof in our bedroom, which is on the second floor off the balcony. Coconuts trees flank the stairs up to the balcony.The first night here, we awoke to the sound of growling, hissing, crashing and thrashing. Possums were doing battle on the roof. The second night, Steve woke to feel an animal on his head. He brushed it off, and it jumped back on. He got his flashlight and tried to figure out what it was. He couldn't find it. He thought it was a frog, but it may have been one of the geckos that are running around on the ceiling. They look exactly like the geckos in Tucson, but they can bark. Last night the possums were at it again. We wonder what sort of wildlife activity to expect tonight.
There is a lovely deck outside the dining room. There are picnic tables on the deck, and the field beyond has flowering plants and trees that attract an incredible variety of birds. You could spend your whole vacation on the deck and have a fabulous time. In one of the trees is a gigantic green iguana, about 4 feet long. He is bright orange, and his wife is brown, but their babies are bright green, so that is how they get their name. He is one of the most spectacular beasts I have ever seen. He has thin, 2" orange spikes coming out of his back. He has a huge black and white wattle under his chin with small grey spikes along the edge of that. He also has a few small spikes sticking up on top of his nose just for show. His 2' tail is black and orange bands. Mostly he just lays there at the top of the tree looking magnificent, but occasionally he bobs his head up and down and shakes the upper branches of the tree. He rids the tree of intruders that way. The locals eat the females ("bamboo chicken") and their eggs, but no one eats the males. No one will say why. They just repeat, NO one eats the males.
Two nights ago was the village Christmas tree re-lighting ceremony. The village’s first Christmas tree ever was installed in front of someone’s house across from the community center a few days ago. It was decorated with tinsel and strings of electric lights. The villagers awoke the next day to find that cows had eaten the first tree, and two of the cows had Christmas lights tangled in their horns and they were butting each other. Nobody knew that cows ate pine trees. The villagers tried again with a 5' pine decorated with tinsel, shiny garlands and a star. This time they closed the gates to the fence around the yard, because the cows just wander around the roads. As of yesterday, the tree was still standing. There was a skinny black Santa with a cotton beard on hand to hand out gifts to the children.
It is strange to hear Jingle Bell Rock and Blue Christmas playing real loud on the villagers’ boom boxes. Last night, in addition the possum warfare, we were entertained (not really) until about 2 AM by the sound of karaoke from the bar. Disgraceful mangling of Patsy Cline and Hank Williams tunes, plus deserved destruction of Kenny Rogers songs. The locals are descended from African slaves. They are mostly very black-skinned. They speak Creole, which is supposedly something like English, but we can rarely catch a word of it. Chewed up words and slang. For example,
"If you kyaa hear, you haffu feel"
Literally: If you can’t hear, you have to feel.
Meaning: Experience teaches those who won’t learn in any other way.
It’s fun to listen to it, and I expect the Creoles like talking about the tourists in front of us. The children learn Creole in school. If they want to go beyond 6th grade and learn proper English, they have to go to private school at the cost of US$2,000 per year. Obviously, very few children do that, so their employment opportunities are limited to fishing and raising cattle and chickens.
The hotel manager is a charming young man about 22 years old named Efrain. He was born in El Salvador, but he and his parents moved to Belize when he was an infant. He has skin the color of iced coffee, a diamond earring, and hair and eyebrows dyed orange. He's very friendly and speaks English with a nice accent. He learned Spanish at home, and Creole in school, so he switches easily between languages. He was one of the lucky ones who got to go to private school. He says the reason they don't teach proper English in the public school is the teachers are lazy, and most don’t know anything but Creole anyway. The government is too cheap to insist on hiring English speaking teachers. He says the government is no good. He also told us that when we see large, fancy houses, we can be sure they are owned by one of the following: politicians, rich Americans, or pastors.
I guess I had better try to send this before the computer crashes.
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