We got home late last night. As we flew over the familiar streets of Tucson, Chuck Berry was in my head:
"Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today.
We just touched down on an international runway.
Jet propelled back home from overseas to the USA"
It was so nice to wake up at home this morning. I realized half way through the tour that I usually spend several hours a day reading and writing, and our days on the trip were so full, I rarely had more than a few minutes for either. My routine, or lack of routine, was also disrupted by having to eat and board busses at the same time everyone else did.
There is a curious concept of Belize Time, which is used to explain all the waiting we did. The tour guides and restaurants were usually very slow, and we were supposed to slow down and adapt to the laid back Caribbean lifestyle. The ironic thing is, while the locals are happily laid back and urging the tourists to adopt their attitude, the tourists are unable to get laid back because we have to show up on schedule, even when we know we will have to wait for a guide or bus driver or waitress to leisurely, but cheerfully, get around to dealing with us. The three hour dinners became an ordeal that kept us out too late and prevented us from getting anything done in the evening.
Belize Time is also strange in that every time we went to a new hotel, we would have to adjust our alarm clock to synchronize with the approximation of the correct time shown on the hotel's clock. Sometimes the variance could be up to 20 minutes.
After we jumped ship and left the kayaking group, we spent 2 nights at the adequate Serenade Hotel in Placencia. It is on the sidewalk, which is the main path through the town's hotels, restaurants, bars and shops. The Guinness Book of World Records calls the sidewalk the narrowest street in the world, but this is a stretch. It is just a 24" wide glorified concrete sidewalk. No vehicles will fit on it, and any one who rides a bike on the sidewalk could be fined $100.
Placencia is a sweet, quiet little village, much more placid than the rowdy Caye Caulker. Its motto is "A quaint little drinking village with a slight fishing problem". It was a relief not to have people trying to sell us stuff in other towns, but along the sidewalk here are a few people displaying their handcrafted goods on blankets on the ground. The craftsmen and women seem to come from Punta Gorda to the south or the Garifuna community of Seine Bight to the north. Garifuna are a mixture of African slave descendants and South Americans. We bought bracelets and a mask.
Placencia was flattened by Hurricane Iris in 2001, just as the town was building up its reputation as a fishing and adventure travel hub. Thousands of trees and most of the buildings were lost. Lots of rebuilding occurred, and now many of the buildings have incongruously new paint jobs. The first real tourist seasons was 2003. Just as we saw in Louisiana and Mississippi, the hurricane made people aware of this place and investors flocked in, looking for opportunity, inflating the property values way above pre-hurricane prices.
Placencia is especially attractive because it is the only place where we could drink the tap water. Placencia water tastes as good as Tucson water used to taste in the pre-CAP days. When we first got to the country, we were warned not to drink the tap water. We were advised to not even brush our teeth with it. Brushing my teeth with bottled water is too much hassle, and I rationalized that maybe taking small doses of their bacteria-laden water would innoculate me against illness. It seemed to work. I got only very slightly sick for 2 days. A few of the others were miserable and unable to eat for several days. So maybe it worked, or maybe I got lucky. At any rate, I recommend a hepatitis A shot for anyone traveling here. We also got tetanus and typhoid shots and took malaria pills. Probably overkill, but we survived. There were fewer mosquitos here than there were in our house last summer and fall. The things that bit us in the night left a variety of scabs, bumps and blisters, but none of them seemed to have done us any lasting damage, although Steve still has an itchy spot on his knee, over a week since our last bed bug attack in Caye Caulker. [Turns out it was a bot fly! Yech! That's another story].
We also enjoyed the plentiful fresh fruit. Papaya juice is on most menus, and we drank gallons of it. The pineapples are especially sweet, and they were welcome treats on our camping trips. The oranges here have green skin because it doesn't get cold enough for them to turn orange. They are not exceptionally good. Fried plantains (a banana cousin) also turned up as a tasty side dish to the ubiquitous rice and beans.
Belize is a country where the oranges are green and the green iguanas are orange.
"Oh well, oh well, I feel so good today.
We just touched down on an international runway.
Jet propelled back home from overseas to the USA"
It was so nice to wake up at home this morning. I realized half way through the tour that I usually spend several hours a day reading and writing, and our days on the trip were so full, I rarely had more than a few minutes for either. My routine, or lack of routine, was also disrupted by having to eat and board busses at the same time everyone else did.
There is a curious concept of Belize Time, which is used to explain all the waiting we did. The tour guides and restaurants were usually very slow, and we were supposed to slow down and adapt to the laid back Caribbean lifestyle. The ironic thing is, while the locals are happily laid back and urging the tourists to adopt their attitude, the tourists are unable to get laid back because we have to show up on schedule, even when we know we will have to wait for a guide or bus driver or waitress to leisurely, but cheerfully, get around to dealing with us. The three hour dinners became an ordeal that kept us out too late and prevented us from getting anything done in the evening.
Belize Time is also strange in that every time we went to a new hotel, we would have to adjust our alarm clock to synchronize with the approximation of the correct time shown on the hotel's clock. Sometimes the variance could be up to 20 minutes.
After we jumped ship and left the kayaking group, we spent 2 nights at the adequate Serenade Hotel in Placencia. It is on the sidewalk, which is the main path through the town's hotels, restaurants, bars and shops. The Guinness Book of World Records calls the sidewalk the narrowest street in the world, but this is a stretch. It is just a 24" wide glorified concrete sidewalk. No vehicles will fit on it, and any one who rides a bike on the sidewalk could be fined $100.
Placencia is a sweet, quiet little village, much more placid than the rowdy Caye Caulker. Its motto is "A quaint little drinking village with a slight fishing problem". It was a relief not to have people trying to sell us stuff in other towns, but along the sidewalk here are a few people displaying their handcrafted goods on blankets on the ground. The craftsmen and women seem to come from Punta Gorda to the south or the Garifuna community of Seine Bight to the north. Garifuna are a mixture of African slave descendants and South Americans. We bought bracelets and a mask.
Placencia was flattened by Hurricane Iris in 2001, just as the town was building up its reputation as a fishing and adventure travel hub. Thousands of trees and most of the buildings were lost. Lots of rebuilding occurred, and now many of the buildings have incongruously new paint jobs. The first real tourist seasons was 2003. Just as we saw in Louisiana and Mississippi, the hurricane made people aware of this place and investors flocked in, looking for opportunity, inflating the property values way above pre-hurricane prices.
Placencia is especially attractive because it is the only place where we could drink the tap water. Placencia water tastes as good as Tucson water used to taste in the pre-CAP days. When we first got to the country, we were warned not to drink the tap water. We were advised to not even brush our teeth with it. Brushing my teeth with bottled water is too much hassle, and I rationalized that maybe taking small doses of their bacteria-laden water would innoculate me against illness. It seemed to work. I got only very slightly sick for 2 days. A few of the others were miserable and unable to eat for several days. So maybe it worked, or maybe I got lucky. At any rate, I recommend a hepatitis A shot for anyone traveling here. We also got tetanus and typhoid shots and took malaria pills. Probably overkill, but we survived. There were fewer mosquitos here than there were in our house last summer and fall. The things that bit us in the night left a variety of scabs, bumps and blisters, but none of them seemed to have done us any lasting damage, although Steve still has an itchy spot on his knee, over a week since our last bed bug attack in Caye Caulker. [Turns out it was a bot fly! Yech! That's another story].
We also enjoyed the plentiful fresh fruit. Papaya juice is on most menus, and we drank gallons of it. The pineapples are especially sweet, and they were welcome treats on our camping trips. The oranges here have green skin because it doesn't get cold enough for them to turn orange. They are not exceptionally good. Fried plantains (a banana cousin) also turned up as a tasty side dish to the ubiquitous rice and beans.
Belize is a country where the oranges are green and the green iguanas are orange.
