April 11 - Caye Caulker

The water taxi to Caye Caulker traveled the sea without life jackets. We were jammed into the boat. I wonder if it was too full? Could it cap size? I asked myself as the water taxi bounces along. If it cap sizes, I’d drown. It took about an hour to reach Caye Caulker.

People have told me that this Caye is very lay back. There are plenty of tourists and plenty of tour companies willing to take tourist scuba diving or snorkeling.

I spend the day chillin’, as my granddaughters would say.

April 13 - Crooked Tree Bird Sancutary

Going to Crooked Tree Bird Sanctuary was a bit of a bust because if I wanted to a lot of birds I ought to have gone the night before, stayed overnight and started to trek around at 4 am when the birds weren’t sleeping.

Apart from birds Crooked Tree is known for cashews. It is the ideal climate and soil conditions to grow cashews. There is cashew jam and cashew wine. Cashew are a fruit with the nut hanging from the fruit.

Mangos, coconuts, papayas, limes plantains are also grown, and somewhere there are blackberries, but I didn’t see them.

April 12 - Belize Zoo

The Belize Zoo is world renowned among zoo keepers for it’s ability to make the animals feel like they are in their natural habitat.

I don’t like zoos, but decide to visit this humane zoo (Is it ever humane to cage an animal?)

I take the bus to the zoo road and walk to the entrance

All the animals have been rescued. Some were injured, some had been illegally kept as pets, all are native to Belize.

I wait on the edge of the highway for the bus that will take me back to Belize City. I wait alone for about 25 minutes, but am joined by a couple he’s a Belizean and she’s an American from Texas. I get the feeling they met on the internet and that her month in Belize, which began April 3, is the first time they actually met.

We talk about how expensive everything is in Belize..

Brenda Lee, who has become my cab driver when I need a taxi, was at the bus depot when I arrived, and was at the bus depot when I returned. It had been a slow day. She drove me back to my hotel.

April 10 -From St. Ignazio to Belize City

I took a public bus from St. Ignazio to Belize City. It stopped an accountable number of times along the way, and sometimes it was so crowded it was standing room only. It was hot, humid and took about three hours. I didn’t have a clue where I was going to stay once I arrived in Belize City.

When I got off the bus and made my way outside to the taxi stand there were too many cab drivers searching for fares. A woman named Brenda Lea with twenty years of driving experience took my duffle back. As we stood beside her old beater of a taxi I explained I didn’t know where I was going but that I wanted a hotel beside the ocean, with air conditioning and I didn’t want to pay more than about ninety dollars a night.

The first places she took me to cost too much. I settled on the Chateau Caribbean. The hotel is sixty years old, needs painting and new flooring but it had a bath tub, which is a rarity in Latin America, air conditioning and overlooks the Caribbean Sea.

I settled in, found the boat taxi service, and bought a ticket to Caye Caulker for the next day.

(The photo is of my hotel. It has an interesting 60 year history, and has been many things, including a hostpital.)

April 8 - Barton Creek Cave

With nothing but a large flashlight connected to a battery we entered the cave. John paddled the canoe, I held the flashlight. We travelled one kilometer into the cave and back. We were the first people of the day to enter the cave and so we got to see lots of the bats. I have been claustrophobic throughout my life, but somewhere in the not so distant past I must have lost my fear of enclosed places because I didn’t feel at all nervous. At times the stalactites were so close to the water we needed to lie down parallel with the canoe to keep from hitting them. We had no back up flashlight and at times the maneuvering of the canoe between the walls of the cave and the stalactites was a tight fight. At the beginning of the trip John told me he’d have no trouble finding his way out if the light failed. At the end of the trip I told him he ought to have had a back up battery because there was no way he could have found his way out without light. He told me he wasn’t worried because the battery was new, that there had been times when he almost didn’t make it out because the battery was old and was running out of power. I think he takes foolish chances, but then again, I was along for the ride, so what does that say about me?

The road up and back was rough, rutted and part of it ran through a very large orange grove. The man who owned the property beside the cave was a Canadian who had found his piece of paradise here in the backwoods of Belize.

We were in Omish country and we passed many a horse and buggy on our way. They were on their way to market.

When we returned to St. Ignazio, the very small, not so pretty town where Midas Resort is located, I searched for a larger guiding office where I might hook up with a party interested in going to Pine Ridge Mountain.

April - Arrived in Belize

At 7 a.m. I was picked-up at my hotel. The car that picked me up was falling apart and I wondered if it could make it to the border. I thought perhaps this car and driver were just driving me to meet up with a mini-bus, but I didn’t ask. I enjoyed the uncertainty of the journey.

I was delivered to a sort of bus terminal where one of the mini-buses, which was almost the size of a regular bus, had Melchor painted haphazardly on the front My bag is carried to this not quite as run down vehicle and I hop on.

We were quite full, but I suppose not full enough, the bus driver kept shouting Mel ----e---chee, Mel--e--chee. After a while we moved on.

We didn’t go very far, I then found myself sitting in this rattle trap of a vehicle stopped in middle of a very busy market where the driver had the help of another man. They walked around this market while cars, buses and people hustled and bustled in a most chaotic fashion. Mel--e--chece, Mel--e--chece the men shouted.

They picked-up a few more passengers for the journey. We’re all stuffed into the collective and off we went. We stopped and started many times along the way to the border. People got on. People got off. Everyone except me were Latino.

At the border the bus driver told me I owe him money. I showed him my receipt because I’d already paid for my trip He tells me he is with another company.

I’ve been put on the wrong bus Now I have to pay twice for my trip to the border.

Two of my companions felt I was ripped off by the agency I bought my ticket from. For me it was not worth the effort to try to get a refund, in fact I suspect impossible unless I returned to Flores.

After the difficulty over my double payment my compañeros felt the need to look after me, and so the explained how I could reach the border to cross into Belize. Leaving Guatemala and entering Belize took a while because there were line-ups at both counters.

When I entered Belize I took a taxi to Midas Resort, and arrived to discover I was booked in for three nights and had no idea why I had planned to stay for so long. I was at the point in my trip where nothing was unplanned. I scout around for a guide. In Belize nothing can be visited without a guide. Ecotourism and protection of their patronage and jungle terrain is big in Belize.

John is a full blooded Mayan who has been guiding for sixteen years and was busy setting up his office, gift shop and carving workshop. He’s a wood carver and licensed guide

I wanted to visit the Mountain Pine Ridge forest reserve, but he doesn’t have anyone else booked for the trip and wasn’t profitable to take one person, unless I paid a whole lot extra. We agree to go to the Barton Lake Cave tomorrow.

What I've been up to.

This has been a week of medical adventures. The doctor I went to was born, raised and educated in California. The dentist doesn't speak English, which would generally be fine, but my teeth are complicated and I needed to tell him their history. I didn't want the filling replaced before my trip because I was concerned I might have an abscess nerve in a country where I knew no one. He tried to assure me that the filling was a long way from the pulp. It didn't work. He did put a coating on the tooth which corrected the sensitivity. I'll pay him a visit when I get back. The x-ray, consultation and the coating cost $250 pesos.

I injured my shoulder when I took a hard fall in August and it still hasn't healed. The x-ray, a steroid shot, a perscription for an anti-inflamatory and two visits to the doctor's office cost me $500 pesos. Filling the perscription cost $40 pesos. However, so far no change in the condition of the tendon that is causing the pain. At least now I know not to exercise the arm.

I'm leaving early this evening for Chiapas, Guatemala and Belize. It will be a long trip, eleven hours to San Cristobal, Chiapas. I don't know if I'll be able to check into the hotel when I arrive mid-morning, but I'm quite sure they'll tuck my duffle bag away somewhere.

With all the lugguage I own, none worked for this trip. So I purchased a rather large duffle bag, larger than I need, I think. It cost $300 pesos. Hopefully I'll be able to carry it with my one good arm.

I'm gone for about six weeks and will be posting from time to time, but I'm not taking my computer and photos won't be posted until my return to Oaxaca.