Welcome to being in a constant state of dripping sweat

I arrived in Belize City and was immediately greeted by the filthy hot air sneaking its way onto the plane. I stood around for about 15 minutes hoping to bump into a similarly minded traveler (read: poor) who wanted to split the cab into town. Unfortunately the crowd was a bunch of whities on their little exotic vacas, so I had to part with the $25US and make my way into town alone.

I was dropped off at a hostel that was run by two ex-pats: a gray haired lady and her significantly younger pony-tailed partner. I ended up chatting with him a little bit about the “fate of the planet” the next morning and he turned out to be an annoying pessimist who abandoned his children in California and has a gambling problem. Pretty tense.

I spent that night with two Italian girls who could only converse with me in Spanish. We played Yachtzee, they made me pasta, and then I passed out. The next morning we walked to the bus station together as they made their way to the zoo, and I got on an old American school bus for my journey farther south.

I got a seat, luckily, and was sitting alone for a majority of the ride. There was no air-conditioning, but the open windows provided fresh air and it was totally bearable. I arrived in Dangriga mid-day and started the walk up the rustic streets toward “town”.

Nothing much to say about Dangriga, except that I had some rice and beans and a Belikin Stout for less than $5US for lunch. I chatted with this guy in the restaurant who runs boats out to Tobacco Caye for a while and promised him that I’d come back and ask for him when my Dad is in town.

The next morning I got to take an express bus to Punta Gorda ,which means it’s just a coach bus with air-conditioning that is recycled through the entire ride. I would have preferred fresh air. I wasn’t really sure where to get off once it got to PG, nor if anyone was coming to meet me, so I just sat back and saw what happened.

I told the conductor and a couple of people at the front of the bus I was going to Ya’axché and they squabbled for a while about where the office is even located. Luckily, a couple stops later, Nat from Ya’axché showed up at the bus looking for me. Apparently he had been chasing us down since it had gotten into town trying to stop me from going all the way to the station.

Went to the office, met everyone, ate rice and beans, salad and chocolate covered frozen banana for 2.50$US, cruised around for like two hours as Julio finished some errands in the Toledo district then finally got to the field centre (British English around here). Included pictures are of my room, kitchen, yard, etc.

I live with Molly. She's 25 and pretty cool. Nice to have an American girl around all the time ( though I would have preferred Samantha. Get it? American girl dolls? Whatev).

On Tuesday we had to do a riparian buffer assessment and test the water quality at this really far away transect on the river. We hiked for four straight hours on trails and through straight up bush. At one point we encountered a lone horse tethered to a tree. It was crazy bizarre. We took a break and ate, then did work, hiked for another two hours and then swam in the beautifully clear river among near naked Mayan women washing their clothes. I have been working on editing the Agro Forestry manual that one of the rangers prepared for the past two days. It's a shame because few Belizeans have formal educations so the written English around here is pretty broken.

Today we did a test hike of the ecotourism project Ranger for a Day. We spotted fresh tracks from jaguars, tapirs, and armadillos and saw tons of birds, butterflies and snakes. Afterwards as I was letting my dry beans soak and cook on the stove, I hung out with some rangers as they macheted down coconuts for us to drink and eat. They were saying drink/eat a whole coconut and don't worry about eating until tomorrow. Molly clarified by informing me that a whole coconut is 2000 calories!

Okay I'm going to go make rice and beans. Tomorrow I'm going into town to get my volunteer visa and to have a meeting with my other boss, Nick, a ginger male. Gross.

---

---