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Published: April 20th 2010
Now that Jen has had to recommence her Masters degree while travelling, you dear readers, are going to have to put up with me, Jeff, for the rest of the blogs. But hey, whats new?! From the moment we entered Belize through it's western border, we knew we were going to get on just fine with the locals. For starters the stamp guy at the immigration, in a clear departure from the mood usually shown by this profession, was all smiles and welcomes, asking us 'so what exactly is the best way to eat kangaroo? With a big dish of mash potata?.' Then, as our bus came into Belize City a few hours later I began to notice signs outside of shops for 'meat pies'. Together with the fact that our guide book was talking about cricket pitches in each town, and Queen Lizzie was on all the bank notes and coins, and we thought we were right at home!
Our van from Flores (Guatemala), was clearly geared towards serving the classic gringo trail - from Tikal, dropping us off outside of the boat terminal for trips out the the backpacker-reef spot of Caye Caulker. But following our recent
trend of trying to get a little bit off the classic backpacker track, we headed straight to the bus terminal instead and began our journey south to Dangriga.
Dangriga We entered the sleepy seaside town of Dangriga on a Sunday afternoon. We wandered from the bus terminal up to Ruthie's Seaside Cabins, where Ruthie had managed to sweep us into a lovely little cabin and told us all about her abilities in the kitchen before we had even asked how much the cabin cost...'How much!?'.. Welcome to Belize, by far the most expensive country in Central America.
A stroll through town looking for dinner on a Sunday evening was proving extremely fruitless, but soon enough another local character came to our rescue. Tonight for dinner, a quickly whipped up chow mein and chicken stirfry from 'Uncle Will', known simply to his customers as 'Chino' (i.e. Chinaman). Our experience of the multicultural nature of Dangriga continued the next day with a visit to the Garifuna Museum. Here we learnt all about the ancestry of the very proud Garinagu (singular Garifuna). Our understanding is it went something like this -
- Arawak-speaking people of the Orinoco region of South
America (Venezuela), migrant to the island of St Vincent in the Caribbean
- West Africans, predominantly males, are transported to the Caribbean
- The cultures intermixed, predominated by African men and Arawak women.
- Following unrest in St Vincent, many Garinagu take to the sea in the search of a new home. From a first base in modern Honduras, Garifuna people migrated to several locations along the Caribbean coast of Central American, including to Nicaragua (near Pearl Lagoon) and southern Belize.
The museum also had exhibits on the unique Garifuna culture, language and music. Once outside we were mobbed by school kids from the Garifuna school next door, and played a game of pass the camera round and take each others photos.
Walking around Dangriga we were constantly greeted by the locals. There were plenty of 'hellos', 'awrighhts?' and 'good evenings' (regardless of whether it was morning or evening!). Everyone was concerned about Jen's strapped up ankle, with many offering massages or other home remedies to fix it. The upside of the injury was that it became a real conversation starter. We also noticed here that our new walking pace brought about by Jen's injury (i.e. extremely slow)
was just about a perfect match for how folks walk in laid-back Dangriga.
Tobacco Caye A panga ride from Dangriga out into the Caribbean took us to Tobacco Caye, a tiny caye on Belize's famous barrier reef. Whilst the caye was small enough to walk around in less than 5 minutes, finding accomodation proved particularly difficult. Partly because some places were booked out, others were way out of our budget and others didn't seem to have anybody home through whom to enquire. But a couple of hours later we finally came across the very friendly Dean, who runs some gorgeous cabins over the water on the Caye's northern end. Thankfully for us he also had a two storey hut out the back which was more within our price range. Unfortunately the weather wasn't fantastic during our stay, but we did manage to get in a great snorkel. There was an amazing variety of fish and all sorts of fan and brain coral to keep us amused for a couple of hours. Upon leaving the Caye the next morning the sun appeared (of course), and at least gave us a good view of the island in all its beauty as
we were leaving.
Orange Walk A pleasant bus trip from Dangriga along Hummingbird Highway took us back into Belize City. Here we changed buses to head further north to Orange Walk. Although the town of Orange Walk itself is not particularly inspiring, we managed to have ourselves a great time here. Staying in luxury out at the riverside cabins on the outskirts of town proved to be a good choice. From here we took a fantastic river boat trip down the New River (not sure what happened to the old one), past Belize's one and only sugar refinery, past the Mennonite community at Shipyard, past bats and turtles and crocodiles and birds all the way down to the mayan ruins of
Lamanai. Having a guide for the first time at a Mayan site was a real positive - giving us a much better insight into the workings of this ancient city. In fact, Laminai is thought to have been one of the longest inhabited of all the Mayan sites. Here we saw some amazing carvings which had just been uncovered by archaeologists and played a bit of 'the ball game' - well actually, nobody really knows how this game
was played, so we just threw a rubber ball around. Jen had the pleasure of watching the rest of us climb up a massive temple and enjoy the great views over the New River. The quide was quite correct in stating at the start of the climb, 'going up is physical; coming down is psychological'. It was steep!
Back at the cabins in Orange Walk some local teenagers invited me into their game of basketball while Jen rested her tired ankle with a lie down and a book (the way she treats all ailments). As she rested, the skillful teenagers managed to rip out any sporting pride I may have had, and tear it up in front of me, as they dunked all over me. Them 5 foot nothing, me almost 6 foot... But it was good fun, nonetheless.
Tired from the workout these kids gave me, I headed up to the bar for a beer. Here I met the owner of the cabins/bar/etc, Raul (aka Pete), his brother Mart and their friend Peter Flowers. We soon got to talking about music, and it turns out that with Peter Flowers recent return to Belize (after 20 odd years
in the US) the guys had decided to reform the band they once had many years earlier. When I mentioned I also played music they all got very excited and before I knew it we were all in the band room jamming along. Whilst I was pretty rusty on the guitar, and even rustier on the drums, they asked if I would join them the following night for their first gig - Friday night in that riverside pub. Raul was kind enough to only charge us half price for the extra night, and wiped all our beers off the tab! Ah, the privileges of the rock n roll life.
And so, by late Friday afternoon we had moved all the equipment into the outside bar area, Raul jumped on the guitar, Peter Flowers grabbed his bass and I picked up the drumsticks. We started out with some blues numbers, including one Raul had composed earlier that morning. Then when we started going rock n roll with Blue Suede Shoes and Rock Around the Clock people were up and dancing. A bit more blues, and then Mart turned up so I happily gave up the drumsticks so that he could
rejoin the lineup. Despite me not being a particularly competent drummer, the second I went over to the bar to get a beer just about every middle aged man was coming up to me, shaking my hand, getting a photo with me, etc. Even Jen was getting comments from the locals, such as 'good boyfriend!.' Definitely did good things for my ego! The free beers went down very well for the rest of the night, as we enjoyed the rest of the bands set, chatted with a couple of guys who were up from Placencia, and thoroughly enjoyed the karaoke performances that took place after the band. Never have we seen so much passion in a karaoke night as this!
Now there was only one task left before leaving Belize - get a meat pie. So far our attempts to do so had been fruitless, as shop after shop advertising them never in fact actually had them. On a hot tip from Mart we headed to the local Shell service station, where we were sure to find one. Sure enough, there was a big container full of them on the counter, so we grabbed ourselves a strawberry milk (another
luxury we had been sorely missing) and waited in line. Got to the front of the queue, and what?? Where did the pies go?? Looked out the window and a man had taken the entire container, jumped in his car and driven off. Noooooooooooooooooo!! Will have to wait another month or so to finally fufil the craving.
Until next time,
the travelling travellers
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