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Published: December 6th 2006
Quick, name 3 ways to get your adrenaline rushing in Belize: 1)Dive amongst sting rays, green moral eels, barracudas, and nurse sharks, 2)Hear the sound of howler monkeys at dawn just yards from your tent, 3)Get a knife pulled on you in the streets of belize city.
I have already blogged a bit about the first 2 and I'll put the last one off for later.
Belize is set apart from the rest of central america in many ways...
First, Belize is english-speaking, not spanish. It took me a while to adjust...the first couple of days I was ordering food and saying hello in spanish. The main language is english and creole, a unique hybrid form of english...you will be listening to it thinking you understand because there are familiar words but really you don't...it is a language in its own right with its own distinctive rhythm. (I don't know, what do you think Derek?)
Second, Belize is very new as a modern nation, having just achieved independence from Britain in 1981. Prior to this it was a colony called British Honduras. Before that it was basically just a giant logging camp for british and scottish pirates
and entrepeneurs.
It is also a tiny country, perhaps the size of Massachussetts and has only 270,000 people. So there are more people in most American cities than in all of Belize. The largest, Belize City, has only about 50,000 people.
Third, unlike guatemala which is basically ladino and mayan, there are many cultures intertwined here...The first thing i actually noticed upon crossing the border from Guatemala were the chinese restaurants. They are everywhere and they are good too. One of the good things about leaving Guatemala was to find some more culinary diversity and flavor.
Yes, chinese! They are some of the newest ethnic immigrants. But Belize is mostly Creole, with Garifuna, Mayan, German Mennonite, Indian (as in from india, called east indian here to distinguish it from indigenous mayan indians...can you believe their is a Hindu temple right in dowtown BC...it caters to belizean hindus but also to young hare krishna wannabes), British, and even Arab communities thrown into the mix.
The Creoles are descendants of african slaves and british and the Garifuna (sometimes called black carib) are the descendants of the african slaves who intermarried with local Indians. they make up about 10%
of the population.
But culturally, it is very much western (usa) and caribbean. For example, there is no place that doesn't have the goddamn TV blaring and much of it carries satellite programming from the US like soap operas and sports. American brands of clothing and cars are ubiquitous, and christmas music in english could unfortunately be heard everywhere. And the black and caribbean aspects are shown in the dreadlocks, the bright red and yellow and green colors of hats and shirts, the barefootedness (is that a word?) on the islands, the reggae and reggaeton, the punta rock, the african pop and caribbean rap, the seafood cuisine, the fry chicken, and the yummie fry jacks (there just fried dough, like doughnuts, but without sugar). Even the chinese restaurants served fried chicken with the chow mein or curry.
Fourth, it is a wealthier country and it is much more expensive. I had sticker shock the entire time i was there, especially the islands where it is to be expected. But i was paying 2-4 times the price for things I paid in Guatemala.
But Belize City is a real piece of shit town...from the moment i arrived i didn't like it. You are constantly harassed by hustlers, drug dealers, and touts. First it is a port city, second it is a drop off for caribbean tourists on the cruise lines, so they know where the money is. They have this ghastly air-conditioned mall just for ship tourists to come off for a couple hours and buy some glitzy crap and then get back on board without even seeing anything else. It is even called Tourist Market are something like that. I half understand it, because its not that there is much to see in belize city, but don't pretend you have been to belize by stopping at the port and buying some sterilized trinkets from the upper middle class merchants.
Just outside of this real belize begins. Now there are hustlers and touts everywhere, India being among the best. Guatemala and Mexico had touts too, and i know people have to make a living. But here there is this real inauthentic aspect and i just had this feeling of being not secure. In Guatemala people say hello genuinely and i never felt unsafe. I'm sure i would think differently if i spent some time in guatemala city or where there during the war years. But here when these men shout out at you, "hey, man, hey buddy, where ya from?" and pretend to know you or try to high-five you, i was really turned off. Especially when they try to come talk to you and walk beside you. Sometimes people would yell at you from a block away! What the hell! I found the best strategy was to ignore them because any attention given was a sign for further discourse.
Now belize has this reputation for being a real "laid-back" culture, but it wasn't my style of laid-back. Laid-back yes, if you mean sitting on the goddamn curb all day drunk or high and harassing people. To me it was obnoxious. There was this crazy looking grey-haired guy that lingered in the streets all day pretending he knew people...i would see him all around town...he would hang outside the hotel and try to talk to me and other people if he saw me inside, even when i was talking on the phone. Another crazy looking guy came into a restaurant while i was eating breakfast and said he saw me yesterday on the streets and sat down uninvited at my table! I said what the hell and told him to get the fuck out of there.
I know it sounds like a have developed a rough edge, but sweetness doesn't work with these people, like, "hey, excuse me, sir, but i would prefer to be by myself right now, if that is alright, pretty please."
Maybe it was just me, but there seemed to be this whole class of degenerate looking people. Even on the islands and even further south along the coastal towns i thought i would get away from it, thinking it was just a city thing....Drunken, debauched dirty people staggering the streets. It just was different than the poor people i had seen elsewhere like in guatemala and chiapas. The poor mayan people didn't look debauched or sick or wrong in the head to me and they were never threatening. You can't really go out after it gets dark at 6-7 and certainly not after 9pm. So i was stuck in the hotel and you could only go across the street to the one chinese restaurant that stayed open in that area, which had a private guard posted at the entrance.
So one day i wanted to get out of town and decided to go to the Howler Monkey forest and as i was walking to the buses a guy started jiving me. The guy looked like a hustler, and I wasn't in the mood so I just ignored him, but he stepped up beside me and continued his thing. Damn! So our conversation when something like this: "buddie-man, where you goin', man?'" "Listen, i'm not interested." "I'm just trying to be your new friend, man. where ya from, ma buddie?" *that's the universal inroad, to ask where someone is from, because everybody feels like they have to answer. He puts out his hand to shake...i refuse and continue walking. Then he becomes beligerant and starts yelling at me, "Fuck you, white cracker! Who the fuck you think you are?"
Wow, how is this a racial thing? i thought.
He is yelling and then he says, "what you think i should do with this, cracker?" and brings out a knife. In moments like this you have a million split-second thoughts and you just act on instinct. All i could think to do was get away, so I pushed him as hard as i could in the chest. He stumbles back off the curb of the sidewalk and falls in the street and i run like hell around the corner, with my pack and everything, where the buses were.
He didn't come around the corner and luckily i never saw him again. I just got on the bus and wanted to get out of there.
He might have just wanted to intimidate a foreigner. I have heard much worse stories of muggings by gunpoint from travelers in central american capitals like Tegucigalpa, Honduras and guatemala city and mexico city. So i considered myself lucky, but it didn't endear me much to belize. That being said, i don't not like belize because of this incident, because i already didn't like belize that much by this time, that is, except for the coral reefs and the monkeys and the forests.
Sorry I don't have pics on this post because i didn't really take many. It wasn't safe to go around with your camara and besides there was nothing much to take a picture of.
Just so I don't paint the entire county with my black paintbrush, i have to say i did meet some nice people. The places where i stayed in BC and dangriga and punta gorda were basic, but clean and the owners were nice people. I also befriended a woman named Shirley (and her friends call her coolie girl, which used to be a derisive and patronizing name the british gave to people from India) who works at Tropic Air...she is east indian in appearance but speaks english and creole. Her parents and grandparents were born in india but she has never been there and she doesn't speak punjabi or hindi at all. Her parents are nominally Hindu, but she is anglican. Some of the ancestors of the indian community here were also brought as slaves or indentured servants like many of the black ancestors. It was interesting to get to know her background and life. She told me a lot about Belize. I met another girl who was from orange walk in northern belize whose mother was from el salvador, and who spoke english and spanish, but not creole. She hates belize city too but that is where the higher-paying jobs are. She was very much enamored with popular american culture and wants to immigrate to the united states. I'd marry her and bring her back to the states but i don't do that sort of thing anymore...and she has to turn 18 first. 😉
On another positive note, Belize has toilet seat covers, toilet paper, and hot water showers!
And apart from its dismal cities, Belize has abundant forests and natural beauty, though i didn't take advantage like i wanted to. After belize city i went south to Dangriga, a small costal city right on the beach, but it kept raining, so i continued south the next day to the most southern town of Punta Gorda, which is quiet, but nothing much to brag about. By this time i just wanted to get out of belize and back to guatemala. Usually i give a place some time so i can get to know it, but 8 days was enough for me. I just wasn't enjoying myself so i planned on getting the boat the next morning to Livingston, Guatemala. But I found that they weren't going to livingston until the next day; they were only going to puerto barrios, guatemala. So i didn't have a choice unless i wanted to stay an extra day there. That didn't appeal to me so i hopped on and got to PB, and immediately took another boat to Livingston.
I didn't like that town much either, so took a 2 hour river boat road down the rio dulce, which was pleasant and picturesque. It goes through a small canyon like a miniature Sumidero in Chiapas and then opens up wide with forested hills on both sides and islands in the middle of the river. Saw lots of bird species and dinosaurs and mayan thatched roof huts on the shores.
When i got to the town of rio dulce on the lake, i decided, what the hell, and hopped on a bus that was just leaving to head north back into Peten. I just wanted to get away from port and river towns and get back to the forest.
So after a long day's vagabonding, starting in southern belize, crossing the gulf of honduras twice by boat, going up the river by lancha, standing in the aisle of a chicken bus for 3 hours and at one point the bus skidding sideways on the blacktop after the pilot slammed on the breaks in the rain to avoid hitting somebody, i arrived outside poptun, in eastern guatemala.
And that is just what i was looking for. Oh, beautiful Guatemala, it is maravillosa to be back in your arms, speaking spanish, hearing your birds, and eating your beans!
So right now I am living in a tree on a beautiful finca and that will be the subject of my next blog.
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Derek
non-member comment
Belize vs. Guatemala
Well, I tend to agree with what you wrote Ryan, Creole definitely is a separate language. Guatemala was markedly more dangerous and thuggish during their protracted civil war era, and Belice has taken a downturn in recent years as it has fully entered into competition for tourist dollars. Unfortunately, most tourists go to Belize now either on their way to the ruins or for doing something that they wouldn't want to get caught doing in the States. Anyway, sorry to hear about your incident.