Beautiful Belize

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This post is only... a month late?

I wanted to post about some places I've had the chance to go lately but when I tried to post the pictures (more than a hundred of them, I'm a little camera happy) on Facebook, my internet cut out - making me lose all my edits and captions. My frustration pushed me out the door for a walk, and I abandoned the posts and then life went on and now, here we are - either way, better late than never right?

So I have had the chance to do a few cool little trips around Belize since I've been here. I already posted about my weekeday-weekend in Placencia (where I will be returning to next weekend hopefully, with my friend Gomi, to get some of their famed gelato from the Italian couple who lives there. It was closed over the summer, who closes an ice cream place in the summer!). I've also had the opportunity to go to a couple villages - San Felipe, Barranco and Sunday Wood, to the town of Dangriga, and to some waterfall/cave sites in Blue Creek and San Antonio.

First story...

While hanging out with a friend from school, I met Gabriel who, when I asked him what he had been doing that day, answered with, have you heard of the Grameen Bank? Now - if you have heard of it, I'm sure you understand how excited I was to be talking to him. If you don't: Grameen Bank was the original microcredit bank, that started the microfinance movement. Microfinance, in a nutshell, enables impoverished people (with business plans) around the world to access credit, allowing them to start or grow a business that can seriously change the fate of their families and communities. So turns out Gabriel works for the local Credit Union and his whole job is to promote microcredit and set it up in the local villages! SO great! I basically invited myself along to a meeting he had arranged for the following Saturday in Sunday Wood. He was really nice and offered to leave earlier so we could stop a few other places too, and see more of Toledo (the district I am in).

We went to Barranco which is the southern most town in Belize, and has a gorgeous view of Guatemala. It seems very quiet (I suspect many people were in PG, Saturday is the major market day), and I learned there is a soap factory that does tours! Day trip anyone? Then off we went to Sunday Wood, which was quite a ways away, so I got to see a lot of different villages on the way. Interesting thing - all the villages have a UNICEF sign that states the population, the amount of children, how many are in school, etc. Not sure how updated they are...

In Sunday Wood, we arrived and found a man waiting for us - turns out he was in charge of calling the rest of the village the meeting. WITH A CONCH SHELL. Seriously. He blew on a conch shell and men came for the meeting. As my friend Marie said - "Now you can check 'Attend a meeting called to attendance by a conch shell' off your bucket list." ha ha! About two dozen men came to the meeting (though Gabriel specifically asked for women, because internationally, microfinance operates mostly with women as recipients, it's simply more effective for long term progress.). They were all seemed interested, which is good. I will eventually post on my other blog what I learn about microfinance here - so check that out.

Driving through the villages was super interesting - to see how people live. There were lots of people washing dishes and clothes and bathing in the creeks and rivers, and all the houses were wooden walls with thatch roofs. From what I could see, and from what Gabriel, who is from another village called Columbia, told me, most people have one bed type thing, for the mother and the most recent baby, while the rest usually sleep on the floor on on hammocks. There are chickens, pigs and dogs and naked babes running around, and there is a government school in each village. Very enlightening trip - hope I get to go again!

The trip to Dangriga was earlier in October with Tom, the other intern from my university and a guy we know. We took the bus up Saturday and came back Sunday. Gary wanted to go bird watching on Sunday with this group that does organized trips, and I just wanted to see more of Belize. Hint to future Belize travelers - don't bother going anywhere on Sundays. Nothing is ever open! Except the giant supermarkets they have!! In reality, they were the size of a medium sized Shoppers Drug Mart but relative to PG, they were stocked! I was so overwhelmed with choices I couldn't even think of what kinds of things I would have liked to buy. Next time, I will bring a grocery list and bags.

Best part of the trip was seeing the Pen Cayetano art gallery. He is a Garinagu (Garifuna) artist and has gorgeous paintings depicting different facets of his culture -the people, historic events, the food, everything! His wife is German, and she does this amazing textile art, basically embroidery on steroids. If I had $500 to spend on art, I would have bought one. haha Until then, I bought post cards 😊

And last story... a totally tourist tour day.

The day started with the intention of going tubing/swimming in the Blue Creek Cave but the water was so high that we just hiked out to it and came back. The hike was a ton of fun, more of walk really, but it was in the jungle next to a big river. I was happy! We had to wade across a big, fast creek to get there, which added to the fun - cold water up to the middle of my thigh, walking in our bare feet. The cave looked beautiful too, and the water was certainly way too high to even get close to getting in. Apparently it usually lives up to its name and is a bright blue, but that day the heavy rain in the villages made it pretty brown. We walked back out and headed to a waterfall instead, in San Antonio (BEAUTIFUL village, definitely need to find my way back there). It's a big village, but not quite a town, with gorgeous hills and houses with stairs that would force me to garden because there'd be no way I'd be carrying groceries up there. The waterfall was perfect - a gorgeous clear basin at the bottom, and the waterfall wasn't tall so we could jump off it, once some kids showed us where the deeper spot was. The water was cold - I was glad I had some training in Canadian glacier rivers!

In the afternoon we went to San Felipe to visit Cyrila's Chocolate - where Juan and Abelina and their two kids own a cocoa farm that has as it's mission to grow organic and sustainably, and to provide meaningful employment and industry for their village. Their farm is a giant plot of land with cocoa trees and lots of other types too to maintain the biodiversity of the area (my heart was so happy). Gotta say, even though I learned a lot about cocoa that trip, I must say the highlight was learning about almonds! I asked about an interesting looking tree, to find out that it was an almond tree, and Juan showed me which fruit to pick and how to crack it open. No wonder almonds are so expensive! You have to crack an outer shell, then get rid of some mushy stuff, and then crack another inner shell and then you get ONE almond. It was delicious, but seriously, a lot of work if you wanted even just one handful! I will forever appreciate my almonds.

Juan showed us the farm and Abelina showed us what to do with the beans. We got to shell them, grind them into a liquidy paste with volcanic rock, and added it to hot water to make hot cocoa! It was so wonderful and a delicious end to the day. I bought a lot of their chocolate products - cocoa powder that I make way too many batches of cake and brownies with, cocoa nibs (bits of broken cocoa bean) that I added to my banana bread this week, and of course chocolate bars - heaven. I had been out the farm once before for dinner with some people I know in PG, and this trip was even better!

That trip was certainly the tourist-highlight of my time here so far. Nice to see such crazy beauty and to learn about food (seriously.. the almond thing still blows me away). Great, great, great day.

Well, these posts get long quickly. That's enough for me tonight - hopefully there will be more travel stories soon enough! Life is good, keeping extremely busy with school. Been hanging out with some new friends and cooking and baking a lot in my spare time (my ingredient du-jour is banana. They're in season so they're just 50 Canadian cents for 8, so I make a lot of banana bread and most recently banana oat bars.) Karate and running are the balance to all that cooking, and the rain has been letting up so I get to go out more often. Well now you're all caught up!

Pinkie promise that I won't lag so much before the next post! Take care, all!

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Photos

Barranco
Guatemala behind me

Art Gallery
Pen Cayetano's Art Gallery, Dangriga

Blue Creek
Wading our way to the Cave

Made it!
Too much water to go in

San Antonio Waterfall
Me jumping off!

Juan at Cyrila's Chocolate
Showing us one of the pods.

Cocoa Pod
Each one will hold about 20-30 beans

Almond Fruit
And a slightly mangled almond, my first try.

Almond!!
I'm going to remember that almond forever, no joke.

Inside a pod
The beans are under the white stuff, which is sweet, you can suck on it, and animals love it. The beans have to be dried out first.

Mashing beans
Mashing them on a volcanic rock to make the liquidy paste that they use to make hot cocoa and chocolate bars.

Comments

[Marie]

Awesome post K! I loved hearing all those stories again, and this time seeing the pictures! All the places you've seen make me so happy :) Lovelove