the final few days
We met pretty well everybody from the boat again wandering
round, or later at the tremendously good ice cream shop. Well, except the Germans. Placencia is at the southern end of a narrow
peninsula and is really a beach with buildings on it. It’s about 400 yards wide and even the
restaurants in the middle on the road are strictly on the beach and fairly
close to the sea. While Caye Caulker was
just touristy this place is like a real home town with tourists. We like it.
It is dusty and sandy but like most places we’ve seen in Belize pretty
clean with not much litter. It has the
usual scattering of westerners who’ve settled offering ‘alternative remedies’
to the gullible but which merely induce varying degrees of incredulity in
us. To be honest most people would be looking
after their inner well-being better by making sure that their salad was washed
in clean water.
I thought I‘d say something about the buses here. It’s clearly not allowed to carry weapons as
a passenger because every time a farm worker got on he handed his machete to
the driver who stowed it under his seat.
Also, definitions are inexact to say the least. Our Express non-stop to Belize City bus which
we were only getting for half the distance so was obviously making at least one
stop, set off dead on time when we left Placencia at 6.15 and had stopped to
pick up passengers at half a dozen places before we even left town. For about an hour of the journey the driver
stopped every few minutes to pick up or drop off and then for no apparent
reasons did the rest of the journey as stated, driving straight past people
frantically trying to wave him down. We
arrived on time. This particular bus had
a full set of well-treaded tyres and a typical ‘Belize windscreen’ which is
broken with a crazed pattern across it.
Not tiny bits as in safety glass but like a cracked window .
Taxis are the same and I wonder if this is a security device. You can’t take out a broken windscreen in one
piece but you can lift out a nice unbroken one with a couple of big rubber
suckers.
On the run up to San Ignacio we had to change at Belmopan. This
town had been planned to be the new Capital after a huge hurricane in the
1960’s caused millions of pounds worth of improvements to Belize City, but the idea seems to have been just not been followed up in true Belize
style. This area has a large Mennonite
community, a Christian Religious sect who won’t use mechanisation and various
other modern inventions. The men wear
mid blue shirts, dark trousers, big beards and all look like Abraham Lincoln
out to do the gardening while the women wear unflattering cotton dresses and
headscarves and they all look like Russian babushkas. Horses and buggies are used for
transport. They now run the biggest
agricultural and dairy businesses in Belize. However, it’s unclear to me why they chose
what seems to be up to the mid to late 1800’s as the time that human ingenuity
and invention was acceptable but after that wasn’t acceptable.
We think we’re quite good on security and it helps to be a
suspicious bugger. If we’re in a taxi
with bags in the boot we never both get out unless the driver does. If he doesn’t get out, H gets the bags while
I take my time paying from inside the vehicle.
I also always carry a dummy wallet as well as a money belt. The dummy has some old credit cards with the
numbers cut off and a sheaf of low denomination notes from other countries
we’ve visited. A selection of small
notes in a shirt pocket means we can pay for a couple of beers or an ice cream
without having to get out the real wallet and giving away which pocket it’s
in. This sort of suspicion has
drawbacks of course. If someone approaches
us or says hello, my first thought is nearly always, whatever they’re selling I
don’t want it, but of course most times they are just being friendly. I nearly cost us the visit to THE White
House garden when we were in Washington when I just said “no thanks” and walked
on whereas H actually listened, collected the free tickets on offer and we got
in. I’ve since heard that you only
usually get to visit the garden courtesy of your Congressman intervening.
With the end of the trip approaching, we had to do some
planning and have booked some time at a lodge near San Ignacio to do some
birding and relaxing. Run by a big
Belize family, one son of which runs a well known birding outfit here, it had
good big cabinas and attractive grounds with a large variety of plants. It was run in what you could call relaxed
Belizian style. For instance the 6.00
bird trip for us and an Italian birder, Maurizio eventually left at 7.15. For you non-birders this is late for tropical
birds which tend to disappear as it hots up.
Seeing tropical birds is rather like discovering birds all over
again. We often have no idea even what
family they’re in and so many look like someone with a random box of bird bits
has just stuck together contrasting pieces of anatomy and colours.
Toucans are a case in point.
On our second day we decided to canoe along the river,
taking in what turned out to be a magnificent botanical garden, ending up at
the lodge. When we arrived upriver and
asked for the ‘dry-bag’, our driver had forgotten it. You can see this might have
‘consequences’. We should have sent him
back for the bag and waited but we didn’t.
And so it came to pass that at the first set of rapids we tipped over,
got upright and then we sank it.
Cameras, binoculars, money and passports all got considerably wetter
than recommended by the manufacturers, but at least the water wasn’t cold. We were of course soaked, I did my back no
good at all trying to lift a canoe full of water while holding my dripping
camera bag in the air with the other hand, and one of the paddles was drifting
downstream. It was a clear, clean creek
but we were well and truly up it with only one paddle. The cash dried out well, freshly laundered,
the passports look lived in, bins seem OK but my nice new Canon isn’t. I must say though that the last few days
walking round without a pack full of photo and electronic gear has been very liberating.
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