The road travelling to the north end of the island isn’t a viable road; it’s a bumpy, often swampy track. Riding our bikes today, with civilization far behind us, we didn’t pass much other than the odd resort that is only accessed by boat. But then on the lagoon side we came to an abandoned overgrown resort. Naturally, we explored.

Walking through debris in a small ground floor room, suddenly a Belizean man appeared coming in from a balcony overhanging the water.  I think we surprised him as much as he surprised us. We all smiled. He was looking at the fish, he said. We went to the balcony where he pointed out the fish and told us how he would feed them and then catch them. He didn’t have a fishing rod but he’d rigged up something with a pail and a line. Half a pail full in half an hour, he told us. I was excited. I find fish unexpectedly expensive here and eagerly anticipate catching our own dinner (and by that I mean mostly Jim and Max catching our dinner). He also told us about how there were lots of big crocs in the lagoon, one small one (only a few feet long) lived right under where we were standing.

The fish he feeds are barracuda’s and sometimes the big ones come and eat the little ones, he said. He tries to shoot the big ones but they always get away. Apparently they are good eating. We will see. I suggested we come back another day and fish together. We will bring the rods and he will bring the feed and expertize. It’s a long laborious ride back made all the more so by my broken bike seat but if we score a saddle bag full of fish, it will be worth it.

This morning, when Max left for school,  it was reminiscent of his first day starting (grade 7) in the public system after years in a small private school in Perth. He set out for grade ten (or should I say 2nd form) boldly,  facing similar challenges.

I was getting ready when he said, “Mom, please don’t come with me”.

“No problem Maxie,” I replied.

“Please don’t call me Maxie,” he responded back with a long suffering look.

I saluted smartly. After he left I followed using my evade and duck surveillance technique. The open auditorium of the school is right on the beach and I thought about scaling a palm tree me Jane modus for my stake out but opted for huddling behind a group of 4 mothers watching their 1^st form (grade 9) students instead.

As the white-clad kids arrived, I noticed some universal similarities.  Groups of girls gathered and giggled and hugged after summer holidays and groups of boys watched the girls gathering, giggling and hugging. Promptly at 7:50 am the assembly started. I watched until they were divided into classes and sent off to homeroom. Today is orientation, tomorrow is games and classes start Monday.

When Max arrived home, he smiled his bright smile and said in a surprised voice, “Well, that might not be so bad. Everybody in my class already knows my name. I’m popular “.

We had our first island glitch today. Sheila flies out tomorrow at 1:00 pm from Cancun. So today she needs to take the midnight bus from Corozol (on the mainland) to the Cancun airport which takes about 6 hours. The boat from San Pedro to Corozol leaves at 3:00 pm every day. It all works! Except there is no boat when there is engine trouble – as in today! Soooo…plan B. Take a different boat down to Belize City. Unfortunately it’s the wrong direction and an additional 4 hours on the bus, costs more money, and involves braving the lean, mean streets of Belize City again.  Jim is escorting his mom and will see her safely settled on the right bus. He will catch a boat back tomorrow.

Max and I are staying here and preparing for him to start school tomorrow.

We have bought his school uniform of long white pants, white shirt, black belt and shoes. I am sewing the school crest on the left pocket (that says San Pedro High, anchored in success) of his shirt as required. We have purchased his books (at a whopping $400.00).

Max feels a combination of nervous, excited, and wondering how “they will accept the gringo”. I feel like I did when he started kindergarten. I am sure that he will be fine and am gratified that he is giving it a go. Adults can appreciate the experience of attending school in a Central American country but for a 15 year old there is nothing fun about leaving the life you love and your friends. Even living by the sea and having the option to home school using Ontario distance online learning, he is constantly trying to negotiate a return home. We will see what the next week brings.

(click on the picture if you want to make it bigger. (Thanks to Sabrina, I know this now)

 

When we finally got the (possibly) brown recluse spiders good and killed the two sets of mother and son started down the river, Max and I in the kayak and Jim and Sheila in the canoe. Water is way outside of Sheila’s comfort zone so this river trip was quite the quest for her. Our plan was to ride the gentle current a couple of hours back to San Ignacio.

Floating through Tarzan vines listening to all manner of birds, insects, monkeys and other rainforest creatures was magical and we reveled in the isolation. We passed a chunk of a termite nest that had fallen off a tree and was crawling with hundreds, if not thousands of termites not at all pleased with their new waterfront property. A couple of spiders dropped out of a tree into Jim and Sheila’s canoe. Max spotted a Basilisk Lizard (commonly called a Jesus Lizard) running across the water and when we stopped for a swim he stumbled across a largish turtle with a pointy mouth that kept opening when he (carefully) picked it up to show us. Turns out it is a nocturnal and very rare South American river turtle that is listed as “critically endangered”, the only species of its family that is not a fossil. SO COOL! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_American_river_turtle

The first (of many) rapids weren’t class 5, but it was fast moving, albeit shallow, water nonetheless. The best way down was close to the shore through low hanging vines and branches. Max and I went first. After being thrashed by the brush I turned to watch Jim and his Mom go down. I could see Sheila holding tightly to both sides of the canoe. Before she knew what had happened, the branches had knocked her backwards flat onto her back, feet in the air. Jim was trying to make sure she was OK and navigate the canoe at the same time. Sheila came up thumbs up, laughing hard. That got us laughing and throughout the day whenever I would think of her feet in the air, I would burst out laughing.

It soon became apparent that we needed to paddle… and paddle…and paddle. Under one low hanging canopy I had a near miss with a hornet’s nest covered with hornets. And still we paddled. Under a large overhanging rock we were treated to the sight of dozens and dozens of fruit bats flying all around us. (Very cool!) And still we paddled. We found the stairs to the medicine trail, slipped in the mud getting to shore, climbed up the hill (with my now broken thong), were tired and getting slightly concerned about time so we went back to the canoe… and still we paddled. When we started passing small pockets of children cooling off and playing in the water and women washing clothes in the river, we knew civilization was near.

David of David’s Adventures was casual. There was no making sure that we had food and water (which we did) or questions about whether we knew how to paddle (some people might find it too challenging to paddle for six hours) or waivers or forms of any kind. His instructions consisted of “If you want to walk the medicine trail go past Shaw Creek a short piece and look for a fallen tree trunk in the water, then start looking for stairs up the hill on your left”. Then he gave us a gold toothed smile and “have a good day”, walked across the river, dreadlocks hanging to his waist, and disappeared. All part of the experience! We don’t need or want to be handheld; but a little bit of handholding usually comes with a guide. It reminded me about how different life is here. Simplicity and adventure abounds. I love it. And Sheila did amazing.

David getting us some of his bananas

David has been a guide for twenty years and lives deep in the jungle with his wife and youngest daughter. His land sits on an unexcavated Mayan ruin and was passed down to him from this great grandfather to his is grandfather who was a Mayan Shaman down the line to David who is a grandfather himself. He looks like the original medicine man. We hired him (truly, how could we not) for our paddle trip down the Mopan River. The plan was – he would drive us to his home about an hour away from our hotel in San Ignacio where we would launch the canoe and double kayak into the river, then Jim, Sheila, Max and I would proceed to paddle downstream back to San Ignacio on our own and meet him there. What we didn’t know was that it would be quite the adventure that it was.

At 8:30 we climbed into his SUV, slammed the door shut and a small part fell off. I don’t know what the part was but he picked it up, muttered that he would have to fix that, and we were on our way. En route he pointed out the estate of “the toilet paper king”. Clearly a flourishing business! When we finally arrived, we avoided the head sized poison ivy leaves that he pointed out, dragged the canoe down to the river (the kayak was already there), paddled across, then walked up the almost vertical steps to his place.

Shaded by giant palms, his thatched outdoor kitchen had a row of Mayan tools and artifacts on a sideboard beside a large eating table. A large clump of fresh apple bananas hung from a string and he passed us some to eat. They were sweet and delicious. A bench overlooked the Mayan mountains. They built everything themselves. It was a small secluded paradise.

We walked back down to the river with David. He wished us a good day, waded across the river and disappeared. Our first order of business was to deal with the spider in our Kayak that crossed paths with Max’s baby toe. It looked exactly like the brown recluse. (We have since looked it up and can’t for the life of us decide. It may be too big). In any case – THERE WERE TWO. Jim’s fear of spider’s isn’t a phobia, but close, so trying to kill what we assumed were potentially lethal fast moving arachnids in our kayak was nail-biting to say the least. But he did it.

Oops, time to go, more later.

Hello loyal and illustrious blog-followers,

First, I would like to commend you for picking such a wonderful blog to follow. You must be really smart. And pretty.

Second, you should know that this is Arlene’s daughter Sabrina writing. I serve as manager, middle(wo)man and menial pencil-pusher for mom’s blog’s IT division. As such, I feel it is my duty to inform you that we are experiencing some technical difficulties with the sidebar and pictures. So if things start changing around a lot or disappearing, you may send your complaints to the company email: notarealcompany@yousillygoose.com.

We hope to have this all sorted soon and we thank you for your continued readership during these times. As a token of our appreciation, please enjoy the comic below.

Best,

Sabrina

TheFlipSideOfFifty tech support

After a relaxing couple of days enjoying Sheila’s visit we decided to visit San Ignacio and see some jungle. It has to be a quick trip though as we registered Max for the first term in San Pedro High School and he starts this Thursday. Kids here don’t take school for granted with tuition costing over a thousand dollars a year, plus books (about 300.00) and the all-white uniform (200.00), with black dress shoes and belt. We have all given it a lot of thought and hope it will be a good experience for Max. Anyway, more on school another day.

This morning the boat for Belize City was overloaded so about 30 of us were herded onto another boat, only to find that the motor on that boat wasn’t working properly, so back we went to the original boat where we crammed in again and groaned our way out to sea. 1 ½ hours later we docked and high-tailed it on foot the five or so blocks through the dirty, loud, rough streets of Belize City to the bus terminal where we boarded a bus, San Ignacio bound. Sheila has never been outside Canada and the U.S. and justifiably looked especially grateful to view the city through the window from the seat of said bus rather than the open fray of the street. Belize City is an intimidating place.

Saturday is market day in San Ignacio. There are rows and rows of stands with an array of colorful fruits and vegetables and all manner of exotic foods. We’ve entered a world where pineapple and avocados are dirt cheap and potatoes, onions and carrots cost a fortune. For 2 dollars I bought a very large chunk of what I understood to be some dirivitive of sugar cane; turns out it is delectable molasses fudge.

We climbed a very steep hill and visited a 3000 year old Mayan ruin site this afternoon named Cahal Pech. It was magnificent. Like Max said as he spread his arms wide standing on the highest ledge overlooking a courtyard, “A Mayan king could have stood here doing this”. What a feeling! I lay flat on my back on a different ledge that looked suspiciously like a sacrificial alter and thought the same thing. Only it wouldn’t be a king laying there; more like a scared virgin or a slave. Not going to lie – my heart started to pound. Tomorrow we canoe down the Mopan river and walk a “medicine trail” full of herbs and plants used by the ancients. Till tomorrow, adios.

I love cemeteries. Odd, I know. I wonder through the headstones looking at the dates and figuring out how old the person was when they died. I read the inscriptions and think about their loved ones, the lives, the losses. Sometimes I imagine a whole life history around a single monument. When Max saw the little cemetery he said it was the cheeriest little cemetery he had ever seen. Max often has the unique gift to see and verbalize things that others miss. And he is right; it is a cheery little cemetery.

the cemetaery

The various sized concrete rectangles above ground are all painted white, many with bright flowers and decorations adorning the monuments. Iguanas sun themselves on the warm blocks of concrete that separate the cemetery from the white sand of the beach and our apartment stairs. Palm trees sway in the breeze. Three harmless drunks hang out there every day with the dead, their bottles open, quietly passing the time and feeding the birds. We have wondered what initially drew them there. Were they already drunks who just like the quiet to live their life out of the bottle or did a tragedy bring them there, time passed, they stayed and the bottle followed. Who knows? Jim has nodded to them on his way to the water during his time here while I was in Ottawa and they have always been pleasant   but I can tend to engage in a lot of

conversation and it may not be prudent given that we live right here.

The cemeteries in Greece looked similar to this. Headstones are crowded with candles, pictures and mementoes from their loved ones life.  They were not the melancholy places that often pervade where we bury our dead. When I went down just now to take some pictures (I am going to try and start posting more pictures) there was an old weathered man standing beside a fairly recent stone, flowers by his feet. I almost stopped to talk with him but didn’t want to intrude. I wonder what his story is.

Thank goodness for Max’s strong arms. Between me, Max and Sheila (Jim’s mom who will be visiting us for 10 days) we are lugging five 23-pound carry-ons and four 55-pound duffle bags on 2 planes, 2 buses, 4 taxis and a boat ride back to Belize. We are 2 planes and one taxi ride down and just had the scare of our life.  We had dragged our bags up the stairs, down the hall and into our postage stamp sized hotel room in Cancun when, with disbelief, it slowly dawned on us that two of our carry-on bags containing scuba gear (expensive) and many of Max’s most treasured  possessions (also expensive) were missing.

As the sick realization set in that they truly weren’t there I starting running back to the bus terminal.  I either left them in the terminal or in the taxi which was long gone, neither of which boded well for recovery. This is Mexico after all.  A couple of minutes later, our taxi passed me on the road, the driver waving me down. He was on his way back to our small hotel with our bags. The round jolly driver hops out of the taxi, opens his arms wide and says,  “Ah, Mexico,  eets a good, good country”,  gives me the bags and happily drives off.  I could have cried I was so relieved. Good people are everywhere.  It also reminded me that I am not fully functional these days and I need to be more cautious.

Last week I had a car accident; the first of my life (where I was driving). My fault! (the lady slammed on her brakes for a pedestrian that she didn’t see and I crashed right into her). 4,000 to 5,000$ worth of damage!  Twice I have missed exits that are second nature to me and not realized until over an hour later, not to mention other assorted bizarre memory related lapses. I’m not thinking it has anything to do with the accident, I think it’s the other way around. And I just walked into a curb and chunked out a couple of pieces of my big toe.  But Yay – I can’t believe that we got our bags back. I am so happy.

This past weekend Max and I completed our open water dives for our PADI scuba certification and not a moment too soon. We finished up yesterday and flew out early this morning.  I look like a fish out of water with the constant opening and closing of my mouth trying to equalize.  From down in the deep to high in the sky, I hope my ears pop back soon.