Belize City is ramshackle with sewage ditches called "canals"

Another Belize

This morning I got a taxi down to the Swing Bridge in downtown Belize City. It’s from here that the water taxis leave for Caye Caulker and San Pedro out in the Caribbean. The Swing Bridge rotates early in the morning to allow boats through, bringing traffic to a halt. It’s also the key spot for hustlers who prey on tourists.

The boat, a large launch, zipped out onto the relatively calm and clear blue water, taking just under an hour to reach Caye Caulker, where I plan to spend a few days decompressing. This island is definitely geared to tourists, but it’s more like Negril in the 1970s than like the big tourist resorts. Pretty laid back and irie. There are no vehicles other than bicycles, golf carts, and the odd scooter.

The roads are sand, and you’re never far from water. There are little shacks catering to the budget tourist industry, offering reasonably priced meals, diving expeditions, etc.

I’ve found a hotel a few feet from the water with all the basics, including fan, private bathroom, good windows, and for a small fee access to wireless Internet. Paradise has to be sun, palm trees, the sea, and good wireless Internet. Is this paradise? We’ll see.

Yesterday I caught a bus out of the city to Belize Zoo, which is set in a jungle-like location an hour out of town. If I were an animal confined to a zoo, I would choose this one. They have lots of space and they’re in their real environment. Most of the animals are ones reclaimed from captivity, and unable to be released into the wilds. The zoo also has a very strong educational component, teaching visitors about protection of the animals’ habitats. The ocelot, for example, is now protected, but before that, it took 100 of the poor little cats to make one coat.

Among the other animals, all from the region, were a number of tapirs, the national animal of Belize. These look a bit like pigs that are growing longer noses that are trying hard to become trunks. They are sometimes called mountain cows, though apparently they are related to horses. They came up close and let you scratch them behind he ears, though one, Scotty, had a sign warning that if you got too close he might pee on you.

Other animals included giant crocodiles, a beautiful black jaguar, spotted jaguars, cougars, and black howler and spider monkeys hanging out in trees. One spotted jaguar reposed about 30 feet up in a tree. There were birds — my favourite, the multicoloured scarlet macaw, toucans, parrots, eagles, and others.

And on the way there and back I got to experience village life from the seat of an old Bluebird school bus.

Back in Belize City, I had a good walk in the downtown area, which seemed only a little less threatening than it was on Sunday afternoon. My hotel was in a richer area, and many of the houses were all decked out with elaborate displays of Christmas lights.

Had a great East Indian dinner at a restaurant just around the corner from my hotel — run by a family that appeared to be from south India, though things were too busy to engage them in conversation. They had the TV on, first with a Bollywood channel, and then they switched to local news. The newscaster spoke good English, but there was a murder story where they interviewed the family of the victim, who all spoke Criole, the local dialect of English. Then there was a lengthy interview with a wealthy businessman who had thwarted a planned home invasion by disgrunted former employees who planned to kill him and his family, despite the elaborate security system around his home. The news was entirely focused on crime, though earlier in the day I was in a restaurant that had CNN, and showed dozens of instant replays of a journalist in Iraq throwing shoes at Dubya, who kept ducking. The people in the restaurant and I thought it was hilarious.

Here people love Obama, and there are stickers on windows, and t-shirts proclaiming “yes we did.”

Bus to Belize

It’s a short bus ride across the border from Chetumal, Mexico, into Belize, but there’s a world of difference.

You board the bus to Belize at Chetumal’s new market north of the town. Some beaten up buses were pulled up by the market, and immediately the driver’s assistant from one called out to me in English and told me his bus was leaving at 10:30, in about 20 minutes. The bus looked like a 1960s vintage one that might have been used for intercity runs in North America a long time ago — a sign at the front still said that “federal law” requires you to remain behind the white line. Belize is not a federation. The door to the toilet in the back was shut with a wire that you had to untwist when you wanted to use it, and the driver’s assistant warned me it was only suitable for “number one.” And this was a first class bus. The normal buses, as in Guatemala, are old Blue Bird school buses with seats designed for children.

The driver and his assistant were both like many Belizeans — a racial mixture of black and Mayan. He spoke Spanish one minute to Latino passengers, switching to English depending on the colour of the passenger’s skin.

Many Mexicans were going to the border for the Free Zone, an area between the Mexican and Belize customs posts with Mexican-style shopping centres. The border was easy, and the guard who stamped my passport said: “Welcome to Belize. Fun in the sun? I wish I was you.” Just a little different from crossing into the U.S.!

The difference across the border was remarkable. The infrastructure was suddenly rundown and ramshackle, a sharp contrast to Mexico, which has developed enormously over the past 30 years. The road was narrow with no centre line, and this is the main northern highway. Some of the houses were wooden constructions on stilts. The people were a kaleidoscope of races, though mainly black and mestizo, and many people, perhaps 30% according to one cab driver, speak Spanish as a first language. But there are also other ethnic communities, notably East Indian and a surprising number of Chinese, who seem to be thoroughly involved in the business community, as are overseas Chinese elsewhere. My hotel in Belize City is run by a Chinese family, and I was awakened with a loud conversation in Chinese outside my window.

Belize City can best be described as “dodgy looking” (the term used in the Lonely Planet Guide). There are twisty streets, ramshackle buildings, and the city is marked with several of what are euphemistically called “canals,” but are more accurately described as open sewage trenches. Several times I saw rats, both dead and alive, in the streets. When I walked downtown on Sunday late afternoon, the streets were pretty empty except for a few guys who called out to me to see if I wanted a taxi, and some thin and diseased looking old me who asked me for spare change. Today, Monday, the stores are open, and there are more normal looking people around, but I’m still extremely careful where I walk and when I dare to take out my camera.

One cab driver talked to me a bit about how when he was a kid they used to sing God Save the Queen, and Belize was a colony, British Honduras. Guatamala has long claimed Belize, and he says the Americans are unlikely to get involved in Guatemala invaded because Guatemala is of more economic value to the U.S. Guatemala has a huge army compared to Belize, which I pointed out, is mostly used against its own people, rather than foreign invasions. Traces of the British influence still remain — the Queen is on the money, though it’s a younger picture than on the Canadian money. Some of the downtown buildings like the courthouse have GR on them — no doubt from one of the King Georges. And when I bought some bananas, a woman told me they were “a shilling” — when I looked puzzled, she told me that was 25 Belize cents (12.5 cents U.S.)

Today I visited the Belize Zoo, which I’ll describe in another post. Tomorrow I’ll catch a water taxi to Caye Caulker, a large coral reef out in the Caribbean.

Art, Mayans, death and mestizaje

The Mayan Museum, Chetumal, December 14, 2008

The Mayan museum opened at 9 a.m. so I went for a look. It was a modern building around an open courtyard filled with trees and birds. Other than a few items, and a map of the Mayan civilization, there was nothing very Mayan about the museum. It did have several galleries of work by Mexican artists.

I love Mexican art. From the muralists to Frida Kahlo, and many lesser-known artists, Mexican art tells stories, conveys cultural themes, and is brilliant and surreal.

Two common themes in Mexican art and culture are those of death and mestizaje – the racial mixing of indigenous people and Spanish conquerors that led to the modern Mexican race.

Death is celebrated November 1 on Day of the Dead, but it’s a theme that permeates Mexican culture right down to the little candy skulls that are often sold. Skulls and skeletons are common icons in Mexican paintings.

Mestizaje Is often glamorized, but the reality is it was a brutal conquest and rape of a civilization. The difficulty that Mexicans have in coming to terms with their cultural origins is not unlike a child accepting that his father was a rapist. Still, Mexican culture is so rich because it is a mixture of European and indigenous traditions – the Spanish-language, the indigenous food, and a European Catholicism infused with indigenous customs. At the same time, the mestizo culture, has always looked down on the indigenous as inferior. The reality of mestizaje is complex.

And so I particularly appreciated some of the works I saw that highlighted these common themes. I especially liked one artist, Angel Ortiz, who had traveled widely, including to Canada, and even had a painting of Vancouver harbor. His most striking work, shown here, was a montage of real human skulls inlaid among stones, the skulls displaying smiling and grimacing expressions.

The Real Mexico

Written: Chetumal, Mexico, 13 Dec. 2008

At last the real Mexico! Chetumal is a city six hours south of Cancun near the Belize border. I got here late this afternoon, and after checking into a cheap hotel, I took a long stroll down the main street. Many people were out walking, there were Mexican-style Christmas lights on buildings, and blaring Christmas songs everywhere, some in Spanish, some in English, but always loud.

Latin Americans have a higher acceptance of noise than North Americans. My hotel room is back from the street so I don’t expect the noise to be too bad tonight. For a walk down the main street though, the noise and hustle and bustle created an interesting ambiance. The lights are lit up in letters of feliz año nuevo and feliz navidad, but somehow in the balmy 20° plus weather, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.

I rode the bus from Cancun and had both seats to myself. Mexican first-class buses are much more comfortable than North American buses, and the six-hour ride it went very quickly. It took a long time to escape the tourist ghetto of Cancun, and much of the ride wasn’t particularly interesting. The Yucatán is very flat with scrubby vegetation and small trees, but not much scenery. Only in the last couple hours of the ride did the sun come out and I began seeing more Mexican looking at villages, many with poured concrete boxes for houses, and some with palm thatched roofs. Along the highway, people sold fruit. Pineapples are now in season at about a dollar for a big large ripe one.

Chetumal has a great looking Mayan museum about a block from my hotel, which I will check out tomorrow if it’s open, before crossing into Belize.