Archive for December, 2007
Happy New Year!
Monday, December 31st, 2007
May all your wishes come true and life would prove itself a worthy adventure!
Our gift to you: Experiments in Macro
( +2 )
Posted in Places»North America»Mexico | No Comments »
Find Us If You Can
Sunday, December 30th, 2007
Every time we reach this stage, an end to yet another chapter of the trip, I have mixed feelings. They are so mixed; I don’t know what they are. I don’t want to leave, but it’s time to move on.
On our last day with Byron and Rachel, we took canoes through the Crooked Tree reserve and hunted, cameras in hand, for herons and orange iguanas. It was our last excursion together. Later that afternoon, we dropped them off at a bus stop and drove out of Belize, into Mexico. The usual border formalities headache finally helped me find the answer to my doubts when I had to use my “feminine charms” to avoid potential complications. The mean woman in customs was about to close and we didn’t have copies of all the necessary documents. So I’ve ran to the all-male staff of the immigration office, my shirt strategically unbuttoned, and “Me no know what do! Señor help, por favor,” did the trick. Is it bad I’ve even enjoyed it a little?
Tags: ruins
Posted in Places»North America»Mexico, wildlife | No Comments »
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
My skin is all wrinkly – time to get out of the water I guess. Besides, Belize just got interesting on mainland. Yes, thank you, you know-it-alls, I know that technically you can’t even spit in Belize and not hit a National Park or a reserve. Those though, are all so high on price and low on wildlife and adventure, we mostly stuck to the archaeological sites where if you walk patiently, quietly, and carefully, you just might not step on something poisonous and interesting like this guy here:
Having visited over twenty ruins already, we now drag ourselves through familiar sites and pyramids noting that it seems like none of the Belizean ones will make it to our top five list. At least at one site we got ourselves a good laugh: as we were about to leave a tiny camera crew showed up and for half an hour shot a cheesy singer rapped to the backdrop of confused visitors and ancient structures.
( a few shots of Atun Ha and Lamenai )
Tags: ruins
Posted in Places»Central America»Belize, wildlife | No Comments »
Caulker’s Bonnets (and more)
Friday, December 21st, 2007
Hats! Huge, wide-brimmed, enormous floppy hats! A quick zoom down to the South of Belize, a fake, mind numbing, “indigenous” story about the moon and the sun who ends up killing his adoptive mother… and we were… Wait. Where was I? Oh, yeah – Stingrays! Gracefully floating through Caye Caulker’s waters these fish reserved to the shallows, allowing sunrays run radiant streaks across their silver-gray skins, adorning them in electrifying costumes.
Due to Caye Caulker’s steep prices, we only dove twice. The underwater wildlife was not nearly as abundant as in Honduras, but the visibility was so amazing I was nearly forgetting we were underwater. We were taken to a site called “Raggedy Ann”. When I heard the name I couldn’t imagine how the red-haired doll would translate to coral studded scenery, but when we descended it all made complete sense: the seemingly endless dreads of the reef, shaggy with colorful coral and aquatic flora, stretched beneath us in ridges and folds, very much resembling tatters. I swung and swooped from crevice to crevice, probably really annoying the dive-master, first for pointing out more interesting things than he did, and second, having him chase and grab me by the fins as I setoff after a turtle of fish far in the background. I must give my respect to the man. He must have gotten slapped around pretty badly before managing to grab on to my flipper, but never said a word about it.
( Snorkeling I couldn’t understand why most people kept staying in the boat… )
Tags: underwater
Posted in Places»Central America»Belize | No Comments »
Belize Bar Sign
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
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Tobacco Caye
Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Know those one-palm-tree islands from the cartoons? Well, I’m sitting on one and eating a coconut. Draw me up! I’ve caught, killed, and opened it up all by myself! Alright, alright, Rachel helped a little. She, her college friend Byron (both from the States), and we were making nearly half the population of the Tobacco Caye. The island is roughly the size of a soccer field, if not smaller, with Conch Shells ornamenting every tree bed and path, and that suddenly made me very concerned with the weather. It seemed like not much is need to erase this patch of land off the face of the earth. One little wave, and we would be lucky if any driftwood was left to grab onto.
On our first morning in Belize we were not exactly in a take-charge mood. The country felt a bit bizarre. Belize is expensive, so it feels like any wrong move is gonna cost you an arm and a leg. Surrounded by Spanish speaking countries, the English-Creole on the streets of Dangriga perplexed us even further. Now, add the fact that every person on the street is black, however, every venue, be it a restaurant, a hardware store, or a supermarket, has “Chang” in its name and a Chinese person behind the counter, all that makes you feel like you are in a cultural twilight zone.
That morning it felt like procrastinating, though I very much understood we needed to keep going, so when Byron and Rachel came out of their room and said they are going on a boat, leaving in fifteen minutes, to Tobacco Caye, I packed, Shurik ran to the bank, we made arrangements to leave GreenGo on the mainland, and jogged to the pier. Sometimes, it’s good to give the decision making part of the brain a vacation, and just follow a lead.
( Frigates, palms, durgons, and spotted rays… )
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As Graceful As a Cow on Ice
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
One, two, three… Lights! Two, three… and going down, good, two, three. Watch your frame! And don’t kick him in the face, you could kill somebody like that, you know…One, two, three. Watch, the, coral. And plié… Not! kicking up too much sand… Alright people, this concludes our rehearsal of Sea-Cow on Ice ballet.
Only this wasn’t practice at all, and as for me, I was hardly starring in the production clumsy with a flashlight in one hand and the camera in the other. This was the very real ocean night dive we decided to try our flippers at on Utila Island, which is being told to be one the best and cheapest diving places on earth. I was scared out of my mind when we took a “giant stride” into the pitch-black water. Honestly, it was not as bad I expected it to be. All sorts of amazing stuff comes out in the dark, and soon I was so enticed with the nudibranchs and the sleeping cowfish that I forgot all about any concerns of getting lost or bitten, and just followed the rest, even if it was just a bit too close. Besides, I ended up potentially drowning or getting hurt on many of the day dives that we did. Somehow, in all the preparations I found myself a few times deflating my BCD vest and being dragged down by the nine pound weights around my waist, only to find out that the snorkel is in my mouth and my regulator is floating somewhere behind me. No matter, luckily reg recovery is something we are actually trained for, but no one can really prepare you for nature acting up at an unfamiliar to site. Now I can tell from experience how fun it is to be swept by a currant with your only companions being spawning jellyfish who slash you across the face as you unsuccessfully struggle to swim back to the boat. I was liking my scars weeks after we left the island.
Upside-down Jellyfish.
Stings mildly, not that we tried it out.
Submerged, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that the underwater world is what those magic gardens from fairytales look like. The birds might not chirp, but they are ten times more colorful then the air-breathing ones and that also goes for the butterflies, lizards, and squirrels. I can just see my (hypothetical) children swimming around with a butterfly net. No, scratch that. The ocean is not a children’s playground and in it soar giants which are very much real. Some majestic gliders, other ferocious killers. Nevertheless, I wish gill-transplant surgery was available. Who wouldn’t want to live among trees and wildlife of all colors and shapes? Floating among wavy flora and looping through coral caves for a lobster dinner. Mmmm… Though, one second, wouldn’t the water hinder the sound of my voice? Make me virtually mute? That does it… Abort plan!
Sleeping Blue Scrolled Cowfish.
Not the smartest idea to sleep like this, just floating around for anybody to grab
( Fishes: big, small, and enormous. My second encounter with a Whale-Shark) )
Posted in Places»Central America»Honduras | No Comments »
It’s all the chicken’s fault
Saturday, December 8th, 2007
Diving in Utila was our next goal. One we’ve been waiting for sometime now. However, Utila being a small island, we needed to figure a way to leave GreenGo behind on the mainland. Thankfully (?), it broke down again, though what else is new, but this time his aim couldn’t be better. It got us to the city we were going to, but when we were only minutes away from the ferry terminal, the whole car started shaking violently as Shurik tried to accelerate and we were forced to stop ending up right across the street from a repair shop. Though the man in this garage was not a VW expert himself, he knew one, and soon, we were in his beat up Toyota, roughly GreenGo’s age, with its “gasoline tank”, a half gallon plastic jug that needed to be filled up for even the shortest ride across town, hanging between Shurik’s legs right under the glove compartment. The whole time in the car, Jorge (this our new best friend) ended up quietly questioning me about Shurik’s sex life – because “He can’t just have one girlfriend, right?” and me assuring him that I am plenty of a woman to handle. Jorge brought us to Luis – an enormous Honduran who towed GreenGo behind his own VW bus to his garage full of Beetles, Buses, and spare VW engines and parts. Luis, just like George had only one favorite subject. Not that we asked for it, but he counted for us (on his fingers) how many local girlfriends he visits on a week, lowering his voice and coyly glancing at the house where his wife and five children were. He blamed it on the chicken. “The chickens here are stuffed with hormones,” he explained, “and when these young girls eat the chickens they develop much faster and give it up…” We listened politely to the sexual conquests, while one of his teenage apprentices fiddled with GreenGo, until my impatience got the best of me: anxious to know where will we be sleeping tonight I urged Luis to tell us if he by now knows what is wrong with the car, and how much might this be costing us. “You know about machismo?” Luis lowered his voice again, though now obviously not on behalf of his wife, “It is really not a custom in this country for a woman to ‘handle business’. This sort of thing should be discussed among men. I don’t have a problem with this, but somebody else might…,” he finished with a smile. “OK,” I smiled back, swallowed my pride and the roaring laughter building up in my stomach. The men discussed “men issues” whilst I, for the lack of meals to cook or rags to wash, read a book, quietly, out of their way. That night we slept in GreenGo, parked in Luis’s garage. Next morning, we left the bus with Luis, who charged us peanuts for storage and repair, and headed to the island.
Posted in Places»Central America»Honduras | No Comments »
Copan
Friday, December 7th, 2007
A month break and we are back to exploring indigenous sites where time left almost no stone unturned. It is home to the longest Maya text found yet carved into the steps of a very tall and wide staircase. Unfortunately, the “manuscript” was found in pieces all over the place and some blocks badly eroded, so the text is jumbled and its full meaning is unknown. Following the usual border formalities where we were told by uniformed officials that we must “just leave with them” the customs fees for the car, since it’s the weekend, and they will file them with the bank “for us” on the next business day, we, frustrated but tolerant as usual after such blunt scamming attempts, just paid whatever they could logically enough get away with, and proceeded for the ruins of Copan. Now in Honduras, we were warned by Don Salvador about police checkpoints and the unavoidable bribe or two, but to our surprise it never came to that. We did get stopped something like eight times in three days, but in contrast to the border fees, it was a small price to pay.
( Happy Tiger, a Parakeet, and one mean looking Eagle )
Tags: ruins
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