The water here is so shallow that occasionally while on the boat ride across we came upon treesliterally growing in the middle of the sea. Most looked more alive than this one.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sea Tree
The water here is so shallow that occasionally while on the boat ride across we came upon trees
San Pedro Express
The boat ride to San Pedro from Belize City takes about an hour and a half at top speed, the boat stops in Caye Caulker (which is a tiny island on the way) then arrives in San Pedro half an hour later.
Belize City
This is Belize City as seen from about one or two miles out to sea. There used to be more to it but several years ago it was flattened by a hurricane, and instead of rebuilding, the government decided to build a new capital city farther inland to prevent the various embassies and government offices from literally getting blown away.Saturday, January 30, 2010
The air.
Day 1/2 . . .
The trip was a little bumpy, but otherwise fairly non eventful.
I should stop here though, and note that my trip through Vancouver airport (which looks great now that it's actually finished) was also uneventful. That may seem obvious, but truth be told, after everything had been arranged for this trip,the only concern I had was US customs, which could have killed the whole thing before it started. The customs official however, simply asked a couple quick questions, and since I wasn't carrying any nation threatening fruit or vegetables, he handed me back my passport and said "Okay, go on" so on I went.
As I said, the trip into Seattle was fun, then after a few hours of waiting in the Seattle airport I boarded a much bigger plane bound for Huston, Texas.
My plan had been to sleep on this plane, since it was a red eye flight, but fate (and my plane ticket) had different plans. My seat was at the very back of the plane on the isle side, so with the passengers coming and going from the washrooms, and the attendants chattering away (they were both apparently very into 4x4'ing, and said 4x4 every second word) - I didn't sleep a wink.
Then we arrived in Huston and were put into a holding pattern because of "rough weather" below. After about 30 minutes of circling I made the mistake of looking across to the other side of the plane and out the window, to where sheet lightning was ripping through the clouds about half a mile of so away. Then we began our descent.
I have never had the experience of looking down on a lightning storm - it's beautiful, until you realize you're about to fly through it, then it's still beautiful, but you're too busy praying to watch.
There must have been a hole in the storm because we flew through without getting fried, and landed in a very wet Huston. After finding my gate I learned that the storm we had been delayed by was stretching across half the country, and for the most part was showering everything with snow and freezing rain. The storm had by that time calmed down to a drizzle in the pre-dawn hours at Huston airport, but where our plane was, freezing rain had grounded everything, and the delays started to pile up. And so my 9:00 flight became a 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30 and then finally landed at 11:45 - at which time we were informed that a few repairs would be necessary before we could take off.
At around that time it occurred to me that the word "repairs" should not be used in airports. I don't know what they could say, maybe "adjustments" or "corrections" would be better, but anything that doesn't make me picture a bunch of wires sticking out with two or three tired, hung over mechanics standing around scratching their heads would be nice.
But fifteen minutes later we boarded our newly repaired plane and set off for Belize. Once again the flight was close to empty, and everyone pretty much got their own row, the flight was only about two and a half hours long, and I could have slept, but once the clouds cleared a bit below us I had a view of a countryside I had never seen before, and it was not something I wanted to miss.
For most of the way the flight was through Mexico, and the landscape was mostly brown with scattered farms and small towns, then we entered Belize, where everything changes almost instantly from brown to green and the jungle stretches out as far as you can see.
From the air it was like looking down on the Amazon - slow rivers wound through a dense forest that hung out over the water - unfortunately I was too high up to see any wildlife, but from what I've learned those rivers are the home of two types of crocodiles and anacondas. The forests around them are home to several species of parrots, howler and squirrel monkeys, and the occasional jaguar or puma. Plus a plethora of other things that creep crawl and fly around.
And so we landed in Belize, where after going through customs I walked out the airport and got straight into a cab headed for Belize city.
The air here is hot and humid, and within about 30 seconds everything you have on is sticky. Riding in the front of an old Lincoln town car of a taxi heading for town, I found that the wind did little to move the heavy air. I also noticed that they drive on the same side of the road as we do in Canada, despite their British roots. Other than that, driving here seems to be a chaotic mess. The rule seems to be - if the road is wide enough for two cares, two cars may drive on it - this is up to the discretion of the drives though, and since the roads are wide and narrow irregularly, my taxi driver was in a constant state of merging or passing .
Stop signs are optional. Roundabouts crammed with cars can be navigated in a straight line, and lord knows how anyone can tell what's a one way street and which way to go on it. Most of the streets in Belize city are little more than alleys, and most of the population lives in small shacks built everywhere along the road.
Eventually we made it to the water taxi that would carry me to San Pedro, and after paying the cab driver I dropped my pack off with the baggage guys and phoned home. After a couple quick "hello, I'm fine, Love ya bye" calls we boarded the water taxi (speed boat) and were sent off by one of the workers yelling "helloeveryonethankyouforusoingsanpedroexpresshaveagreattimeonthebestboatsofsanpedroinbelize
andenjoyyourstayinsanpedroagainthankyouforusingsanpedroexpresshaveawonderfulday!"
Then we were off.
We raced at top speed out into the ocean and I had the experience of watching the sun begin to set over land, instead of over the sea as I'm so used to. And so the trip out felt kind of backwards. Belize city from the shore does not look like a city at all, there are almost no high rises above 4 stories and so there is almost nothing visible that would indicate a sprawling mass of some 70 thousand or so people.
(I should note that I actually wrote this yesterday, but after the Internet crashed I thought I had lost it all and was too annoyed to even think of checking for a draft. Apparently though, God works through computers as well, so here it is)
The trip was a little bumpy, but otherwise fairly non eventful.
I should stop here though, and note that my trip through Vancouver airport (which looks great now that it's actually finished) was also uneventful. That may seem obvious, but truth be told, after everything had been arranged for this trip,the only concern I had was US customs, which could have killed the whole thing before it started. The customs official however, simply asked a couple quick questions, and since I wasn't carrying any nation threatening fruit or vegetables, he handed me back my passport and said "Okay, go on" so on I went.
As I said, the trip into Seattle was fun, then after a few hours of waiting in the Seattle airport I boarded a much bigger plane bound for Huston, Texas.
My plan had been to sleep on this plane, since it was a red eye flight, but fate (and my plane ticket) had different plans. My seat was at the very back of the plane on the isle side, so with the passengers coming and going from the washrooms, and the attendants chattering away (they were both apparently very into 4x4'ing, and said 4x4 every second word) - I didn't sleep a wink.
Then we arrived in Huston and were put into a holding pattern because of "rough weather" below. After about 30 minutes of circling I made the mistake of looking across to the other side of the plane and out the window, to where sheet lightning was ripping through the clouds about half a mile of so away. Then we began our descent.
I have never had the experience of looking down on a lightning storm - it's beautiful, until you realize you're about to fly through it, then it's still beautiful, but you're too busy praying to watch.
There must have been a hole in the storm because we flew through without getting fried, and landed in a very wet Huston. After finding my gate I learned that the storm we had been delayed by was stretching across half the country, and for the most part was showering everything with snow and freezing rain. The storm had by that time calmed down to a drizzle in the pre-dawn hours at Huston airport, but where our plane was, freezing rain had grounded everything, and the delays started to pile up. And so my 9:00 flight became a 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, 11:30 and then finally landed at 11:45 - at which time we were informed that a few repairs would be necessary before we could take off.
At around that time it occurred to me that the word "repairs" should not be used in airports. I don't know what they could say, maybe "adjustments" or "corrections" would be better, but anything that doesn't make me picture a bunch of wires sticking out with two or three tired, hung over mechanics standing around scratching their heads would be nice.
But fifteen minutes later we boarded our newly repaired plane and set off for Belize. Once again the flight was close to empty, and everyone pretty much got their own row, the flight was only about two and a half hours long, and I could have slept, but once the clouds cleared a bit below us I had a view of a countryside I had never seen before, and it was not something I wanted to miss.
For most of the way the flight was through Mexico, and the landscape was mostly brown with scattered farms and small towns, then we entered Belize, where everything changes almost instantly from brown to green and the jungle stretches out as far as you can see.
From the air it was like looking down on the Amazon - slow rivers wound through a dense forest that hung out over the water - unfortunately I was too high up to see any wildlife, but from what I've learned those rivers are the home of two types of crocodiles and anacondas. The forests around them are home to several species of parrots, howler and squirrel monkeys, and the occasional jaguar or puma. Plus a plethora of other things that creep crawl and fly around.
And so we landed in Belize, where after going through customs I walked out the airport and got straight into a cab headed for Belize city.
The air here is hot and humid, and within about 30 seconds everything you have on is sticky. Riding in the front of an old Lincoln town car of a taxi heading for town, I found that the wind did little to move the heavy air. I also noticed that they drive on the same side of the road as we do in Canada, despite their British roots. Other than that, driving here seems to be a chaotic mess. The rule seems to be - if the road is wide enough for two cares, two cars may drive on it - this is up to the discretion of the drives though, and since the roads are wide and narrow irregularly, my taxi driver was in a constant state of merging or passing .
Stop signs are optional. Roundabouts crammed with cars can be navigated in a straight line, and lord knows how anyone can tell what's a one way street and which way to go on it. Most of the streets in Belize city are little more than alleys, and most of the population lives in small shacks built everywhere along the road.
Eventually we made it to the water taxi that would carry me to San Pedro, and after paying the cab driver I dropped my pack off with the baggage guys and phoned home. After a couple quick "hello, I'm fine, Love ya bye" calls we boarded the water taxi (speed boat) and were sent off by one of the workers yelling "helloeveryonethankyouforusoingsanpedroexpresshaveagreattimeonthebestboatsofsanpedroinbelize
andenjoyyourstayinsanpedroagainthankyouforusingsanpedroexpresshaveawonderfulday!"
Then we were off.
We raced at top speed out into the ocean and I had the experience of watching the sun begin to set over land, instead of over the sea as I'm so used to. And so the trip out felt kind of backwards. Belize city from the shore does not look like a city at all, there are almost no high rises above 4 stories and so there is almost nothing visible that would indicate a sprawling mass of some 70 thousand or so people.
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