gone south

BELIZE

Following an interesting border crossing – the end result being a perfunctory search due to our patience in waiting for 1.5 hr. for the women to find a new permit book- we stopped briefly in Corozal to picnic beside the water and then headed to Lamamai.  This proved to be trial for us and the van over 37 mi. of unpaved minefield like roads, down the tiniest of roads into Indian Village and the ruins themselves. A truly magical time! Once again, we had the entire site to ourselves, including howler monkeys, toucans,blue butterflies and spectacular mayan buildings, not to mention the park-like setting on a large lagoon.  In some respects we are reaping the few benefits of the global financial situation.

Come evening a small truck overloaded with kids arrived to set up tents. They were friends from “college” in Orange Walk ( 2 being locals from the village) celebrating the end of the semester. This was indeed the best part of the stay.  Included in the group was a young mayan woman who came along because she had a truck and so that her daughter who had a broken leg due to a soccer accident could come along. We shared food, fished from the dock and spent time just chatting with them. I particularly had a great evening with Edna who was named Agriculture Woman of the Year 2005-an enlightening time.

Leaving there, we spent the night in a resort parking lot on the Belize River leaving early in the morning to check out the Belize Zoo and a sister research station.  Then we have worked our way south along the spectacular Hummingbird Highway arriving in Dangriga just in time for the evening soccer session in the park at waters edge. Youngsters first followed by the adult game under some streetlights but not nearly enough to see well as they played way into the dark. Calvin, my new best 12 yr. old buddy brought us oranges and johnnycakes from his aunties in exchange for his “Christmas present” of a soccer patch and some pens.  We had heard that you could park right there but a couple of local women came by to suggest otherwise and so we moved into a vacant lot adjacent to one of their houses. Seems times have changed.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.