I may be meeting with Belize’s Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries tomorrow.

No, really. (I never kid about the truly bizarre.) Chet, the guy I was talking with about his planned ecotourism project, is meeting with the guy tomorrow or Friday, and has asked me to come along if I can, presumably to lend him some kind of credibility. Needless to say, I’m not going to say no: at the very least, it’ll be an interesting way to spend an afternoon. I’ve been warned that Chet is full of plans that never quite happen, so I’m not investing a whole lot of time in it, but how often does a tourist get to meet with a country’s minister of agriculture and fisheries? So I must poke my long feline nose (well, okay, short and stubby feline nose) into this and see what happens. Traveling tigers are ever-curious.

But that’s the secondary news. The best news is: I’m going to a cacao farm tomorrow! The folks at the Toledo Cacao Grower’s Association set me up–I’ll be going out at 8am for a half-day tour. They’re currently harvesting and fermenting the cacao, so I’ll get to see all the parts of the process.

I’m also leaving in about an hour to spend the night in one of the Mayan villages–San Antonio, where they do a lot of handicrafts and someone can presumably teach me. I’m hoping to luck into a weaver. I’ll be coming back tomorrow morning and heading straight out to the cacao growers, so you may not hear from me for a day and a half or so, but trust me: it’ll be worth it.

I went down to the market this morning (which, honestly, is pretty tiny) and picked up some fruit, and also some kind of jungle fruit that looks like a very odd longan. I was intrigued by it, and asked the vendor what it was. ” “, she said.

Okay, ask a silly question. (I mean, someone walks up to you and asks what an apple is, what are you going to say? “An apple.” If they haven’t got any idea what an apple is, they’ll go away none the wiser, much as I did.)

So, of course, I had to buy some and try them. So I shelled it out of its papery shell–it looked like a palm fruit (not a date) and gingerly tried it. It was fibrous, a tiny thin layer over a very large nut, with the taste and texture of glue. I spat it out, but it took a long time to get the pasty mess out of my mouth afterwards. I asked Chet what it was, later, and he said it was some kind of jungle fruit–one sucks the thin layer of fruit off the very big nut. I sincerely hope I got an unripe one, because I can’t imagine anyone paying money to eat glue.

(Well, at least I tried it.)

Speaking of food, it turns out that they do eat the paca here, which they call “gibnut” and which has been described to me as an R.O.U.S.–a rat-like critter that weighs about sixty pounds. Must see if I can get my hands on some. Must try new and bizarre foods (preferably not tasting like glue).

Today I also bought a rosewood bowl from a guy for $37–it’s burlwood, very pretty, and finished to a fine polish. Heavy, too. Rosewood is a very dense, fine-grained wood, so it’s beautiful.

On impulse, I asked the guy if he could make something custom for me. He said yes, and what did I want? So I asked him to make me two rosewood drop spindles, each about 1-2″ in diameter, with carvings in the center of the whorl. He wouldn’t set a price on it immediately–he said it depended on how long it took to make it–but said it would be reasonable. I doubt it’s going to be super-expensive, and it would be lovely to have a rosewood drop spindle as a souvenir of my Central American travels. It can go with my Akha drop spindle and the silver spindles from Thailand.

What can I say? Other people collect souvenirs, I collect travel spindles.

Anyway, the bus is about to leave for San Antonio, so I’d best go wait for it. I’ll post back in a day or two, after the Mayan village and the cacao farm.

Tien

P.S. Vanilla DOES grow here! I spotted what looked like a vanilla orchid growing up the side of the house, and dangitall, I was RIGHT! I’m very pleased with myself, especially since I’d never seen a real live vanilla plant before–only drawings.

There’s also a cacao tree back behind the house, with a fruit growing off it–I was going to take a photo of it, then realized that I’d probably get to see plenty of cacao fruit at the plantation.

I forgot to mention that the cacao produced here is purchased by Green & Black as part of their eco-friendly organic chocolate production system…they produce an organic chocolate bar that is sold in quite a few gourmet shops (including Trader Joe’s, I think) and is quite edible. This is really cool–I had never thought much about organic eco-chocolates (I mean, it seems like everything’s organic eco-xxxx these days), but it makes a real difference actually coming out here and seeing it. One never really thinks of one’s food choices as genuinely affecting others’ lives, but here it makes a big difference to the villagers. Before Green & Black appeared, they never harvested cacao because the low prices made it not worth the effort–but now, they’re planting as much as they can get, because they’re guaranteed a fair price for all they can produce. Which, in turn, helps the local culture by giving them economic alternatives. So that’s a great thing.

It’s great getting to see the benefits, tangibly, of a “green” food product. It’s very different from reading about it in companies’ “see how PC we are” brochures.

Belize is PAVED in orchids!

I went for a walk last night, looked up into a tree by the water, and my goodness! The rosette cups of bromeliads, the big flat leaves of orchids, crumpled yellow-and-maroon sprays of flowers COVERED the branches, and half the trunk. The tree was a bouquet of blossoms.

Then I started looking around, and realized that EVERY tree is like that. For an orchid aficionado, it’s paradise.

I had never really thought about orchids before. I mean, I have about a hundred of them, and always have a blooming orchid on my desk, but I had never *thought* about orchids before. They were potted plants you bought from a nursery. Seeing them just growing, wild, was a tremendous shock.

The first time I saw an orange tree, I was just 17…I had just arrived from the East Coast for college, and one day I saw an orange tree by the post office. I rushed back to my dorm and breathlessly told my roommates, “I saw an ORANGE TREE! I saw an orange tree!!”

Well, one of them was from Arizona and the other from Southern California, so they naturally looked at me as you would a complete idiot. Umm, yes. It’s an orange tree. So? The world is paved in orange trees.

“You don’t understand! I’m from the East Coast! I know all about oranges, they grow in little crates in the back of the supermarket! But here they’re on a TREE!”

So, that’s how I feel about the orchids here. They’re not potted plants! They’re real live plants! They live on bark and everything!

So now I’m wandering around looking at all the trees along the way. (Not only are there orchids, there are all kinds of exciting lizards and anoles–I think I saw some kind of crested basilisk this morning.)

It’s funny how often you know something, and then something happens that makes you look again, in a totally different manner, and realize that you really didn’t know it at all.

I spent half the morning talking to Chet, the guy who owns my guesthouse. It all started when I mentioned I was interested in weaving and chocolate. He said, “Hey! I have a book titled Llamas, Weaving, and Organic Chocolate. You want to see it?” and we were off.

Anyway, it turns out that he’s an expert in ecotourism and cultural preservation, and is working very hard on a plan to preserve the culture of the local Maya in the face of an planned highway through Punta Gorda. Right now, Punta Gorda is the end of the highway, a sleepy little backwater, where the old ways are preserved because no powerful interests care enough to push the Mayan villagers off their land. He’s working on a plan to enable economic development without destroying the local culture, and has some really interesting ideas about combining ecotourism, “green” agriculture, and cultural tours for a holistic solution.

He needs seed money and a solid project manager to make the project succeed (he’s more of a visionary), and I’m giving serious thought to taking it up as a project–at least, the sale and marketing of his proposed products in the United States. It combines quite a few things I’m interested in, like chocolate, spices, and handicraft. (One of the products is ground cacao mixed with spices like cloves and orange peel, which is wonderfully yummy, and I think would make a very good upscale drink for sale in cafes et al.) I’ve been looking for something more meaningful than high-tech for awhile, and I think this might very well be it. So I’m going to have some longer conversations with him over the next day or so, and look seriously into feasibility.

Meanwhile, the Toledo Ecotourism Association, which sets up the trips to villages, doesn’t seem to be open today (people here tend to open shop whenever they feel like it, so things can be kind of sporadic). But do I care? NO! because, on Chet’s advice, I went to see the Toledo Cacao Growers’ Association today, and they said they’d try arranging for me to spend some time with a cacao farmer, showing me the different stages of production. He warned me that I might have to stay with the farmer overnight. Ooh, hurt me. 🙂

So anyway, I’m going to have lunch, and then see what the Cacao Growers Association can do for me. If they can’t get me out to the trees today, I’ll take a walk, see what else is in town, and then (if there really is nothing else to do) curl up with Llamas, Weaving, and Organic Chocolate.

Hmm…I wonder if they grow vanilla here, as well?

Tien

Belize is a tiny little country, about the size of Massachusetts, nestled between the southeast end of Mexico and the northeastern border of Guatemala. About a quarter of the 250,000 people living here live in the biggest city, Belize City–making it about the size of Mountain View.

In other words, it’s a really, really, really small country.

Belize City itself is nothing much to speak of, looking mostly like a very rundown beach town–quaint wooden houses with the boards bleached like driftwood, balconies rickety and falling down, rot everywhere. It’s not quite an abandoned beach town, because people clearly live there, but there are at least thirty years of rot and failed maintenance running around the town. I didn’t think much of it, and was glad to get away.

I had planned to pick up a swimsuit and some doxycycline (antimalarial) and then hop a bus to Punta Gorda, but quickly discovered that today was a national holiday and all businesses were closed. Also that I’d already missed the bus to Punta Gorda. The taxi driver suggested that the plane to Punta Gorda had not yet departed, and perhaps I could catch that. So, I hopped over to the municipal airport.

The airport wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting. They took my credit card and gave me a ticket. Then I looked around noticed my pack had disappeared, and panicked completely, thinking someone had taken it. (I had just come from Guatemala City, where anything not nailed down will vanish instantly.) I spent the next minute kicking myself for being such an incredible IDIOT as to let my pack out of my sight for one second, and then realized that it was safely under a counter. The baggage guy had very helpfully come over while I was buying my ticket, and put it with the rest of the bags. I relaxed, settled in to wait, about three hours, for my flight to leave.

(One of the things I like about Third World travel is that you spend a lot of time waiting, with nothing particular to do. This probably sounds bizarre, but it’s not like waiting for a bus at home, where you have twenty things you planned to have done that day. Instead, you get pleasant time to think, to reflect on your journey and your life, and not worry about missing anything, because nothing you do will make the bus come faster.)

As I was boarding the plane (a Cessna 60 Caravan), I realized I’d forgotten to present my boarding pass. I fumbled through for my ticket, then realized I didn’t have a boarding pass, but the gate attendant waved me on. “Oh! I forgot to give you a boarding pass. Well, never mind.”

The plane itself was a tiny little propeller plane, with room for just twelve passengers, and the pilot right up in front–more like a car than an airplane. There were only three of us, so even the tiny plane was mostly empty. Two men loaded the luggage–four battered old bags, a sack of onions, and a giant bag of green peppers. As the airplane taxiied down the bumpy, gravelly, ancient runway, the wing struts creaked alarmingly, but we made it up into the air, and I gasped with delight. Below me spread all of Belize.

We flew for about fifteen minutes, then landed at Dangriga, the third-biggest city in Belize, about twenty miles away. We came down over the treetops–big trees covered with yellow bloom popped out like goldenrod, and delicate, purple-blossomed trees grew like orchid lichen. Feathery tufts of coconut palm punctuated the green canopy. Then I saw the runway, and blanched. It wasn’t run-down, it was ancient.

But, improbably, we made it down with a thump and a rusty squeal. The pilot waved at the terminal, but no one was boarding, so we were off again.

The wonderful thing about flying in a private plane is that you can see everything. It’s not like being in a jet plane, where you’re too high up to make out the detail–this was more like an aerial tour of Belize. My map had come to life–the green coastline, the squiggly caracoles of rivers, the purple shadows of the giant barrier reef looming through the turquoise water.

Fifteen minutes later, we stopped in Placencia, where stubbly mangroves rose up from the water on their elevated roots, looking for all the world like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice brooms from Fantasia. I kept expecting them to get up and walk away. We rose up again, turned sharply–I thought the pilot was circling to look at two wildfires sending up giant plumes of smoke a few miles away–but then we landed five miles away, at the Savannah Forest Station, to drop off our last remaining passenger. I was alone in the plane.

Twelve minutes later, the plane came down with a bump. I had arrived in Punta Gorda, 80 miles south of Belize City. I had traveled two-thirds the length of the country in just under an hour, including four stops along the way.

I am forever amazed by the tiny scale of Belize. In Guatemala, it takes forever to get anywhere–it took my bus four hours to get to Quetzaltenango, which is not too far from Guatemala City. In Belize, you can drive from one end of the country to another in about eight hours.

So anyway, I’m now in Punta Gorda, and staying in a place that’s pretty basic but not too bad. My friend Herve, who is an eminently civilized person, would probably die on sight upon seeing my room–peg-board ceiling sagging, ancient two-inch mattress with paper-thin sheets, broken window covered with torn mosquito mesh, rusty old fan and no air conditioning–but, fortunately for both of us, he’s not here. (I’m really quite fond of him, and would hate to see him die in such an untimely manner–so useless, and so unnecesssary.) The showers are cold, and the water sporadic–yesterday the shower was only a trickle, today they got enough water to turn it on again–but for a cabin out in the back-country, it’s not at all bad, and it’s only $11/night. After I fixed the mosquito netting with the duct tape I brought along (oh yes, the traveling tigress is prepared for everything), it was just fine.

Tomorrow I’m going off into the Mayan villages, and will probably spend the night there, so I may not be able to write for a day or so. I’m sure I’ll be having adventures, though. 🙂

Tien

P.S. Cacao IS grown around here!! I’m heading down to the local cacao grower’s association as soon as I finish writing this email. Hot dog! I hope I can get to see it being grown, processed, etc.