I'm still in Belize and staying at this guy Davids house/guest house on a 50- acre property in the forest near San Ignacio Belize. it is also the home of Mayan temples that are undisturbed. it also sits on a river and the house is built right next to a look out point that was used to protect them from the Spanish coming from Guatemala and the coast of Belize.
the owner is a tour guide named David who's father was Jamaican and mother Mayan. there are also lots of creole or garrifuna people in Belize who were slaves who escaped here from one of the Caribbean islands.
i just came from Hopkins and gales point which are both near the coast.
the town of gales point only has a population of 500 and there is no bus service in or out. the area used to be a small tourist destination but has been cut off from the rest of the country with no bus service and a bad coastal road that is not maintained and tears up at least one tire every trip. there used to be a water taxi to gales point but that also stopped when the owner of the Manatee lodge died and it ended up in the hands of people (American or Canadian) who have run it into the ground. it is actually a beautiful property with views of the sunrise and sunset over water and thick tropical rain forest. There is a Manatee hole a few hundred meters from the point with about 20 manatee living in a fresh water spring in the middle of a huge lagoon.
I stayed at this guy Emmeth Young's home. He has a small campground on the property next to the "point" where the lodge is located and a 2 mile strip about 20-40 yards wide comes to a point. Emmeth is a drummer and a drum maker. he is also a leader in his community and a selfless person. The property is really nice with water on both sides and a nice simple guest house and small veranda. Emmeth is 43 but when you are around him you cannot help but jump around camp with him eating coconuts. He wants to build a few more cabanas for people like me to stay. By the time I left we had plans to build a house together over the water and raise money for a non profit chicken coop for the local youths to work to keep them out of trouble, teach them the skill and give them food for their families. It shouldn't be too hard.
I was there for boxing day, the day after Christmas. The whole town, led by Emmeth and the other drummers, walked from one end of the point to the other and stopped at peoples homes to play "Broke Down" or "Bruk dun" and drink the local wine which everyone makes (Emmeth's Berry wine and grapefruit wine is the best and the grapefruit is for when you don't have anything to do the next day) the rhythms while the younger girls sing a chant and response and dance. they have many songs but the only one that I can remember goes "me want pee pee" then the other half of the group sings "me can't pee pee" they are saying that they have to pee from all the wine that they drank but can't leave because they are having so much fun. At the end of the night they gathered in front of a fire at Gentles Veranda (the only restaurant in town and just like everyone else in the country make the great stewed chicken rice and beans with is the primary meal of the garifuna descendants)
to have a sambaii, an African mating dance. All of the people in this town grew up around this music and almost anyone can jump in to play the beats Coo coo. I took a few lessons on the djembe from Emmeth but clearly was not born with the same natural ability.
All of the people who live in town are very friendly and will welcome you into there home. if you are walking down the street and it starts raining they will tell you to come in the house. or, if you need to head down to gentles to grab a beer they will lend you their bike. The people there do not have much but they are happy. They will never go hungry as there are plenty of fish in the water, coconuts growing from trees and an endless amount of food that they can grow on their land. Since they live in Belize they also don't need to worry about freezing to death.
If something breaks, they fix it. So it seems like everyone can fix a car in town even though almost no one owns one. they definitely can fix a bike and it seems like all US school buses, cars and bikes come to Belize to die. I always wondered where all of our cars went.
I spent a day on the beach in Hopkins which is also a garrifuna town on the ocean. It was nice.
I got to San Ignacio 2 days ago on a bus from Dangriga through Belmopan. San Ignacio is on the western border of Belize with Guatemala. there is a good mix of Mayan and African decent here. when i got off the bus I was walking around looking for someone that I had met down in gales point. then, i was standing in the middle of the square in town with my big backpack on looking at my guidebook for a place to stay. I heard a loud popping sound and thought that it was car that was about to breakdown. When I looked up I saw people running. At first, I thought that the car was going to explode. then I looked back and saw two guys shooting semiautomatic weapons at each other. I obviously freaked and started running away and into a store and hid behind a washing machine that was for sale. when the shooting stopped it turned out that 3 guys were trying to rob a deposit from the coca cola factory to the Belize bank. they had 5 bags of money. at least one of the security guards died and the robbers got away injured but were later caught that day. they were not from the area. they came here because they thought that it would be an easy place to rob a bank. I was literally 20 ft from them when it started. I felt like i was in a movie. It is not dangerous in Belize though. I feel much safer than i do when i am in Baltimore. this was just a freak random occurrence. it rarely happens where i have been staying.
I met a tour guide yesterday am who took me pretty far into a living cave called Barton creek cave. it is full of stalactite and stalacmite. the cave goes a few miles deep and David once went all the way in and back. it took him 2 straight days and 1 night to trek through the stream and hike through the rocks. without light it is pitch black with a fresh water stream that is created from the water that seeps through the mountain and the limestone and other rock that create stalactites that grow close to a hundred feet down from the ceiling at points at a rate of 1 mm every 5-10 years. it is actually living and when you shine a light on it, you can so much detail. it looks like there are curtains and chandeliers and people. The Mayans used this cave as a burial site and performed ceremonies because they believed in reincarnation and the underworld. There are bones and pottery throughout the cave.
I arrived at Davids last night in the moonlight. we had to take a canoe across the river and walk down about 100 steps then back up the other side to get to his place.
There are a bunch of Mennonite's down here. they build houses and drop them off at your property fully finished for about $5000. they also grow lots of food and sell it. They own horses not cars but will hitchhike in a car. I don't really understand. We picked up a couple of ministers wives yesterday on our way to Barton creek. after a long conversation, they told me that i was gonna go to hell if i didn't believe in Jesus so i told them that i don't believe in hell either. they said that i will find out one day. there are only 2 paths. I thought that was funny. it's not their fault, it's all that they know.
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