Belize adventures

Let me start with an admission. Tonight, I'm really missing my family. I say my family because I miss Andria, but I also miss The Muffin - even though it is only a fetus and all I can do is try and teach it prime numbers by tapping on Andria's belly. Nevertheless, I feel like I'm really missing out on some important times. I'm sure it sounds all kinds of corny, but I really can't wait to have my family back. Of course, Andria is coming here on Friday, so, thankfully, I don't have that long to wait. If I'm this much of a softie now, imagine how bad it will get with a living breathing child!

So it turned out that in Belize the week was backloaded with work, meaning that I could escape for some fun stuff on the front end. I got in Saturday afternoon - without my checked bag. But I was determined to do something fun Saturday afternoon regardless. By chance, it turns out I was here for the Crooked Tree Cashew Festival. Like produce-oriented festivals the world over, it was about doing everything you can with cashews, drinking beer, fun for the kids, and listening to live music. First things first - what is a cashew?

Surprisingly enough, a cashew is a fruit, not just a nut. Take a look at the bucket of them to the right. They are a meaty, juicy fruit - kind of like a peach. But they taste exactly like cashew nuts and the juice dries your mouth out almost instantaneously. I'm not quite sure how to describe the sensation, but it is not dissimilar from the tang of tannins in red wines. The bottom of the fruit (looks like the stem of a green pepper) is actually the hard case in which the cashew nut/seed can be found. Totally not what I expected!!!

Here I am at the festival giving the cashew fruit a taste. They also make cashew wine, which I thought was dangerously sweet - almost disguising the taste of alcohol. There was also good bruckdown music (native Belizean music). Unfortunately, I did not want to stay all night and see the full line up of the best bands. But I did enjoy what I was there for. Plus I got real Belizean food for dinner!

The festival was in a village called Crooked Tree, which was a little over an hour outside Belize City. I had to hire a cab driver/tour guide to take me out there. You can see a cashew tree to the right, which will make it all too obvious why the place is called Crooked Tree - all of the older cashew trees looked kinda like this one - all gnarled and twisted. It was certainly worth the significant effort it took to get to Crooked Tree, but it would have been nicer to have been able to stay there and party through the night with all the locals!

Fast forward to Monday. Sunday was all work, all day. Lots to catch up on, and nothing exciting happened. I spent most of the day in my hotel room getting stuff done, with a short walk from the hotel which made me realize that it is probably a good thing that I am not staying in Belize City after Andria shows up. For a country with so much culture and nature to offer, Belize City is surprisingly not tourist friendly - or even all that safe seeming. I would advise not walking around at night.

But Sunday night I realized that I did not have to work on Monday, but would have to work hard the latter part of the week, so I figured I'd get my fun in on Monday. I decided to take a river tour to Lamanai - the third largest Mayan ruins in Belize.

I always find these kinds of ruins to be fascinating. We had a particularly good guide - Ignacio - who was taught by the Canadian archaeologist who excavated the site between 1974 and 1988. I believe that we were told that only 6 temples of over 700 had been partially excavated. So a lot of what we saw were mountains of grass covered by trees, which is quite fascinating considering that the site was still populated through about 1700 AD. The rainforest takes over quickly it would seem! The picture above is Jaguar Temple - so named because of the jaguar-like faces on either side of the main stairway heading to the top.

Here is a picture of the high temple. It was the tallest temple in the complex and the third tallest among the various sites in Belize. The picture below is me standing on top - yes, I have to stand on top of all tall tings, especially rocks, as I have said before.

Getting down was a treat. Check out the picture below. I went down pretty fast, but there were a number of people holding that rope with a death grip! And with good reason too - it would have been quite a head-splitting tumble!

The next two pictures are of the Mask Temple. Named for obvious reasons...again there is a mask on either side of the main staircase.

The masks on either side are actually fiberglass replicas that cover the original to prevent people from chipping off pieces of the mask to take home to adorn their mantle or chotchka shelves. It amazes me sometime how much people can suck. Anyway, the fiberglass is not at all obvious, so I guess there is no harm in protecting things. But come on people!?!?!?

That's it from Belize. Now it's time to go to sleep and start work in the morning! Can't wait till Friday to see my family again!