Sunday, January 15, 2012

A little excitement

Most of our trip to Belize was pretty low-key. See a few ruins, sweat it up in the jungle, hit the beach, hate the beer, usual stuff. The closest thing to excitement we had was on the last day, but it started on the first day.

Remember I wrote about the free lunch we got at the car rental place. This almost made up for the rental car we got. It was a Chevy tracker well past it's due date, more because of the mileage than the age. As soon as we picked it up, we noticed a funny noise coming out of the rear end, a few missing trim pieces, a side-view mirror that rattled so much as to be useless (which became less of an issue half way through our trip when it rattled right off). But we planned to drive on crappy roads, so you tend to worry less about that stuff: if they gave us a shiny, new car, we would be worried about any little damage we might do and what I would cost us, so this thing seemed to suit our needs. Four inflated tires and a spare, 4 wheel drive, air con that works to get us past hyperthermia after jungle hikes, fluids topped up, and no sign of overheating. Everything else was just frosting.

After a few days up in the jungle, driving on sketchy roads, it became apparent that the noise from the rear end was getting no better, and might have been getting worse. Nayer, our passenger from Lower Dover to Hopkins, agreed with me when I described the noise as the "alien" sound from the movie Contact. Clearly rhythmic, and coinciding with the wheel speed. My 20 years of driving cheap, crappy cars had me diagnosing it as likely a worn wheel bearing, or maybe a dry or worn rear differential.

Coincidently, in Hopkins, we overheard another tourist arguing with their rental car agency as they had cracked the head on their rental truck. The agency was saying they should have pulled over as soon as it overheated and called instead of continuing to drive, and then it might have been a minor repair instead of a new head. the agency wanted to tourist to pay for the head replacement. So we thought we had better call our rental agency and make sure they know about the blown wheel bearing - just in case.

Our rental guy seemed completely unconcerned. -yeah, that truck is noisy, nothing to worry about , see you next week!

So we did what we were told, and didn't worry about it. I guess you know where this is going.


The day of our departure was a beautiful sunny morning, if a little windy. We decided to spend a couple of hours sitting on the beach, putting the last layer of melanoma on before heading back to Belize City and rainy Vancouver. Our flight was at
5:00, and we were 2-1/2 hours away at a leisurely pace. we packed up at noon, and started heading north.

Ten minutes out of Hopkins, something went wrong in the rear wheel. The noise quickly went from the rhythmic thrumming to the sound of various bits of metal trying to kill each other. I pulled over and looked at the back wheel: the brake drum was smoking hot, and there was grease/oil sprayed all over the inside of the wheel. It seemed to me that the wheel bearing had failed, taking the seal with it, and dumping rear end lubricant and cooked wheel bearing grease into the drum. It now seemed likely to me that either the wheel would fall off, or the combination of heat and oil would cause the wheel to ignite; both very bad things.

We happened to be near a small village called Sweet Grass: Small in that there was a single pay phone outside of the single police station, across the street from the single Chinese Store. We parked at the police station, assuming I could ask them if there was a taxi or bus that could take us to Belize. The police station was open, the police radio and books and phone
and everything were there, but there were no actual police. Front and back door wide open. Small town. I thought about picking up the radio and calling in an APB, but I had other things to deal with.
We called out rental guy, and told him that the truck was rolling, but there was no way we were getting to Belize City.  in his truck.

He said - no problem, I will send my guy down there right away.

I said - problem, if you send your guy down here now, he won't be here until 3:00, and if we are both here at 3:00, we won't be where we need to be: at Belize City Airport meeting you to drop off the car.

He said - You leave today?

I said -uh, yeah, that is why we were meeting you at the airport in two hours, remember?

This seems to stump him. For only a few seconds. -You just drive the car to Belize City then, it'll be Ok. We'll see you at the airport.

I expressed my doubt, but given few other options, we hopped in and headed north. It was about 10 minutes later when approaching one of Belize's ubiquitous highway speed humps that I noticed the brake pedal go to the floor. It took a few pumps to get braking.

Then it became clear to me: it wasn't the wheel bearing or rear end at all, it was the rear brakes! It had been brake parts inside the drum that had been rubbing, making the thrumming noise, not the wheel bearing. It wasn't getting smelly or pulling the car to the right because there was no brake lining on the shoes. This might even explain why we had the adventure up at Nim Li Punit with the sliding parking lot: we had been operating with no rear brakes!

It seemed now that now broken bits were bouncing about inside the brake drum, the brake cylinder had failed, and we were blowing brake fluid into the drum. Checking under the hood, the Master Cylinder was down fluid, confirming the brake-
pedal-to-the-floor observation. Clearly, we had a limited number of braking events left before the whole thing stopped stopping. We were not going to drive for two hours at highway speeds in an automatic transmission car with a smoking back wheel and no brakes! It just wasn't on.

Luckily, we had been peripheral to a conversation earlier in the week when Nayer had been trying to arrange her travel back to Belize International, and we knew he next major city ahead had an airstrip with regular flights to Belize City.

So, sounding like we were dragging a drum set behind the car, emanating heat from the rear wheel, and me using the crappy auto box transmission to reduce the need to brake, we limped in to Dangriga airstrip. They had a flight leaving in 10 minutes to Belize international, with seats available for $75 each.

Tig called our car rental guy, and actually only got our car rental guy's guy. Apparently, our guy was now "out of the country". Regardless, we told our guy's guy where his car was, and asked if he wanted the keys brought to Belize City or
left there. Then he asked Tig if we had filled the gas tank.

Tig, now hotter than our back brakes, very politely told him that we had not, and that he was going to have to eat that $75, considering the money we were spending on tickets to get back to Belize City.
Literally 10 minutes after pulling into the airport parking lot, we were asking off in a Cessna Caravan for the 15-minute flight to Belize City. This is how Led Zeppelin used to travel...

So, really, for an extra $75, We got to replace a 2 hour drive with a 15 minute flight in a small plane over some of the most scenic coast in Belize, including passing right over the lagoon where we had gone to spot Manatee. I guess for something going wrong, it all worked out pretty well.



Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't thank Nayer... It was being around her that led us to the simple solution to a problem that cropped up a few days after she had flow home.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Rainy Days 2

Another day of non-promising beach weather, so we decided to head north this time.
Between Hopkins and Dangriga, there is a little shop called Maria Sharp's. "Mama Maria" is known across Belize (which, I remind you, with a population of about 300,000, over 22,000 square miles, is rather like being well known across Vancouver Island), because she is the producer of the Nations #1 Hot Sauce. It was rare to sit down at a meal in Belize without a jar of one of her sauces in front of you, it is the salt and pepper of Belize. She also makes jams, chutneys, and juices, but her habanero pepper sauces, from mild to Belizean Heat are her...uh... Is "bread and butter" to confusing an analogy?.


We tasted some samples, and took a tour of the factory, where huge vats of mashed hot peppers towered over where some the boredest-looking assembly-line bottle-lid-fasteners sat all day. We also chatted with Maria and bought a few jars of the good stuff.





After Maria's, we rolled up the Coastal Highway, which is really neither, being a twisty gravel road through the jungle. The "back road" between Dangriga and Belize City put truth to the definition of a short cut as the most difficult route between two places. However, about half way along, if you take the right at a completely unmarked turn-off, you end up in Gales Point,
where you can see Manatees. Sort of.

Gales Point is a one-road village strung for several kilometres along a 50-metre wide spit extending into a large lagoon, separated from the ocean by a few kilometers of mangrove. This is a Creole town, but it has seen better times. The local economy is limited, the youth are moving out to get jobs in the Cities, and even regular bus service to the village has ended. Add to that a couple of recent hurricanes, and the place is pretty beat up.



However, pulling into town, we got flagged down by John Moore, and John had a boat and figured he could guarantee us seeing manatees. All we had to do is run him over to the store to buy some fuel, then run him over to the dock, and he would hook up the motor to the boat, and get a battery from somewhere and... Well, a half hour later we were out with Captain John, wearing the only life jackets we saw during our time in Belize. And Manatee we did see.


Manatees are almost literally "sea cows" (although they are more closely related to elephants)in that they are the only living herbivorous marine mammals, they are big, and they are very, very relaxed. When we saw them, they were hanging out by a hot springs, not really eating or frolicking, just kind of hanging around the spot in the lagoon where the water was warmest. They breathe about once every 20 minutes, and this seems to be their only activity. So every 20 minutes or so, their snout, and if we are lucky, their head is visible above water for about 2 seconds. As you might suspect, you don't really watch manatees so much as you occasionally spot them. And I have a lot of photos of wide expanses of murky water with a random spot or two I will insist are manatee snouts.


John kept busy while we sat anchored by the hot springs noting random fleeting spots by fishing for Tarpin. He never actually caught one, but did get a good sized one on the hook for a spirited minute-long fight, but he got away.

It was a nice time on the water, though. Gales Point is located in a very beautiful spot, a long palm-lined sand spit on a shallow lagoon, with mangrove forests to the east and the karst landforms of the Mayan Mountains to the west, even on grey, cloudy day, it is a view to behold.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Rainy Days 1

We're back! But over the next couple of days I will try to post some stuff I wrote while we were still on the road. So stay tuned.

We have had a couple of rainy days here on the central coast of Belize. It is warm and breezy, but the sun has stayed away, and there are occasional showers, sometimes very intense. Thunder and lightning were prominent last night.

No problems, the weather is warm enough that we just need to find shelter to relax under. Although the Belikin has turned me off beer, they have re-introduced me to rum, and there is no lack of that or fruit juices with which to mix around these parts. We have also taken the opportunity to explore the countryside. We are Vancouverites: you say Rain, we say Opportunity.

Day 1 we drove down to the "deep south" of Belize, driving southwest from the Garifuna-dominated central coast to a region of almost all Maya culture.  Travelling through the hilly jungle, you pass through acres and acres of citrus farms and banana plantations. There are a lot of boom-and-bust towns around here, with a logging boom being followed by a coaca boom followed by a marijuana boom, but nothing seems to be booming these days. The Maya live mostly in thatched-roof houses with log or timber siding that, although lacking in R-value, seems to make up for it in ventilation.


Like most of Belize, the nicest buildings seem to belong to the churches. Although there is a large Catholic Church on top of the hill in San Antonio (the largest Mayan village in the area), it is the Pentecostals, the Baptists, the Adventists, and the Mormons who seem to be doing the hard sales in Belize. Being nearby and predominantly English-speaking, the small villages of Belize appear to be prime targets for American Evangelicals. We also saw more Mennonites here as well, of the girls in flowered smock, tow-headed boys in straw hats and suspenders riding a horse-drawn carriage type. they apparently fled to Belize when countries further north started asking them to pay property taxes or send their kids to school. They are now sitting on some of Belize's richest oil fields, but that is another story for another time.



While in the Mayan Mountains proper, we stopped off to see two distinct sets of ruins.

Nim Li Punit is your typical pile-of-limestone-blocks type of Mayan Ruins, from the Middle Classic period (think late Roman Empire to early Middle Ages). Two things really sand out here. One are the large number of well preserved stelae, or large engraved stone pillars. The second are a series of royal tombs uncovered, which at the time contained bones, teeth, and artifacts connected to the burial rituals.

This was also a site where the car refused to stop. It had been raining on and off, and the hard gravel parks lot had a layer of mud and grass on it. When pulling into the parking spot available, the truck didn't stop, but kept sliding along at less than 5km/h towards the bush. The slope could not have been more than 1%, but the ground was so slick, we slid right through the guard rail. It took 10 minutes, two strong guys and 4 wheel drive to back us out of there. On an essentially flat lot. The Park Staff, although  helpful, seemed a little perplexed by the dumb-ass Canadians who couldn't  drive on a flat surface. Tourists... at least we took nothing but pictures, and left nothing but tire prints.


Our second set of ruins for the day were something rather different. Lubaantun is notable for not being limestone, but slate. The large structures were build using precision-cut stones and generally without mortar, with curved surfaces that sort of locked the pieces together (more in the way of cafeteria trays than like Lego). As a result, both the restored and un-restored parts of the ruins look very different than at most sites we have seen in Belize. A large amount of pottery and other ceramics were found here, along with blades and tools made of various rocks, from jade to chert, which leads them who know these types of things to speculate that this was mainly a centre of trade and commerce, as opposed to a religious site like Nim Li Punit. I think they draw too much distinction between religion and commerce, but I digress...



Sunday, January 1, 2012

Jungle and Sea - random notes

We took a trip up to Mayflower National Park. 4 miles down a very muddy road, this park is pretty undeveloped. Even the ruins are of the "seemingly random piles of stones covered with trees and bush" type, that said, more ruinous than usual. A few kilometers hiking up hill through dense jungle on a very, very muddy trail boroughs to some huge waterfalls, and a nice little swimming hole. 


We drove up to Dangriga, a more active river-harbor town, and had some street food: "fry tacos" at a quarter a piece, and BBQ chicken with the ubiquitous beans and tortilla. As we sat beside the river enjoying lunch, a local Rasta type inquired about where we were staying whether we wanted to rent a boat to get to the Cayes, and if we were intereted in some really high-grade shit. 

On the way to Placencia, we saw this road sign, as the road swoops through the landing path of the local airport. The gates (hopefully) come down when an aircraft was approaching...


One day, we are lounging on the beach in the shade of a palm tree, when the tree began to rustle. Thinking this interesting, I watched as the rustling increased and not one, but two large iguana dive-bombed us out of the tree. They seemed none the worse for wear for their 20-foot fall, and one was even a little huffy that I would be there when he fell, but he was all threat display, and no threat.


But most of our time has been spent eating and drinking at sea-side shacks,

Or sitting at the beach, staving off boredom:


Life is not too difficult. However Belize has managed to do something no other place or person has ever done: turn me off of beer. I 've tried to like it but Belikins has made it impossible. I tried the Premium, the Stout, and even a special holiday brew they pump out called the Sorrel Stout, which is flavored with, amongst other things, Sorrel, which is a sweet herb that has laxative effects. Just what I am looking for in a beer.

Placencia and Hopkins

I noticed the Blogsy interface is now truncating the right side of every photo I post.   So to catch full wide-screen splendor of my hackneyed photography, you might want to click them. You might be surprised with what Tig was doing over there to the right...
As I go throught and update older posts with the benfit of actual, useable PC-based "Programs", not attractive but ineffective Apple "Apps", most of the photos should work better. Still, click on them to get widescreen goodness.

We were woken this morning by our room fan stopping. It became apparent that we had no electricity, and no water pressure. The national power system of Belize is run by a company called Fortis, and there have been some disputes between the government and Fortis: the government complaining that Belize has the highest electricity rates in the Americas, Fortis complaining that by forcing rates down, the government is taking away Fortis' ability to maintain the system. Long and short of it, there was an announcement this morning that there would be no electricity in the southern half of Belize until 2:00 this afternoon.

So we drive down to Placencia, a slightly more high-brow beach area than Hopkins, in that the streets have asphalt. They seem to take care of their beaches a little better down here as well. Placencia has the kinds of thing that Hopkins is missing, like a bank, a gas station, and opportunities to buy "my parents went to Belize and all I got was this stupid T-shirt" T-shirts.

 
We had a great lunch at Omar's Creole Grille. Omar makes fresh fish. Fresh is guaranteed, as he is the fisherman who catches it. He also has the customer service skills of a fisherman - service ranges from indifferent to nonexistent - but we are finding this usual in tourist Belize. Nayer, our passenger on the drive from Lower Dover, reported having a great lunch in Hopkins, it just took two hours to get fed.
That said, Placencia also lacks the laid-back vibe of Hopkins. The former is a Tourist Town, where The latter is a Garifuna Village where some tourists showed up. So picking up trash is not part of the Hopkins Lifestyle, but chickens in the front yard is. 

Our guest house in Hopkins is great. our room - the Jungle Room - is a little small and tucked away, so it is not like we have a view of the beach, but the hostess, a Dutch/German, is the exception to the rule I talked about earlier. She is there when you need here, always accommodating, and clearly runs a pretty tight (and clean) ship.


One of our hosts was even kind enough to remove one of his shoes and use it to dispatch a rather chunky scorpion we found in our room.
New Years Eve was spent in Hopkins, bouncing between the Driftwood Beach Bar, where they had live music and good food, and the Windchief, with it's DJ and traditional (for Germans) showing of "Dinner for One", and hanging with a young semi-couple from Winnipeg. It seemed that most of the Ex-Pat population of Hopkins was there. For the first time in a few years, Tig and I both made it to Midnight.