Letter from Belize (1993)
April 5th, 1993
Dear Dad:
There are just two paved roads in Belize, the Hummingbird Highway and the Western Highway. There are also just two traffic signals, both in the town of San Ignatio, and no stop signs, speed limits, or laws against driving while intoxicated.
While in Belize, Allegra and I traveled almost exclusively on the rutted, bumpy, tree-limb and rock strewn unpaved roads which are as characteristic of the country as the evening chorus of frogs, cicadas, and birds and insects I could no more name than number. For the first two days I thought that the roads in Belize must be the worst roads in the world; then we crossed the border into Guatemala...
Our traveling companions were a group brought together by Paradise Bicycle Tours of Denver: a married couple from Boston (a sonar engineer and a self described "bureaucrat"); two business women from Minneapolis and St. Paul, both in sales; an obstetrician and his wife from Manhattan; and an academic couple from Atlanta and their well-mannered daughters, 15 and 17, whose conversation consisted most often of the words "weird" and "cool".
(I mentioned to the engineer that you worked sonar for the Coast Guard in World War Two. He mentioned that marine sonar systems had not changed much since that time. Once people designed equipment and methods to keep it waterproof and functioning in a wet, cold environment, changes were simply not necessary and often not feasible. The change from vacuum tubes to solid state was apparently the main change and not that important.)
The roads in Belize might not be the worst in the world, but they were certainly the bumpiest roads on which I have ever bicycled. Even the bumps had bumps. We bumped mile in, mile out, up hill and down; and it was the downhill bumping that that was the toughest on the rear end and wrists. Amazingly, no one had a flat tire or any other mishap, though once, by accident, the Manhattan doctor and his wife missed the turn off for our afternoon swim and lunch break and cycled on an additional seven miles...
Midway through our second day of cycling, the bumpy roads turned to muddy roads as unexpected rain began to fall. We parked our bikes and crossed a river, two at a time, in a rubber raft for lunch at a small guest house in the shadow of rain forest and mountains. Later, when the rain stopped, we crossed the river again and loaded our bikes on the tour company's four wheel drives vans. Then the local Land Rover pulled us up a muddy hill the GM vans wouldn't handle. Soaked though we were, and anxious to get back to resort for showers and dry clothes and dinner, we were having a great time, and remembered rides and hikes and other occasions we had been soaking wet, lost, hungry, or some combination thereof.
Allegra and I got the idea to go to Belize after seeing an ad in a bicycling newsletter. That connected with the our knowing many zoo people who have been to Belize in recent years, both as part of jobs and simply for pleasure. As it happens, we wound up bicycling only three days of the Belize trip. But the balance of the vacation was no less enjoyable.
I suppose I knew there were Mayan ruins in Belize, and that Belize was close to the Mayan sites at Tikal in Guatemala. But I didn't really think about archaeological sites when we signed up for the trip.
When we crossed the border from Belize to Guatemala, all I could think about was the CIA-engineered change of government in Guatemala in the mid-nineteen fifties... I didn't remember that event, of course, but I had read about it as history, and it felt odd to see the "Guatemala" stamp in my passport.
Then my attention shifted to the unpaved road, worse than that just across the border in Belize, and all the cattle and chickens and dogs wandering along the road. Last year we had a Guatemalan pathologist at the zoo. He told me he saw COWS with rabies at least once a week when he was a veterinarian in Guatemala.
At Tikal, the Mayan site in Guatemala, I thought about those rabid animals when I watched the tame coatamundi, a raccoon like animal, taking table scraps from tourists behind a restaurant.
But most of the time I didn't watch the tourists--I acted like one. At Tikal, we walked for more than five hours, up and down and around the overgrown pyramids and other structures, finally climbing 380 feet up the side of temple four. Wooden stairs took us most of the way up. The final thirty feet or so was up a vertical metal ladder--like climbing the side of a very high silo, with a view forty miles to the horizon. On top I stayed as far from the edge as I could, examining the great overgrown city, wondering why in the world I had climbed up there, watching far off storm clouds building on the horizon. Suddenly, however, those clouds moving toward us fast as I waited my turn at the ladder leading down. The skies opened as Allegra and I reached the ground and ran for the vans.
That night we stayed in San Ignatio, the town with the only two traffic signals in all of Belize. (The lights were at opposite ends of a one lane bridge in the middle of town.) The hotel was surprising modern--it even had cable television, which we still don't have in our part of the Bronx. I noted that several of the framed photographs on the walls of our bed room were the work of Carolyn Miller, an NYZS employee in Belize I knew from periodic letters, electronic mail, and fax messages. Again we were happy to shower and change clothes before heading off for dinner at San Ignatio's highly recommended Sri Lankan restaurant. The curried chicken was much like that served in any Indian or Pakistani restaurant in New York. The Guinness Stout, however, was distinctly sweet, quite unlike the bitter product brewed for the U.S. market. I find I now prefer the sweeter stouts, such as the Belizean product and an English brew sold in the Bronx, Mackeson's Triple Stout. I cringe when I consider the calories in these stouts, but I keep drinking them.
Just as I prefer sweet brews to bitter, I prefer large airplanes to the small variety. It was a sixteen seater, however, which carried us from Belize City to Ambergris Caye for two days of snorkeling and sun.
The coral reef, rather than beaches, is the main attraction of Ambergris Caye. Part of it is a marine national park, and as one's boat enters the park, it is time to pass Belizean dollars to the park guard, waiting in his own speed boat.
Then we put on our snorkels and got in the water... I had never been snorkeling before, but I always loved to swim, and I don't think I have ever had more fun in the water than snorkeling face down with the fish and the eels and the rays and skates over the coral reef. (Allegra saw small sharks but I didn't.) Patti said, if you like snorkeling, you'll love scuba... But I think snorkeling on the surface is just fine with me: no air tanks or weights or bends to worry about, just sights to see and a boat to return to. Returning from this trip was more trouble than most, but I count myself lucky that we were able to rent a car in Miami and sit out the delays near the theme parks in Orlando. We thought about driving all the way back to New York, but were quickly dissuaded by televison scenes of snow in Georgia and the Carolinas.
Your son
Steve
-----------------------Written, 1993. Converted to html and posted, 2001. Links fixed, 7 February 2003.