Before we went ashore in Belize City, we took a little dinghy cruise up Haulover Creek which runs through town before turning into the Belize River several miles on. It’s a great way to do preliminary reconnaissance before hitting the ground.
Here’s part of the fishing fleet.

Lobster season has just ended, at least officially.

On land, the downtown area isn’t so bad, small and full of bustle especially when school lets out. Downtown the streets are clean, the shops decently supplied, and reminiscent of lots of towns in the eastern Caribbean. Our mission was to buy a Belize flag which nautical etiquette requires, and the seasickness remedy Stugeron. Both were available, but in the wrong size. You do notice that some shops keep their doors locked, and the others have door-minders or bouncers.
I was sent into the Bottom Dollar for groceries, which it had in good supply, and came out to find Doug lounging in the shade of Marlin’s Cafe across the creek with an ice cold Belikin in hand.

Here’s the good news: people are really nice. And they speak English! So now I understand that plastic phone cards like you’d use to make a call from a pay phone are old technology, except in the US. In Belize, you can send money from one cell phone to another in about three seconds, and be talking to anywhere in four. Seems that having all that land-line infrastructure has slowed the US down in cell phone technology.

The same newspaper said that the price of red beans was $1.25 BZ a pound a year ago, $4.25 now. Lots of other staples have also gone up. The head of state says he’s looking for overseas loans but otherwise hasn’t a clue as to why prices are up. You’ve got to feel sorry for the vast percentage of good people who just want peace and security, and wireless internet!

A taxi driver took us past his wife’s lunch stand to wave at one of his sons. He explained his eight children by saying there was no television to fill the time. Now he’s got flat-screen, and the breeding has stopped. I asked him what he liked best about his country and he laughed and said expansively: I like EVERYTHING about my country.’ Then after a pause, ‘except maybe the government’.

Sunny downwind lee flat calm turquoise: that’s how we got from behind Spanish Lookout Caye to our date with Customs, Immigration, Health&Agriculture and – who was that other guy anyhow? He got the same $20 ‘transportation’ (no receipt!) as the first three, and now we’re good until the Ides of March.

The anchorage off the city is exposed, and little clumps of ‘mud’ from ‘state of the art’ sewage treatment scoot past like autumn leaves in a stiff breeze. They don’t smell and they fall apart like dust when touched, but I still don’t like salt spray on this dinghy ride!

There’s a lot going on though. Here’s what a 180-degree scan of the horizon reveals:
Us, the only cruising sailboat
A chartered catamaran
Small fast (3x200hp Yamahas) passenger ferry (they do their 24 mile run in 12 minutes, so stay out of their way!)
A 138-foot Dutch square-rigged school ship, Astrid. College age, six months out, two Atlantic crossings, the students do all the work. The captain kindly stopped by to invite us for a beer :) but we were waiting for the tide :( so he gave us the short version, and I’ll spare you the accent: when these children come home the parents are so happy they think ‘maybe we will have more children. This one used to sit in front of computer all day now interested in things and helps and very nice to know.’
Two shrimpers, Northern I and Northern II
A German schooner, Johan Schmidt,100 plus feet ‘sailing cargo’ but looks more like some kind of passengers
Cruise ship Spirit of Independence, anchored far out and ferrying in small boatloads of Dive Discoverers, Mayan Ruin Adventurers, Nature Park Explorers and Monkey Village Shoppers (Diamonds International, Del Sol and the same cast of characters as everywhere else, and you have to show a pass if you’re entering from the street, so it’s ‘safe’)
A small container ship at the bulk wharf, being unloaded by 2 cranes
A cargo ship, the Radnor, about 300 feet, apparently in storage
Oil tanker, pinned like a Lilliputian to four corner moorings so it could deliver fuel through a hose to the tanks at the end of the bulk wharf
Two, not tug boats, but maybe 70’ open aft deck and high forward cabin, anchored
A Belize-registered long-line fishing boat
Water taxi carrying 2 palangis (non-native white people) to an outer key
A pontoon dive boat coming back in from the reef
Local sailing boat with pieced and patched sails and a dugout 1-log dory on top.

Looks like I’ll have to learn html to use the pictures right. Later

or Bay-LEE-Say, as the Mexicans say. Sounds more melodic and seductive that way, I think. Here’s the view from Spanish Lookout Cay toward the mainland the night we arrived.

Getting out of Mexico at Puerto Morelos took all day, but eventually the Port Captain got all the stamps he wanted. Unfortunately, it meant we had to leave with pesos rather than groceries.

The two hundred miles to Belize City took us 56 hours, which is a long time to be a little uncomfortable. The wind never really got on the nose, and never more than 20 knots, and the squalls all missed us and the ships all announced their presence early on and the temperature never went below 70 and there was a good moon and nothing weird happened beyond especially ‘devil’ waters from place to place.

But there was a consistent current of at least two knots straight against us, all the time. What always felt like a good six knots of forward progress turned into something less than four. We constantly lurched into hard stand-up waves, and rolled, and slapped, ad infinitum, although not quite ad nauseum. Bulkheads creaked, and the walls of the nearly-full water tanks under the settees pooched in and out, and salty damp settled everywhere.

Luckily, the Milky Way made a stellar appearance, and later the moon, with it’s usual “Yikes!” moment. Next day we heard euphoric reports from the northbound boats “we were flying, over ten knots sometimes, so much fun we just kept going…..”

But for us, southbound, this passage was something of a chore. However our pet ants really got riled up. We’ve had a few ants since we left Maryland, little fast ones, and bigger but more charismatic mediums, with jaunty antennae and perky pointed abdomens. My inner anthropologist was trying to figure out if they were getting together, what their tastes and habits were, etc. If they appeared in the galley, however, I’d casually wipe them out.

In the middle of the first rough night, caravans of ants appeared, trekking single file through the cabin in both directions along the starboard side where the cabin sides meet the top. Like a vengeful goddess (although I saw myself more as a research scientist), I smote them, sparing only those who seemed to be passing messages or who carried something white. All night long, they passed, and I smote, disrupting convoys , until my watch was finished.

In the morning the field of combat switched to the galley, the ants having apparently abandoned the starboard flank. The war of attrition continued throughout the day, as I threw my lightning bolt, pointed my fickle finger, even used weapons of mass destruction such as the blade of a knife in a gap along the trim.

Well, I’ve pretty much got them all, I thought, and I’m a little sorry because I enjoyed their presence, before they got uppity. That was yesterday.

Today, the larger ants have retreated to an undisclosed port-side location, where they are apparently digging bunkers and filling the sandbags, because our Forensics department has identified piles of frass and masonite dust.

“They’re eating the boat” Doug says. “You’ve got to do something.”

So I’ve concocted a tasty, pasty potion, honey and boric acid, and applied it in a place where I can watch what happens. But insects will inherit the earth, so I don’t think this will be the end of it. Meantime, we’ve got to get legal in Bay-LEE-Say.

What I learned at Tulum was that only 40 or 50 families lived inside the compound, which is about three times the size of what shows here. There was a wall, and the rest of the population lived outside it, all the workers who tended to the folks inside as well as to themselves, that is. One theory for the collapse of the temple/calendar/religious civilization is that the workers simply stopped working. Think where all the modern resorts would be if that happened now!

There was a stone structure here designed to pick up the sound of the wind and broadcast it inland, a sort of advanced hurricane warning system. And there was a ‘lighthouse’ that could be aligned with a cut in the reef. Honey was an important trading commodity, and there’s even a stelae with a bee on it, which might have looked better stuccoed and colored, as all of these buildings were at one point. Nice spot.

Playa del Carmen might be the fastest growing city in Mexico, Armando told us. It’s where the passenger ferry to Cozumel departs, and it’s got the most Norteamericano looking highway we’ve seen – car dealers with flags, drive-through fast foods – sprawl, but small-scale. On the way there we passed 4 cement plants in 20 miles. But on a little detour through the part currently being ‘developed’ the jungle was being cleared by machete and curbs for the roads dug by hand.

Tourism is the main reason for this town too. The main pedestrian shopping street has a sophistication that, say, Ocean City, lacks, but it’s still only a block from a beach full of sun-bakers being served drinks by boys in long pants and sleeves. And I liked how the people from the dive shops would walk the half block down to the beach and stride on out into the water.

There were several interesting-looking hotels back through gardens and alleys, and a complex of about 50 hotels at the other end of the street. There must be nightlife here! But I don’t know how I’ll ever get to be anything but a morning person.