A lot of good intentions of following up my first entry before now have come to nought but here we are at last.....
Been in Belize over a month now and really starting to feel quite at home. This is mainly because I have somehow ended up staying at an exclusive low key jungle retreat, forsaking the forest for a bit of unadulterated but unstuffy luxury. One of the (not exactly) profound things I'm realising on this trip that I'm not as young as used to be, and although I'm certainly still what would be defined by the clientele here as, 'an independent traveller', the days of long bumpy bus rides and cheap guesthouses don't seem to be as high on the priority list as they used to be.
So where were we? Ah yes Las Cuevas.
In the end I've so far only spent ten days at the research station, but that is not to say that I have lost focus on the main objective of the trip. Unfortunately my timing was not very fortuitous, as the project has suffered, like so many things in the current economic crisis, from a lack of short term funding. After arriving brimming with enthusiasm, in the first few days of my stay, three US institutions cancelled their bookings for February and March, and the project manager effectively resigned from his post and went off to look for another job. This obviously had some knock on effects for the day to day running of the station, and as part of the ensuing cost cutting measures the camp cooks were sent home, the plush 4 by4 Toyota I arrived in was sent back to the rental firm, and the generator was turned on barely four hours a day, from 5 til 9 in the evening. This meant that we had light and the precious internet (yes wi-fi in the forest... u can't escape the unrelenting tentacles of the outside world these days), though it seriously stretched the desirabilty of eating the chicken and pork lost in the bottom of the freezer.
And on top of all it rained, and it rained....not in a depressing way mind, and I was still able to get out into the forest and take a lot pictures, but it did have quite an effect on the state of the track back out to the highway. The last stretch of 12 miles closest to camp is the least well maintained, and we had fun and games trying to get back out to civilisation. On the first occasion I went out, (to get my stitched removed) we actually had to prearrange to meet up with a vehicle on the other side of the worst spots, some one and a half hours walking distance from the station, and when I came to head out at the end of my stay, we quite predictabily got stuck for half an hour in one particularly deep mud hole. Fortunately to save myself (and you) from any more long winded descriptions I have a little video which basically sums its all up... Jimmy (the young dude driving the vehicle) is quite a character, but to big him up any more would ove inflate his already bulging ego...oh and i'll throw in some tree cutting ants in too, could watch them all day
must fly guests arriving more later
(hopefully not too much later)
Geoff
funnily enough videos in error will try later
a moment of contemplation
the final dawn on the reef
Cancun airport
Local Colour (2009) photo-collage on canvas
Local Colour (2009) photo-collage on canvas
