Ah blogs work the other way round than I was expecting...
anyway having not worked out how to put the titles to the pictures underneath the individual shots the images are described thus...
1. Taxi into Cancun...through Springbreak hell...
2. The research station is in here somewhere
3. Kid hawker at Mayan site with a very long name I can't be arsed going in the guidebook for
4. View from the main temple
5. Bus to San Ignacio
Friday 16 January 2009
Touchdown
Finally I'm psyched and ready to start this blog which I've been meaning to get around to for the last couple of days or so. The trip so far has certainly not been 'without incident' shall we say, but the pace of things has certainly moved down and notch or two now that I'm ensconced at the research station at Las Cuevas. (For those not in the loop I'm doing an artist in residence at a tropical forest research facility deep -50 miles deep in turns out - in the Belizean 'jungle', close to the Guatemalan border). But thats for next time. I arrived in Cancun (Mexico) a week last Wednesday, after a mad rush to finish work for other projects and say goodbye to as many people as possible. Its not as though I'm away for ages, but any excuse for another 'final drink before you go' had left me pretty knackered before I'd even started. Tie that in with my my usual habit of getting little sleep in the days leading up to the off... because of all the excitement...and I was totally strung out when I touched down. However that didn't stop from going straight back out after checking in to my hotel for that first beer of the trip, and the realisation that I was actually here. Ah man it was sweet. Awake 27 hours straight, I was instantly in some parallel plane and happy to chat on with some ex-pat American guy, who in the space of half an hour had offered me free accommodation in this place he owned in the Guatemalan hills....
And me being me I was up and at it after two hours sleep, packed and ready for the off before 5am, chatting with one of the all night taxi drivers, and working out how far the bus station was from the hotel. So I was up with the rest of Mexico, eating street food (albeit with a very expensive coffee from the departure lounge) and watching the world go by, realising that even with my sixteen words of Spanish, there was no excuse not to do a bit of travelling in Chiapas and Yuchatan before I go home. It takes all day to do the 500km from Cancun to Belize City, and so again it was after dark before we rolled into the bus station on Canal Street (marked by a tree on my very basic map), but unlike Cancun it all seemed very familiar. I'd booked into the Seaside Guesthouse that had become like home on my two previous trips to Belize, and nothing had change in the twelve year gap since my last arrival. In fact nothing had changed at all, no one had done a lick of decorating or maintainence to the place, just a change of ownership to a seemingly laidback forty something hippy dude. I'd got chatting to a guy on the bus (Nick the Greek) who ended up staying in the Seaside with me, and so I had someone to talk at as we went in search of some food. But the whole place was very quiet, and a couple of places that I'd been to before were no longer there. So we ended up at a place very close to the Swing Bridge in the centre of town, which I remember visiting with the '91 Belize crew and having quite a time of it.
Ok, enough of this travelogue crap which I seem to have got locked into. Blog or no blog I think we need a little less verbosity and a little more precision to the story. Sufficed to say the bar had turned into some kind of drug den straight out of the Wire, to the detail that the bouncer was a little over 300 pounds and kind of menacing in a quiet causal way. Anyway we got out ok, the bouncer turned out to be an Arsenal fan, and the hoppers soon got bored when they realised we were spaced out tourists not super cool travelling types looking for an edgy time of it. But that didn't stop us getting shaken down by the cops, who screeched to a halt and blocked our path as we headed back to the main street. Think they were quite disappointed that they hadn't got a white man bust, but fortunately for me the days of running close to the wind are long gone (in terms of taking non alcoholic drugs that is..well out on the street at least)...
Nick the Greek had had enough by then and headed back to the guesthouse, but I stayed out and obviously couldn't have a simple time of it...got hassled by some crack head when I finally sat out on the kerb to eat some rice and beans...talked to the neighbours on the way home who were out on their step chewing the fat, and then stayed up most of the night with the hippy dude who turned out to be far more strung out even than me, having relationship problems, mentally all over the place within himself...blah blah...blah blah blah. As his newly appointed psychiatrist (a well worn joke relating to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) I prescribed no hard liquor, no pyscho activate substances, and gave him some of my precious valium to help him sleep. While he in return gratefully rolled me a fat, well sculptured joint which, with due diligence, I smoked alone. Total amount of sleep in the last four days I worked out, eight hours. This may explain how for some unbelieveably crass reason I mistook the remains of some shower gel in a shop bought water bottle for the real thing, and had to suffer bubble burps for the rest of the morning. Jesus. Not a good look.
Man I've been caught out again, to much detail, got to make it more snappy. We're not in the pub now. Right. Turned up in San Ignacio (the town closest to the research station), to find the house I'd been promised that I could stay in locked up and very much deserted (it turned out since last October) and no sign of Chapal, the Las Cuevas Project manager who was supposed to pick me up and take me into the forest the next day. And after my experiences of the previous evening I just prayed that Eva's (another home from home) was still open because I couldn't cope with anymore surprises. But it was. I realised I was just in need of a beer and some of Eva's famous chicken and chips and i'd be right. And so it came to pass.
Man the generator is about to be switched off and I haven't even got to the climax yet. Perhaps it'll have to wait to next time (is this turning a bit cheesy or what)...oh well a super speedy summary will have to do. I've got nine stitches in my arm from a biking incident, I've been here five days and its pretty much rained continuously. Contrary to what u may think its cold here, 550m up the nights can be nippy, but its stunning beautiful, the bird song in the morning is amazing, I can here howler monkeys close to the camp again, I've had the pre-requitie diarrhea and nausea for most of the week and I've yet to fugure what exactly the pictures are going to turn out like. At present everything is looking a bit green....
Thanks for hanging on in there,
there will be more I'm sure...
I'll post this and hopefully post some pictures up as well
later
g
And me being me I was up and at it after two hours sleep, packed and ready for the off before 5am, chatting with one of the all night taxi drivers, and working out how far the bus station was from the hotel. So I was up with the rest of Mexico, eating street food (albeit with a very expensive coffee from the departure lounge) and watching the world go by, realising that even with my sixteen words of Spanish, there was no excuse not to do a bit of travelling in Chiapas and Yuchatan before I go home. It takes all day to do the 500km from Cancun to Belize City, and so again it was after dark before we rolled into the bus station on Canal Street (marked by a tree on my very basic map), but unlike Cancun it all seemed very familiar. I'd booked into the Seaside Guesthouse that had become like home on my two previous trips to Belize, and nothing had change in the twelve year gap since my last arrival. In fact nothing had changed at all, no one had done a lick of decorating or maintainence to the place, just a change of ownership to a seemingly laidback forty something hippy dude. I'd got chatting to a guy on the bus (Nick the Greek) who ended up staying in the Seaside with me, and so I had someone to talk at as we went in search of some food. But the whole place was very quiet, and a couple of places that I'd been to before were no longer there. So we ended up at a place very close to the Swing Bridge in the centre of town, which I remember visiting with the '91 Belize crew and having quite a time of it.
Ok, enough of this travelogue crap which I seem to have got locked into. Blog or no blog I think we need a little less verbosity and a little more precision to the story. Sufficed to say the bar had turned into some kind of drug den straight out of the Wire, to the detail that the bouncer was a little over 300 pounds and kind of menacing in a quiet causal way. Anyway we got out ok, the bouncer turned out to be an Arsenal fan, and the hoppers soon got bored when they realised we were spaced out tourists not super cool travelling types looking for an edgy time of it. But that didn't stop us getting shaken down by the cops, who screeched to a halt and blocked our path as we headed back to the main street. Think they were quite disappointed that they hadn't got a white man bust, but fortunately for me the days of running close to the wind are long gone (in terms of taking non alcoholic drugs that is..well out on the street at least)...
Nick the Greek had had enough by then and headed back to the guesthouse, but I stayed out and obviously couldn't have a simple time of it...got hassled by some crack head when I finally sat out on the kerb to eat some rice and beans...talked to the neighbours on the way home who were out on their step chewing the fat, and then stayed up most of the night with the hippy dude who turned out to be far more strung out even than me, having relationship problems, mentally all over the place within himself...blah blah...blah blah blah. As his newly appointed psychiatrist (a well worn joke relating to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) I prescribed no hard liquor, no pyscho activate substances, and gave him some of my precious valium to help him sleep. While he in return gratefully rolled me a fat, well sculptured joint which, with due diligence, I smoked alone. Total amount of sleep in the last four days I worked out, eight hours. This may explain how for some unbelieveably crass reason I mistook the remains of some shower gel in a shop bought water bottle for the real thing, and had to suffer bubble burps for the rest of the morning. Jesus. Not a good look.
Man I've been caught out again, to much detail, got to make it more snappy. We're not in the pub now. Right. Turned up in San Ignacio (the town closest to the research station), to find the house I'd been promised that I could stay in locked up and very much deserted (it turned out since last October) and no sign of Chapal, the Las Cuevas Project manager who was supposed to pick me up and take me into the forest the next day. And after my experiences of the previous evening I just prayed that Eva's (another home from home) was still open because I couldn't cope with anymore surprises. But it was. I realised I was just in need of a beer and some of Eva's famous chicken and chips and i'd be right. And so it came to pass.
Man the generator is about to be switched off and I haven't even got to the climax yet. Perhaps it'll have to wait to next time (is this turning a bit cheesy or what)...oh well a super speedy summary will have to do. I've got nine stitches in my arm from a biking incident, I've been here five days and its pretty much rained continuously. Contrary to what u may think its cold here, 550m up the nights can be nippy, but its stunning beautiful, the bird song in the morning is amazing, I can here howler monkeys close to the camp again, I've had the pre-requitie diarrhea and nausea for most of the week and I've yet to fugure what exactly the pictures are going to turn out like. At present everything is looking a bit green....
Thanks for hanging on in there,
there will be more I'm sure...
I'll post this and hopefully post some pictures up as well
later
g
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