Geoff's Belize Odyssey

Final post

2009-04-24T05:39:00.000-07:00

dawn view from my dorm

a moment of contemplation

the final dawn on the reef

Cancun airport

Finally tiding this blog up before linking it to my website. I had an amazing time over the three months and am plotting to go back out at some point to try and sell my more commercial pictures as prints and postcards....who knows. What I'm pretty certain of is that I have accumulated enough material to have at least a couple of different exhibitions back in the UK in the next few months, watch this space.... well this one anyway!

Geoff Allan Collage Artist

Local Colour (2009) photo-collage on canvas

Completely forgot to add this other little picture I put together before the exhibition was organised. Its composed of the bright exterior house paint colours which are in evidence throughout Belize. People are certainly not shy of striking colour combinations as evidenced below....

Finished artwork created at Glovers Reef

2009-03-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

Coral Study (2009) photo-collage on canvas

Lovers Reef (2009) photo-collage on foam and duct tape!
(split into two parts here because the complete image would not fit across the blog site)

The brief for this artist in residence was to create a centrepiece for an interpretation centre which is in the process of being built on the atoll. Alex, the station manager, kindly gave me access to his archive of underwater photographs to use as core material for the picture. In the process of scanning through the images, I was also able to pick out interesting close ups of different aspects of the reef which caught my eye, and formulate them into an another composition which turned out as 'Coral Study'.

http://wcsgloversreef.org/Default.aspx

Glovers Reef

2009-03-18T19:26:00.000-07:00

Well I do seem to have rather embarassingly hit yet another sweet spot before I head home at the beginning of April. An artist in residence at a Marine Research Station on the remote atoll of Glovers Reef, way off the coast of Belize....you really couldn't make it up....Don't quite know how I blagged this one, met the station manager Alex while I was at Pooks Hill, and one way or another he's invited me out to create a couple of artworks for an interpretation centre their are building on the island.....so here I am, on a two week jaunt and more cut and paste photoshopping to do....still got a fair bit of work to do mind, though I do have to say being able to take a break from your computer and swim out off the dock instead of making a cup of coffee cannot really be beat....

Middle Caye looking south Photo Credit: Astrum Helicopters

the station itself....

view from the office

the dock

first foot on the island

Donation to The Britsh High Commission

2009-03-18T19:13:00.000-07:00

Pretty happy with that...

Re:Exhibition

2009-03-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

Unbelieveably I have picked up the pace enough to exhibit in the capital Belmopan, and even better have got people along to view it! It is being held at the George Price Centre in the town which is basically the main culture centre outside Belize City. I'm pretty chuffed I have to say, though because it was in a public building the exhibition was set up as a presentational display only, and therefore the pictures were not for sale. I was very fortunate that the British High Commissioner turned up and was happy to donate my Green Shoots picture to stick in the janitors room at the embassy or something. I was also bizarrely inviewed by local Belizean TV to drum up some publicity. It maybe on youtube somewhere I'll have to hunt it out. Not in great typing form but hopefully the pictures tell the story....

Green Shoots (2009) photo-collage on canvas
Bark Study (2009) photo-collage on canvas
Abstract Lichen (2009) photo-collage on canvas

The one that got away.... fantastical vine... not finished in time

half an hour before the opening, not nervous at all...

obviously I had no choice about the colour of the display boards...

always good to get the kids involved

A few pictures from a weekend trip out to Tobacco Caye

2009-02-16T11:15:00.001-08:00

Sunrise at Placencia

A free taxi ride to the caye

Can't decide.... snorkling or hammock time?

Beer O'clock

The belize equivalent of 'nice sky Macintyre, well done'.....(from Local Hero)

A few more pictures from Pook's

2009-02-16T10:42:00.000-08:00

the only picture missing is one of the bar....!

2009-02-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

the view from my cabana

Pooks Hill

2009-02-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

My standard line when one of the guests asks me how long I've been here is 'I came to visit for the weekend and that was three weeks ago'. Which is pretty much true. Pooks Hill really is an idyllic location, and I seem to have clicked with Vicki the owner, and the managers Cat and Dave. So I have been doing odd jobs, I look after the phone while the others are out (don't panic!) and obviously am a permanent fixture behind the bar come the evening. And the clientele are by and large good company and I've made some pretty strong casual connections if thats not a contradictory statement. I'm good at that sort of thing. And I've been able to sit down and have a good look at the photos I took while I was in the forest, and unbelieveably a reasonable number have actually been in focus, which is a relief. Some interesting pictures are starting to emerge and there is a growing possibility that I may be able to exhibit some stuff while I'm here. We shall see. I'm almost certain that I will extend my departure date to the beginning of April, so I'll have a few weeks to pull something together. It seems very easy to network here, its a small country and everyone is pretty welcoming and interested in what your doing....

http://www.pookshilllodge.com/

Oh, and I thought you probably didn't want to know that after giving what I think is due diligence to the project over the last month I did find time to escape for a couple of days on the coast. It was quite cool and raining when I arrived on Saturday morning but by Monday it was scorching hot. I went out to an island called Tobacco Caye and had a very relaxing day snorkling and doing whatever you do on the beach...I even got a free ride out there by some fluke, which I can safely say is the first time I've 'beaten Belize' while I've been out here.

Hopefully back to Las Cuevas this week, the road is much drier and I have a clearer idea of the photos I need to complete the first series of pictures....more snapshots to follow

Vague Productivity

2009-02-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

Seem to have made some progress with sorting out the pictures this week and actually getting excited about the small possibilty of exhibiting some artwork while I'm here in Belize....Life is treating me well here at the jungle lodge and really am plotting to stay as long as possible...hopefully through March all being well....

ideas about the final picture compositions enclosed, oh and a funky picture of some rare bat we found at the back of the cave..and a flukey picture of a Bird of Paradise

Snapshots of Las Cuevas

2009-02-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.lascuevas.org/

Aerial view of the Chiquibul Forest Photo Credit: Alistair Rogers

The research station in a rare bit of sunshine

The entrance to the cave at 'Las Cuevas'

Daily Life

View from the bird tower

Sunset over the forest

The journey back to San Ignacio

Jumping Ship

2009-02-08T11:25:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-16T18:21:00.000-08:00

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

some pictures, in completely the wrong order of course

2009-01-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

Touchdown

2009-01-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

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