beautiful belize

well the border crossing from mexico was superbly easy. they speak english here again! to begin with i kept addressing all officials in spanish, before i remembered. in the north there's lots of hispanic-looking people, some of whom actually don't speak english, so it's highly confusing.

it feels like a very civilised country, unlike mexico. everybody drives nice and slow, and coruzal, the first town on the road through belize, is so laid back its amazing. there's hardly any cars at all, everyone's biking around, and everyone smiles and says hilloo deer, or stops to chat. it feels a lot like, say, the Scilly Isles -- like the England of thirty or fifty years ago. today i am leaving this lovely place and going to a nature reserve, one of many. belize is all nature reserves and relaxed people, as far as i can tell.

it's going to be a struggle to face other central american countries after this, that's for sure, with their corruption and lack of civilised infrastructure.

oh, and the houses here are all faded clapboard affairs on stilts, rather than the concrete and breezeblock structures so favored by the mexicans. often with attendant old black man sitting in rocking chair on the stoop.

met david and naomi the first night i was here, in the guesthouse: the first fellow-brightonian travellers of the trip! like me, of course, they aren't from brighton at all, they just moved there. it was wierd to sit and talk about brighton house prices over a couple of belikins, but all that was brought to a stop by the other people in the bar who came over to talk to us. an interesting mix of locals and ex-pats.

finally, no more maize tortillas! here it's good old rice, beans and chikin. and deep-fried flour tortillas called "fry jacks", if you want a heart attack on a plate. oh yeah, as well as everyone talking english with accents that sound to me like jamaicans (even the hispanics which seems kind of incongruous), most people also speaks creole which is so cool to listen to. "ah won't ya cut out ya foolishness bwah."