Christmas in the Caribbean

My parents flew to Belize from Arizona to spend Christmas with us. We were all very excited to have them here (especially the boys) and their arrival coincided with the Island Academy Christmas Pageant.

The boys were psyched to ride our rented golf cart to school with their Grandparents!

Post-school, pre-pageant beach time

Since this is our first year in San Pedro, we had no idea the Christmas Pageant is such a big deal. It seemed like half the town was there! The school had set up an enormous tent to cover the stage, the audience, and the BAR. Yes, there was a  bar serving beer (and I think maybe even wine and mixed drinks) adjacent to the seating area. How many school functions have you attended in the US with a temporary bar set up on school grounds??

The play was really well done and it was obvious the teachers and students worked hard preparing the props and rehearsing the material. It was a musical about the best way to present Christmas as a musical, and the kids performed several numbers reflecting the directorial and musical styles of several genres--film noir, action, old-timey silent films, Spaghetti Westerns, etc. Lochlan's class sand Mele Kalikimaka (complete with Hawaiian dance moves), Liam got to play The Villain in one of the musical numbers, and the boys' friend Aiden did a fantastic job as Sergio Spumoni, the spaghetti western director. 

We took a ton of pictures and videos, but it turns out one of the moms at Island Academy is a professional photographer, and her pictures are amazing. So the images below are hers (used with permission).

Lochlan's class performing

Liam's class, about to perform "Get Along Little Reindeer"

Lochlan's class post-pageant

Liam's class post-pageant

Fortunately the rain held off until the very end of the performance. We had promised the boys D & E's ice cream afterwards, and as it happens, Eileen herself was at the pageant! We asked if she was going to be open, and she said "yep, just as soon as I get back to the shop!" So we gave her a ride and were ensured access to the best ice cream on the island.

After the pageant, we headed to San Ignacio for a few days (which will be covered in a subsequent post), but I thought it would make more narrative sense to treat the pageant and Christmas Day in a single post. Which leads me to Christmas decorations. 

Living on a tropical island is truly wonderful but it presents certain difficulties when it comes to satisfying the holiday expectations of young people. For example, Christmas trees do not exist in this country. Sure, there are tropical pine trees up in Mountain Pine Ridge, but to my knowledge, no enterprising Belizean has yet taken on the challenge of harvesting, distributing, and selling said trees to the population (nevermind raising live trees to sell for decoration followed by planting after the holidays as we normally do in Seattle!). Artificial trees are available, but they are expensive, tough to store, and impractical to take along when we move back home in six months. So we improvised.

Inspired by an art project at school based on the work of Dr. Lala, we cut up soda cans into tiny squares, punched four holes in each piece, and then Amy spent HOURS and HOURS linking those suckers together. I think it turned out rather well, but it certainly is the most unorthodox Christmas tree we've ever had.

The Tree

The Tree with presents

Another complication was where to hang the stockings with care. Fireplaces are also not really common here, so we once again we improvised. I rigged up some nylon rope in a spiral around the central support pillar in the living room and Amy ran some LED lights alongside. We tied the stockings to the rope, and it turned out pretty well.

The final challenge was presents. We love how simple things are here in Belize, and the fact that there are no chain stores of any kind is pretty amazing. However, it does make it close to impossible to find things like Magic The Gathering playing cards, or build-it-yourself catapult kits. Receiving packages here (and conversely, sending them) is time consuming, expensive, and not always reliable. So--Mom and Dad to the rescue! The folks very graciously let us ship a bunch of stuff to their place in Arizona, and Amy's parents also dropped off some things for the boys, and my parents played Santa. We would not have had many Christmas presents without them! Although I'm sure the boys wouldn't have minded fewer presents, just having their grandparents here really made it feel like Christmas, even though everything about it was very different than what they're used to. 

Sand, sails, and Santa hats

The boys decorated a gingerbread house from Grandma and Grandpa Kaplan

PRESENTS FROM SANTA!!!

Dad with his jippy-jappa basket

We gave Mom some metal geckos to decorate their new house

I got a cool shirt with a map of the island on it

The boys got Amy a dolphin made by a local carver

Dad playing Forbidden Island with the boys

Since we won't be able to take large toys back with us, most of the gifts were on the small side, but we had a wonderful morning opening them and trying out some of the numerous games each of us received.

We had a Skype session with my brother and his family in Arizona, and another Skype session with Amy's parents and sister in Kentucky. We spent the remainder of the afternoon at the beach, then came home and prepared a delicious feast of all our favorite traditional dishes--mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, corn casserole, etc--and we introduced a new favorite, fried breadfruit!

It was a wonderful, relaxing, fun-filled Christmas Day, and it was such a joy to spend it with my parents. The only thing that could have made it better is if the rest of our families could have been with us.

Christmas Parade in San Pedro

Belizeans love parades. We have been to four since we moved here! On Sunday night there was a Christmas parade. It was scheduled to start at 6:00. We ate a leisurely dinner, hopped on our bikes, checked out the big Christmas tree in Central Park, took a few photos.

The the boys in front of the Xmas tree in Central Park

Then we walked down to Middle Street around 7:30, and the parade started about 15 minutes later. It was great! As usual, there were lots of LOUD sound systems pumping from the back of flatbeds, plenty of decorated golf carts, and lots of cute kids.

In the Caribbean, Santa's sleigh is pulled by dolphins

Dora is in *every* parade

Another Santa, with some elves

This was a huge, drunken conga line that wrapped around its float, they were having a great time

Some of the cute kids throwing candy to the crowd

My favorite aspect of the parade was definitely the seven guys dressed as Santa, every one of them brown or black. The boys caught a lot of candy thrown from the passing floats, and even though it was still 78 degrees on our bike ride home, it felt a bit more like Christmas than it did before we saw the parade.

Water: Where does it come from?

Even though I make my living as a cartographer and GIS analyst, my collegiate and post-graduate education are in urban planing. I've always been fascinated by cities and how they work--where does the water come from? Where does the sewage go? How is the electricity generated and transmitted? What happens to the garbage? I know the answers to all of these questions when it comes to Seattle, but not with respect to our temporary home here in San Pedro. So I jumped at the chance when Laurie sent Amy and me an invitation to tour the Consolidated Water plant.

Our tour guide was Dee Dillon, the general manager of Consolidated Water Belize Limited (CWBL). Dee is a mechanical engineer and worked on water production and distribution systems in Southern California for 27 years before retiring to Belize. He came out of retirement to manage the CWBL plant. Although CWBL produces the drinking water, it is distributed by the Belize Water Service.

Dee giving us an overview of the plant before the tour begins

The town of San Pedro is located on the island of Ambergris Caye. The island is long, narrow, and low-lying, with very little in the way of freshwater. To produce drinking water, CWBL extracts seawater from two underground wells, one on the south side of the plant, and one on the north side. The wells are about 40 feet deep.

Dee explains how a device very much like an Archimedes screw brings the water up from the well (Laurie and Steve in the background)

The water exits the well at 60 psi

The north well

Where the water from the north and south wells is mixed and enters the plant

The water from the two wells is combined just outside the plant, where it is pushed through a pump/turbine combination that jacks up the pressure to 980 psi! This is extremely high-pressure--the way Dee described it, if that amount of pressure were to be placed against the steel entrance door to the plant, it would blast through anything in its path and end up on the reef, about 3/4 of a mile away (maybe we could get Mythbusters to test this?!) The high-pressure water is pushed into the reverse-osmosis filters, which form the heart of the plant. These plastic filters are formed in a spiral pattern, and although I didn't quite follow all of the chemistry and physics, essentially the high pressure in conjunction with the structure of the filters literally rips the salt molecules from the water molecules. They also remove all particles larger than 5 microns, which eliminates almost all silt, bacteria, protozoans, and any other undesirable components of the water.

Cranking up the pressure

The reverse osmosis portion of the process--the water entering the white tubes is at 980 psi!!

At the other end of the filters, fresh water emerges at 10 psi

The injection well where the briny sludge is pumped underground

The salty sludge ends up in the center of the filter, and is routed back outside the plant where it is injected back into the ground, about 90 feet below the wells that are pumping out the seawater.

Although the water is now fresh, it still contains hydrogen sulfide gas (which smells a bit like rotten eggs). The water is also too basic at this point, so citric acid is added in a mixing valve, then the water is sent into a tall cylinder filled with mostly hollow spheres that use a catalytic reaction to remove the hydrogen sulfide gas, which is vented to the air. Interestingly, over time the spheres form a snot-like substance Dee calls "jelly" that must be cleaned off about once a year.

Citric acid is added here to lower the pH level to somewhere between 6.5 - 7.5

The pH-balanced fresh water flows out of the building in the blue pipes to the top of the tower...

...where it is filtered through thousands of these spheres to remove the hydrogen sulfide gas

After the gas is removed, chlorine is added to ensure the water stays free of bacteria as it makes its way through the Belize Water Service (BWS) distribution network.

The de-gassified water is passed over a series of weirs, where the chlorine is mixed in

The water is regularly tested for bacterial contamination, and Dee said they have never found fecal coliform bacteria in the water--which is a good thing! The fecal coliform bacteria is very common and is not harmful in and of itself, but its presence indicates that conditions are right for the nastier forms of bacteria to reproduce.

Culturing samples

The whole system is powered by a pair of diesel generators. Dee explained that the plant was originally powered by an electric motor, but the electricity supply to the island is so unreliable that the motor would frequently shut down, wreaking all kinds of havoc on the equipment in the plant.

Hard to convey how LOUD these suckers are

The plant is currently producing about 600,000 gallons of fresh water a day (that's about 7 gallons every second), 420,000 of which is being consumed. The balance is being routed to the million-gallon CWBL tank, to be used during high season in December and January.

One MILLION gallons

Dee said the plant is running at or above capacity every day, and he is a vocal proponent of conservation. I asked him how San Pedro's water usage compares to the US--he said that even compared to California, one of the most water-conscious states, residents here use about four times LESS water. However, until additional capacity is added, we'll all have to make do with a little less as more residents and visitors come to the island.

It was a fascinating tour, and quite obvious that Dee is really good at what he does and loves his job. We are lucky to have him in charge of producing our water.

Palapa Bar

Yesterday we rode our bikes north of Boca del Rio to the Palapa Bar. As the name implies, this place is a bar, built into a two-story palapa right over the water. They have inner tubes rigged up alongside the dock so you can swim, float, sip your Belikin, and enjoy the good vibes. Or do cannonballs off the dock, as our boys did.

Palapa Bar!

Cannonball time

Swimming with my boys

The Palapa Bar has a fun tradition of encouraging graffiti--every flat surface (and most of the curved ones, come to think of it) is covered with names, drawings, places of origin, favorite sports teams, etc. They have a huge stash of sharpies at the bar for the patrons to use, so naturally we added some of our handiwork to the mix.

Amy and Loki enjoying their beverages

Now he'll know where to sit next time

L.J.S.!!

Nautical graffiti

After a fun swim and a round of rum punch and Shirley Temples, we biked back home. On the way we found a dead boa constrictor, and after Amy washed it off in the ocean, we posed for some photos with the local kids.

It was a pretty good sized snake

After some initial trepidation, the local kids jumped right in

It was a good day.