Campeche, Mexico

Last weekend was a school holiday, called the "Long Tropical Weekend" (which gets my vote for best holiday name ever) and we took the boys to Mexico.

We pulled them out of school a bit early to catch the 3:00 Thunderbird ferry to Corozal. We were met there by a transfer driver (sort of like a long-distance taxi) who took us through the Mexican border and to our hotel in Chetumal. The next morning we picked up our rental car from the Hotel Noor and drove west.

The Yucatan Peninsula is surprisingly large. Chetumal is in the southeastern corner of the peninsula, and Campeche is about halfway up the west coast. It took us six hours to get there! We passed many security checkpoints along the way, some staffed by Federales, others by the Policia Municipal, and still others by the military. The landscape was pretty flat just outside of Chetumal, but as we headed west, became increasingly hilly and we gained a fair bit of elevation as we neared Calakmul.

At Escárcega we turned north and arrived in Campeche just before sunset. We stayed at the Hotel Castelmar, an old military barracks that was converted to a hotel. It is such a cool place! The walls are tremendously thick, the doors are made from ornate tropical hardwoods, there is a central courtyard, and each room has a balcony. They even managed to fit a swimming pool into the building!

Our hotel

Courtyard of the hotel

Amy and Liam on our balcony

We chose Campeche as one of our destinations for this trip because of its history. Campeche was founded in 1540, and quickly grew into a prosperous sea port. Before long, this prosperity attracted the unwanted attention of PIRATES (including John Hawkins, Henry Morgan, and Edward Mansvelt). The city was attacked so frequently that in the late seventeenth century the Spanish throne consented to fund the construction of a wall surrounding the entire city.

Map of the old city and the wall

The wall is truly impressive--it includes eight bulwarks or bastions (seven of which have been preserved), is about 24 feet high, 15 feet thick, and features four gates:  the sea gate, the land gate, and two lesser gates on the remaining two sides of the irregular rectangle.

The buildings encircled by the wall have all been painstakingly restored, and walking through this portion of the city feels very much like traveling back through time. The ornate doors, iron work, and architectural details seem a bit European, but the color combinations and tropical climate make for a festive atmosphere. There were also some very interesting sculptures placed throughout the old city.

We saw many ornate doors

The boys posing with one of the cool sculptures placed throughout the city

Amy and the boys with another cool sculpture. There are faces within the hands of the bird lady.

The Cathedral was really beautiful at night

Our first evening there, we attended a "re-enactment" at the land gate. There were actors dressed in period costumes, some as Spaniards, others as pirates, Mayans, priests, dancers, and various others. We got to walk along the top of the wall and look out over the city from the gate, which was really cool. The balance of the presentation was a super-duper cheesy video (!) that was projected on the wall, and the costumed actors would (sort of) act out some of the bits that were being narrated in the movie. And of course, the whole thing was in Spanish. In fact, just about everything was only in Spanish--there don't seem to be many non-Mexican tourists in Campeche, so my advice if you are contemplating a visit is to bone up on your linguistic skills.

The Land Gate

The Land Gate from outside the walls

Cannons, cannons everywhere

Walking atop the wall

We drove south a couple of miles to visit the Fort of San Miguel. This fort was built slightly after the wall around the city, but with the same goal of protecting the inhabitants and the bustling commerce. The fort is also in remarkable shape, and we were able to explore the entire thing--across the drawbridge, down into the moat, all around the curtain wall, climbing on the cannons, you name it. There was not a barrier or a "no climbing" sign in sight, and naturally the boys took full advantage.

The inside of the fort is a (rather ironically) a Mayan museum, and we saw many very interesting artifacts. Of course, like the rest of the city, everything was in Spanish, and there were no English speaking guides, so I only kinda-sorta knew the story behind each of the artifacts. Many of the most interesting pieces came from Calakmul, a very large Mayan site in between Escárcega and Chetumal.

Obligatory cannon shot

Another cannon shot

On the drawbridge!

After we toured the fort, I bought coconut ice cream for Amy and the boys...

...from a guy on a motorcycle.

 Apparently, American tourists--particularly of the fair-skinned, blue eyed variety--are so rare in Campeche that we really stood out. In fact, one woman was so enamored of the boys that she asked Amy if she could take a picture with them and her twin girls. Of course we said yes, but I think Lochlan's expression nicely sums up our family's reaction to the request.

My boys are celebrities in Mexico

On our last day in the city, we took advantage of the numerous restaurants and had a delightful lunch where we were serenaded by two fantastic guitarists/singers. They asked what we wanted to hear, and not knowing a single Mexican song, I punted:  "Uhh...conocen los Beatles?" So naturally they played a very Mexican version of....My Way, by Frank Sinatra. It was awesome. That night at dinner, we also found some Mexican craft beer (first craft beer in six months!) and it was muy delicioso.

They played it THEIR WAY

Craft beer!

Horchata!

Overall, we were very impressed with Campeche. It was frustrating at times that we did not really understand much of what we read or heard, but that is more a reflection of our poor Spanish language abilities than a lack of information. The old portion of the city is also a bit Disney-fied, which we discovered during a nighttime sojourn outside the walls. But everyone was very friendly, and we all enjoyed the palpable history of the place and the pervasive presence of PIRATES!

Pirate

Pirate

Pirate

Ammo...in a pirate's chest

Even the hostel is named after pirates!

Spear Fishing

The red lionfish is an invasive species that has caused terrible problems for the ecology of reefs throughout the Caribbean. This fish is native to the Pacific and was introduced to the Caribbean by pet owners that no longer wanted their fish and dumped them in the ocean off southern Florida. Over the last 30 years, they have spread like wildfire to every part of the Caribbean basin. They have no predators here, and are themselves voracious predators and have decimated fish populations.

Red lionfish under the dock at Ramon's Village Resort

There is a fairly well organized, concerted effort to educate the public about this problem and to promote the only strategy that seems to work--killing them, one at a time.

We've heard so much about the problem, and seen enough lionfish ourselves, that when Liam got some money from his grandparents for Christmas, he decided to spend some of it on a type of spear called a Hawaiian sling. The sling works by looping the thick elastic band on the end around your thumb, pulling the sling back, and holding it in place until you are ready to "shoot" it at a fish. It takes a fair amount of strength to hold it in that position, but Liam was very determined and eventually figured it out.

Liam on the prowl for lionfish

We went searching for lionfish off the Caribbean Villas dock, and had great success in locating them--we saw about 8! However, they like to hide in nooks and crannies amongst the various bits of detritus the resorts have placed near the piers as artificial reefs, and consequently, it is hard to get a clean shot. The other thing we discovered is that even if you hit them, unless it is a killing shot, they will wriggle off the spear. The way to keep them on the spear is to pin them against a rock, piling, or even the sea floor until you can reload the sling and shoot it again to run it further through their body.

The first lionfish!

Eventually Liam was successful in spearing the first fish. It was just a tiny one, but tiny fish become big fish. As we were looking for more, we saw a local boy named Kevin fishing under the dock with a hand line and a homemade hook. He was not having much luck. He was fishing under the dock because there are hundreds and hundreds of fish, most of them blue-strped grunts, but also some snapper, sargeant majors, sailors choice, chubs, and many others. I speared a grunt and gave it to Kevin, and later managed to spear a sailor's choice, which I also gave to him.

Blue-striped grunt

Another view of the grunt

Eventually I found and successfully speared a small lionfish too. It was surprisingly satisifying to kill something with a pointy stick, and I actually felt a bit guilty about enjoying it. However, I have to believe there is some part of our animal mind that evolved to do exactly that, so perhaps it should not be too surprising to feel a sense of satisifcation after successfully completing a task that our brains and bodies evolved to do.

A day's catch

Liam with the largest lionfish yet, speared under the Caribbean Villas dock

Cleaned and scaled fish--the fish on the left is the lionfish, which I skinned completely

Fried grunt, just about ready for the tortilla

On a subsequent trip, Liam speared two lionfish, one of which was big enough to eat. We speared three decent sized grunts between the two of us, and we cleaned, scaled, cooked, and ate them in some fish burritos. The lionfish was surprisingly tasty--I'm obviously not much of a fish eater, but I thought it tasted quite good and I can understand why restaurants here on the island have it on their menus. 

Half-way

The Sunday before last marked the halfway point of our time in Belize. This has triggered a certain amount of reflection on my part, and Amy and I have talked at length about what we've experienced and what we and the boys will take away from our time here.

A toast to the halfway mark!

Over the past five months, we've seen beautiful animals in their natural habitats--spotted eagle rays, nurse sharks, lobsters, octopus, reef fish, toucans, parrots, frigate birds, tree frogs, snakes, lizards, and many, many others. We've all made new friends, with people from all over the world. The boys have adapted to a new school. Liam learned to sail, and Lochlan has become a confident swimmer and snorkeler. We've seen Mayan ruins in Mexico and Guatemala, learned how to drum from a Garifuna man in Punta Gorda, made chocolate with a Mayan farmer, held wild boa constrictors on the beach of a tiny tropical island, and fed jaguars and ocelots their evening meal. Amy started volunteering at a local clinic and has learned to give injections, draw blood, and deliver babies. I've managed to keep my Seattle-based business running from thousands of miles away, and have been fortunate enough to still have time for the occasional day of fun in the sun during the middle of the week.

But there have been many, many challenges. The climate and tropical storms took some getting used  to. The whole process of "getting things done" is radically different here than it is back home. Despite the English-speaking population, there are still communication issues that we deal with regularly. There is way too much drama happening between certain portions of the sizable expat community here in San Pedro. But I think the most persistent and difficult challenge, especially for the boys, is homesickness.

In five months, we will move back to Seattle, return to our old house, and resume our normal lives. Yes, we are having amazing experiences and are very happy with our decision to move here, but we are simultaneously looking forward to returning to our dear friends, wonderful neighbors, fantastic public schools, and Seattle's first-world infrastructure.

However, when we consider what our "normal" Seattle lives consist of, we realized that it won't actually feel that normal, at least not at first. To a surprising degree, we have adapted to the unique climatic and cultural conditions of this tiny Central American nation.

Things that seem normal now:

Golf carts
People drinking beer as they drive their golf carts
People drinking beer (and various other alcoholic drinks) EVERYWHERE
Loads of unsupervised kids
A ubiquitous "go slow, no worries" attitude
Geckos, geckos everywhere
Iguanas staring at us as we work out at the gym
Cockroaches, scorpions, mosquitoes, sand flies
Sand, all over the floor, all the time
Not wearing shoes or socks
Riding our bikes on the beach
Riding bikes without a helmet
Crocodiles in the backyard
Buying our produce off a boat from Spanish speaking Mennonites
Lake-sized puddles in the middle of every dirt road every time it rains
Bats
Lightning bugs
Frigate birds, ospreys, spoonbills, parrots, grackles
Sailing on crystal clear blue water
Sending the kids to the bar to order (non-alcoholic) drinks for themselves, and putting it on our tab
Having a tab at the bar
Soca music blasting everywhere
Parades, for every holiday, or sometimes for no apparent reason at all
Waiting in line for over an hour to deposit money in the bank
Random power outages
Having to visit 4 or more stores to do the week's shopping
The lack of many familiar foods
Very friendly people everywhere
Having to add 15 minutes to every trip outside the house in order to chat with people along the way
Stray dogs
Beautiful sunsets
Hammocks
Belikin (more bottle than beer!)
Sweating
Having our drinking water delivered by a wagon pulled by a tractor
The unique ways people transport themselves, their children, and various large objects

Over the next four months we will have four sets of visitors, and undoubtedly the time will fly by. There are still many places in Belize we want to see, and we are in the early stages of planning a tour through Central America. We are going to make the most of the time we have left.
 
We are surely in for some culture shock when we get back to Seattle, but I'm sure all of us--especially the boys--will adapt to the familiarity of Seattle even more quickly than we've assimilated to the strangeness of Belize.

The Red Shoe Box (a bedtime story)

One day in early winter a woman was walking down a crowded sidewalk in a big city. It was cold--almost, but not quite, cold enough to snow. A light drizzle with bits of sleet mixed in fell upon the gray and black-clad office workers making their way from the subway to office towers, shops, and various other places of business. In the crowd walked a woman, dressed just like everyone else, except for one difference:  she carried a bright red shoe box.

Meanwhile, a man was working inside his newsstand, selling magazines, newspapers, candy bars and sodas to the workers passing by on the sidewalk. He saw the red shoebox and made eye contact with the woman. She looked extremely worried about something, and as soon as she saw the man looking at her, she walked right up to the newsstand. The man smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, and the woman placed the shoebox on the counter. She said "will you please, PLEASE take this shoebox from me?" He couldn't see the harm in it, so he said, "uh, sure...I guess...yeah..."

As soon as he put his hand on the shoebox, the woman stepped back, and smiled. She turned around and started to walk away, then stopped, and turned again to face the man. With a serious expression on her face, she said "whatever you do, you must not open the box." Then she disappeared into the crowd.

The man put the shoebox under the counter, then went back to selling his magazines and newspapers. He couldn't stop thinking about the box, and what might be inside of it. Business continued fairly briskly until about 9:30, and he really wanted to look inside the box, despite the woman's warning, but enough business was trickling in that he forced himself to wait.

At 10:30, business had nearly stopped. He looked both ways down the street, didn't see any likely customers, so he reached under the counter, took out the box, and opened the lid. Inside was a small carved wooden figurine. It had an open mouth filled with many teeth, and the body was covered with spirals of different sizes. There was nothing else in the box. He closed the lid and put the box back under the counter.

Immediately after he replaced the box a woman walked up to the counter. The man said "May I help you?"

The woman looked around inside the newsstand and said "Hello? Is there anybody there?"

The man said "Yes, I'm right here! How can I help you?"

Once again the woman said "Hello...?" Then she sighed exasperatedly and continued walking down the street.

This happened twice more, with the same result. Then a teenage boy walked up to the newsstand, looked around the street quickly, and reached inside and grabbed a candybar. The man grabbed the boy's arm to prevent him from stealing the candy bar, but his hand passed right through it!

The man stumbled backwards inside the newsstand. He was starting to feel worried. He looked at the red shoebox. He picked it up and walked out of the newsstand, approaching several people and trying to get their attention. Everyone ignored him.

Finally, he walked up to another man, and prepared to bump into him. But the other man passed right through him! Now he was feeling very, very worried.

He started to walk down the street, not sure what to do next. Where could he go to get help if no one could see him? He didn't know what to do, so he continued walking down the street.

Eventually he saw a flower cart, filled with brightly colored flowers of all shapes and sizes. The flowers made the man smile, despite his growing concern. The woman selling flowers looked at the man and smiled. He walked up to her.

"Hello!" said the man.

"Hi..." said the flower seller.

"Will you please, PLEASE take this shoebox from me?"

The woman looked at the man, looked at the red shoebox, then looked back at the man.

"Uh, yeah, sure."

He handed the box to her, then stepped backwards with a smile on his face. He was about to turn around to walk back to his newsstand, but stopped. He looked at the woman, with a serious expression on his face.

"Whatever you do, do NOT open the shoebox."

The end.

Groove-billed and Smooth-billed Anis

One of the many things I like about Belize is the wonderful bird life. There is tremendous species diversity, and there are also just a lot of birds, everywhere. There are pelicans, frigate birds, terns and ospreys along the beach; spoonbills, egrets, and night herons in the lagoon; and orioles, parrots, hawks and hummingbirds in the forested bits. However, there is one particular species that might not be the flashiest on the island but has been of particular interest to me since we moved here:  the smooth-billed Ani.

The predominant Ani species is the groove-billed, and it can be found from southern Texas all the way to northern South America. I have seen many of them during our trips to the mainland. The bird is slightly smaller than a great-tailed grackle, has black plumage, a long tail, dark eyes, and a large bill with several prominent grooves.

Groove-billed Ani, image courtesy of allaboutbirds.com

A picture I took of a groove-billed Ani yesterday

The smooth-billed Ani is found from the southern tip of Florida, throughout the eastern Caribbean, and in northern South America. It is larger than the groove-billed, has a larger, smooth bill with a prominent bulge on top, and has completely different vocalizations.

Smooth-billed Ani, courtesy of allaboutbirds.com

A picture I took yesterday of a smooth-billed Ani, coincidentally in the same exact pose as the picture above

The really interesting thing about these two species of Ani is they overlap in only a handful of places in Central America, and Ambergris Caye is one of them.

Groove-billed Ani distribution map

Smooth-billed Ani distribution map. The little green blob at the southern border of Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula is Ambergris Caye.

Several weeks ago I was riding down our street and thought I saw a smooth-billed Ani flying parallel to the road, above the Mansions wall, but when I slowed down to take a closer look, it was gone. Absolutely execrable weather ensued, the holidays happened, my parents came to visit, etc.

Yesterday, I finally took the time to ride my bike inside the Mansions to look for the bird. The Mansions was intended to be a largeish (for San Pedro) gated community of luxury homes. The land was cleared, roads were built, utilities were installed, two homes were built...and then the global economy collapsed. No additional homes have been built, and the cleared land has started to return to habitat that just happens to be perfect for Anis, Grackles, flycatchers, and other birds.

When I came inside the gate, several black birds with long tails flew up from the ground to roost in nearby trees. Most of them were Grackles, but a handful were Anis. They looked like groove-billed Anis, so I observed through my binoculars and took a few photos. Scanning for more birds, I saw what looked like two large Anis that flew up into a tree. They let me get quite close, and I could see they were in fact smooth-billed Anis. Both species were IN THE SAME FIELD! This was really exciting for me, to see both species within a few yards of each other in one of the few places in Central America where they overlap.

Geckos are Everywhere

As I may have remarked before, our house is surrounded and infused with geckos. There are literally hundreds of them. We see them all over the ceiling and walls of our back porch, hear them chirping merrily from the walls of our bedrooms, and occasionally they will fall off the ceiling and scare the bejeezus out of us when they land on the floor. For the most part, we like them, because they eat lots and lots of bugs.

A pack of geckos hanging around the porch ceiling.

However, for some reason, they've been showing up in unlikely places over the past few days. A couple of nights ago I was preparing to use the toilet when I heard a "sploosh" sound coming from the bowl. At first, I thought something had fallen out of my pockets, so I turned back around to face the toilet, lifted the seat, and saw this little guy.

At least he didn't try to sell me car insurance.

Unfortunately he couldn't get out of the bowl, and I wasn't about to use the toilet with him scrambling around in there. So I reached in to the bowl, noted with mild disgust that someone had used the toilet without flushing earlier in the day, and grabbed the gecko. His tail promptly fell of onto the floor and started squirming the zombie lizard tail dance, so I stepped over it, opened the front door, and placed the reptilian interloper gently on the outside wall of our house. I picked up the tail and just chucked it outside (he'll grow a new one soon enough).

Tonight as I was preparing to wash the dinner dishes, I was putting away last night's dishes, when I picked up a tea cup and found this little fellow.

This guys is very, very tiny, probably recently hatched, and could not climb out of this cup. We placed him in Liam's terrarium and will release him in the morning.

Wonder where they'll turn up next??