The Angry Australian

As I said, Belize City is totally unrepresentative of what is actually a stunning country. From BC, we took a water taxi out to Caye Caulker which I think is about ten miles off the coast. It's an equal mix of Mestizos (natives who were forced off the mainland by the Spanish), Africans who were dumped there by the Brits who brought them out as slaves, and whitey tourists.

The official language of Belize is English, which came as an enormous relief to me, because my Spanish is el shitto maximosa. I realised in Mexico, just how much of a person is defined by their language. When deprived of my use of English, I had no personality. I felt like my body had been taken over by a big, dumb, wide-eyed retard, who can't say nuffint. It's a simple thing, but to be able speak the native tongue of the locals was a huge comfort.

Sadly, there was a touch of the del Carmens on Caye Caullker, with a lot of the locals looking at you as a big dollar sign. Still, lobster season had just started and the Creole influence in the food resulted in us stuffing our faces with loster, conch and snapper, cooked to perfection, for around US$10. I'd never tried lobster before and, having had my fill, probably never will again.

We ended up staying there for the Lobster Fest over the weekend. We probably should have gone on the Friday. The fest wasn´t that flash and accomodation prices doubled for that weeknd which put a bit of a tarnish on our time there. But the memories of Caye Caulka, for mine, will be the cheap rum cocktails, the stunning dusky women and the snorkelling, which, all in all, was pretty beaut. I also bought a cane made from a local hardwood It´s name translates as ironwood, cos it´s hard as fuck. I bought it primarily as a pretty souvenir, and secondly as a Mexican-bashing whoop-ass stick. Little did I know how soon I would have an opportunity to use it. Or at least threaten to.

Back on the boat, back to Belize City to get a tourist van out to the Cayo district, in the tiny country´s west. The AA really came out on the tourist bus. We´d paid the extra for the van as the guy who sold us the ticket said it cost a little more but was a much quieter, more comfortable option. He was lying. And, as it turned out, he was the biggest problem. He was ON the bus, for some reason. Initially, I found that kinda reassuring. Standing behind your product, etc. Right from the get-go, however, the driver had an attitude problem. When we asked if my companion had time to visit the ladies, we were met with a harsh response in the negative. We were going right away. Ten minutes later, my compaion had little wees leaking down her leg. She went off to the toilet, and came back, and there we sat for at least another five. As most readers will be aware, I also have an attitude problem. And by this stage, I also had a big stick with which to back it up.

About ten minutes into the two-hour trip, the guy who sold us the ticket (and also spoke the Queen´s tongue), started chatting up this chick behind him. They might have known each other, but I´m trying to paint him in the ugliest light possible for the purpose of this anecdote. Anyway, so this dispicable sleaze started yammering away to this girl in Spanish, EXTREMELY loudly. "llororllorlrorooll" "rllroorllrloroorooorrrroolooolllo," he prattled. "lllooroorlllrlrooool". If he´d ben speaking at anappropriate volume, this leg of the journey would not even rate a mention. It´s important that everyone understand that. "llororlrolyyyoyoyolllrorollooo". My companion and I were right next to the chick he was attempting to seduce, so we were right down the barrell of this guy´s spitty meanderings. It really started getting on my nerves. As if copping this guy´s Spanish spray wasn´t enough, the driver put a tape in the stereo. At high volume. Possibly to drown out the fuckstick next to him, it just occurrs to me. So the music was modern hideous Spanish pop, in the style of Christina Aguilera, but more romantic and with zero production value. So now we´ve got the rapist on one side and this unlistenable crud on the other.

After failed attempts at glaring the spittly rapist/murderer into silence and further failures attempting to locate the mp3 player to attempt to drown him out, the noise just kept getting louder. I started grinding my teeth away and eventually said to the rapist, "Look mate, either you shut the fuck up, the driver turns off this fucking God-awful fucking music, or (pointing at the stick) I will lose it, and bad shit will happen. OK?" The driver did turn the sound down (a little), and the rapist did lower his voice. For a while. Before long, the noise was back to its original level but by that time I was too sad to care. We got to San Ignacio town were we were dropped off on the main road outside of town. I was glad to be off the bus, but still tense from the ride.My companion went off to investigate where we needed to go to get the centre of town. I chainsmoked and looked after the bags.

Almost immediately, I was accosted by a ragged local with rage and the redness of hard drink in his eyes. "You looking for trouble?" he asked me after blurting something I couldn´t understand. "No. Are you looking for trouble?" I responded, some part of me itching for the opoortunity to work out my aggression on a living, bleeding thing. "You looking for trouble?" he went again. "Are you fucking looking for trouble?" was my reply, as I stood, lit a cigarillo and did as close to a Clint Eastwood slitty-eyed stare-down as I could manage. The guy backed off a little bit and said he doesn´t like Americans coming to town. "Í don´t like Americans either. I´m a fucking Australian. Orright?" I offered him a cigarette. "I am from Belize." "Nooooo." He didn´t quite get the sarcasm and lit up, and we had a civil chat about the relative merits of Belize and the US. By the end of it, he was feeling up my biceps telling me I was perfect and beautiful. Situation diffused. "Welcome to San Ignacio".

San Ignacio, in fact, everything we saw of the Cayo district reminded me of home. Not Sydney, but where Im from originally, the north coast of NSW. The British influence has created some similarities between Belize and Australia, such as saying there´s a "whole heap" of things, bitter beer and other little things like that. Specifically, though, the town reminded me of so many on the north coast. Run-down weatherboard houses, lush green hills surrounding, evening showers and lightning, steamy mornings, and a shallow rock-bottom stream running through. We lucked out on the first couple of nights, accomodation-wise. We went to a hotel called Marthas and we told there no standard rooms available, only the penthouse suite, at US$60 a go. That´s a fair bit of scratch in Belize terms, but we were up for a little luxury and took the room. I couldn´t throw my credit card at him fast enough. The hotel itself was a beautiful colonial remnant left by the Spanish, who later got squeezed out of Belize by the British. The building being so pretty, it was a fair assumption that the suite would be, well, SWEET. And it was. A huge room, with kitchenette and two balconies, one of which was enormous, fully equipped with hammocks, rocking chairs, outside dining setting and the like, and boasted views over all of San Ignacio town. And cable TV.

Though we only stayed in that room for two nights, we stayed at that hotel for five days and really enjoyed our time in the town. Bought some rocks from a guy who called himself Kenny G, local good-guy hustler, tour guide, concierge and occasional drug dealer, whose mantra, as my companion and I tired of after our considerable time with him was, "When the woman is happy, the man is happy." Anyway, he taught me how to smoke bricks in the local style by crushing a drink can, punching a couple of holes through it and smoking it like a pipe. It felt pretty seedy. But in a good way. I´m sure Martha would not have approved.

The tours around the town were pretty pricey, but we settled on one of the cave options. This guy Dave took us and a charming American family out in his 4WD to Barton Creek. The point where we got out of the car to get in our canoes was called The Last Post, a restaurant by the river in the middle of pretty much nowhere. The place was run by an American couple who´d run away from Miami after the last cyclone hit to live and work at The Last Post, sight unseen. They reminded me of so many of the adults I grew up surrounded by. Idealistic hippie-types who had made the decision to rough it in exchange for a little piece of mind and somewhere beautiful to raise their kids with hearts full of hope and eyes sparkling with optimism. They´ll probably wind up as property developers when they decide they want hot water ALL the damn time.

On the canoes we saw tortoises, a number of bird species, iguanas and a bush dog (or Tirar), which was all heartwarming and shit. Then we took the canoes further downstream and into one of the cave systems that the Mayans believed was a connection to the dark powers of the underworld and where they fucked off to when they´d had enough of their opressive regime. (NOTE: From birth, members of the lower castes of classic Mayan societies had the tops of their heads strapped down with a heavy lump of wood. This flattened the tops of their heads, making it easier for them to carry things on them, hence, making them more useful as slaves. A good thing to get away from.) The caves were pretty awesome. Pretty much what you´d expect from a limestone cave system, with the added attraction of visible ancient skeletal remains.

On the drive back, we had an interesting chat with Dave, the tour guide, who was a bit of a champ. He was half native (his grandfather was the local shaman, or so he claimed) and half Black, and sported rasta dreads and maintained a belief in the local boogie-woogie. We drive past a couple of guys who looked really sick, wore no shirts and carried machetes. Hard-lookin´dudes by anyone´s standards. I asked what was up with those guys. He said they´d been cursed. "Cursed? Hah! No, really, Dave what´s with them?" I told him I had trouble buying the whole curse explanation and suggested they were on crack He insited they´d been cursed for their wrongdoings and that if I didn´t beleive it, he said he could put a frog in my belly to prove he was on the money. And not smoking the crack himself. I told him that hocus-pocus only works on people who beleived in it. He took some offense to this, so to smooth it outI asked him if he could put a spell on me to make a little more handsome. Diffused. We drove on.So that was Belize. I left with a special place in my heart for the Cayo district and still feel that it´s somewhere I could set up the compound.

# posted by Azza @ 3:34 PM