An Executive Means of Travel

As we got further from the Mexican border, the tension in my shoulders started to ease, even though it would turn out to be some days before I would let my guard down and start trusting locals again. Via a blissfully simple entry into Belize we rattled along a baked tarmac road to the dusty bus station of Corozal. Realising simultaneously that everyone spoke English and that we had an extra hour to hand due to the time difference, everything suddenly became very possible and we realised that we could be on the tiny island of Caye Caulker to meet our friends within a day.

Quickly compromising economy, we decided to fly the fifty miles or so to the island instead of waiting for the water taxi the next day, and were shuttled in a battered car that had pretensions as a taxi to the local airstrip, where a light aircraft stood waiting by the hut that constituted a waiting lounge. "Looks like yeh plane is reddeh" the taxi driver said, as we dumped our bags by the side of the plane and paid the price or our urgency. Within minutes we were crammed behind the pilot, the only passengers on board and feeling like royalty to have our own aircraft laid on for us. These feelings quicly evaporated, however, as the aircraft bumped along the runway and shook itself into the sky causing one of the other passenger seats to worryingly crashed sideways onto the floor.


The aircraft quickly rose, and the ground dropped away behind us to reveal electric blue water thinly covering the black outline of coral reef, dark patches of cloud sliding across the surface of the water. As we watched tiny boats below us draw white trails out behind them and small islands come and go hundreds of metres below, Mexico already seemed like a long way away. We landed in nearby San Pedro after a fairly ridiculous twenty minutes to change planes, joining a mixed group of Belizians, ex-pats and tourists and, after handing in our seemingly pointless giant red laminated cards bearing only the information "BOARDING CARD", rapidly took off and passed the last leg of the journey which ended on a bumpy landing on the Caye Caulker airstrip. The only two to get off the plane, we shuffled down the sand track to the "arrivals lounge", basically standing outside a shack, until our luggage was untangled from the aircraft and trolleyed to us. It was, all in all, the closest impression of a commercial airline infrastructure that I have ever seen.

Exiting the airport by way of a white sand path, we soon encountered a huge Belizian lady proudly driving a golf cart, the local laternative to standard vehicles and taxis. Thus we found ourselves, some four hours out of Mexico, facing backwards down a sandy Carribean road bordered by brightly painted wooden stilted buildings and clinging to our possesions while our driver cheerfully swung the golf cart around the twists and turns of the island, taking us closer to what I could already feel would be a very refreshing change in direction from the last two weeks.


Caye Caulker, Belize
17th July 2009

The Clarke Show rolls into town

I`m sitting in the central plaza of my new home town, chiapa de Corzo at some indiscriminate time in the morning, all the clocks here either seem to be broken or defining their own unique time zone. It`s a warm cloudless morning, and groups of Mexican tourists and locals drift by as a steady stream of traffic circumnavigates the square while I sit in the shade of one of the many trees dotted around the plaza.

I was picked up from Tuxtla Gutierrez airport after a short wait by Enrique, the husband of the director of the Dunham Institute. A well presented and polite chap, he was in possession of an enviable fluency in English, allowing us to chat on the short ride to Chiapa de Corzo. The road wound its way over dry scrub land punctuated by desperate trees and dusty roadside settlements before sweeping right over a wide river that, to the left of the bridge, flowed into the beginnings of the deep Sumidero Canyon.

We cut a right off the highway and with a verbal flourish Enrique pronounced "Welcome to Chiapa de Corzo!". The first thing that struck me about the town as we drove through it was the colour. CDC is a colonial settlement about 500 years old, and viewed as a rather special item in Mexico`s cultural portfolio so the residents seem to have made efforts to present the town well; residential houses dotted around the narrow streets through which we drove were painted in a wide range of vibrant colours which, despite a seemingly callous disregard for the laws of palette matching, combined to create a wonderful spectacle.

Negotiating the indecipherable system of one way streets, we arrived at the institute and I was introduced to Joanna, a perpetually smiling redhead with a booming voice who for the majority of our time together seemed to have a tired child draped over her. She drove me in spiralling circles around the town to assist my orientation and drop me off with my host family. On our travels, Jo pointed out an ancient set of steps, sandwiched between two branches of a fork in the road. "That" she explained, "Is part of one of the oldest Mayan ruins in the world; the site is huge. It is also" she went on, "The same site upon which Nestle decided to build a milk factory". Indeed as we swung around the corner, I could see a blocky industrial buildings and gleaming white cylindrical towers, all bearing the badge of the company in question.

With my head spinning with the orientation and sights of the (admittedly rather small) town, I was almost slightly relieved when I was dropped off at the family house and introduced, over the course of a couple of hours and a variety of locations about town the the entirety of my host family; Padre Javier, Madre Toni, brother and sisters Javier Jr, Toni Jr (easy enough) and Andrea and Dolly the Dog, one and a half years old and in possession of a rather unfortunate combination of a dislike of strangers and an astounding capacity for forgetfulness. Since my arrival they have all been incredibly welcoming, giving their food to me at the dinner table on my first rather jet lagged day instead of unleashing me into the community to find something and, despite an obvious aptitude for English tenaciously persist in speaking to me in Spanish; presumably a frustrating exercise as my contribution to these conversations is rusty and limited at best and seems to revolve around the verbs "to be" and "to have"...

Chiapa de Corzo
4th January 2009