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After chilling in Hopkins for a couple of days I teamed up with a Canadian couple, Ollie and Naomi and their friend Aaron who had planned to hire a car and head south towards Punta Gorda taking in a few new cultures along the way. This worked well for me because I wanted to get off the beaten path again and they could drop me in Punta Gorda!
In typical Caribbean fashion the car didn't turn up until gone 1pm so we headed straight to Punta Gorda (PG) and stayed in a newly opened Hostel/guesthouse called Amaya's Inn. The next day we explored the local fruit market and had a good breakfast at 'The Snack Shack'. Coming from a community farm in Canada, Ollie and Naomi were keen to visit a Mennonite village to experience how they lived so that was our first destination!
Similar to the Amish, Mennonites believe in living 'a simple life' and appear to be stuck somewhere in the 1800's. They live without electricity and still use horse and cart as transport. The community of Pine Hill are unique in the fact that they still have an active eight horse saw mill that they have used over the past 15 years to produce timber for their homes, schools and church.
Their humble homes were immaculately clean and functional. Each with either a wind or horse powered water pump, vegetable patch and allotted area of land.
The Mennonites are modest and very religious so we were careful to wear long sleeves and trousers so as not to offend but the couple of families that we spoke to were very friendly, welcoming and more than happy to show us around and talk about their beliefs and traditions. Most of what I saw and heard made a lot of sense, their religion holds the community together without the need of law and they create very little impact on the world compared to the rest of us.
There were on the other hand a few things that surprised me. In order for them to keep up with modern farming methods the Mennonites rely heavily on expensive pesticides and chemicals to keep the fruit and vegetables marketable. Ollie and Aaron were keen to share tips on how to avoid the need for these and the farmer seemed to take some interest.
With the Mennonites living in such close communities with little interaction from the outside world one of their biggest problems is the decreasing gene pool and inbreeding. One of the farmers quite openly introduced an older man as his farther and step uncle. If you having trouble working that out it means that when his mum died, his dad married his aunt (his dad's sister)! It seems very odd to an outsider but it's all a part of life for a Mennonite.
After spending an interesting few hours at Pine Hill we headed back along the long dusty road back to the highway and on towards the Maya villages of San Miguel and San Pedro Columbia.
Between the villages of San Miguel and San Pedro Columbia lies the Maya site of Lubaantun, made famous when the daughter of British explorer FA Mitchell-Hedges discovered a life size pure Quartz crystal skull dated at over 3600 year old. The site its self is in poor shape due to the explorers using dynamite to excavate. We decided not to pay the $10 but still had a look around the visitor centre and one of the guides showed us some recently discovered clay whistles. It felt pretty special to be blowing on an ancient whistle handmade thousands of years ago.
Right next door to the site a British couple have just started building an Earthship. The idea behind an Earthship is to use waste material such as old car tyres, plastic and glass bottles held together with cement to build a home. Ventilation, light and water collection are also carefully thought about. Construction was only just underway; it was pretty interesting to see how it is put together. Alisa had a friend in the next village that ran a Jungle retreat/hostel so we headed there for the night.
It was a really interesting location right next to a nice river for our nightly cool off and the owner was trying to reintroduce a healthy population of native butterflies.
The next day we got up early and headed to the Maya village of San Pedro Columbia
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Jamie Lovely stuff Johnnyboy, keep it up buddy! :D