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A Tale of 4 Crips
We arrived in San Ignacio after a bus journey with Amish people who were all dressed identically and looked like the cast of Little House on the Prairie. A very odd site on a bus full of Belizeans and two English people. Lisa was attacked by an Amish hat which was not relocated by the owner for some time. Lisa was too scared to touch it. As well as living without modern innovations, they also appear to live without deodorant - an observation intensified by the stifling heat on the bus. When we arrived at our destination we went to our hotel, which was more like a building site. The ex-pat owner from Bristol seemed a little strange. We relaxed and wandered around the small town for a few days. On one day we took a trip to the nearby Mountain Pine Ridge to see the rainforest and some waterfalls. It was on this tour that we met Crip 1. 28 years old, frail, greasy tightly curled hair and clothes hanging off her exposing her ill-fitting dowdy off-white bra. She hung around us for the whole day, spilling forth comments that revealed herself to be the type of tourist that gets robbed due to her lack of common sense. Later we found out that she actually had been robbed in Guatemala City. Lisa went swimming in the waterfall and got washed around by the flow. Charlie sat on a rock and watched, failing to see the appeal of the cold, brown water. Saw some amazing scenery. Visited another waterfall that had a luxury resort built around it. Lisa swam in it again and Charlie paddled this time. We also swung in hammocks right next to the river, still tailed by Crip 1 who refused to swim unless she could follow Lisa around in the water. Turns out this whimpering idiot is actually a tour guide! Mental note to self – always meet the guide first before going on a tour. Returned from the trip in the van along mud tracks, with the van wheel spinning and sliding all over the road – fun! That evening we left our room at the hotel to go for dinner at an amazing South Indian restaurant we discovered. However, before we reached the front door of the hotel we were accosted by a man also staying in the hotel, who we had seen earlier carting around a granja’s shopping trolley with a spiderman picture on the front. Crip 2 is his name. He talked at us for about 2 hours and we couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Lisa got a headache from feigning interest for so long. Topics covered in this lecture included
- Typhoid is cured by limes
- The greatness of British Honduras (before it became Belize)
- How clever he was (he told us he had only been educated to primary school level)
- How he was a successful businessman (he bought things and sold them again to people in offices)
- Big tombs are dangerous and typhoid spills out of the cracks
- He assumed common bonds with the Queen
- When he was cleaning a library once he felt vibes coming from a book and when he looked at it he saw it was Hebrew and he tried to read it and then confused us with something about numbers and when Jesus was born – whatever.
- Demonstrated his confused but self-assumed knowledge of history, including about the Queen’s pirate ship fleet and how the Queen conquered the Greeks.
- Diagrams to help us understand some of his proposed theories,
Eventually we escaped and made it to the restaurant. Owned by a lovely Indian man and his wife, Raksheeta, who did all the cooking and made what you ordered from scratch. Good samosas too! Meals on average cost 1.50 and were huge! The next day we went on a walk, contrary to the advice of all the tour guides who told us that 3 miles was too far and we should get a taxi! We took a bus to the end of a dirt road leading into the rainforest and followed it until we reached our destination, Belize Botanic Gardens. The walk was quite strenuous because about 2 miles of it consisted of steep hills up and down and sloppy mud roads. Luckily the brief rain spells were refreshing! We visited BBG because it had a Mayan rainforest trail that identified lots of plants used in traditional Mayan medicine (and still used as treatments today). However, even this semi-educational trip was not without hilarity. Firstly, upon entering the garden a shallow wooden ramp had to be negotiated. Charlie crossed without incident, however Lisa slipped and fell on her bum and slid down it. Unfortunately, 2 gardening kulaks were watching at that very moment and burst into raucous laughter. Luckily, so did we. The second incident involved a set of laminated cards bound by a metal hoop that we had been given on entering the gardens, to help us identify the plants. Charlie held the cards, swinging them as he walked. We observed a beautiful large toadstool growing in the middle of the path as we passed by. Suddenly, the metal hoop sprung open and cards were scattered everywhere. After collecting them all up, Lisa realized that 2 were missing. Charlie spotted them at the beginning of the path, where they had fallen off the hoop unnoticed. He lollopped off down the path to collect them, only realizing too late that he was on a direct collision course with the beautiful toadstool, which exploded, splattering water and fungus juice up his leg, and leaving three limp pieces scattered over the path, the only testament to its existence. The rest of the garden was reminiscent of St. Andrews Botanical Gardens – s***. So we skipped merrily through it only pausing at the fire tower. The lack of breeze made us very hot and sweaty. We spoke to a wood cutting kulak and then left after feeding bread to a dog. The walk back to the main road wasn’t too bad, but we missed the first bus due to incessant chatting and staring at cows. Tired and dirty, we had showers and headed for a nice respite at South India restaurant, but it wasn’t to be. Here entered Crip 4 halfway through our meal and sat uninvited at our table. Once again we were talked at and told off for not being Christians ha ha. He also claimed to be a businessman, but when pressed on the subject it turned out he sold ice shavings to school children during their breaks from his cart. He also had the same overfondness for the Queen and believed that Belize was better under the Brits as we apparently still have the death penalty in the UK! We fear these crips are no longer in touch with reality! So where was Crip 3? As mentioned earlier, our hotel was run by an ex-pat and his kulak wife. Lisa decided to do some laundry at the hotel and had to use a gritty sink with cold water and a drying line in the shade. This was a rule by Crip 3, who displayed notices around the hotel in bad English that you shouldn’t use the hot water in the bathrooms for washing clothes. Soon after this, we accidentally locked the key in our room. When we asked the owner for a spare key he became agitated because we had let the back door to the hotel swing shut on its spring. This was very bad of us, and we were instructed to close all doors very gently, not allowing them to close on their spring hinges. We wouldn’t have minded the crazy rules if the hotel had been nice, but it was falling down and covered in wet cement! So our tale of 4 crips comes to an end and we look forward to crossing the border into the safety of a Spanish speaking country where “Lo siento, no entiendo” removes all crips from our path. Mark out of 10: 5 Final thoughts: San Ignacio is quite a small town with not much to do apart from the odd day trip. Bad weather and an unusually high proportion of crips mean the town loses marks from an already poor score.
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