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Comida Típica

One of the most enjoying parts of my cultural immersion mission has been the food. I’ve made an effort to try a range of typical foods in my project countries, and the gustatory rewards in the first third of my trip have been numerous.

In Belize, rice and beans are a staple, to the point that there’s a famous Belizian song called Rice & Beans (your rice and beans nice | your rice and beans nice | give me more | give me more – listen by clicking on Track 4 here). Rice and beans are most often accompanied by potato salad and stewed chicken flavored with annatto. Marie Sharp’s, a ubiquitous and delicious carrot-based hot sauce, went with pretty much everything.

Typical Belizian dinner

I also thoroughly enjoyed fry jacks (deep-fried tortillas folded over refried beans, cabbage, and chicken) in Belize. In the north, Mexican dishes such as salbutes, garnaches, and burritos were more common, while in the south, I enjoyed traditional Maya cooking.

In Nicaragua, the rice and beans are usually combined and called gallopinto (spotted rooster). As typically Nicaraguan as food gets, gallopinto allegedly got its name from a villager who bragged about the size of a spotted rooster he had. He overeagerly invited the whole village to come enjoy the rooster on the day he was going to slaughter it. When too many people showed up, there wasn’t enough meat for everyone, and he had to serve rice and beans. From then on, everyone jokingly would tell him how much they had enjoyed his gallopinto.

Another dish with a story is Indio Viejo. According to legend, it got its name in the days of the conquistadors. Spaniards marching through a local village expected the villagers to feed them some of their beef stew, even though there wouldn’t be enough left for the villagers. When the Spanish asked what was in it, the village chief replied “an old Indian who just died.” The Spanish decided to march on without lunch, and the villagers enjoyed their meal in peace.

Gallopinto and Indio Viejo were two of the dishes I learned to cook in the cooking lessons I took. Others included arroz a la valenciana (paella) and enchiladas (fried and more like empanadas than the Mexican-style enchiladas I’m used to). Nicaraguan cuisine also involves lots of plantains. Sometimes the plantains are cooked while they’re green (verde), and sometimes when they’re yellow/brown (maduro). Sometimes they’re boiled (cocidos), and sometimes they’re fried in disks (tostones) or strips (tajadas). An abundance of fresh fruit is one of the best parts of Nicaragua. Freshly squeezed juice is always available; passionfruit, pineapple, and pitahaya were some of the ones I had regularly. I also tried one called chila (or something similar); at first I thought it was called chicle because it tasted like bubble gum.

By far my favorite food so far has been the nacatamal. The tamales I’d tried before pale in comparison. Typically eaten with coffee on relaxed Sunday afternoons, these oversize Nicaraguan tamales are stuffed with pork, tomatoes, onions, rice, and tomato.… Read the rest

Read Full Post | November 18 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Belize Bus Article Published in School Transportation News

National Transportation Services Limited bus leaving Orange Walk

I have now been published in one of the school bus industry’s leading trade publications. Read my article, Buses around Belize, in the November edition of School Transportation News here.… Read the rest

Read Full Post | November 15 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Belize Transportation Map – Subway Style

Belize Transit Map

It took me a while, but I finally finished this map based on my travels in Belize. I tried to represent the majority of the country’s important bus and ferry routes in a transit-style map using the freeware program Inkscape. I had a fun time using the London Underground map as a guide, while making a number of changes (such as variable line widths to reflect varying service levels and larger diameter circles to represent transfer terminals). Download a high-quality PDF of the map here.

If you’re interested in similar transit-style maps (done much more professionally), check out these maps of Amtrak and the Interstate Highway System.

The Belize Bus Guide has helpful schedule and route information.

The map below shows the routes I traveled in Belize, covering the length of all four major highways (Northern, Western, Southern, and Hummingbird). For a map of the local routes I rode within Belize City, click here.

Belize Transit Map (my travels shown in yellow)

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Read Full Post | September 27 2010 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | 7 Comments » |

Sights of Western Belize

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Read Full Post | September 26 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Cahal Pech

Cahal Pech is a relatively small complex of ruins a 25 minute walk outside of San Ignacio. After going to church in town, with few buses running on the Sunday afternoon, I decided to check it out. Because Cahal Pech doesn’t receive heavy tourist traffic in comparison to Altun Ha or Lamanai, the ruins seemed much more accessible. Exploring the visitors center and site was enjoyable, and the friendly dog that insisted on being a tour guide was a definite highlight. I also got the chance to talk to an archaeologist from the University of Texas who had been working on the skeletons at Actun Tunichil Muknal the previous day.

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Read Full Post | September 26 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Buses of Western Belize

Many companies run along the Western Highway from Belize City and Belmopan to Benque Viejo near the border with Guatemala, including Shaw’s, National, Guerra’s, D&E, Middleton’s, and the Belize Bus Owners Cooperative. This tends to be a slower route than the other main highway routes, due to curves and heavy agricultural traffic near the Mennonite community of Spanish Lookout. It was even slower for a few days during my stay with a detour required by repair work being done on the Hawksworth Bridge between San Ignacio and Santa Elena.

Drivers in Belize used their prewarning and warning lights not for boarding or alighting passengers, but instead for decoration and visibility. I saw a few buses with flashing lights and strobes driving along the Northern Highway, and it seemed more common in the west.

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Read Full Post | September 26 2010 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | 1 Comment » |

Actun Tunichil Muknal

Actun Tunichil Muknal, The Cave of the Stone Sepulcher, is a three-mile long cave in Belize that the Ancient Maya used for sacrificial rites. Located in the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve, the cave was opened to limited tours starting in 1998. A few years ago, tour restrictions were relaxed slightly, and the site’s parking lot is now increasingly filled with buses and vans.

In addition to interesting geomorphology, the cave also contains a wealth of ancient pottery, sacrificial tools, and skeletons. Even though it’s a bit of a strenuous trip into the cave, requiring scrambles over rocks and some amount of swimming, many of these artifacts are in danger from wayward tourists. The only barrier in the cave system is in front of the famous Crystal Maiden skeleton; the other artifacts are completely unprotected except for a limited amount of calcification that holds some of them to the cave floor. One of the skeletons has a hole in his skull from a dropped camera. As I was leaving the cave, a lady in a different tour group almost sat on a pottery shard, then picked it up and showed it to her friend before being scolded by one of the guides. With such occurrences, I wouldn’t be surprised if restrictions are again heightened. I’m glad I got to see the cave before they are.

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Read Full Post | September 26 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Sights of Southern Belize

In addition to my stays in Na Luûm Caj and the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, I enjoyed a number of other highlights in Southern Belize. Hickatee Cottages, a solar-powered bed and breakfast outside of Punta Gorda, was a great place to spend my first night in the south. The owners were able to tell me about their experiences traveling the Americas by bus (including the Green Tortoise Bus Line), I enjoyed a refreshing bike rides and hikes at sunrise and sunset, and I had the chance to participate in a Howler Monkey tracking project.

Another highlight of Southern Belize was the number of interesting bus stops. When I wrote about investigating the architecture and urban form surrounding bus stops in my Watson proposal, I couldn’t even imagine some of these thatched-roof palapa bus stops on the Caribbean coast. Since the Toledo district grows quite a bit of cacao, I couldn’t pass through without stopping by a chocolate factory, though its claim to be the chocolate center of the universe may be a bit hyperbolic.

Overall, Punta Gorda was great. Even with this year’s completion of the Southern Highway paving project, washed out bridges (like the one at Kendal) and the relative sparsity of tourist infrastructure will likely keep it a more relaxed and authentic experience than some of Belize’s other destinations.

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Read Full Post | September 15 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Southern Belize – Bus Photos

Southern Belize seemed to have a slightly more diverse population of bus makes than the North. In front yards and empty lots along the Hummingbird and Southern Highways from Belmopan to Punta Gorda, I saw Blue Birds, AmTrans, Wards, Waynes, Carpenters, and Thomas Built Buses. As in other places, many of them had the school district names covered in black spray paint, as if censored; I’d be interested in finding out whether this is done by the old owners (school districts), the new ones, or someone in between. Two years ago, I would have seen many more abandoned buses along the route; the recently paved Southern Highway used to take its toll on buses (in the first image below, note the picture of a bus driving through two feet of water), and many that broke down would be left on the shoulder of the road. Recently, scrap metal dealers, especially from Guatemala, have been hauling these away.

Unlike the Northern and Western Highways, which are served by many different bus companies, the Southern Highway is essentially served by only one company, James Bus Lines. Operating out of Punta Gorda, James Bus Lines is an icon of the country. Stonetree Records even uses the James livery as a motif for their This is Belize album.

The founder, James Williams, who recently passed away, was very well regarded by those in Punta Gorda. One person told me it was Williams’ morning routine to drive his truck to a bus stop known as The Dump, where residents of San Antonio and Crique Jute transfer from village buses to the early morning northbound express, just to talk with them and make sure they were doing well. The company also raffles off cash prizes to its passengers, using their ticket stubs as entry tickets. Other companies are able to make runs in the southern towns of Dangriga and Placencia, but James Bus Lines has a virtual monopoly on service all the way to Punta Gorda. A resident of Na Luum Caj told me that passengers in Punta Gorda simply will not ride another company’s buses. While much has changed since the 1989 bus report I read in Belize’s National Archives, the following still seems to apply to James Bus Lines: “Bus owners take great pride in their business and acknowledge the importance and responsibility in providing public transportation. In turn, passengers reciprocate through loyalty to specific bus firms.”

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Read Full Post | September 15 2010 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | No Comments » |

Buses of Na Luum Caj

Scheduled buses from Na Luûm Caj to Punta Gorda run only four days a week, departing at 3:00 and 3:30 AM so that vendors can set up their market stalls at sunrise. This schedule is still an improvement over twenty years ago, when the majority of Toledo’s villagers had to ride into town in the back of pickup trucks.

The main bus owner in Na Luûm Caj is Felix Choc. He operates the 3:30 AM departure using a 1994 Blue Bird All American that was retired from a school district in Arizona earlier this year. Choc also owns a 1988 Thomas/Ford conventional that made its way down from Illinois in 2003 and three older buses used for spare parts and scrap metal. Last year he sold a 1983 Thomas/Ford conventional, formerly Bus #26 in the fleet of Florida’s Duval County Public Schools, to his neighbor, Lucio Sho. Lucio, the brother of my host, now uses it to run the 3:00 AM departure.

Another highlight of my time in the village was an hour and a half long hike through the jungle to an old logging site. The holder of the logging title towed an old school bus up to the site and set it up as an overnight shelter for his workers.

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Read Full Post | September 04 2010 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | No Comments » |

Na Luum Caj – Mother Earth Village

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to spend five nights with the Sho Family at their house in Na Luûm Caj, a small village in Belize’s Toledo District.  My visit, coordinated by the Maya Village Homestay Network, was an amazing opportunity to learn about Mopan Maya customs and life.   The coordinators stated that I would be treated like a family member, “not as anyone ‘special,’” and I found this to be true.  I was thankful for the family’s openness in authentically sharing their life with me.  Around the dinner table the family spoke Mopan (translating into English for me occasionally), and I was welcomed to the Sunday church service they hosted on their patio.

Na Luûm Caj, which means Mother Earth Village in Mopan, is home to approximately 125 people.  According to the Maya Atlas: The Struggle to Preserve Maya Land in Southern Belize, a project for which Mr. Sho was a community cartographer, the village was founded in 1986 by a group of progressive farmers from nearby San Antonio.  They received land grants from the government and set up their model community, complete with environmental and ecological protections such as riparian buffer zones, just down the road from the village of San Antonio.

I arrived by bus on a Friday afternoon.  After introductions with the mother, father, and five children, I sat down to a late lunch of corn tortillas, beans, and ginger tea.  As I expected, fresh handmade tortillas and beans were a staple; I ended up having them at twelve of fourteen meals with the family.  On a couple of occasions, I tried grinding the corn and shaping the tortillas; my efforts towards the latter inadvertently resulted in some creative shapes.  By the time I left early on the following Wednesday morning, I was most grateful for the family’s laughter; after weeks of traveling, staying with a family in a home full of laughter was a centering experience.

Mr. Sho took an interest in my project and we spent a few afternoons talking to some of the local bus owners (including his brother).  Other highlights included washing my clothes in the river (steering clear of a scorpion on the rocks), using the outhouse (and steering clear of a tarantula on the wall), and hikes through the mud (and not being able to steer clear of some deep mud).

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Read Full Post | September 04 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Belmopan

After Belize City was leveled by Hurricane Hattie in 1961, government officials began planning a new seat of government. The initial phases of Belmopan, Belize’s capital city, were constructed between 1967 and 1970. To me, the resulting master-planned city of 16,000 people felt the closest to Woodbridge or a college campus that I’ve been since leaving home.

A highlight in Belmopan was my research at the national archives. The staff there pulled up a couple of great reports on buses for me, one of which was a Masters Geography thesis from 1989 entitled “50 Years of Buses: A Case Study of the Bus System in Belize, Central America.” It was fascinating to read this report and consider how the system had changed (and, in some cases, remained the same) during the course of my life.

An interesting facet of the Belmopan Bus Terminal was the prevalence of signs reading “No Standees Permitted.” While a nationwide law prohibits standees on buses, this bus terminal is the only place I have seen it enforced. One of the concessionaires in the terminal even takes it upon herself to warn passengers of the surprising enforcement, shouting “push your way through the boarding gates and to the bus, otherwise you won’t get a seat and you won’t get a ride” when buses pull in. Indeed, Belmopan is the only city in which a government Terminal Management Unit employee boards each bus before departure and ensures all passengers are seated. Being in geographical proximity to the seat of government seemed to increase concerns with the law and government regulations. Yet this effect also seemed to have quite a limited radius; once the buses left the terminal and headed towards the Western and Hummingbird Highways, they stopped to pick up numerous standees.

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Read Full Post | September 01 2010 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |