Paget's Belize Journal

The Preliminary Trip - It Begins - First days - A tourist trip - Flying, sand crabs - San Pedro 1 - San Pedro 2 - Braids, snakes, dogs - Leaving Dangriga The Actual Stay - Help for library - Books; departure - Arrival; weather - Sensations, housing - Security, more housing - Security, snorkeling - Dock activities - Day-to-day life 1 - Day-to-day life 2 - The Quadrille - The apartment! - Cleaning and culture - Hurricane Irene - Too much reality - Hopkins Village 1 - Hopkins Village 2 - Weather - Minimum wage - Transportation - Food Experiments - The Brits; furniture - Meeting and greeting - Night noise, Settlement Day - Dragonflies! - More noise - A good 19th - Wrapping up the 19th - Traveling to Mexico - Thanksgiving in Mexico - Cockscomb Basin - A Belizean week-end - Tobacco Caye - Is it really Christmas? - This is the life - Christmas wishes - Headwear - Christmas Experiences - Lottery - Caye Caulker haircut - Caye Caulker 2 - Geckos - Red Bank - The last few days		Jun 16, 1999 Monday's message sent again WEDNESDAY, Taking another run at the e-mail, glad to know that the web interface for pengen list worked okay and thanks for the responses. Sending this to try again via the PagetInBze list we set up. This was the message you should have had Monday morning bright and early. More if it works. MONDAY (June 14, 1999) Friends, Things are going well here in Belize, but it's taken me this long to get an e-mail connection operating via the account of my hosts Tony and Therese. And I lost some mail along the way. So if you've sent me anything today (Monday) or yesterday, please send again. Weather has been lovely, the rainy season here is so far mostly at night. But we had a righteous thunder and lightening storm on Thursday night. Talk about sitting straight up in bed! Dangriga (the coastal town where I am staying) is very true to its roots and little has changed in the last 50 years as far as I can tell. It is an interesting mix of *very* rural and undeveloped and "modern conveniences." There is better-than-expected plumbing, electricity and water, but terrible roads, a fair amount of trash and garbage strewn about and dogs and chickens running free. The telephone system is reasonably stable (a government monopoly) and Internet service is very expensive. $60 US per month for 10 hours of access. I am doing a good job of mixing business and pleasure. Yesterday I was invited on a trip to Carrie Bow Caye--a Smithsonian research facility, which is being rebuilt after being totally destroyed by Hurricane Mitch and then a fire. Those crystal clear Caribbean waters really are. The picnic was conch seviche and potted meat sandwiches, Famous Amos cookies (a treat brought in by Belize City visitors) and fresh pineapple. I am being very careful about the sun. I have made friends with the night guard dog pack at the Pelican Beach Resort where I am staying. I have been bitten by 7,000 mosquitoes (well, maybe not quite). The resort staff says they have "gotten used to" all my repellants. Sigh. Anyway here is the site for Pelican Beach http://www.pelicanbeachbelize.com/dan.html Things are progressing slowly on the business front. They really need more technical expertise than I've got -- Unix server stuff, complicated data bases, etc., And what I really like to do -- the human/technical interface -- they haven't got much use for. But we're still discussing things and I'm trying to be helpful. More on Wednesday I hope. Anything you want to send to me, just send to the normal e-mail address. Next