On to Belize City

This morning we said goodbye to Greg, his family, and the Belize rainforest. Greg drove us to Dangriga to catch our plane. On the way we learned more about Belize. There is no public education in Belize. Parents have to pay for their kids from preschool on up through high school. That is really not good public policy. A good number of the schools are religious schools. It seems to be quite a number of Protestant sects, especially Pentecostal. Belize is a very religious country. Last night, next door to our cottage they actually had some kind of a church meeting with a lot of loud music. Greg also said the government is very corrupt. People skim a lot off the top of most government contracts. Then the work that gets done is very shotty. So all in all, Belize is really a poor country. Most people work fairly menial jobs. In spite of all this as you walk down the street, people say hello to you. They start up conversations with you. I just find this to be an incredible country. I just feel sorry for how hard the people here have to work to make a living.

Greg
Our room was on the lower right. 

We flew from Dangriga to Belize city. It has been really fun flying in these little planes. Our landing was one of the smoothest I’ve ever experienced. Here’s some more pictures. 

I sat right behind the pilot. 

We are actually staying in a hotel with an elevator, hot and cold running water and two double sized beds. What luxury. The first thing Berni did was to take a hot shower. After relaxing a bit, we decided that the activity for the day would be visiting the Museum of Belize, which was a short walk from the hotel. We stopped at a place to eat, and we went to a local market to buy some food to have for breakfast.

Lamb curry
Inside the restaurant
Local police station
Under the sidewalks (if you can call them that) is the sewer system. Which appears to be an open ditch. In many places, the sidewalk is broken and you can see right into the sewer system. Greg said they dumped the sewer directly into the ocean. Not good.

After walking around, it was pretty obvious why most people say if you go to Belize skip the city and go directly to the islands. We did go to the museum though, and it turned out to be quite interesting. Two of the major exhibits was on slavery and on the Mayans. 

The sculpture is entitled emancipation.
The Mayans had a sophisticated number system. Much superior to the one that existed in the western world. They even had the idea of a number zero which occurred fairly late in western Europe. Next to this display there was some math puzzles you could do using Mayan math . Of course I tried them and did quite well.
The Mayans were also very good at constructing huge archways in their buildings. Here the museum challenged you to make a structure out of foam bricks that spans the distance that they specified. Here was what I was able to accomplish. It was fun.

The Mayans used Jade a lot for jewelry and other things. The museum had a very nice collection of some of these works. 

800-900 CE
250-900 CE
731-751 CE
Painting titled Cassava Baking Hopkins, 1996

Here are some pictures taken as we walked back to our hotel

Amazing collection of birds. An egret, heron, pelicans and terns.
Sunset from our hotel room
View from the deck at the restaurant. I had one of the best hamburgers ever at this place. 

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