The United Nations Tortilla Factory

Island cabana on Tabacco Caye. Even a shack in paradise is more than any mansion.

Island puppy

Hammocks!

The Marie Sharp hot sauce bottling plant

Dark storm clouds over San Pedro

This is the name of a tortilla shack I saw in Belize on our way out to Mexico. I´m taking off solo for Morelia, Michoacan. Ahhh. Let me explain.

From Tobacco Caye three of us went back to Dangriga to make a stop at the Marie Sharp factory (when we asked how to get there people would just call it ¨Marie Sharp¨like we were going to see the person). Marie Sharp is THE hot sauce in Belize. With a carrot base it tastes like nothing I´ve had in the states and is just absolutely excellent. We got to see the humble factory where ladies were bottling the sauce and of course did some shopping. Got little bottles of the ¨fiery hot¨sauce and grapefruit based sauce. I also picked up some canned cashew fruit that was superb. I hope the jar makes it back in tact. We went on to Hopkins, a small Garifuna town on the Carribean Sea, where we hung out and played in the ocean. Hopkins has no town center, it is just tin houses and businesses all along a street that runs parallel to the ocean. Really quite place where everyone gets around by bike. A little black boy called me Chinese and when I called him a Belizean he said, ¨Hopkensian!¨ We then headed back up to Dangriga where we met up with our friend who had stayed on Tobacco Caye to do some scuba diving.

We traveled, the four of us, together to San Pedro, the only town on the tip of Ambergris Caye, a large island off the northern coast of Belize famous for its resorts and beaches. It was such a change from the tiny island paradise of Tobacco Caye. Everyone drives around in golf carts and there are boat docks poking out of the beach every 50 feet. We did some snorkeling there at the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, beautiful coral reefs but so crowded with snorkel groups that I kept bumping into ppl constantly, and then at Shark Ray Alley, a spot where fisherman gutted their catches so sharks and rays congregate there. It was amazing to swim around with rays and sharks, but the experience was marred by the fact that the 5 or so snorkel boats there were all chumming the water, some very obstrusively, and one snorkel guide even grabbed a shark and ray for ppl on his tour to ¨hug.¨ Thankfully, our guides from Ecological Tour were much less invasive but the experience very much gave me my fill of snorkeling. There is such beauty in the ocean to be seen, but my finning all around it only interferes with what should probably be mostly left alone.

That day I also decided that I wanted to set off solo. I have had my fill of beaches and I know that going up the Yucatan to Cozumel and Cancun will only place me in ever increasingly touristy places that I don´t really want to go to. This trip has also shown me that I could totally make it on my own. I don´t know lots of Spanish but I think I could get by. And really what spurred me to go on this trip was an opportunity to visit Morelia again, the capital of the Mexican state of Michoacan. Beautiful city: modern, colonial, clean, economically diverse, cosmopolitan but easygoing. I don´t know if it will still be the place I once encountered, but it is what I left to see and my travel companions really only planned to go through the Yucatan to see beaches and ruins. So I´m taking off solo. First time doing so in a foreign country. I hope things will go well. I´m a little scared, but I am also excited. I´ve surprised myself with how strong I can be. I think I can do this ok. I take off tomorrow with a flight from Chetumal to Mexico City and then will take a bus to Morelia. Phew. I´ll keep connected to the internet daily, I think, to reassure my family that I´m not dead or hurt or penniless. So, I guess you´ll get the latest on my solo adventure. I really just plan to stay in Morelia for 4 days and then spend a day in Mexico City to see the Aztec temples of the Sun and Moon (meaning I will have seen the greatest ruins of the Incans, Mayans, and Aztecs in one go!). Then I hope to stop in Houston for a few days before heading out to California. It´s my vacation and I should do with my time what I want to do. I want to stay in one place for more than 2 days (even spend my birthday there alone, I´ll be 25 on July 25th!), and I want to see my family one more time before I have to dive into my final year of graduate school. Holy moley, let´s hope I know what I´m doing.