Belize: Mayan Chocolate

I’ve always known that coffee and chocolate share common traits.  Both start with a fleshy, sour fruit which has little value compared to its bean. In fact, when either bean is separated from the fruit, they need to be dried and processed.  Both coffee and cocoa beans are inedible before roasting.  If you bit into either, you could easily break a tooth.  Both beans have long shelf lives before roasting and stale after roasting.    Both require crushing/grinding before use.

The primary reason that we went to San Ignacio was to visit Mayan ruins in the area, but we wanted to see San Ignacio on its own merits also.  While exploring the city, we passed by a chocolate factory offering tours of the manufacturing process.

Julia and I had low expectations, but we were very pleasantly surprised and would recommend  the Ajaw Chocolate factory tour to anyone with even a modest interest in chocolate and how it’s made. The fruit was nothing like I would have imagined. The beans are separated from the fruit, fermented and then roasted.  At each stage, we were invited to touch, smell, and taste.

In many countries, automated machinery is used to harvest and process.  That’s not the case at Ajaw.  We were shown the stone grinding process to create an intense chocolate paste.We were also offered the opportunity to try grinding the roasted beans ourselves.  Julia did pretty well.  I made a bit of a mess and got chocolate all over the grinding stone.  The guide is explaining to the others not to do that.

Next was my favorite part.  We were given small bowls, some chocolate paste that we had helped grind, and some hot water.  We were then invited to stir and taste.  This was the traditional hot chocolate made for the Mayan elites and leaders.  Later, additives were used, including cinnamon, honey or small amounts of red pepper.  I tried all of those and found it interesting how much the red pepper added to my enjoyment of the drink.  We were also given tastings of wine made from fermented cocoa fruit.  I liked that too, although not everyone else did.

Chocolate and coffee share one other thing in common.  Our guide complained that some of the world’s best known chocolate is advertised as Swiss chocolate or Belgium chocolate. Just about everyone has heard of French roast or Italian roast coffee.  While both cocoa and coffee beans may be processed anywhere in the world, neither are grown in Europe.  Our guide was very proud of locally grown Belize chocolate.    When people have that kind of passion about creating a product, the quality almost always shines through.  The chocolate was amazing.

Belize: The Mayans (Days One and Two)

Day One:
Our plans for the second half of the trip were open-ended and without any schedules.  While we had flown from Belize City to San Pedro (approx $100), Julia and I decided to take the ferry back to Belize City ($15).  We had no idea of what the ferry would be like, but I guess that I assumed it would have a cabin and be bigger.  Fortunately, it didn’t rain, and the seas were smooth.  I was worried because the departure time was delayed while they cleaned up some puke on the floor and helped the sick woman disembark.  I don’t know for sure, but I believe that alcohol or drugs may have been a factor.  Anyway, we made sure not to sit on that side of the boat.

After 90 minutes of boat motoring, we arrived in Belize City.  We were originally going to take the bus from Belize City to San Ignacio, but Julia was worried that bus travel might be difficult with our large suitcases and reports of crowded buses.  On the previous night, I emailed a couple of shuttle services and arranged for a $35 van shuttle to San Ignacio with one stop at the airport to pick up another couple.  The pickup turned out to be an adventure.  Our van driver wasn’t there at our arrival, and some street people were trying to help out.  One guy wanted me to put money on his cracked phone so that he could make calls to our van service.  I might have been born in Iowa but not yesterday.  Just when we were ready to walk to the bus station, the van driver arrived.  We enjoyed a comfortable, air-conditioned, two-hour ride to San Ignacio near Belize’s western border with Guatemala.  The driver dropped us off at our $50/night Airbnb, and we were soon taking it easy.

Our hosts were Landy and Erva.  Landy is an elections administrator, senior justice of the peace, and commissioner to the Belize Supreme Court.  His wife owned and operated Erva’s restaurant in San Ignacio before turning it over to their son.  They were incredible hosts:  offering us drinks, cooking dinner one night, giving us rides around the area, providing recommendations, and more than willing to discuss politics and issues of the day.

Belize was once British Honduras before gaining its independence. English is the official language, although Spanish is widely spoken also.  Back in the 1880’s, Belize’s borders were established via treaty with England and Guatemala.  Unfortunately, Guatemala contends that the treaty was with England and not modern Belize.  Guatemala is interested in Belize’s natural resources and tourism.  The big political issue in Belize and Guatemala is that referendums will be held this spring to decide whether to send the matter to the International Court of Justice.  Landy thinks that Belize has an excellent case but was worried about the administration/education process for the referendum.

Landy is a big fan of the United States, but has grave concerns about our current president.  He is also worried that other countries like Russia and China will fill the vacuum of credibility/leadership in Central and South America.  We live in interesting times.

That night, Julia and I dined at Hode’s Place, which was all of the way down the hill and to the other edge of the downtown area.  We got lots of exercise walking up and down the hill over the next days.  Dinner was terrific.  Julia had jerk pork, and I had an onion stew.  We were joined for dinner by these two well-fed companions.

Day Two:
We were up early the next morning and traveling by foot to our first Mayan ruin. Cahal Pech is on the edge of San Ignacio and about a mile from our host’s house.  We did get lost getting there and walked up an extra hill, but a business owner turned us in the right direction, shouting “Don’t use Google maps in this city,  It doesn’t work.”

The only ruins that I had ever seen before were fallen barns and outbuildings, so this was something new to me and old for the world.

There was hardly anyone else visiting, so we had the ruins mostly to ourselves.  I can only imagine all of the rules and regulations that would have been imposed if something like this was in America.  Here, we were free to climb up the temple steps and explore the palace rooms.

I was glad that we saw Cahal Pech first because it was the smallest of the ruins that we saw and was a good introductory lesson about the Mayans.  We learned that the temple and palace were only for the elites, and that the regular folks rarely stepped here.  The Mayan elites were also very  much into blood sacrifice: Cutting off finger tips and mutilating genital areas were areas of specialty that  pleased their gods.  Prisoners and animals were also sacrificed.  The elites consumed hallucinogenic drugs and stretched their heads to the point of deformity.  The Mayans kept an accurate though different calendar and were known for use of the number zero.  Some people believed that the end of the world would occur at the end of the Mayan calendar.  It didn’t.  Our host argued that the Mayans only predicted that the end of the calendar marked the beginning of a new turbulent time. Hindsight is 20/20; predictions are tougher.

Belize: Days 4 and 5

More frivolous fun

On Day 4, we boarded a catamaran to sail to Caye Caulker, another island.  San Pedro is the city on Ambergris Caye.  Twenty years ago, San Pedro used to be a quiet little place without paved roads, where the pace was slow.  Today, the big hotels are moving in, and golf carts on the downtown streets often crawl in congested golf cart traffic.  Caye Caulker is what San Pedro was like twenty years ago.  Progress?

Travel on the catamaran was smooth sailing, despite windy conditions. Bean bag chairs lashed to the front deck provided ultimate comfort.  It didn’t hurt that the crew came around with snacks and rum punch.

Caye Caulker is my kind of place.  I don’t need an adventure every day.  I’m pretty sure that I would be content for a long time here before getting bored. While people back in Wisconsin dealt with the polar vortex, Caye Caulker offered summertime, and the living was easy.

As my mother always told me, there’s no rest for the wicked.  On our fifth day  on the island, our hosts booked a full day of snorkeling, fishing and a cookout.

While I was screwing around catching little fish that the locals call “grunts,” our captain snorkeled out to the reef and harvested something more substantial for supper.

As we drank rum punch, the captain prepared and cooked the food over a fire of coconut tree husks.   It was easily better than any restaurant meal that we had on the trip.

We spent one more day on the island before taking a ferry ($15) back to the Belize mainland.  I think you probably can guess that there was beer and island drinks involved, We then parted ways with our friends and headed off on our own adventure to San Ignacio, base camp to visit the Mayan ruins.

Belize: San Pedro (Days Two and Three)

On Day Two, we went fishing.  I’m not a fishing enthusiast.  I’ve probably fished a couple of dozen times in my life, and most of those times have been through the ice.  San Pedro is best known for fishing and snorkeling.  I’m not much of a swimmer either, unless something is chasing me.  So besides drinking beer and rum punches, my companions strongly suggested that I select an excursion.  I chose fishing.  Julia, the daughter of a serious fisherman, was the only wife who wanted to go fishing.  Kim and Michele went shopping instead.  I don’t like shopping either.

Brent and John have fished many times before in Belize and knew a guide with a boat.  This was unlike any of my previous fishing experiences.  The guide and his helper netted a bunch of sardines during the first twenty minutes and then chopped up the sardines into little pieces to use as bait.  Then they baited our hooks every time we needed bait, and they pointed out where to cast to catch the fish.  If I caught a fish, they took it off the hook, sorted out whether it was a keeper or not, and later cleaned all the fish for supper.  I think we ended up with about 35 keeper fish between the four of us.  Most of the fish were different varieties of snapper.  Julia caught an ugly fish known locally as a Slippery Dick.  It was quickly released and sent overboard.  This was my first fish.  It was not deemed a keeper.

On Day Two, we hopped on the golf carts and went bar hopping to the north side of the island.  The island is quite skinny, so it isn’t hard to find a beachfront bar.

Kim is being a good designated driver with her Coke.

In the last post, I forgot to include the an excerpt from my A.T. Trail Journal.  I would plead jet lag but there was no time zone change.  Here is the next entry.

UnBelizeable

The stars had to be almost in perfect alignment for our trip to take place.  Caregivers for Justin were being hired at the last-minute.  Julia’s Dad was still having post-stroke complications.  A major weather system moved through on the day before departure, cancelling hundreds of flights at O’Hare when a jet skidded off the runway.


In the morning, I drove to Whitewater to drop Justin off at school.  The long access ramp to his dorm was not plowed or shoveled, and I had no way to get him in the building.  I ran down the street and chased down a university employee who found two shovels.  I started at one end, and he started at the other.  Justin shivered in the cold, but we did get him in the building.

In the afternoon, Julia and I loaded up the car with our suitcases, along with Allie who needed to be dropped off at her school.  We drove to Milwaukee, dropped off Allie at her apartment, and then drove to Chicago.  We had found a stay, park and fly deal at the O’Hare Hyatt, which allowed us to stay overnight and park for less than the price of two weeks parking at the airport’s economy parking lot. We ate at the hotel bar, while watching the gusts of wind blow snow around in circles.

Early the next morning, we took the hotel shuttle to the airport and headed for the gate.

Despite the horrible weather and the understaffed TSA employees working without pay, we made it through security and were at the gate less than an hour after taking the hotel elevator down to the front door.  I would definitely recommend the O’hare’s Hyatt Regency’s park, stay and ride offer for up to two weeks free parking in the enclosed parking structure.

Our United non-stop flight left on time, and we were in Belize City by early afternoon.  From there, we boarded a small plane for San Pedro, an island about fifteen minutes by air.  It was the smallest plane that I’ve flown in for awhile.  I sat close enough to the pilot that I could have tapped him on the right shoulder. The woman sitting next to the pilot was another passenger.  There was no co-pilot.

Our friends Brent and Michele own a condo on San Pedro that we were invited to visit about fifteen years ago.  When we saw them in Alaska last summer, I asked if the invite was still good. “Of course,” they replied.  We texted that we had arrived early, but Brent didn’t get the message until about an hour later.  We passed the time by drinking the national beer, Belikin which is amazingly not too bad, even for a beer snob like me.  The brewery was started by a German who faithfully followed the requirements for German beer: malted barley, hops, water, and yeast.  No additions of rice or corn. Belikin offers a regular lager, light beer, stout, and holiday beer.

Julia says one of those beers is for me, but I’m not sure about that.  There are worse ways to wait for a ride.  Brent arrived by golf cart, the main way to get around the island.  On the way to the condo, we stopped to support the local grocery store by getting more Belikin for the thirty minute ride to the property, which had lovely views of the Caribbean Sea. This was a brewed journey worth the wait and effort.