March 13, 2009, 9:15 pm

 

Number of pillows at Martha’s Guesthouse in San Pedro, Belize that equal one of my pillows back home: 3

 

Number of conch fritters I ate for dinner: 3 (out of 4 possible)

 

The diameter of the corn tortilla that serves as the base of the world’s smallest taco: 2.5 inches

 

Was it only this morning that I was eating free samples of chocolate chip cookies at Paradise Bakery in the B Concourse at Denver International Airport? I just ate a pork taco and conch fritters 20 feet from a palm tree growing out of a white sand beach. (Is there any nourishment in sand? What do palm trees live off??) And now I’m settling into a “bed” that makes my therma-rest look like a Tempurpedic. I am a little worried about waking up with an infestation of crawly critters of some sort.

Not quite the Four Seasons.

Not quite the Four Seasons.

Martha’s Guesthouse is no Cayo Espanto, which, judging by the aerial I got flying in to Ambergris Caye this evening, is going to provide the last bit of relaxation and recuperative energy I need to pronounce myself fully recovered from 24 Hours of Sunlight. Flying in at an elevation of 700 feet, I had no problems discerning the 150-foot pier the Cayo brochures extol. And I had no problems seeing that charming structure that sits at the very end of it … and that I myself will be sitting (and sleeping in) tomorrow night.

 

Since I haven’t yet been to Cayo, I can’t give the details of exactly how it differs from Martha’s, but I bet that Cayo doesn’t have its check out time (11 a.m.) written – in blue ballpoint pen — on the back of the door. And I bet Cayo doesn’t have another note handwritten on the wall – again in blue ballpoint – asking

Reduce, Reuse, recycle. Saving paper while alerting me that check out ia at 11. Which is really too bad, as I was hoping to hang out here longer.

Reduce, Reuse, recycle. Saving paper while alerting me that check out ia at 11. Which is really too bad, as I was hoping to hang out here longer.

guests to put toilet tissue in the trash can. And I bet I’m not going to fall asleep in a bed at Cayo tomorrow night wondering if I’ll wake up the next morning covered with bug bites or with my head crawling with lice. I really don’t trust these pillows. Especially since I need to use three of them – thereby increasing the odds of critter contamination – to raise my head even the slightest bit off the mattress. I don’t want to even think of what might be living in the mattress. But Martha’s fits the budget these days: $10.

 

At dinner tonight I realized that perhaps I should have done just a little bit of research into a ballpark figure for the exchange rate between the American dollar and the Belizean dollar. My world’s smallest (pork) taco was $4BZE. I’d say that, for me not to have ridiculously overpaid for it, the exchange rate has to be at least $2 BZE = $1 U.S. I’d be even happier if it was $3: $1 though. Not that I’m going to be buying much on this trip – don’t know how much I need a stingray carved from mahogany (Belize’s national tree), even if it is beautiful – but I guess I should perhaps still get a clue as to what a Belizean dollar is worth in my home terms.

 

Although I didn’t research my current currency exchange rates, I did actually do a bit of general Belize research. Which, for me is a big deal. I’m usually a traveler along the lines of let-me-get-there-and-get-myself-as-lost-and-confused-as-possible-(and-possibly-accidentally-offend-some-locals)-to-learn-about-the-place. But, this being work and all, I figured it’d be good to know a bit of Belize’s back story. Did you know that when the Mayans were at their most kick-ass – say, from 0 to about 800 AD – there were about  a million of them living here in Belize; that’s roughly four times the number of people of all backgrounds that call Belize home today.

 

When I’m not hanging out with sharks and otherwise exploring the largest barrier reef in the northern and western hemisphere – and the second longest in the world – I’ll be checking in with some of the 50,000 Mayans still in Belize today. I don’t have cell phone service down here and I didn’t chat with Brian about this before I left, but, since it is the Mayans that are the big predictors of the world ending December 21, 2012, and since Brian is a big fan of end-of-the-world hypotheses (is hypotheses the right word? Predictions?), I’ll ask them about that. I wonder if there’s a Mayan version of Price who’s about to hit it big with a “Party like it’s 2012?”

 

Here’s hoping tonight’s not a repeat of Malawi 2003, when I was awoken in the middle of the night by tiny ants crawling (and biting me) all over my body. Although I guess I’d take a one-night date with ants than an ongoing battle with lice. Or some sort of insect I don’t yet know about but which could maybe crawl in through my belly button, ear, nose, or some other unseemly place and lay thousands of eggs that will hatch in a few weeks and leave my insides teeming with all sorts of bad things until one day, all thousand-some of the creature spill, en mass, out of whatever orifice their mother crawled in through.

 

Sweet dreams.