Saltworks

Heather McKillop is an archaeologist who's done fieldwork in Southern Belize. I've recently read her article (link below) on the discovery of 41 Late Classic Maya (AD 600 - 900)saltworks in the Punta Ycacos Lagoon. Pottery fragments on the seabed indicated saltworks in wooden buildings. The pottery jars were used to boil seawater to produce saltcakes, most likely for trade. At one site they also found a well preserved (in peat) canoe paddle, which indicates trade using canoes. The shape of the paddle matches those in ancient Maya art, incised on bone found in a temple in Tikal.

Sore shoulder

We had our shots yesterday and got our Malaria pills; Belize has the highest rate of Malaria in Central America, the doctor at the travel clinic told us. The latest book I've read is Don't Drink the Water: the complete traveller's guide to staying healthy in warm climates, by J. S. Keystone. It's an excellent book; one surprising statistic: "...98% of travellers make a food faux pas within 72 hours of arrival at a tourist destination." Yikes. We'll be very careful.

Time Among the Maya

Written by Ronald Wright in 1989, Time Among the Maya: Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico only has 57 pages on Belize. A travel writer, Wright chronicles his third trip to Central America. The prologue details his visit to the Lamanai ruins during a previous visit, and the first two chapters describe the start of his journey, from the Mexican border to Belize City, then on to San Ignacio and Guatemala. The book, while easy to read and enjoyable, lacks photos, which made the previous two books more interesting I think.

Jaguar Woman

Tonight I finished a similar book, called Jaguar Woman, by Canadian Melanie Watt, written in 1989. She did field work in Belize in the mid 1980's, for her MSc in Zoology at the U of T. The book starts out describing the Cross-Country Classic, a 144 mile cycling race on rough roads in the heat of April, from Belize City to San Ignacio near the Guatemalan border, and back. Since the first one in 1929, no woman had ever finished the race. Melanie did it in 10 hours, to raise funds for the Jaguar Preserve. That in itself is an amazing story, but she goes on to photograph and track jaguars in the Cockscomb basin; her struggles and resourcefulness, the incidents and characters she meets, make for good reading.

My first post!

Wow! That was easy; I've created a blog. Now I need to learn how to use the digital camera, so I can upload photos when I travel. Our first trip of 2008 is to Belize, so I'm doing some reading. I just finished Jaguar: One Man's Struggle to Establish the World's First Jaguar Preserve, by Alan Rabinowitz. Fresh out of grad school with a PhD in wildlife ecology in the early '80's, he started collecting data on the jaguars of the Cockscomb Basin in southern Belize. His two year stay there was full of adventure, and the book is hard to put down.