Friday travels

Today we took Ray to the airport and ended up in Orange Walk. On the way out of San Ignacio Ray had to drop off a sweater at the Octavia Waight nursing home, and he had to deal with a half-million Italian lyra (worth maybe $300) that were useless to him but of potential value to the proprietor of the Italian restaurant. I'm not sure what deal he worked, but it was amusing that he had to come to Belize to get rid of Italian currency.

We got to Belize City early enough for lunch. After wandering around the city, which is crowded and has chaotic traffic, we found the Indian restaurant Ray was looking for.
Soup for lunch was tasty and agreeably light. Above the bar a cricket match was being shown on TV. the picture wasn't really clear, but I think it would have been incomprehensible anyway.

After dropping Ray at the airport, we came back into the city to try to meet with the operator of the government water laboratory. He didn't show up, but I did have a brief chat with the woman who does microscopic identification and diagnosis at the malaria lab. Because the other guys were eager to get on the road, I resisted the urge to stop in the Maternal Child Health office to see what they are doing.

Up the Northern Highway the houses along the road were in somewhat better condition than most in the little villages in Cayo District. We were passed by a fast-moving pickup truck that had a small sofa in the bed, up against the cab. In it were two elderly-ish plumpish ladies in long Mennonite dresses, holding their straw sunhats on their heads and chattering away. It was a photo-op that we regretted missing.

In Orange Walk Town we first found the school and then found our hotel. We teased Pat for driving the wrong direction on the one-way street in front of the hotel, as well as having run a stop light earlier, because he is a former police officer (Previously Pistol-Packing Police, Presently Presbyterian Pastor Pat). The hotel is on a river and is forested down to the water. It looked like something out of the Amazon or African Queen.

After supper I wandered around town for a while. There were shops of a variety of sizes, from a large appliance store to room-sized shops stocked with CDs, T-shirts, and jeans. I found a grocery store with five aisles and one-hundred-pound sacks of sugar stacked by the front window. These stores generally do not sell produce, which is mainly sold at the open-air market.

Orange Walk town, with its town square park and central boulevard, has a more open feel than San Ignacio and Belize City. The people seemed more inclined to gather and socialize in the park than I had seen before. I was definitely more comfortable there.

Peace,
Chuck