I almost titled this post “A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts,” but I decided that would be too obvious 🙂

One afternoon, several days into our stay at Black Rock Lodge, some people from our yoga group mentioned that they’d not yet taken the complimentary sustainability tour. Mom and I had not yet managed to take the tour, so we decided to tag along.

Before we set out on the tour, our guides Giovanni and Freddy made sure they had a machete and a handful of straws.

Mom and I exchanged glances that said, “uh oh … what have signed ourselves up for now?!”

As I mentioned in my post about the lodge, they are fully off the grid, so on the sustainability tour we got to see the solar hot water system and solar batteries and the waste water treatment. We hoped we’d have time to go down and see the gardens, but we had to get back for our afternoon yoga practice.

Instead, we stopped near the parking lot, where Giovanni announced, “we’ll stop here for a coconut break!”

(This delighted me as much as the sparkling wine break on safari in South Africa.)

They used a forked branch to knock a few coconuts out of the trees, and Freddy hacked them open …

So *that’s* what the machete was for …

There were young coconuts, out of which we enjoyed a refreshing drink of coconut water!

… and that explains the straws.

And a mature coconut, from which the water has been absorbed into the rind and the meat is ready to eat. (We ate some … in case that wasn’t clear!)

A few days later, during our yoga practice in the palapa, we watched one of the waiters in the restaurant walk down to the river, pick up a giant forked branch, and carry it over his shoulder back up the hill.

When we went back to the restaurant for lunch, there was a big stack of coconuts, ready to be the day’s special.

The coco loco!

There are several different variations on the coco loco that I found online, but I think this one on allrecipes.com is pretty close to what we had.

Thanks for indulging me in a coconut break. Back to more sightseeing recaps next week!

Last fall, every time I heard someone say “Belize,” my ears would perk up. Now, most of the time, when people around me were talking about Belize, it was because they (or someone they knew) had been and wanted to recommend a particular site or activity. But once, it came up because a modality of massage called Mayan Abdominal Therapy originated in Belize. There happened to be a workshop in Seattle in November, and I signed myself up because obviously it was meant to be.

The workshop wasn’t exactly what I expected, but it did set up a very clear expectation for my trip to Belize: the Maya people had a strong connection to plant life as plants were used for food, buildings, clothing, medicine, and spiritual rituals, and that connection remains in Belize today. Dr. Rosita Arvigo, who studied with the Maya shaman Don Elijio Panti in Belize, brought the massage techniques and interest in medicinal plants to the U.S.

So when Mom and I arrived at Black Rock Lodge, and they mentioned that the Belize Botanic Gardens were just a canoe float away, I convinced Mom that we had to visit.

Before we got into the canoe, our guide Isaias warned us to keep our expectations in check – the gardens are not full of lush, beautiful flowers; but mostly medicinal plants.

We walked through the grounds, ending up in the orchid house, which was full of lush, beautiful flowers. So let’s start there.

This is Belize’s national flower – the black orchid. It’s an air flower, and usually grows on trees.

  

This is a vanilla orchid – it wasn’t currently flowering, but the flower produces the pod that has the vanilla flavoring we all know and love. This is the only orchid that produces edible fruit!

All right, let’s start back at the beginning. The grounds of the Belize Botanic Gardens are spread out to make several distinct parts of the park, grouping certain plants together. There were also a few small attractions, like the pond, where a family of turtles were sunning themselves on a log …

I only had my phone and not my big camera, so my pictures aren’t especially clear, but there’s one full grown turtle that you can easily see, and there were three tiny turtles crawling around 🙂

Another attraction was the Maya House, which was built completely out of materials from the botanic gardens, including a bed and kitchen inside.

The roof of the Maya House (as well as all the palapas we visited during the course of our stay) was thatched with leaves from the bay leaf palm tree. The leaves are bundled together and tightly woven to deter bugs from nesting in it and resist water. Several of our guides explained that the leaves have to be cut between the full moon and the new moon; if they are cut after the new moon, the molecules will be spaced further apart and the leaves won’t be as stable. Apparently, part of the roof over Black Rock Lodge’s restaurant had not been harvested at the right time in the moon’s cycle, and was prone to rot where the rest of the roof was fine.

I took a ton of pictures, but I’ll spare you from sitting through innumerable photos of leafy green trees. Here were a couple of my favorites:

These are tamarind pods! I’m not sure why (maybe something to do with my quest to make the perfect pad Thai sauce, or maybe it’s the tamarind flavored margaritas I like at Matador) but I’m obsessed with tamarind. I’ve found tamarind pods and tamarind paste at our local Asian market, but I’d never seen them growing before. Isaias peeled a couple of pods for us to taste – they were extremely sour.

And this is a tiny cinnamon tree! Ground cinnamon of course comes from the bark, but we crushed the leaves up between our fingers and they were very fragrant.

As we walked through the grounds, Isaias kept plucking different fruits out of the trees for us to taste. I was really hungry, but I can’t say any of the things we tried were particularly good! After the tour, we headed back to the restaurant for lunch, where these toucans were having some pineapple.

But first, we walked through the rainforest portion of the grounds.

Over 70% of Belize is tropical rainforest which is protected by the government, however, rainforests are in trouble and since they provide nearly half of the earth’s oxygen, we kind of need them to stick around. Some things we should all be doing to help the rainforests:

• Shop less. Favor used over new, and local over imported when buying.
• Drive less, and consider alternate modes of transportation and carpooling to use less fossil fuel.
• Make sure the flowers and foliage you buy in your flower arrangements come from a sustainable source. In particular, xate (fishtail palm) has been so popular as a decorative palm that it’s been over-harvested.

I’ll leave you with one last flowering plant we saw at the botanic gardens – this one is called yesterday, today, and tomorrow, because the flowers change color as they bloom.

Back with more Belize adventures later this week!

Before our trip to Belize, my mom and I had a few discussions and emails about what kind of sightseeing to do on our vacation. What we eventually decided on was just to figure it out once we arrived 😉

But I knew for sure that I wanted to see some ruins.

Now, we knew that Black Rock Lodge was close enough to the Guatemalan border that crossing it to see Tikal was a reasonable distance – but we agreed that it wasn’t our top priority as going across another border sounded unnecessarily complicated.

Well, when we expressed to Petro, the manager at Black Rock, that we’d like to see ruins, she recommended Tikal without missing a beat because 1. the two-and-a-half-hour drive (each way!) is on paved road, and 2. there was already a group planning to go the following day.

Going across the border was not nearly as complicated as we’d imagined because Fernando, our guide from the lodge, basically held our hands and walked us across, and both Belize and Guatemala are happy to let tourists cross their borders as they charge a small fee to do so.

So, it’s taken me two weeks longer than I thought to get this post together, mostly because I haven’t known where to even begin to tell you about Tikal. There are so many details I want to share (and remember) but now I’ve put it off for so long that I’ve already started to forget.

I’ll start by telling you about the park itself. It’s enormous – 575 square kilometers (roughly 142,086 acres.) I had my phone in my camera bag, and it logged 13,786 steps that day (and surprisingly, only 13 flights climbed – I felt like we were climbing stairs and walking uphill constantly! I average more flights climbed going for a walk to the park in my neighborhood.) It’s home to jaguars, but we didn’t see any because they are of course nocturnal.

Being in the middle of a jungle, there are months of flooding, followed by months of drought. The Maya who cultivated the site which is now known as Tikal learned to deal with this by building reservoirs and collecting rainwater.

Here’s a manmade reservoir, now home to crocodiles.

Only a small fraction of the Mayan structures have been excavated, and we walked a big loop through the park to see them.

Starting with …

This is one of the smaller ones – if I remember correctly, it’s Temple IV. It was the only one that we were allowed to climb the stairs of the temple (you can see a few people on the top!) Of course, we didn’t know that at the time, so mom and I declined to climb this one in favor of conserving our energy for the bigger temples. Oh, well. (And we did get to climb some of the original temple stairs at a different site, Xunantunich, which I’ll post about next week … or maybe in a few months at the rate I’m going!)

We continued on the loop to the next temple: one that brought a lot of attention to Tikal and Guatemala, because it was used as a filming site for Star Wars: A New Hope. That temple has been partially excavated, and a staircase built around it, so that us tourists can climb up and enjoy the view and only minimally disturb the original structure.

Our guide left us at the bottom of the stairs, and Mom asked him to hold her camera bag while she was climbing. As we set off, he told us, “go take some good pictures, like George Lucas!”

Look familiar?

As you can see, one of those temples is currently undergoing restoration – that’s Temple III, which we went to next. Further in the distance are Temples I and II, which were our last stop of the day.

Here’s the view of Temple III from the ground. Again, it’s currently being excavated and restored. (Actually, unless I’m misremembering, the excavation and restoration may have been put on hold. This is mostly due to lack of funds, but our guide explained that there’s also some consternation about whether the buildings should be restored or left in their original state, and if they should be restored, then how much?)

Here’s another, smaller building that was only partially excavated. This one really shows how the vegetation overtook the structures.

Then we set off to the main plaza, and Temples I and II.

(We passed this sign along the way. Good thing the path to the lost world is clearly marked.)

Here’s the main plaza, and Temples I (left) and II (right.) Both were commissioned by the ruler known as The Great Jaguar. He was entombed in Temple I, and his wife in Temple II. According to our guide, he was the only Mayan ruler who had a temple built for his queen.

The temple has nine levels, one for each of the layers of the Mayan Underworld.

  

All of the temples had these tiny, narrow sets of stairs up the side. Our guide explained that they were used by the warriors who protected the temples so they could hastily get to the top. These are on Temple II – obviously, we were not allowed to climb them.

But it did have a set of stairs built around the back of the temple, so we could climb up and photograph the plaza …

… or each other.

(I was hoping I could zoom in enough to see the inside of Temple I – no such luck.)

Well, I’d better get back into the groove of regular blogging so I can write the rest of my Belize recaps before I forget everything we did and saw! Next week – the Belize Botanic Garden.

In 2012, my mom and I went on our first international yoga retreat to Italy* (though we’d gone to Portland and San Francisco for retreats, and been to several in Seattle.) At the end of our week together, the group sat in a closing circle for a little reflection, and one of the other participants said something like “when I used to travel as a younger person, I looked for the ways that we were different. Now I look for the ways that we are the same.”

At the time, I thought that person was being a bit self-aggrandizing, but obviously it’s stayed with me. Since I’ve been able to travel to more and different places since, I’ve come to appreciate that there’s a sort of synchronicity that happens when you travel.

Every place I go is different, but I notice the similarities. Everywhere I go reminds me of somewhere I’ve already been.

After my trip to South Africa, where we visited Nelson Mandela’s prison cell on Robben Island, I started noticing quotes from Mandela everywhere I went. As I wrote in a post following his death, that experience stayed with me, and that’s why I notice his words now where I didn’t before.

Belize was no different; here’s a Mandela quote painted into a mural on a school in Placencia.

Our trip was lovely: We spent ten days in the rainforest, and then three at the beach. I’m planning several recap posts about the trip … but as I’m writing this, I’ve been home less than 24 hours and I’m a bit sleep deprived, so I’m not even sure what to say.

But I know exactly where I want to start: Tuttifrutti Gelateria in Placencia, which we went to on our final day in Belize.

So imagine for a minute that you’re me (don’t be scared, it’s just for a minute.) You’re staying at a resort in the Belizean rainforest, asking for recommendations in the beach town you’re headed to next, and the resort’s manager, who is a South African woman, tells you about an Italian Gelateria.

You get what I’m saying about synchronicity, right?

Actually we would have found our way to the gelato shop regardless – it was also recommended to us by the staff at the hotel where we stayed, the cab driver who took us into town, and the woman who ran the jewelry boutique across the street. Tuttifrutti is the #1 rated restaurant in Placencia on Trip Advisor 😉

The flavor offerings change daily. They all sounded amazing, so we decided to mix two: blackberry, and rum and hazelnut (because when in RomePlacencia.) Both were sweet and rich and creamy, but the rum and hazelnut completely stole the show.

(My picture is blurry because I was too excited to eat it and couldn’t sit still!)

*I just noticed that many of my travel photos, particularly from Italy, aren’t showing up after the issues I was having with my site last fall. I’ll work on getting those back up.

This post was originally published in February of 2013, shortly after I returned from South Africa. I’m currently off on another adventure, and I decided now would be a great time to go through the archives and share an old favorite post from my travels.

(Just kidding – I’m sure I’ll have as much good stuff to share when I’m back home from Belize!)

***

A week or two before I left of South Africa, one of my coworkers and I were talking about our respective travel experiences, and she said something along the lines of “the times when everything goes right make great memories, but the best stories are when things go wrong.”

I mulled it over, and decided she was probably right, and told her the story about the time my mom and I almost got thrown off a train in Italy (I don’t think I ever actually blogged about it, but it’s definitely the best story from that trip.*) She told me a story about accidentally entering a sailing competition in Mexico. We both laughed. It’s funny when things go wrong!

If you haven’t already guessed where I’m going with this, this is the post about the day in South Africa when things went wrong.

After our week in Cape Town, we were headed up north to Bushman’s Kloof, a resort in north South Africa. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the best hotel in the world or the best hotel in Africa.

Joel’s boss had arranged transport from Cape Town, so early Monday morning, we checked out of our hotel and boarded a luxury bus for what was expected to be a four hour drive. I’ll start this by saying I had no idea the drive would be that long – I figured it would be a couple of hours, tops. But I had a fully charged iPad and some snacks, so we settled in.

About an hour outside of Cape Town, the driver pulled over at a rest stop. Rest stops in South Africa do not have bathrooms or coffee or vending machines. We happened to be at a nice one with a picnic table and some shade.

“I’m so sorry, but the bus has overheated,” the driver told us. “I’ll let it cool down for a few minutes and see what happens, but I don’t know if it can even make it to the next town.”

The bus driver called for a back up — from Cape Town. And we waited at the shaded rest stop in The Middle Of Nowhere, South Africa for the next hour. Finally, we were rescued by a much smaller and less luxurious van. We asked the driver to stop at the next rest stop we came to (the kind with a toilet, I mean.) And we did. After another hour of driving.

And that’s the story. I know, it’s not that exciting (trust me, the one from Italy is better.)

And even if it were a better story, the amazingness that was Bushman’s Kloof negates any trouble we had getting there. We were taken on a tour of our private lodge and the grounds, and kept joking to each other that maybe we’d perished at that rest stop or the van had gone over a cliff on the way down the mountain because “this place must be heaven!”

Here’s our private pool at the lodge.

Since we arrived much later than we expected to, tea was all laid out for us. The house manager, Malcolm, on the left here, asked if anyone would care for something to drink – tea or coffee or maybe sparkling wine? Yes, sparkling wine, please. We ate with our feet in the pool.

We had time for a quick game drive (and more drinks) before dinner, and we spotted this group of springbok and a couple ostriches. The ostriches kept pretty well hidden at the kloof, so we were glad to have seen them. Also — they are HUGE. I’d guess about 8 feet tall, from feet to head.

We saw some spectacular sunsets at the kloof, and the first was the best. There was a huge wildfire just a few days before (it had actually gotten to the edge of the resort and all the guests had to be evacuated.) Thankfully, it burned out/was put out in the night, but the lingering smoke made for this beautiful sunset.

*Edit to add: I finally blogged about nearly being thrown off the train in Italy. Click here to read the post.

The weird thing about dragging out my trip recaps posts as I’ve been doing is that I’m now wearing cardigans and wool socks everyday, and just now getting around to posting about the hottest day of our honeymoon. It was much hotter in D.C. than NYC; but we were in luck – our hotel had a swimming pool!

Actually, there’s a full day of our trip that isn’t getting its own recap post. The train ride in to D.C. was pretty short, and we’d planned to get a head start on our sightseeing, but when the hotel staff told us about the pool we opted to hit the Target across the street for swimsuits and relax around the pool rather than head in to the city (we ended up staying in Fairfax, VA, which was a nice change of pace after five days in Times Square.)

For the record, this was my second swimsuit purchase this year. I also bought one in South Africa! Maybe someday I will learn to pack a swimsuit every time we go somewhere warm.

Oh, but I was talking about our first day in “the other Washington.” The weathermanapp predicted a high of about 90 degrees, so we decided it would be a good day to be indoors at the Smithsonian. We made it to three of the museums – the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Air and Space Museum.

Some of us were cranky, what with the heat and poor selection of gluten-free-friendly lunch options at the Smithsonian Museum, so I’m keeping today’s post picture-heavy and story-sparse.

The American History Museum

Julia Childs’ kitchen

World War II propaganda.

Natural History Museum

Joel is taller than an elephant’s leg

Air and Space Museum

After a late lunch, we hit a couple of Labor Day sales, then headed back out to Fairfax to eat ice cream and cool off in the pool.