THE
BLUE BOX (Recycled Ideas)
by Don Cox
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Those of you who follow this column will know that over
the past two years I have undertaken to carry the story
of our magnificent and glorious winter weather to our less
fortunate brethren in the warm southern climes. Last year
and the year before I went to Portugal to urge the populace
there to forsake their oppressive heat and dryness and come
for a winter holiday in the frozen north. I haven't noted
any stampede of Portuguese visitors yet, but these things
take time.
This year I decided to venture into even more challenging
territory, and went to Belize in Central America to test
the tourism potential and to visit a friend there. For those
of you who are geographically challenged, Belize was formerly
British Honduras. It is a sliver of land 174 miles long
and 68 mile wide. It's directly south of the most southerly
part of Mexico's east coast. In 1934 Aldous Huxley wrote
"British Honduras is not on the way from anywhere to
anywhere else, has no strategic value, is all but uninhabited;
if the world had any ends, British Honduras would be one
of them." Nothing much has changed since Huxley's day,
except that Belize now has about 220,000 people, which makes
it just barely inhabited.
My friend is one of the inhabitants. He lives near the
northern town of Corozol and makes and prescribes folk medicines,
rather like a witch doctor. On the second day there I crawled
into an ancient VW to accompany the witch doctor while he
made house calls. One visit stands out over all the rest,
an old lady in her last few hours. She was surrounded by
family praying, the senior members closest, the cousins
nearer the door, the children outside. The dogs and cats
were beyond the children and the hens and rooster beyond
them. The sun bathed the trees filled with toucans and other
birds in full song. I thought it was a very civilized way
to depart. "How long does she have?" I asked the
witch doctor. "Until the toucan calls her name",
he told me.
Later on that afternoon I dropped in to Nestor's Hotel.
I knew Mark the proprietor when he lived in Montreal and
thought I would pass a few minutes in reminiscence. Unfortunately
Mark was in a surly mood and wouldn't give me the time of
day. Nestor's is an older hotel and the facilities are not
that modern I'm told. Evidently the rooms have a slightly
ammoniac air about them. Don't stay there.
That evening I had supper with the witch doctor and other
friends on the terrace of the Hokol Kin Guesthouse. This
is the best place in Corozol and it's where I was staying.
I highly recommend it, stay there if you decide to visit.
We sat on the terrace well into the night drinking coconut
rum and watching the stars. Orion was directly overhead,
and Polaris was only a few degrees from the horizon, very
unnatural and a little off-putting. It reminded me that
I was far from my log house and my ice covered stream. I
began to hear the great Manitou calling his children home.
I've been back nearly a week now, the days are warm and
the water is starting to gurgle under the ice. Today is
the first day of spring and tonight we're expecting a foot
of wet snow. It's the parting gift from the great Manitou,
he's giving us a blanket and tucking us in for the last
time. In a week he will be far away in the North and we
will start the new season. Farewell Manitou, it was a good
winter.
Bluebox ©2001 Don Cox
Website ©2001 OttawaWEB
