Susanne in Belmopan: Star Treatment

The Curse of Belize

Belize is a stunningly beautiful country, but it has one curse. Can you guess?

◘ Mosquitos

◘ Humidity

◘ Traffic Jams

◘ Greenhouse gasses

◘ Botlas

The answer is 5) botlas, which is Creol for bottle-ass (don't ask me why). They are mega tiny little flies, you can't see, hear or feel them at the time. Only a day later you will notice the spots. They itch like the devil and only very slowly recede (between 7 and 10 days). They're everywhere in Belize; in sand, grass, near water and even the most hard-core repellents (Deep Woods) and long pants and sleeves will not fully protect. I use Benadryl gel to relieve the itch but mostly just wait and sit it out.

Skype is not working in Belize. The national telecom company, BTL, has a monopoly on both the regular and mobile telephone network. Belize is therefor in the same category as China, Cuba, Kuwait and other unfree countries. Such a shame for a country as nice as Belize. They don't want us to use skype because they'll lose money if we do. They also charge ridiculous rates for internet in return for a pretty slow connection and poor service. After months of investigating and trying, I found there are ways to circumvent the blockage of Skype. You have to download some sort of software and then connect to a so-called VPN server. There is Witopia, UltraSurf, and there is Hotspot Shield. After many frustrating days I finally managed through HotspotShield.com. It is not perfect (dropped calls, other party can not hear me) but at least I can chat on Skype. Good luck to all who are trying to use Skype in Belize...

Pinky House

As any 4-year old, Soleine gets pretty bored when we travel long hours in the car. But now we have a game. The first one to spot a specific object gets points. As follows:
- a pink house = 10 points
- a horse = 5 points
- a tractor = 10 points
- a pair of shoes hanging from power line = 20 points

A regular trip from Belmopan to Belize can score about 100 points, to San Ignacio 150 points because more horses and tractors. Soleine usually wins. When we'll be in Belgium or Holland this summer we'll have to change the rules, There aren't many pinky houses (as Soleine calls them) there, right?

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Star Treatment

Hey, what is happening to our poor car? Well, no need to feel bad for it (or like the French say: for 'her' - a car is female). She is actually getting a star treatment!
It's one of those things that I never knew existed. I never had to know. Here in Belize many of the roads are unpaved, and on gravel road the wind screen of your car can easily be damaged by a pebble or a small stone. If you don't fix these small cracks or stars in the windscreen, they can become bigger and bigger and eventually the entire windscreen can burst, which is obviously a dangerous and costly affair. In Belize city there is a small repair shop that does these star treatments. They drill a tiny hole into the windshield, then put liquid glass in it and fill it it up through vacuum pressure. How clever is that? Our car enjoyed her star treatment!

1 comment:

JarmilaMay 07, 2010
Not only in Belize do car windshields get such incipiently disastrous wounds! We've had this done on two of our cars over time....And we live in central PA where *most* of the roads are paved highways...
The process is pretty ingenious. But Belize does not have an exclusive on such a repair :-) though I'm sure you are very happy that someone in Belmopan does it. My impression of Belize was that the people are very clever in providing whatever is needed. Necessity being the mother!
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