Mayan Chocolate and Cotton Trees

Juan offers me the cacao pod. About the size of a Nerf football, its color is deep orangish yellow with a few tiny dark brown spots and it’s textured, with deep ridges running horizontally. It’s also light, the whole thing weighs less than a pound. I run my knife into its outer hull, which is […]

Mangroves and Howlers

Raymond is slapping his four-foot-long machete on the Cohune Palm then he barks to the tribe of Howler Monkeys racing across the treetops. His command was a husky “AhhRoof!” that he repeated six or seven times over. Imagine our surprise when one of the young males clambered down to within twenty feet of us, easily […]

The Hummingbird Highway to Placencia

Hello Google. How do I say “Which way to the beach in Mayan?” There’s four highways in Belize. No kidding. Four major highways crisscross this country of nine thousand square miles. The Philip Goldson, Western (George Price), Southern, and the Hummingbird Highway. If your destination is off one of those highways by twenty miles there’s […]