Spanish Lookout

Day 5: This was a day of driving all around Western Belize with Jam, Aisha, Mathias, and Jorge, the head carpenter on the building project. Our main errand was a trip to Spanish Lookout to pick up more wood and electrical supplies. First stop however was in San Ignacio, where we bought a new bottle of rum rainforest bitters and some copal incense. On the way to Spanish Lookout we crossed another river via ferry, and Jorge indulged us with two tasty vegetarian tomalitos (little tomalis). They were so good, and the fish thought so too as they swarmed like mad to pick off any remaining morsels from our discarded corn husks. Spanish Lookout actually looks quite a bit like, say, rural Pennsylvania. It´s home primarily to emigrated Mennonites, a community that unlike the Mennonites of North America (like Alan´s uncle Michael), are actually quite industrial. The men often drive pickups, the teenage boys drive motorcycles, and the girls generally drive around in ATVs. They look like the Amish of Pennsylvania, with their straw hats and neck beards, and some actually look a little inbread--a problem the community is trying to address by exchanges between the Belizean and Canadian Mennonite communities. Spanish Lookout is full of hardware and agricultural supply stores run by the Mennonites, and Alan got a good deal on a nice little rug for his future apartment. Amidst going back and forth between various supply centers, we stopped at a local ice cream shop, where the dragonfruit and kiwi flavors were something special indeed.

Pictures from Day 5