SNAKES AND MANGOES

Decided to visit Sarteneja village today, so pack up my stuff, finished the last bit of watermelon in the fridge and headed down to Roberto's Internet Cafe as he was going to give me a lift to the Thunderbolt taxi boat.

Got on his car and did a quick stop at the BTL shop to get a Belizean SIM card. 50 Belizean dollars after and I have a new phone number: +501 629 59 76. Do contact me, please do!

Afterwards, said good bye to my host Roberto and as I had 30 minutes to kill, decided to have a cup of ice with strawberry syrup for 50 cents. Delicious stuff.

Boarded the Thunderbolt taxi boat, paid my fare (25 Bz) and about half hour later arrived at Sarteneja pier.

Smiling girl with bicycle greets me with a French accent: "I'm Natalie, from Backpackers Paradise." She informed me that her hostel was 15 minutes walk so I strolled beside her and talked about the hostel, frogs and snakes (Natalie is a herpetologist, which means that she studies creepy crawlers like frogs, snakes, etc.) and funnily enough she's no different than you and I, as in:

If we see a snake in our path we run. If Natalie sees a snake she runs too, but towards the snake!

She shared a bit of her story in this village. Originally from Switzerland, she came here 4 years ago with her husband, bought lots of acres of land, after 3 years they split up and she received 3.5 acres and the hostel. BTW, her ex-husband still lives across the street in his ranch.

Currently, Natalie shares the hostel work with Ed, her cool French boyfriend after he got his sailing boat destroyed.

Later on I found out that there's this shipyard in Sarteneja where they build amazing wooden sailing boats, where Ed is trying to get a new one.

Arriving at the hostel, I noticed Natalie's love & interest as there's lots of photos with snakes of all sizes scattered around the hostel walls.

She's even done a research for the nearest Natural Reserve: http://www.shipstern.org/CMS/default.asp?ID=152&Language=EN

Natalie asked me if I liked mangoes. I replied: "Course I do, actually, everyone does, right?" She told me that she spent a whole year without touching a single mango because the year before she was eating like 15 a day. Apparently there are more mango trees in this village than anything else, so people here will eat what they can and chuck out or give it away the rest. I couldn't help to notice the amount of mangoes on the ground as we walked past some trees.

Paid for my cabaña and went on a walk around the village. Cool little village with very few shops and a really nice sea front.

Later on talked a bit more with Natalie and Ed and then went to bed to sleep. As we were in the middle of the jungle I could hear the crickets and the odd forest noise, but apart from that, the night was very restful. Tomorrow, I intent to visit Shipstern Natural Reserve.

Ciao 4 now

~ Paulo ~