Belize Blog
About this blog
Joshua Berman spent 10 years touring, trip-leading, and teaching throughout Central America, and still believes there's no place like Belize. In this blog, he'll share his knowledge of this beautiful country.
Recent Posts
- Reducing Your Impact on Endangered Wildlife When Traveling
- Back in Belize for Holy Week
- Bad-Ass "Belize City Boil-Up" is Full of Funk
- Book Explores Belizean Food and Its Place in the World
- Maya Skull Sports Jade Grill
- Sustainable Harvest International Offers Volunteer Opportunities in Belize
- Nice Cayo Jungle Blog from Moonracers
- Belizean Maya Land Rights Case Update
- Joan Fry's Belize Memoir Now Available
- Belize featured on Boomerscape
- Belize's Famous Skull
- Ladies and Gentelmen, Start Your Paddles! 12th Annual La Ruta Maya Belize River Challenge Set for March 6
- On Assignment in Nicaragua with Travel Channel's Bizarre Star
- Maya Festival planned in Toledo for end of March, 2009
- Essential Belize Bookmarks
Reducing Your Impact on Endangered Wildlife When Traveling
Parrot poaching is a big deal. Especially for the Yellow-headed Amazon parrot (Amazona oratrix), a gorgeous species under serious threat of extinction in the world. Its numbers plummeted from 70,000 to 7,000 in the last two decades. Human encroachment on natural habitat fuels nest-robbing for an illegal pet trade. In Belize, some poached birds are sold on the international market, while others end up in homes or in businesses who want to add “color” to attract tourists. more >>
Back in Belize for Holy Week
Ah ... Belize in the springtime—hot (102 in the shade yesterday), dry, dusty, and as vibrant and full of life as ever. I spent my first day day tripping to Cayo where I stumbled upon a marching band festival on the streets of San Ignacio, then pushed westward into the bush where I finally had a chance to visit the Poustinia Art Park, a truly bizarre, extraordinary environmental art jungle "museum". more >>
Bad-Ass "Belize City Boil-Up" is Full of Funk
Seriously. It's a bold statement, but I stand by it. Stonetree Records released Belize City Boil Up in 2005 to instant international acclaim—which was accompanied by international surprise that Belize could produce something other than reggae and punta. Belize City Boil Up consists of freshly remastered vintage Belizean recordings from the 1950s, 60s & 70s when the Belizean music scene actually included cool jazz, smooth rhythm and blues, and even psychedelic funk. Turn up the volume -- awesome samples on the album site and
on Amazon.com. more >>
Book Explores Belizean Food and Its Place in the World
In Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists, anthropologist Richard Wilk argues against the simplistic notion that in today's hyper-connected world, "…culinary diversity is disappearing under a monotonous food landscape of burgers and fries."
Rather, the advancing steamroller is only one way to look at globalization; another way is to "compromise and reduce [globalization's] impact by adapting and preserving local and ethnic traditions of food, music, dance, and language." Wilk says that instead of colonial and Western civilizations swallowing local cultures whole, it's much more of a global give-and-take; the same forces which created the small creolized country of Belize in the first place eventually helped create the notion of "Belizean food" and national identity. more >>
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