Lepard in Toronto: April 2006

Glassblowing course

We took a glassblowing course this weekend. It was 20 hours over the whole weekend, 4 on Friday night and 8 on Saturday and Sunday. Glassblowing is a lot harder than it looks..there are about 3 different things to do all at once...if your attention shifts for 5 seconds you could lose the piece you've spent the last hour working on...and its very very easy to have the piece collapse in on itself..as happened many times this weekend.

It was a fun course, the first day we made paperweight...pretty simple but it's surprisingly difficult to get all the steps right, gathering the glass from the furnace, heating it, and shaping it...all without doing one little thing wrong or it gets all wonky...

By the second day we were trying to create blown pieces...it was much more difficult and we were exhausted by lunch...it tooks us two and a half hours to make one little vase thing...you have to heat it to just the right temperature...too long in the working furnace and it gets way to melty and ruins all the hard work you just put in...

By the third day we had it figured out and were able to make some pretty decent pieces...it was lots and lots of fun...but very hot ( the furnaces are around 2500F) and you have to be always careful about where you move and what you touch.

Kim shaping the hot glass with a bunch of very wet newspaper...

Our friend Lily shaping her glass paperweight...

Kim ready to catch the finished piece before it goes into the anealer overnight to cool slowly....from 900F down to room temperature.

Kim in the hot suit :)

Lily blowing her piece...it's very hard to start the bubble but after that is fun to see it grow...

Lily strategically applying gravity to extend her piece...

My masterpiece of the weekend...unfortunately it didn't survive the seperation process and cracked right through... :(

Kim working on one of her three excellent christmas ornaments...

The Final Products! The middle ornament was actually made by someone else in Corning New York (where we got inspiration for this course)

The two vases were made by Mike and the paper weights and coaster were made by Kim

That's it for Belize

We had an amazing time in Belize, the week in the jungle doing all the adventure stuff allowed us to cross several things off of life's To Do list. Then the week on the beach allowed us to relax and recuperate and truly have a vacation. We'd deffinetly recommend going to Belize, it's a wonderful place where everyone is friendly (and they speak english). Spend a few days in the interior, away from the touristy beaches and truly experience it.

Wildlife tour

We saw a lot of wildlife while we were in Belize...alot of it was in the jungle and at Tikal during the evening/morning. Pictures we didn't get included large iguanas, monkeys, and toucans.

This bird is the Montezuma Oropendola and it a very unique call that we heard very often in Tikal...it also makes these hanging nests in the trees and has a bright yellow tail.

This is the Coati...the central american version of the racoon...but obviously not nocturnal...we ran into a whole group of the on one of paths in Tikal...very much at home.

This is Spooky, the pet of the owner of the place we had lunch at during the canoe down the river..he also had a german sheppard and kitten, and all three liked to play together.

We also saw a few crocodiles...these ones are babies at Tikal, but we saw large ones on Ambergis Caye, the local kids would put on a show and feed them with raw chickens on ropes.

This ray came right up to shore and was making a hole, maybe nesting or feeding...

This is the conch..not the prettiest animal but it can live for 5-7 days outside the water.

Beach BBQ near the reef....

Belize has the largest reef in the western hemisphere about 2km offshore from the hotel. We went for several day sails/snorkels on the reef, so many types of fish including barracudas, sharks and rays (I got to touch one).

One of the sails included a beach BBQ...here's lunch they just caught.

and the stew we had....delicious!

Finally, relaxing on the beach....

We had the BBQ where the reef comes into the land...it gets very shallow and the guides said if we found any large conch while snorkelling we could have ceviche (sashimi). Kim managed to find two, including one really big one with a beautiful shell that we got to keep.

Week on the Cayes

The second week we spent on the beach in the Cayes (pronouced Keys). The white sandy beaches and azure water are amazing.

Belize has a long history of producing mahogany, here's a boat made out of mahogany..although it's been painted. Belize was also founded by pirates :)

On Ambergis Caye and the other large Cayes the main mode of transportation is golf cart...

Here's the view of the beach from out hotel...we stayed in the the more touristy area, it was a bit too much with wall to wall resorts and condos along the beach...but it was a good lead out to home from the jungle.

Horseback riding and canoeing

The rest of our time in the jungle was much tamer, we went horsback riding one day...very hot and a little painful but very fun. We rode through the little village close by to a small set of waterfalls..the limestone bedrock makes wonderful formations....but I've never seen so many dogs, every property has at least two and usually four.

The next day was canoeing down the jungle river...very cool..we saw the tail of a VERY large iguana sunning iteself on a rock but it ran off pretty fast, crashing through the underbrush.

We stopped for lunch a very quaint restraunt/lodge...it had stilt cabana with thatch rooves and nice hammock views of the jungle...very rustic. The main part was very much out of a beach/travelling movie, all small,handcut trees. It was easter weekend so the expat owner had let the staff go, but he cooked us up something quick and we had an excellent talk about belize and it's government/development.

Check out rocko in his own blog: http://rockohorse.blogspot.com

Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave

After we got back from Tikal, we went to this cave that the Maya used for ceremonies to honor their ancestors. It was a 45 minute hike into the jungle where you had to ford a river three times. We then arrived at the entrance to the cave, the river runs through it, and you have swim for about 50 feet to get to the inside ledge. You then splunk through the cave, wading through the river, clambering over boulders, and slithering through passages. We had headlamps during this...the Maya did this with pine torches and the river was higher....

You then reach a spot where you climb up out of the river to dry chambers. The Maya brought pots and offerings to their ancestors to the massive chambers here. They would cook the offering there and then break the pot to finish the ceremony. They then left the pots there...

It's amazing as you are inches away from 1500 year old pots that you would normally see in a musuem..probably the closest I'll get to being an archeologist. Here's the monkey pot...they've discovered 5 of them in central america...all with the same monkey and they believe they were made by the same guy.