Monday, September 01, 2003

Monday Sept 1, 2003
Belize City, Belize

Just back in town after 3 days on the road shooting Taste Belize… we visited several high end resorts and shot cooking segments with the house chefs. One resort, Blancaneaux (sp) is owned by Francis Ford Coppola. It is an amazing spot, tucked in the middle of nowhere. The highlight: tasting some of Coppola’s estate wines and the actual ceiling fan from the beginning of Apocalypse Now. Cool!

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Another highlight came on the weekend. A longer version will follow, but, here’s the shorthand version:

It’s Saturday night in Spanish Creek, Belize. It is hot and the humidity is high. In the middle of a field several large klieg lights are illuminating a large patch of concrete. Time for a soccer game? No! It’s Hockey Night in Belize.

A crowd of about 150 people are watching the second game of the final series – the Blues versus the Whites. The players are all Mennonites and are equipped with standard gear. But instead of ice skates, they are wearing roller blades.

They’ve been playing hockey for a few years here, but now things are getting more serious. The players are honing their skills by watching NHL games on the TV (Dallas seems to be the #1 team here), The ref learned the rules of the game by playing hockey videogames.

The rink is official size, and the boards even feature advertising for the local John Deere dealers. I recorded the events for a CBC radio documentary as well.

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On Sunday, we spent the night with record producer Ivan Duran and stayed up until 2am drinking cheap rum and listening to some amazing music. More on this soon.

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We are back in Belize City tonight, then off to shoot another resort before coming back for one more night here. Then we’re heading to Ambergris Caye for a couple of days – shooting more cooking segments. And then on Friday it will be time to return to Caye Caulker before flying home on Wednesday Sept 10th.

Certainly lots going on… and I will update when I can.

Cheers!

Doug

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