I would be lying if I said I'd never before experienced a tropical Christmas, but I was a kid the last time I did. I do know that I have a bit more appreciation now than I did back then. Still, wearing shorts on the beach next to a palm tree decorated with Christmas lights and listening to White Christmas on the radio is a little surreal.
As the last Christmas BK ("Before Kid") and since we hadn't actually taken our annual vacation this year, Lee and I decided that a tropical Christmas would be the perfect thing. We wanted to visit inland to see the Mayan ruins and also get some beach time so we split our week and a half long visit between Cayo, in the eastern border near Guatemala, and Caye Caulker, one of the quieter tiny islands in the Caribbean. 
First off, Cayo. The picture is our humble abode at Mystic River. The jungle resort is owned and run by a French and American couple, Nadeje and Tom. On our first afternoon there Tom gave us a tour on his beloved Polaris four wheeler to the top of their hill where he had some unexcavated Mayan ruins he was excited to explore. Apparently once we started recognizing unusually geometrically shaped hills or mounds, it's quite easy to spot Mayan ruins and they're everywhere. On the way back down to the resort proper, Tom put the Polaris on coast as we bumped down three sizeable plateau steps that were once Mayan terracing. As someone later dubbed it - Mayan roller coaster sans rails.
The following day, we set out for a cave adventure at Actun Tunichil Muknal or ATM with our guide Ben. We had never been cave adventuring before but Gina, Mystic River's tour coordinator, insisted that it was a must-do. So off we went with another couple from Mystic River and originally from Colorado and a Dutch pair that we picked up along the way. The last part of the ride there was once again on bumpy, dirt/gravel road that is a common theme inland. Once we parked, it was about a 40 minute easy hike to the cave entrance. The hike in was also where we acquainted ourselves with the the water via three river crossings. It was cold but not unbearably so and seemed pool-like. At the entrance, we snacked on some watermelon, donned our head lamps and left any unnecessary (read: things we'd like to keep dry) gear.
And there was the entrance:
Yes, that is a swimming pool (though a bit warmer than the river crossings) to get inside. Inside, there was more moving water, sharp rocks and bouldering over, under and through said rocks. There were a few tight squeezes and narrow tunnels but they were always short passages so it didn't trigger any claustrophobic reactions. This was definitely an athletic tour. Once we clambered up a particularly tall rock, we came upon a treasure trove of ... shoes? It turned out that we were to shed our shoes and traverse the rest of the cavern in our stockinged feet. Ben made sure to carefully position us as we moved from area to area before we could look around. As we went on, it was clear to see why: calcified pottery blending into the cavern floor was littered all throughout. He pointed out several that had already been broken by previous careless tourists. He told us that the government had limited the number of licensed guides that could make tours through ATM to cut down on the traffic, but judging by the number of souls in that cave with us, we wondered if that were enough or if they would eventually have to shut the place down for tours.
The cave itself was primarily used by the Mayans as sacrificial grounds. As we swam and crawled and scaled rocks, I tried to imagine carrying that pottery with fire-making supplies as the Mayans must have. The pottery lying about was to cook their corn offerings. The human offerings they left whole.
The skeleton above was a teen-aged Mayan girl from the elite class that was sacrificed. Dubbed the "Crystal Maiden" because her bones have been calcified and look sparkly.
The way out went much more quickly than the way in and once back at the picnic area, we really appreciated the delicious lunch Ben provided. On a side note, I think Belize has the best banana bread I have ever eaten.
The following day, we went to Caracol. A two hour bone-jarring bumpy ride towards the Guatemalan border. The site itself is about half an hour's hike to the border. We were on the tour with the same couple from Colorado as well as another couple from the far-away land of San Francisco, CA. Along the way, Lewis, our tour guide treated us to many stories about the sights we saw. The most interesting one was by way of explaining the sign that we were to have a military escort into the Caracol site.
Apparently four or five years ago, Guatemalans were crossing the border to harvest leaves from a particular tree in Belize. When they had largely decimated their chosen crop, they decided it was more lucrative to rob the guides and tourists that were coming to the area of Mountain Pine Ridge where Caracol was located. It wasn't until an American tourist wrote about their ordeal on the internet that the government took action and installed a military presence at Caracol and required that all tours entering be escorted to and fro for the last 10 miles. This also shortened the hours that the tours could go visit (9am to 2pm). On an interesting side note, the crop that the robbers were previously harvesting was the leaves that would create the green dye used in US currency; someone was paying them (rather poorly at that) in order to counterfeit US dollars.
But back to Mayan ruins. Caracol is the largest Mayan ruin site in Belize that supported approximately 140,000 people at its height. The picture below is the top part of Caana, the tallest structure on the site standing at 140ft. above the ground floor. There are less than 100 steps to the top which made climbing up there a decent workout. There are still significant portions of the site that are unexcavated, but they're easy to spot as very geometrically shaped hills.
We learned quite a bit about their elite class who liked to flatten their foreheads and induce cross-eyedness by piercing the bridge of their nose with something bright and colorful to focus on. We also learned about a brutal ball game they played that involved throwing around an 18lb. latex ball. I didn't get to hear what the rules of the game were (I suspect it isn't definitively known) but it sounds like it would hurt.
After lunch and Caracol we stopped by a much shorter cave, the Rio Frio Cave. No water scrambling needed, but we did take some nice shots towards both entrances for the nifty contrast. A little farther away were the Rio Frio Pools where we could take a swim. We didn't actually go swimming, I just wanted to see how far I could get across the river by hopping from rock to rock without getting my sundress wet. I didn't manage to make it across the river, just halfway across, but it was fun nevertheless. Then it was back to the resort through some more bumpy roads.
I don't want to leave Mystic River without mentioning their very earnest bartender, Leo. Every meal he would come to the dining room from his bar at the hut next door to check to see if we wanted anything. He also had a daily drink special that sounded like he concocted himself and was very eager to have people try. I almost felt bad that I couldn't order any of his drink specials so I ordered some fruity smoothies instead. Our last night there, I told him about my favorite Forbidden Island drink, the Banana MamaCow and in exchange he told me about a new banana flavored drink that I'll have to wait to try out - the Dirty Banana.
The following day, we took the 2 hour drive back to Belize city with Angel, our cab driver, and the other San Francisco couple, David and Amy. The local airport had apparently suffered during the last hurricane as their terminal lost a wall they were still in the middle of repairing. Our ride to Caye Caulker was a prop plane. Sadly I couldn't sit in front right behind the pilot as we did in Costa Rica since we would be the only ones getting off at Caye Caulker. Everyone else was headed to Ambergris Caye, the more popular tourist destination.
In the interest of hitting the publish button, I'll save the Caye Caulker write-up for the next post. Stay tuned!
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Christmas in Belize (Part 1 of 2)
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Birthday 2011
I celebrated my birthday on Monday, but it's not my birthday that occupies my mind nowadays, but rather the upcoming one in June heralded by the above picture.
We sent a copy of that picture in a frame to the soon-to-be-first-time grandparents for Christmas and received delighted, excited, even emotional reactions across the board. It was fun to finally be able to share our little secret and get that reception both in person and over the phone.
Thankfully, I have had an uneventful first trimester. No morning sickness - yay for me! Even so, the routine medical appointments are annoyingly frequent. I understand it gets even worse in the third trimester. Blessedly, the prenatal tests are all coming out normal and quite average. I'm not showing yet, I can still wear my regular pants and so far no one has been guessing that I'm pregnant. Perhaps they're just assuming that I simply ate heartily over the holidays. I certainly feel full - full of baby. It's starting to be a little extra effort to pull my socks on. I noticed that my balance isn't quite what it used to be at karate practice. Sensei has banned me from sparring but I hope to keep going to practice up until I have to go to the hospital. We'll see.
We felt the baby kicking two nights ago. My doctor described it to me as feeling like gas bubbles. Once I recognized the sensation, it felt more like someone was poking me from the inside. Lee got to feel it too. That moment, every time I get an ultrasound or I hear/feel the baby's heartbeat makes all this seem real. Without that, I just feel like I'm getting extra round in the middle.
Not that I don't have moments that come up short of wonder and joy. Mourning for my rapidly fading figure - and to think I only recently started to like my figure in the past year (I had a waist! My body will never be the same again!). Pre-mourning for having the time to sleep, go out to movies, dinner, outings, video games, having the time to make elaborate Halloween costumes. I've been reading a bunch of books on pregnancy and preparing for the whole labor and delivery process. Scary! My dad is OB/GYN - I grew up listening to painful sounding experiences of delivery. There were many dinners growing up where I vowed to myself that I'd rather adopt than put myself through that. Guess I lied. And let's not even get into the worries of complications and issues with the baby or the extent of psychological damage I would inflict on another human being throughout its life. Deep breath.
Meanwhile, there's birth classes and hospital tours to schedule, names to ponder, decisions like disposables vs. cloth and what would make a good family car to replace the Saturn (thanks Consumer Reports), what color to paint the nursery. Every time I find a new website or talk to someone new about my delicate condition, there are more considerations to take into account and decide on. I suppose I don't have to figure it all out now. Suffice to say that this June birthday (or May) takes a whole lot more energy than all my January ones combined.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Garrus: The Making Of
Chris posted his making-of-video a few days ago. He's made some minor improvements to Garrus, primarily in the comfort of his shoes.
I made a cleaner set of Tali belt buckles, which sadly didn't make it into any decent full body picture shots from Halloween so I'll post them on their own. I also tried to improve the shape of my boots by caving in the calf portion to try and streamline them a bit more. Not so sure I was totally successful.
I'll post Chris' Tali props video when he has it up.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Halloween Costume #2: Ninjette
Happy Halloween!
I've been reading Adam Warren's Empowered comic series and two weeks before Halloween, decided to make the costume for Empowered's best gal pal, Ninjette.
She's a beer-drinking ninja princess from New Jersey, hiding out from her clan. Aside from the beer drinking and actual ninja skills, I thought it would be a straight-forward costume for me to make and wear in two weeks.
It turns out that I only had one week to actually complete the costume since work sent me to China the week before Halloween. Compared to my Tali costume, Ninjette was almost a sleepwalk. The patterns were based off of a mish-mash of various pieces of clothing I owned. I did have to make my shorts twice because I assumed a stretch factor on the stretch vinyl that wasn't quite true. Thankfully, I was only off by a seam allowance width. I used the same kind of fabric paint for Tali's hexagons to make the Ninjette logo.
The arm and leg wraps were just long strips of the stretch vinyl. After this photo shoot, I ended up getting some black gloves and thigh-high socks to put on underneath the wraps so that when they slipped, it wouldn't look so obvious. There's still some refinement to do with that process, but when I went out to the club, I carried black electric tape for emergency repairs. I wore black toe shoes (not shown here) to complete the outfit.
The long ponytail is not mine, it's a wig from the Halloween store. I bought some nail polish pens and painted my nails while I was hanging out and waiting during my China trip.
I'm a bit bummed I ended up assembling the necklace in reverse order. But the comic rearranges the order frequently enough that maybe it's not that big a deal (except to my sense of detail). I also should have taken some darting into account for my halter top, but I didn't have time to adjust it. It still works but isn't as correctly fitted as I would like.
While Tali was showcased at work during the day Friday, I ended up wearing Ninjette to both parties we went to for Halloween. No costume contest for me. I figured anyone who didn't recognize the Ninjette character would just assume I'm wearing a generic ninja girl costume which isn't remarkable enough to warrant a stage performance. It was still a fun costume to make and wear. I especially liked the fact that 1) I could see clearly, 2) I wore the most comfy shoes I remember wearing for a costume and 3) I could dance.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Post PAX + Press
We're back from PAX and still absorbing all the awesomeness of the experience. Friday was our Normandy crew day when we got a taste of traffic-stopping fame. We didn't get to the convention center until 4pm after getting ourselves outfitted up. We deliberately got a late start to the day because Chris and I didn't know how long we would last in our costumes and we knew we wanted to catch up with fellow Mass Effect cosplayer and awesome all-around girl, Holly Conrad at her evening PAX panel, From CG to Reality.
Little did we realize that as soon as we rounded the corner towards the last two blocks on the approach to PAX that our progress would be severely impeded by picture posing. Every few feet or so, we would be stopped by people wanting to take pictures of us or with us. Luckily, it was pretty easy to just ask the people asking for our pictures where Holly was and where the Bioware booth was. It just took a really long time to get there. We could only really move forward when security would tell us that we would need to keep moving to prevent blocking up the aisles. Then we would move another few steps and start it all over again.
The picture above was taken at the Bioware booth. We were a bit anachronistic standing in front of a huge poster of their fantasy game rather than Mass Effect, but we were loved up with flash photography all the same.
I didn't actually see much of PAX until Saturday when I had no helmet on my head. Chris switched to his Daft Punk (below) costume where he was wearing a helmet. He got stopped for plenty of pictures and interviews but we could still walk around and see the booths we wanted to see.
We're still looking for pictures and Chris' aforementioned interviews so if anyone's got links, please let me know!
Now for the pictures that we did find. I think my favorite mention of us came from Joystiq.com where they used our picture to lead the article and wrote that we were "quite possibly the best Tali and Garrus we've ever seen". Yay us!
We were included in Kotaku's gallery (picture 17).
Game Informer also had us in their gallery of PAX
About 56s into this video Daft Punk makes an appearance.
And then a random video where I desperately dodge the camera.
Saturday night, we had a blast attending the Paul and Storm and Jonathan Coulton concert. On Sunday we unexpectedly ran into them at their merchandise booth so I got Jonathan Coulton to sign my pass.
We had so much fun! I have some repairs to make on the costume and perhaps some redesign, but I'll give myself a week or so of down time before I tackle those so long as they're in time for Halloween.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Full Mass Effect
Did a full dress rehearsal yesterday and recruited our friends Kati and Eric as our photographers. I jammed out some pretty late nights this past week trying to get all the accessories I needed, but failed to get the boot knife in before our photo shoot.
Of course, there's lights on everyone's costumes and we had to defend a dark lab from danger just to see it.
I have some fixes to do to the various attachments: hood keeps falling off from the wind, my leg and arm bands don't stay where I want them to. Nothing a liberal use of velcro can't fix. Chris and Lee have various cracks in their armor that needs patching up, but overall I think we're ready to hit the road with this Normandy crew.
I'll leave you with some photoshopping in honor of the Penny Arcade Expo we're going to. The original comic was from Penny Arcade.
