Liz: At Home In The Jungle

From Liz: Their journey here to Moonracer Farm

(At the Tropical Education Center - Prior to their arrival at Moonracer Farm):
I am happy to report that although the screens had holes, the bed was missing a slat and the mattress was a 2" foam pad, and although there were crocodiles in the pond 50 feet away (about the same distance as the bathrooms) and we found a black scorpion crawling across the floor of our room after dark, we survived our night "roughing" it summer camp style without any major problems. The kids had a great time, the dad rose to the occasion and the mom experienced a case of grumpiness the next morning, which passed after a good meal and some meditative time next to a beautiful river.

We took a night tour of the Belize Zoo and saw some animals up close that are hard to see in the day, like a big jaguar and a harpy eagle. The tour started with the opportunity to hold a boa constrictor which Patrick and Otis were brave enough to do. Our guide, one of the zookeepers, howled up to the howler monkeys, starting an outburst that lasted until we were well away. I have to confess here that I am not a jungle type of a gal. Deadly poisonous snakes, fire ants and mosquitos that could be carrying a nasty disease like Malaria or Dengue Fever don't excite me. So, about halfway through the tour I wanted to be home with the kids tucked safely into bed. While Otis shared the sentiment, Patrick and Sofia had a great time on the tour and we recommend it.

You might be wondering at this point why I wanted to go to the Belize jungle. That's what I was wondering the next day as we bumped our way over miles of rocky dirt roads that felt about 10 times worse than any dirt roads I've been on before. If you wonder why it is so expensive to get around Belize, it's not just the high cost of gas but the cost of spare tires and parts for the cars. We passed a village on the way to Moonracer Farm that is without power. Our guide told us it was scheduled to get power but then the entire village voted for the political party that lost the election and now they don't get power. There are poles along the road up to a point but no power lines. Perhaps that's also why the road is so bad. Our guide said it was because they would just get the road fixed and graded and then the heavy rains would come and wash the dirt away, leaving rocks and holes. Big rigs coming through to pick up oranges and deliver things make the problem worse.

Finally we arrived at our destination, Moonracer Farms, a lovely place in the middle of the jungle where you can pick fresh oranges, grapefruit and bananas right off the tree to go with breakfast. The cabin was immaculate and cozy, the screens in perfect condition, the beds comfortable, and the hosts are friendly and understand (and welcome!) children. We had a wonderful homemade meal that reminded us of home, pasta with a garlic and cheese sauce along with vegetables and chicken. Today, sitting on the hammock on the porch listening to the birds and monkeys, watching hummingbirds fly around just outside the screen, and seeing the kids happily exploring a new place and learning about the jungle, I'm glad we came.

Patrick with boa at the zoo

TEC - docks near rooms

TEC - Crocks in ponds

Bumpy roads

From Otis: San Ignacio Lizard Farm and Ka'ax Tun Park

From Otis, one of our recent visitors. This is what we are encouraging our guests to help us with, seeing Belize through their eyes. (Thanks so much Otis, you are great!)

Visiting the lizards (iguanas) was pretty fun. If you poke your hand towards the baby iguanas' tummies they will whip their tail fast at your hand. The grown ups will puff up and fight each other for territory. I liked Moonracer Farms. There is no electricity and it's fun there. I saw army ants. The army ants can kill scorpions and even a chicken and bigger. They are powerful and scary. My dad lifted me over one of their marching lines and we drove over a big line in the truck. And you just have to love Marge's cooking. You have to try it. You're going to love it.

We went to a jungle park with caves and vines you could climb up. My dad wouldn't let me climb very far because I can't climb but there was a boy named Melver who could climb super high. But his dad climbed higher and higher, all the way up the cliff. In Marge's outdoor kitchen, Melver can climb up to the rafters and walk on them and higher. There are caves you can go into. There are pottery shards in many of the caves that the Mayans left. There are really big creepy crawlies you're going to have to watch out for, like spiders and bats. The bats eat fruit so don't worry about them. Tom has a machete. It is really light and sharp. I got to try chopping down a tree with it. The rest you have to discover for yourself.

Sofia at San Ignacio Lizard Farm

Baby Green Iguanas

Mayan Pottery Shards

Otis Climbing

Melver's Dad (Julio) Climbing

Julio, Tom & Marge

Emerging butterfly

A few days ago, we noticed a wiggling cocoon on one of the palapa posts. As I was standing and talking to Julio a day or two later, I noticed that the top of the cocoon had broken and the butterfly was coming out. Here are the pictures, in order, of the butterfly emerging.

Red legged honeycreeper

We found this little bird on the path between the cabins. It had trouble staying upright, couldn't hop or perch, and was a little twitchy. Because of its long bill and green feathers, we originally thought it was some sort of hummingbird, but eventually determined that it was too big. I posted pictures on FaceBook, which were shared by our nature-loving friends, and we found out that it was a juvenile red legged honeycreeper.

We put it in a bucket so it was away from drafts and fed it sugar water and squished papaya. Within a day, it was hopping around and eating on its own, with the favorite foods being papaya and very ripe banana. I made sure to keep the dogs in the house and just left it perched a table in the kitchen with a good supply of papaya, banana, and water. It didn't move much for a few days, and then started hopping around the table and sometimes fluttering to the floor. In about a week, its feathers had grown, and I went out one day to start lunch, and it was gone. We're pretty sure it flew the coop since no predators could get it in the kitchen, and we didn't find it fluttering around on the floor or outside the kitchen. Now we're keeping our eyes out for a tamer-than-usual honeycreeper, although they seem to like to stay higher in the trees, so it's likely we'll never see it again.

TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice 2012 Winner!

Just checked our TripAdvisor listing and found out we're a Travelers' Choice 2012 Winner in the top 25 B&Bs in Central and South America. A big thank you to all of our guests who wrote their wonderful and much appreciated reviews!

Click here to see our TripAdvisor listing.

Merry Christmas - 2011

Merry Christmas to everyone. We had a nice day, we even got out for a relaxing walk in the jungle. Our present was this "little" critter this evening in the dining room (shown next to Marge's foot).

The Christmas Xate

While we have lots of pines in the Mountain Pine Ridge, none of them are Christmas tree calibre. So, we decided to decorate one of our local palms, the Xate, along with a black orchid (the Belize national flower) and a dead stick. This is the result...which we like! Our friends Erik and Rhea understand the icicles on a palm picture, but for the rest of us, it's just pretty! And we've kept the horse theme going from our life it the US.

The Ponies have a Barn!

We finished our barn project in record time...less than 2 weeks from start to finish! A week ago Monday, Tom and Julio started harvesting trees and digging the holes to plant the corner posts and put up the framework. By the end of the week, they were harvesting the cohune leaf for the roof, and on Saturday we had a barnraising party with all of Julio's family and a bunch of friends from 7 Miles.

The men and boys went up on the roof framework to tie on the thatch, and the women stayed on the ground to pass the palm fronds up to the men.

Even Odaly was hauling the leaves up, and this isn't as easy as it looks. The palm is heavier than you would expect since it's not dry, and climbing up and down the ladder with an unwieldy weight isn't easy. I ended up having to put down the camera and my cooking utensils and doing this job on Monday, and I have to admit I was a little bit sore the next day.


Most of the job was done on Saturday, and by Monday lunchtime Julio and Angel were tying down the roof cap. We cheated a little and used some old zinc roofing we had taken from one of the cabins because it leaked, but we didn't think the horses would mind that their roof isn't totally authentic.

On Tuesday Tom and Julio turned the barn into four stalls with feed bowls installed on stumps in the four outside corners...and on Tuesday afternoon, the horses had their first dinner in their new home.

The individual horses haven't taken to the barn (or not taken to it, as the case may be) as I would have expected. Nessa, the oldest of the four and the mother of Elphie and Lodo, wants nothing to do with it. She won't even go in a stall. This doesn't surprise us because we know Ness doesn't like change, but it does surprise us because she's one of those horses who just likes to keep herself clean, and we thought that giving her a place to get out of the rain or sun would have made her happy. Glinda, who is basically a feral pony and who always likes to be in charge of the other horses, doesn't go into a stall on her own, but once there she's pretty happy to just chill in her own space. Elphie and Lodo, neither of whom has ever seen a barn, think it's the coolest thing ever, and we'll look out during the day and see them standing in or around the barn even when they could be out grazing with Glin and Ness. We expected them to be the ones that wanted nothing to do with it, and they both seem to like it. This isn't the first time we've guessed wrong about our horses' reactions to things, and, in fact, I think I'm almost always wrong so I don't know why I thought this time would be any different.

Cooking with Wood

I've been using the firehearth quite a bit for the past few weeks, and am finding that, as warned, I love it. Part of me loves it because I'm cheap and butane is very expensive here, and my gas range has been getting a lot less use. Wood is free; we live in the jungle.

Part of me loves it because it's a little bit of a challenge to learn to cook with wood. First, I have to figure out how to make a fire, and make it the heat I want. I'm learning things like sometimes the best way to make a fire a little bit cooler is to add another stick of wood. It's somewhat counterintuitive, but it works. I'm also learning to have a little bit of patience, which goes against my natural tendencies. I can't just twist a knob and make the stove hotter and make whatever I'm cooking get done faster. Instead, I have to fiddle with the fire to make it hotter or cooler, and then wait while the heat of the comal adjusts. This usually involves shuffling around whatever I happen to be cooking so that the stuff that should cook quicker is over a hotter part of the fire, and the stuff that should cook slower is over a cooler part. All of this works, but none of it is instantaneous. And, I'm learning that lots of stuff just cooks better over wood heat for some reason, and that even though I feel a little out of control and can't make the instant adjustments I want to make, the results are worth the wait.

I also like it for a few random reasons. For example, I almost always leave my tea kettle on the comal, so whenever I want a cup of tea, the water is already hot and I don't have to wait for it to boil. [I know, we're back at that patience issue.] I also love cooking scrambled eggs on it; they're almost creamy when they're cooked over the slow even heat. And, I like the smell of the woodsmoke. I think it makes me remember all the camping trips I've been on, throughout my life, where I always thought that food tasted better when you were camping because you were so hungry from being active all day. Now, I know that food really does taste better when cooked over a wood fire. And, while I sort of hate to admit it, I like to play with fire.

Speaking of wood fires, we're still working on the wood fired clay oven. We're using local clay, and adding it layer by layer, and it takes forever to dry and it cracks. Then we add another layer to the top, wait for it to crack and dry, and then add another. Julio tells me we're almost at the stage where we can test it out...and then I'll see what I like about baking in a wood fired clay oven as compared to my traditional oven!

I've been surprised how many people have stopped by just to see the firehearth. It's become a tourist attraction in itself. Even better, we had one of our native Belizean neighbors stop over to see what kind of rocks and clay we used, and to ask where we got the rocks and the white mal. Tom told him, and asked why he wanted to know. The answer: his wife now wants a firehearth just like mine!

Living with the Maya

We just found this yesterday in the ankle deep mud of one of our horse paddocks. [Note to NY friends: the mud here actually has a bottom!] Even though we fairly frequently find random artifacts, it's still a thrill to find something this well preserved, that you know has been lying just underground for possibly up to 1000 years.

We've heard differing opinions as to what it is. It looks like a spearhead, but it could also be some sort of farming implement. I asked a archeologist friend, and he said they just call them "bifaces," because they can't agree on what they are either.

As to the ethics of picking it up, washing it off, and bringing it in the house - we just figure that it isn't doing anybody any good lying in the mud, probably eventually to be broken when a horse steps on it as it's balanced over a rock or hard root. We understand that all artifacts are the property of Belize, and we would never try to sell it or somehow benefit from finding it. And, they're all over the place anyway. We found this yesterday, and today as I was picking up dropped avocados from under the tree, I found the butt end of a similar artifact, broken about halfway up. And we weren't even looking for either of these finds!

The 2011 project

It seems like every fall when things are quiet around here, we build something.  This year, after letting the horses run like wild things for four and a half years, the project is a small stable.  We're using the same basic design as we did for the first palapa and the kitchen/dining room palapa, but it's much smaller - just enough room for four small stalls for our four small horses.  In the US, with our big thoroughbreds and saddlebreds, I never would have considered such small stalls, but here, with the horses being ponies who live outside 99% of the time, the small stalls will be fine for bringing them in to eat, leaving them overnight if we want them to be clean in the morning, or containing one who gets hurt...although fortunately that doesn't happen much around here.  We're building the stable inside one of the pastures, so we will most likely just leave them in that pasture at night and leave the stall doors open so they can decide if they want to go in and get out of the weather...and we'll try not to let it hurt our feelings when they choose to stand outside in the rain and the mud.

The new firehearth and oven, continued

We (well, Julio) have now started building the clay oven, and I've cooked on the firehearth. The pictures tell the story.

Julio making the mold for the clay oven.



Julio mixing the clay for the clay oven. We dug the clay out
of a pit in the nearby village of 7 Miles.



Julio applying the first layer of clay.

First layer of clay on the frame. Julio wants to add another
 layer of clay, and make the mouth of the oven perfectly
 square and flat so we can block it to keep the heat in
when baking.

The lizards aren't part of the construction. They were there
 because we were digging through the pile of wood seen
 behind the oven, and we disturbed some snakes which were
looking for a snack, and these lizards didn't want to be
that snack.

First fire! Boiling a pot of water. Very exciting.

First stew cooking on the comal. It was yummy!

First attempt at baking bread. I put the hot coals on top of
the comal, put the bread in, and blocked the door. Unfortunately
 the oven wasn't hot enough and the top of the bread cooked but
 the bottom didn't, so the gibnuts had mushy bread for
breakfast today. I use the palm broom, made with green leaves
from the give-and-take tree, to sweep the hot ashes out
 of the inside before putting the bread in the "oven."

Building a firehearth

Firehearths have been used here in Central America at least since the time of the Maya and are still used in various forms throughout this region. Many of our neighbors have them but they usually build them in 55 gallon drums or up on a stand (table) made from very strong lumber.

Marge, Julio, Lea, and Ian behind the finished firehearth, front side.

The firehearth, or fogon, is made from specific local rocks and white mal (limestone clay). There is usually a U shaped area where the fire is lit and the coals rest for the cooking. A grate or flat piece of steel (the comal or plancha) is then placed over top to use as the cooking surface like a combination of a stove top and griddle; perfect for putting pots for cooking wherever the heat is best for cooking, or to lay flat tortillas – easy to place on and pull off the flat surface with no need for other cooking pans.

As the fire burns, the rocks around and beneath the fire get hot so you can get a more even heat as you take the fire out from under the comal. You can also clean out the entire area under the comal after everything is good and hot, put the fire on top of the comal, and use the inside area as an oven.

As Marge and some of the local women use the firehearth (and, yes, that is Marge, not ME – way too complicated of a way to cook for my very limited cooking abilities) we will post pictures on how the firehearth is used. At this point I will show how we built the hearth.

Steps to building a local firehearth:

1. Locate a local person that knows how to build a firehearth.
The tour guide that we use most often for our guests is Gonzo. His family has a kitchen where they feed tourists after they do the tour of Chechem Ha Cave. We have been there a number of times and are friends with Gonzo’s mother Lea. We have eaten lunch there and have loved the flavor of the food. Marge, always looking at how food is prepared, saw Lea’s firehearth a few years ago and loved the idea of cooking over a wood fire. Over the years, as we have visited, Marge has talked with Lea and Lea agreed to help us make our firehearth when we were ready.

2. Decide on the design of your firehearth and get a list of materials to prepare for construction.
Marge, Julio, Chuck (our neighbor who would like to make a fire hearth too) and I took a trip to Chechem Ha to look at Lea’s kitchen. We all talked about the size of the cooking area, height of the stove and fire areas, wind directions for the smoke, how to use the stove and oven areas, etc. We then discussed the materials for building what we designed in our heads and Lea told us that all we needed was a lot of a special kind of rock and a specific kind of mal (local limestone-based dirt). That was it!

3. Collect up the rock.
The rock specific for the firehearth is not a solid limestone like what we have in our area. There is a lighter, softer, looks-almost-porous, limestone that can be found in many areas throughout the country. Chechem Ha has a lot around their place but Julio knew that where his family lived in La Gracia had a lot of this type of rock as well, and is a bit closer. So we drove to La Gracia and picked up 4 little pickup loads of rock, driving up the rough Georgeville Road very carefully each time so we didn’t break the truck. Our bonus was we got to visit with some of his family members and have lunch with them a couple of times during this process.

4. Collect up the mal.
We don’t have the special mal that is used for the plastering around here either so when we decided on the day to begin construction, we went to pick up Lea and collect the mal at the in the same trip. There are a couple of embankments alongside the Benque Road going south towards Chechem Ha that have veins of the this material where local people go to collect up bags of it. Julio, Ian (a friend that lives here in Belize part of the year) and I picked up Lea then she showed us the best material to collect for the plastering of the firehearth.

5. Construct with the materials you have.
Some of the rocks have flat sides; some we found that way, some we cut straight using a machete and a small hand maul. We also smoothed some of the sides of the rocks after they were in place using the machete.

Four little pickup trucks of stone to start.

 


Lea and Julio shaping the first rocks




Lea and Tom placing the first rocks



Base filled, Lea mixing "cement" from natural limestone and some
 cement to secure the rocks.





Julio and Lea building it to height and placing the rocks
 for the fire ring. The comal that goes on top of the fire ring is behind Julio.

 

Comal in place, opening for the fire on the far side. Lea and
Tom are planning the platform for the oven.

Lea leveling the fill in the oven platform. Ian waiting for instructions.

Lea leveling a higher level and explaining next steps.

Lea sealing the cracks with more cement.

Oven platform to the left, stove to the right.
Oven platform ready for plaster.



Lea plastering, Marge mixing plaster.

Tom, happy to see that we are making great progress.

Oven platform plastered. Tom cleaning Lea's face because the
plaster splatters when she throws it on the wall, and she can't
wipe it off because her hands are covered with wet plaster.



Ian, Marge, Julio, and Lea all working on final plastering.



Lea putting on the finishing touches.

Lea doing the finishing touches, assisted by Ian mixing
and passing the plaster.

Tom, Marge, Julio, and Lea behind the finished fireheart, backside.