Moonracerfarm Belize

Liz: At Home In The Jungle

2012-02-11T23:38:00.000-05:00

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

2012-02-11T23:10:00.002-05:00

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

2012-02-10T17:36:00.000-05:00

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

2012-02-10T17:25:00.001-05:00

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!

2012-01-17T09:34:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-25T22:38:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-07T22:03:00.002-05:00

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!

2011-10-27T16:25:00.001-05:00

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

2011-10-27T15:49:00.001-05:00

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

2011-10-19T17:28:00.000-05:00

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

2011-10-19T17:16:00.000-05:00

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

2011-09-25T16:36:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-21T16:39:00.003-05:00

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.

New Life for Tinkerbell

2011-09-20T20:54:00.001-05:00

Today was a good day/sad day. First the good – we finished the firehearth for the kitchen (to be in the next blog update). The sad – we said goodbye to Tinkerbell.

For those of you who have not followed our blog from the start, Tinkerbell was the 1991 Ford F250 that we drove from NY to here hauling all of our worldly possessions. She was a great work horse after we got here as well, lumbering over our very bad road with load after load of construction materials and supplies.

We had not renewed the registration nor the insurance for her this year since we were using her so little. In the beginning of August, a local craftsman, Oscar, that makes wood carvings stopped by wondering if we were interested in buying any figures from him. He saw Tinkerbell sitting in the side driveway and asked Julio, “is this truck for sale? I am looking for a truck to haul my carvings around.” We were thinking about selling her before she rotted away too much (or broke on the bad road) so we decided she needed a new life.

From her first days, she hauled 5th wheel trailers from NY to FL for the winter; her 2nd life was with us, making a new life in Belize; her 3rd life, will be hauling artwork around Belize. For us, the recycling of used things here in Belize can’t be beat!

Bid on a Moonracer Farm gift certificate for VT hurricane relief!

2011-09-17T12:17:00.001-05:00

As many of you know, Tom and I have lots of friends and family in Vermont, which was recently devastated by Hurricane Irene. Because we just want to help, and because we appreciate the irony of Hurricane Belt Caribbean residents helping with hurricane relief in New England, we're offering Moonracer Farm gift certificates as auction items to two organizations we like in Vermont, the Green Mountain Horse Association (GMHA) and the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) - VT. You can bid online from anywhere for the NOFA gift certificate on their auction site. GMHA said they'll be putting the auction online, but we haven't seen it yet. In any case, their website is http://www.gmhainc.org/. If you're interested in coming to Belize, this could be a great way to do it - you'll be helping a good cause, and you can write off the expense!

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto...

2011-09-03T22:31:00.000-05:00

I was driving home up the Georgeville Road the other day, chatting with Juana, a woman I picked up with her groceries in Georgeville, and who we frequently give rides to so she can get in and out of the bus-free Georgeville/Chiquibul/Mountain Pine Ridge Road. We saw a guy pushing a bicycle up the hill near the dump, and I asked if we should pick him up. Juana shrugged and said, “See if he needs a ride,” so I slowed down next to him and asked if he wanted to put his bike in the back of the truck and catch a ride. He looked a little puzzled, and said he was only going to the Barton Creek Outpost, and it wasn’t that much further, right? Juana and I looked at each other and in unison said, “You’ve got another four miles on this road, and then another three or four miles from the turnoff.” The guy looked a little surprised, and said that people had told him it was only five miles up the Georgeville Road. Juana and I looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and told him to put his bike in the back of the truck and hop in. He did.

Juana and I continued our chatting until Mile 3, where I dropped Juana and her groceries. We give her rides often enough that when I checked to make sure she had everything she’d put in the back seat, she told me not to worry about it and that if she forgot anything, I could just give it to her next time I saw her. As she got out, she gestured with her head for the guy in the back of the truck to get in the passenger seat she had just vacated. He looked a bit puzzled, and she barked, “We’re at Mile 3. You have a way to go. Get in!” He did.

He and I told each other our names, and he explained that he was from Germany, and on his gap year adventure before he started university. He had flown into Cancun with his bike, and was planning on biking through Central America and into South America, and seeing how far he could get in six to nine months. He had made it from Cancun to San Ignacio in five days, but then his bike broke down and he was probably going to have to order parts from the US, so he was looking for an inexpensive place to stay and had found the Barton Creek Outpost. Since it was “just” five miles up the Georgeville Road, it sounded ideal. I told him that it was a little further than that, but that I could get him at least part of the way there.

You have to understand that the Georgeville Road is in abysmal condition right now. You can’t drive more than about 10mph on it, or parts of your vehicle will start to fall off. Our truck just spent a week at the dealer having the bed welded on, since it was very loud and about to detach. People who live in 7 Miles and only have cars, not trucks, are not able to get their vehicles out to the Western Highway. It’s bad enough that I had to double check with this guy that he was pushing his bike because it was broken, not because the road was so bad that he couldn’t ride. It’s bad.

We chatted as we bounced up the road, and finally reached the Barton Creek turnoff at Mile 5. At this point, I told him that I would drive him as far as the creek, but if the creek was too high from rains in the Mountain Pine Ridge, he was going to have to do the last little bit on his own. He gave me a funny look, but shrugged and agreed. As we drove through Barton Creek, we saw a number of Mennonites, all dressed in their traditional clothing and going about their business. Joe asked if this was normal for Belize, and I shrugged and said that Belize is a pretty free thinking country, and if people want to come here, do their own thing, and live like it’s the 1800’s, that’s their choice. He lapsed into silence and looked at the scenery.

The three miles or so to the creek took a while on the unpaved, one-lane road. When we got to the creek, I stopped and took a look. Despite the rain I’d encountered on the Western Highway on my way home, the creek wasn’t too high, so I told Joe to hang on and I’d take him to the Outpost. As the tires splashed into the creek, he gave me a somewhat panicked look. “What?” I said. “You didn’t think we really had to drive through a creek?” “Um, no, I didn’t really understand what you were talking about,” he said. “I guess this isn’t really what the normal tourists see?” I chuckled. “No,” I said, “we’re just a little off the beaten path.”

As we continued down the track between the creek and the Outpost, he was looking decidedly more nervous. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m really not abducting you and taking you into the deep dark jungle for nefarious purposes.” He gave me a look like he didn’t quite believe me, but at about that time the sign for the Barton Creek Outpost came into view. “See?” I said. “We’re there.”

We pulled in, and Logan, Jim and Jacqueline’s son, greeted us. I told him that I’d brought a camper to them, and asked if his parents were home. They were. Jim took Joe to check him in and give him the Barton Creek Outpost orientation, and Jackie and I took off to catch up on everything since the last time we’d seen each other – which was quite a lot, since we’re both somewhat reclusive. We talked a blue streak for an hour or so, and then, having finished my cup of tea, I needed to get home and Jackie needed to get on with her day. We left Joe reading in the hammock in the camping cabana, with the bike chained underneath, and “good luck” wishes all around.

Moonracer Farm, Guatemala, and Caye Caulker with Margaret

2011-08-30T16:01:00.001-05:00

Tom and I spent last week being tourists as we enjoyed a visit from our friend Margaret, who lives in Virginia. She flew in on Saturday, and we picked her up at the airport and headed to Cheers for lunch. We had thought about doing something on the way between the airport and home, but we were dealing with some vehicle issues so we decided to come home and get that worked out so we could enjoy the rest of the week and act alike real tourists…

…which we did, starting on Sunday morning with a trip to Ka’ax Tun. Julio served as our guide, and we walked, crawled, scrambled, and climbed through the rocks.

We showed Margaret Maya artifacts, climbed through caves and holes in the rocks, hiked along the edges of ravines, and generally worked up an appetite for the delicious burrito lunch Janeth served us when we came out of the jungle.

On Monday morning, we left for Guatemala. Tom and I had originally thought about trying to do it like our guests on a budget like to do, but we decided that since we live here, it wouldn’t cost us any more to drive ourselves in our personal vehicle, and it would be much cooler, quicker, and more convenient than taking the buses. The three of us crossed the border together, then Margaret and I strolled into Melchor to do a little pre-vacation shopping while Tom got the car across the border. I’d left home with only the shoes on my feet, so of course I had to buy a couple more pairs of shoes. I also wanted to pick up a couple of more bras in a style I’d found there that I liked, so I went back to the store where I’d purchased the first couple and started looking through the pile. The store attendant approached and asked if he could help, and I told him I’d purchased a couple of bras a few weeks ago, and was looking to see if they had any more. He immediately reached into the pile, said “This is what you bought, what size?” and handed completely flabbergasted me a few more in the correct size when I answered. Margaret was still tuning in her Spanish ears and hadn’t followed the whole exchange, but when I completed the purchase and explained what had just happened, we were both laughing. I guess they don’t get too many gringas buying underwear off the street, so they remember what we buy!

Tom got the car across the border and came to pick us up, and we headed into La Maquina for lunch at the restaurant owned by the mother of the guide we usually send with our guests to Tikal. We’d warned Margaret that we didn’t really expect fine dining in Guatemala, but we ordered three different things and all were delicious, exceeding our expectations. We were then back on the road and heading for Tikal, and we made the rest of the trip without incident. We checked in to the Tikal Jungle Lodge, and then spent a couple of very pleasant hours at the pool, swimming, reading, and being thoroughly entertained by a young man who was doing an exceedingly good job of amusing himself in the pool. The Jungle Lodge serves dinner from 7 to 9, and because we had to be up at 3:30AM (yes, 3:30 like in the middle of the night) in order to meet the ranger who would take us to Temple IV to see the sunrise, we were there at 7PM sharp and had another good meal, which really surprised us since the food there hadn’t been much more than mediocre the last time we were there.

We set the alarm for 3:30AM, and when it went off we managed to dress ourselves and get out the door to meet the ranger. We were with another family of the parents and their teenaged son, and the six of us followed the ranger through the very dark park, listening to the howler monkeys and other nighttime jungle noises. The ranger got us to the top of Temple IV, and left just as other groups were arriving.

We watched the sun rise, and this time actually got to see a sunrise.

Even though we live in the jungle, and even though we had done this before, it was still an amazing experience to see the sun come up, hear the jungle waking, and watch the temples appear through the mist as it gets light and the mist burns away. And, when it got light, we realized that the family we’d hiked with in the dark was the family with the very entertaining teenaged son, who turned out to be a 16-year old Colombian named David with two very nice parents.

When the sun was fully up, we spent the rest of the morning wandering through the park and seeing the rest of the site. Tom and I had only ever been there on guided tours before, so this time we saw a few things we hadn’t seen because they’re not on the guides’ track.

We saw some wildlife, including an orange breasted falcon, some coatis, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, a couple of trogans, and a few different hawks. It was a beautiful morning and it would have been a nice walk even if we weren’t in a park full of Maya ruins and amazing wildlife!

We got back to the room, got packed, and got on the road to Flores. We stopped in El Remate at a roadside stand for another good meal, although after skipping breakfast we probably would have been happy even if it was barely edible. We then stopped at the new Mundo Maya mall outside of Flores, which all of our friends and neighbors here who have been said we had to do. Unfortunately, coming from the US, it wasn’t quite as impressive to us as it was to them, although I did manage to find a pair of trainers, which I hadn’t been able to do in Belize – which brought me up to four pairs of shoes for the trip!

We pulled into the island town of Flores in the midafternoon, just as thunder was starting to rumble in the distance. Tom and I had put together a list of potential places to stay, but we had no idea how to find any of them in Flores.

And, the streets in Flores are very narrow and all one way, so we decided to park the car and find a place to stay on foot. We popped in and out of a few hotels, checking on prices and accommodations, and had narrowed the list down. We made it down to the waterfront on the west side of the island, when the distant rumbling thunder suddenly became a little more insistent, and we realized that we were about to get wet. We looked up, and the last hotel on our list was right in front of us, so we went in, and found that it was the nicest and least expensive place we had looked at, right on the lake with a balcony perfect for watching the sunset, and all for just fifty quetzals (about $8US) per person for a room with a private bath and a double and a single bed – perfect for the three of us! We checked in, waited for the rain to slow, and then ran back to move the car so we didn’t have to carry our bags so far. We got unpacked, and by then the rain had stopped, so we went out to wander around the very quaint and scenic town. Tom and I needed a few things for the lodge, so we were in and out of the little shops bargaining and pricing things like tablecloths and chair hammocks. Fortunately Margaret is a seamstress, and she grew up with our dining room table, so she was able to ensure that we got a tablecloth that fit. We also found the perfect chair hammock for our dining room, so we were quite pleased with ourselves since we bargained everything we bought down 25 to 30% from the original prices we were quoted.

We stopped for a drink on the waterfront on the way back to the hotel, and then stopped on the street – I think with everybody else in town – to watch the amazing sunset. We had another excellent dinner at an Italian restaurant right next to the hotel, where we were able to not only watch as the light completely disappeared, but also watch the restaurant’s resident cat drink from a shotglass at the bar. And, we had mojitos for 2 for 1 when the price was already low by our usual standards, so we were happy.

Having started the day at 3:30AM, we were in bed early, so we were up early the next day. After a quick breakfast in Flores – also good, but lacking a few things like tea and cream or milk for coffee – we hit the road and started back to Belize for the second leg of our trip. We got checked out of Guatemala and back into Belize without any problems, and stopped in Benque to give our friend Ian the Kindle that Margaret had kindly transported down for him. We found that he was just about to head into Guatemala to meet his son Alex, so we were glad to have caught him. We then headed to Cheers for lunch (yes, that seems to be turning into our place to eat on the Western Highway!) and on to Bravo, where we were leaving the car for its well child checkup while we vacationed on Caye Caulker. Bravo transported us to the water taxi, and we were on our way to the surf side of our vacation.

We had an uneventful ride out to Caye Caulker, and dragged our stuff down the beach to Ignacio’s Beach Cabins, a very basic but also very inexpensive place to stay that is perfectly adequate for people who aren’t spending much time in the room. We stayed in their “suite,” which is really just a larger cabin than the others that has a futon and some other furniture in a sitting room in addition to the bed – as well as a TV (which we didn’t use) and a small fridge, which was great for keeping ice and cold drinks. We hadn’t been out there in over a year, so we caught up with Reuben, and then headed into town to set up a snorkeling tour for the next day.

We bought our cocktail supplies on the way back, and had our own happy hour before heading off to the Sports Bar for dinner and Wednesday night trivia – which we won! We were QUITE pleased with ourselves about that! After the trivia, the guy who runs the contest sat down with us to see where we were from, and we started talking. We asked where he was from, and he said Quebec. We asked if he was from Montreal, and he said no, a small town outside of Montreal. We said the only small town we knew of outside of Montreal was Sutton, where we would go with our friends Del and Vicky to ski and to visit Del’s mother, since he grew up in Sutton. The guy’s eyes got really big, and he asked if we were serious. We said we were, and he started giving us a little quiz to see if we’d really been there. When we passed, he asked us who our friend was and where she lived, and it turns out that he grew up in Sutton and knows Del’s family. They weren’t best buddies or anything, but still…it’s a small, small world.

The next day we went snorkeling with Tsunami tours. Margaret had never been snorkeling, so she was a little apprehensive, but Tom and I assured her that once she started looking at the world under the water she’d forget to be nervous, and the Tsunami crew was great and fixed her up with a life jacket so she didn’t even have to worry about swimming.

We snorkeled Hol Chan, which is always amazing, stopped at Shark Ray Alley to see the sharks and the rays, as well as some turtles, stopped and watched a manatee, and then snorkeled in the Coral Gardens.

We saw a ton of cool fish and enjoyed conversation with some of the other tourists on the boat. We forgot to put on a second coating of sunscreen after being in the water so Margaret ended up with a pretty bad sunburn, and I burned enough to peel, but other than that it was a totally enjoyable day and Margaret agreed that once your face is in the water, you forget the anxiety and just enjoy looking at things you don’t think of as existing outside of aquariums and books. That night we experienced dinner at Wish Willy’s, which a number of our guests had said was a “must try” – and we agree! It’s at the end of a back street, and you eat at some picnic tables set up in a guy’s yard. Dinner is $18BZ for whatever you get, including drinks. You have choices – chicken, fish, lobster, and whatever else he feels like cooking – and all meals come with rice and sautéed veggies, which were very tasty. We had barbequed lobster tails, and while the Caribbean lobsters are smaller than the Maine ones we always at in the US, dinner included two tails each with a really yummy homemade barbeque sauce. It was pouring rain the next night so we didn’t want to walk all the way to the other end of the island again, but Wish Willy’s is definitely on our list of places to eat the next time we head to Caye Caulker.

We’d planned to take the water taxi to San Pedro to show Margaret what Belize is to a lot of people, but after a whole week of lots of physical activity and a day of too much sun on the water, none of us were moving too quickly on Friday morning. Tom and I headed off to the bakery to pick up our traditional Caye Caulker breakfast of ham/cheese/jalapeno pastries and cinnamon rolls, and left Margaret to make the coffee (the other nice thing about the suite was the coffee maker with supplies!).

When we got back, Margaret didn’t feel much like eating, or like going to San Pedro, so we spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon sitting on the cabin’s waterfront deck reading, talking to Reuben, and enjoying the quiet of the south end of the island. We wandered up to the Happy Lobster for ceviche for lunch, and then continued to relax away the rest of the afternoon on the deck. At some point Reuben appeared to inform us that a tropical storm was headed for Belize and that we might want to change our plans for diving on Saturday after seeing Margaret off to the airport, and although we’d checked the news online and seen the weather reports, it was hard to get too wound up about it as we lazed in the sun, looking at the placid Caribbean Sea. However, when we started to think about heading out for dinner around 8PM, we realized that the wind was picking up and we could see lightning and hear thunder coming from the east, and by the time we started out for dinner it was really starting to rain. We went to Rose’s, mostly because it’s at the south end of town and it was raining, and had a lovely and delicious, although expensive by Belize standards, dinner of various seafood entrees, which we shared.

We waited for a break between showers to scurry back to the cabin, and Margaret, who had already purchased a ticket to fly from Caye Caulker to the International Airport at 10:10 the next morning for her 1PM flight, got packed. I was still being a hopeful nincompoop and thinking that maybe the storm would fizzle and we could dive anyway, so I wouldn’t pack…although I then spent a mostly sleepless night, feeling the cabin tremble on its 10-foot legs every time the thunder rumbled or a gust of wind hit it, wondering if it would take any more than a tropical storm force wind to knock the thing off its legs. By morning I had decided that we probably should pack up and head home, and when we watched the Weather Channel in the restaurant while we ate breakfast and they said that the storm had been named Harvey and was heading for Belize, that was definite. The decision was confirmed as we walked back to the cabin along the beach and saw all of the residents pulling their boats onto the beach – and frequently into the streets – and boarding up their windows. We figured that if the residents thought it was worth expending the energy to prepare for a storm, it was probably a good idea for us to get out of their way.

At around 9:30, there was a break in the rain so we grabbed Margaret’s stuff and headed for the airport, which is just a short walk on a path through the mangroves from Ignacio’s. We got there and found that people were still waiting for the 9:10 flight, which was delayed because Tropic Air was about to shut down and was trying to get people off of Ambergris Caye, and they were getting all of those planes filled before heading to Caye Caulker. We tried to get Margaret onto that flight, but it was full, so we then settled in to wait for the 10:10 flight, which was also about an hour late between diversions to where more people needed to be picked up, and being grounded due to gales sweeping through. It was a somewhat tense hour because the guy at the Tropic Air desk was on the phone talking about how soon they were going to stop the island hopper flights, and we were hearing rumors that the International Airport was about to close. The guy at the desk kindly called USAirways so Margaret could talk to them, and they told her that they were still planning to send out their 1PM flight – which was partly reassuring, but partly more stress inducing because Margaret knew she had to get to International in time to make the flight, and it wasn’t at all clear that Tropic was going to be able to get her there…which would have been okay if the USAirways flight wasn’t going, but if it left without Margaret, the next USAirways flight wasn’t until the next Saturday. So, we sat and watched the Weather Channel talk about Irene, which at that point was just a tropical disturbance west of the Caribbean and didn’t even have a name yet, and looked at the unmentioned blob on the radar screen which was about to hit Belize as Tropical Storm Harvey. Tom had to keep telling me to shut up and quit bitching about the Weather Channel (“they are reporting for the US, not the entire world”), and despite the knots in our stomachs, Tom and I kept telling Margaret not to worry because things ALWAYS work out in Belize…and sure enough they did. Margaret’s plane finally took off just about an hour late, and had her to the airport before 11:30 which, although it wasn’t the recommended 2 hours before flight time, was enough time for her to get checked in and get to her plane, which took off early and was one of the last, if not the last, flight to leave before the International Airport closed for part of the afternoon.

Tom and I walked back to the cabin, called to see if the water taxi was still running – it was – and finished throwing our stuff in bags. We went to say goodbye to Reuben, and he offered us a ride “uptown” in his golfcart, since they were going out for some supplies needed for waiting for the storm. We found that the Caye Caulker Water Taxi had shut down, but the San Pedro Express was still running – which was fine with us, since we try not to use CCWT anyway since they stole our camera last time we used them. So, we got our tickets, and after a short wait we were loaded on the boat, which we were told was probably the last one out. We had a smooth if slightly breezy ride back to Belize City, and didn’t see a drop of rain. By the time we got to Belize City, the sun was actually trying to shine. We called Hiram, the service manager at Bravo, and he picked us up in our truck. We took him back to his house in Belize City, and sat for a few minutes filling out the paperwork and paying for the service – which is basically priceless with the type of customer service Bravo provides.

We then set off for home, wondering what all the big deal was about the storm since we didn’t think it was even going to hit Caye Caulker or Belize City. But, about 10 minutes outside of Belmopan, we ran into it, and even though it was just a tropical storm blowing itself out by that point, the rain was hard enough and the wind was strong enough that we couldn’t see well enough to drive and pulled off the road for a little while. Once we had a little bit of visibility again we headed into Belmopan, which we found completely flooded. We drove through the stream that’s usually Forest Drive to our favorite Chinese Fry Chicken place, and ate fried chicken and French fries until the worst of the storm passed and the water level went down a bit. We then continued home, and found that while it had rained a bit closer to San Ignacio, what we saw was probably the worst of the storm that far inland, and the hard rain and high winds were very localized. Tropical Storm Harvey was basically a non-event, even with a direct hit on Belize, and it did nothing more than give us a little drama for the end of our vacation.

Slow tourist season = Vacation time

2011-08-25T10:48:00.003-05:00

Since this is the slow season for us, Marge and I decided it was a good time to take some vacation. Julio has a brother, Poncho, that works down in Placencia, so Julio’s family and I went down for a visit.

Julio’s wife, Janeth, had never been to Placencia and the kids had never really played in the ocean so this was a big adventure. Traveling down in our little Isuzu DMax was a little tight but we managed to get Julio, Janeth, their five kids, and I all inside for the ride down and back. Janeth got to ride shotgun for the entire trip and Julio and I took turns sitting in the back with 4 of the 5 kids, Melvor being one of them – he was small enough to sit on someone’s lap most of the way.

We got two rooms at a local hotel, one for Julio, Janeth and Melvor, and one room for Eric and me. The other two boys stayed with Pancho’s son and Odaly stayed with a cousin.

The first evening I wanted Julio and Janeth to have a nice quiet dinner with no kids since this was the first time they had ever had a chance to eat alone since Eric was born over 14 years ago.

I ventured out with the five kids plus two extras from Pancho’s family to Wendy’s, a nice family restaurant right in Placencia. We had plans to go bowling up in Maya Beach after dinner; however, BWEL was late in filling the butane tanks at the restaurant so dinner took almost 2 hours and we got out too late to bowl.

After dinner we all went back to the hotel to play some dominoes and such, then Pancho took all but Eric, Melvor and I back to his place. The three of us then prepared to go for a night walk on the beach when Julio and Janeth returned. We chatted with them and found out that they couldn’t get dinner at the restaurant that I suggested due to an electrical outage in the middle of the town so they walked all the way north on the sidewalk, then back to the southern point, before finding a nice quiet little place for dinner. So, for all the plans I had in my head for the first night, I had to just chalk it all up to a “Belizean night” – change plans as needed and be flexible! Eric, Melvor and I went for our walk and enjoyed the lapping waves on the shore; and I got to practice talking with Melvor (four years old) in Spanish the entire way.

Eric and I settled in for the night in our room and Eric was happy to be sleeping with A/C (for the first time, I think). He set it to full cold and around 2am I had to turn it down a bit since the two of us were freezing.

The next day we spent doing a bit of fishing, both for the boys

and the girls.

Melvor was fascinated with the starfish he found and actually brought it into the house to show us!

We then spent a couple of hours in the pool, me playing with Melvor in the shallow end, and also hiding coins in the pool for the boys to find.

Our second night we all went out to dinner together, happy and tired after a long day playing in the water and in the sun.

On our way out of town, we made a mandatory stop at Tutti Fruttis just in time, the day before they closed for their own one month vacation! Almost everyone had two cones since the ice cream there is just so good.

It's a wild, wild life

2011-07-26T10:22:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while we think we've pushed back the jungle and we're living in relative civilization. But, every once in a while the jungle pushes back and lets us know that it's all an illusion...like this morning, when we let the dogs out and they ran barking into the jungle. I marched into the jungle, grabbed Kitty (our loaner dog at the moment) and marched her out of the jungle. I put her down, and she ran back into the jungle. Tom went after her, and came out asking if I was blind, because she'd been barking directly at this boa eating an agouti.

The boa had the agouti all the way down and was heading back into deeper jungle in about an hour...but I think I'll be keeping the dogs close to the house for the rest of the day!

Nature Photos

2011-07-24T13:34:00.001-05:00

The end of the dry season has brought out a lot of wildlife around here, and we've been finding all sorts of interesting things.

This gray-headed tananger has been laying 3 eggs at a time, sitting on them, and hatching them for the past 6 weeks or so. This is her third clutch as far as we know. The nest is in a bush right off our porch, so it's easy for us to watch her. One evening when there were babies about ready to fledge in the nest, it started to rain. She brought a leaf big enough to cover the nest and the babies to protect them from the rain - a sort of a tent/blanket for the wee ones.

We found this bug on the rail of our dining room palapa. I thought it was a dead leaf and was about to brush it off when I realized it had legs. It's hard to tell from this picture, but it looks sort of like a praying mantis disguised as a leaf.

Julio found this red-eyed treefrog and brought him into the dining room for a photo shoot. This is only the second one I've seen here, even though they appear in all sorts of logos for resorts and businesses around here. I realized as I was talking to our guests about this little guy that I've now seen as many red-eyed treefrogs here as I have pumas in the wild - 2 of each.

Swingin’ in the breeze in Belize. Or, “What makes you happy?”

2011-07-17T21:40:00.001-05:00

(Zulmi swinging at MRF).

Julio and I have been doing some construction lately and we have been trying to use our scrap wood for some fun projects. Julio came up with making some swings for our restaurant the other day so we cut up three leftover pieces of a very hard tree and made swing seats (basically just put holes in both sides to run a piece of rope through it). We hung up two in the eating area of the palapa restaurant and the guests have loved using them while relaxing before and after dinner.

The neighbor girls have been coming over the past couple of nights to visit since we don’t have any guests and they have been enjoying the swings too. So, since we have one extra seat, I told them I would come over this weekend to put up a swing for them. They ran home and told their father, Julian, about the swing. This morning we heard a chainsaw running for a little bit and then all was quiet the rest of the morning. I was hauling rocks out of the pastures for fill in the back of the kitchen (yes, another blog entry will be coming regarding that project) so I was VERY hot and sweaty come lunch time after digging up and hauling a bunch of wheelbarrows filled with rock.

At lunch time we were relaxing having a nice quiet lunch, me in just my undershorts since my Carhartt shorts were soaking wet with sweat.

(Marixa swinging here)
Marixa and Zulmi came up the driveway, quietly like usual, and called to us. Uh, I was “caught with my shorts down” so to speak! I told them to turn around (in Spanish of course), which they did (this is not unusual here, your living area/private area extends out of the four walls of your house – this is why the custom here is to come up a driveway and call out to someone, and then avert your eyes in case they are not prepared for your visit). I then put my shorts on and they joined us in the palapa, no comments made about me not having my shorts on.

They asked if I had a sparkplug for George (of course I don’t, I don’t even have any extras for me – but what he wanted I later found out was just a deep set socket to put his sparkplug in his motorcycle – how he got it out, I don’t know). They had a few N&L tortilla chips, our favorites with salt and pepper, and some juice and played on the swings. We were done with lunch so I asked them if their father was ready for the swing and they said “yes, he put some poles up”. I was thinking that we would just hang the swing from a tree, but I gathered up the seat, some rope, lighter to sear the ends of the rope after cutting it, and knife and headed over to their house, about 100 yards away.

Upon arrival, I found that Julian had cut down two perfect cabbage bark trees (mancheech in Spanish) for outside supports with very stout Ys, or crotches at the top for the side supports. He told me he had to get a horizontal pole for the ropes to hang from, I told him to wait a sec, I think I had one, left over from building the palapa. I came home, found a 14 foot tree we had left over from last October, and backed it down to their house.

(Jimmy swinging at home). We put it up – PERFECT fit – couldn’t have been planned any better. We cut up some rope, strung up the seat, and the kids were already having a ball when I left.

All I can say is this: All I provided was the seat (a stout stick about 2 feet long), some rope, and an idea. Julian cut some trees from the jungle and put them in the ground. I found a leftover stick for the horizontal, and the kids are HAVING A BLAST!!! I so love living here.

(Anthony swinging at home).

So, what makes you happy?

Belizean Honeymoon for the “Royal Couple”

2011-07-17T17:11:00.001-05:00

Norma and George, our neighbors that we dubbed the “Royal Couple” were married back on April 30th, 2011. For their wedding gift, Marge and I offered them a night here with dinner, breakfast in the morning, and any tour that we offer. So, the evening of June 25th and then June 26th was determined to be the best time for them to come; a weekend for us with no other guests, and since Norma works in San Ignacio from Monday to Saturday every week, a Saturday evening and touring on Sunday worked well for them.

At first Norma and George were thinking about the day tour that we offer to Tikal. However, there were some security issues in Guatemala just after their wedding and the US Embassy issued a travel advisory for US citizens traveling to Guatemala. We informed the couple of this and they decided that they would stay in Belize. We told them about the Actun Tunichil Muknal (ATM) cave tour but George is not a swimmer and Norma is not crazy about caves. After going through all the other tours that we offer, they opted to go to Old Belize to visit the museum and swim at the water park, eat lunch out, and go to the zoo.

On the evening of Saturday, June 25th, Norma and George arrived at around 7pm ready for dinner. Marge made them smoked pork chops with au gratin potatoes which they really enjoyed (and so did we, one of our favorite dishes). Flaming bananas for desert rounded out the meal. Over dinner we caught up on some of the local happenings, who was going on to which school next year, everyone’s jobs, etc.

In the morning, Marge and I were up early, like usual; I fed the horses and prepped the table while Marge made breakfast – banana pancakes. The honeymooners had a nice leisurely meal and we set off to Belize City with dark clouds on the eastern horizon. We drove through a couple of small showers and as the Western Highway twisted and turned, we were alternating between looking at bright sunny skies and dark heavy rain. “The rain must be north of Belize City” was all we kept saying (and hoping). Luck was with us when we arrived at Old Belize, the storms were just north of the city and we had sunshine for our visit to the museum and water park.

Marge and I visited Old Belize back in late 2007 or early 2008 so we looking forward to seeing how much it had changed in the past couple of years. Unfortunately the park has deteriorated over the years. The first time we visited, we had a guide in for the museum; this time it was a self guided stroll through the exhibits, which for us was not a problem since we have been on many tours here before and know most of the contents of most tours. But, if we were tourists coming in looking to learn about Belize and its history, this would not have been a good situation.

All four of us though had a lot of fun looking at and talking about the “old” items that were used by the Maya (like the comal used for cooking tortillas, brooms made from give and take palms, matates used for grinding corn, etc.) and some of the colonial items (like irons for clothes that you put the coals in the metal frame and shut the top, 78rpm records, bikes with little generators that spun as the wheel turned to light the headlamp, horse carriages, etc.). Most of these “old” items are used in our area still today, with the exception of the 78rpm records which have been replaced by MP4s and Ipods.

We then went out to the beach area which is a man-made salt water lagoon. Unfortunately the water slide was broken – no water running down it to keep it slick and the zip line has been taken down. The palapas in the beach area were pretty shabby and the swimming area just seemed a bit run down. It was good to take a dip, and this was George’s first time in salt water.

For lunch we decided to go to Cheers, which is owned by some horse friends of ours. The dark clouds and rain stayed north of us the entire time we were at Old Belize but we hit some rain during our drive west. When we stopped for lunch the rain clouds were moving our way and we got in just into the restaurant just in time, the heavens opened up just after we arrived. No problem though, we were dry while we ate our lunches, and it stayed dry after we were done so we could take a look at the boa, which had just eaten a grackle, in the fig tree at Cheers.

Just as we finished eating, the rain let up and we drove back to the zoo and got to see all the animals without getting rained on. When we arrived at the zoo, Sharon, the zoo director saw us, gave us all hugs, and added us to a personal tour she was giving to some other friends of hers – off to the jaguar area we went!

OK, after living here in the jungle for over four years now, we understand some of the tensions the Belizeans have regarding jaguars. For example, George has lost quite a number of dogs to jaguars since we have lived here and he really doesn’t like the “tigers”. While the locals do see their beauty, they also see them as pet, cattle, and livestock killers, which puts a huge dent in the locals’ pockets when they are trying to make a living.

George was a sport though, we did convince him to get up to see Field Master (who used to be a dog killer, probably because he has no lower teeth), made him roll over, then did a high five with the big guy.

We saw all the animals including the kinkajou (night walker)

and my favorite, the harpy eagle.

As we drove out the front gate, we stopped and picked up a couple of the zoo workers to take to Belmopan; a usual ritual for me when I visit the zoo with tourists at the end of the day.

On the way home we stopped in San Antonio at George’s older sister’s house (Antonia), which also happens to be Norma’s older brother’s house (John). We stopped for a party that Antonia and John were having for their son, Johan (as seen in the previous graduation posting) for his “graduation” from preschool. Marge and I just think that Antonia and John like to have parties for the kids because any excuse is a good excuse to have friends and family over to share food and play games.

Marge and I had a great day with the “Royal Couple” and were happy we were able to help them enjoy their honeymoon tour!

The Perfect Answer

2011-07-14T22:05:00.002-05:00

So we were having a discussion about race with Melver, the four-year-old son of our [Belizean] friends Julio and Janeth. We asked him what race he was, and he gave us a "WTF?" look.

So we said (in Spanish), "Are you a gringo?" "No."

"Are you black?" "No."

"What are you?"

"Soy Bonito." ("I'm a beauty.")

Isn't that the perfect answer? Too bad we don't all feel that way about ourselves.

Commencement Day, 2011

2011-07-11T09:03:00.024-05:00

June 19, 2011 was the day for the Nineteenth Comment Exercise at the San Antonio United Pentecostal School. This is one of the two public schools in San Antonio, the other school is the Catholic School.

Here in Belize, mandatory education starts at about age 5 with Infant I. The students then progress to Infant II, then Standard 1 through 6. At about age 13 graduates from Standard 6 then can continue on to college, what is called high school in the USA; get a job; or go to the Center for Education Training which teaches trades like auto mechanics, tour guiding, hospitality, carpentry, etc.

Hector with his parents, Marta and Julian.

Hector Morales, one of our neighbors, graduated this year with the highest marks in Mathematics. Two of our other neighbors, Wilton and Daisy Ixtecoc also graduated, Wilton taking first in Science. Next year all three will be starting First Form at Eden College in Santa Elena.

After the ceremony, everyone gathered around outside for a bite to eat and talk with their friends and family.

Two of my buddies, Johan and Jimmie hung out with me like they usually do, making sure I don’t get into too much trouble.

Congratulations to all the graduates!!!

Comfortable?

2011-06-17T17:44:00.000-05:00

This is how 15-year old Louis naps in the hammock. He was snuggled up with me, but when I got up he didn't...and this is how he ended up.

I woke him up and helped him out before he could fall and hurt himself.

The Return of the Munchkin

2011-06-17T17:40:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, our smallest gibnut escaped through a small hole in the cage. Tom patched the hole, just in case any other gibnuts could squeeze themselves through, and we set a trap for the fugitive. We didn't have any luck until last night, when he finally fell for a quartered coconut and a mango pit. As Tom, Julio, and Eric moved the trap from outside the cage to the cage door, he jumped up and tried to bite them, but once they had the trap positioned and opened both doors so he could get back into the cage, he made a beeline for the den and his friends.

Apologies...

2011-06-17T17:09:00.000-05:00

...for not blogging for so long, and to all of our guests who have been here since we last blogged. We've just run out of steam, not to mention time, and haven't been able to get summaries of everybody's visits posted on the blog. But, if anybody who has been here would like to send a blog entry about your stay - here, and in the rest of Belize - and a few pictures, we would be delighted to post it.

No email!

2011-05-17T23:32:00.000-05:00

If anybody is trying to contact us and we're not answering, that's because our email is down. We're trying to switch where our website is hosted, and the new host isn't cooperating with the old host, which still hosts our email.

With any luck, we'll be back online in the next day or so...but if you need to reach us, either use FB or try moonracerfarm@live.com.

OUR Royal Wedding – Belizean style – April 30, 2011

2011-05-01T16:19:00.005-05:00

Marge keeps up with the news pretty well using the internet but I don’t spend the time; she updates me with items that are of interest but all the extra fluff, like the royal wedding in the UK, passes right by me, and that is ok with me. When I found out that there was a royal wedding, my immediate thought was it was the wedding that happened yesterday, April 30, 2011; the bride was Norma Canto from San Antonio, Belize; the groom, George Humes, from next door to us.

We were invited to the wedding about a month ago, George came over to hand deliver the invitation. It was great news since George and Norma had been dating for a couple of years. We chatted in the driveway for a few minutes and then it hit me why he was working so hard on his mother’s house for the past few months and had a deadline of the end of April. He had just the front porch to finish, fill the frame with dirt and rocks and pour concrete on top. Our wheelbarrow proceeded him down the driveway with a couple of shovels, he now had tools to move dirt and rocks a bit faster.

The wedding invitation said the ceremony would start at 2pm. We are now pretty used to not knowing what a set time means so we were planning on leaving our house around 1:30pm to get to the church in time. As we were getting ready yesterday, Marixa and Zulmi, George’s nieces from next door, arrived at around 1:25 to see if they could ride in our truck to the ceremony, along with their mother. “Sure, not a problem”. They told us that their mother, Marta, was just finishing her hair so they would wait here at our house while we finished dressing and then they could ride down to their house with us in the car. We arrived at their house, waited for Marta, and as it turned out, about 6 others and we set off for the church, a little over a mile away, at 2pm (of course, I, being uptight about schedules, am thinking “we are late, we are late”, but I am getting a bit more accustomed to things not starting exactly on schedule).

We arrived at the chuch around 2:10, the second car to arrive of about 25 that ended up at the church for the event – of course we were early! We stayed outside the church since there was a nice breeze and watched as everyone arrived. It was great seeing people all dressed up for the occasion.

George was accompanied by his Padrino, Damion, who is his oldest brother since their father is deceased.

The ring bearers/flower girls were very pretty in their suits and dresses.

We had 2 of George’s nephews guarding the front steps.

At around 3:15, some of the men started to joke around that we may have to go out and find another woman who is ready to get married since everything was ready in the church and for the reception! (Men are the same all around the world).

The bride finally arrived in a vehicle with balloons on it around 3:30 and everyone went into the church for the ceremony.

There was a bridesmaid that entered before the bride to cut the path making it ready for the bride to enter.

The ring bearers were following.

Norma, the bride, of course was beautiful. She was escorted down the aisle by her father, Juan Canto.

The ceremony was nice with advice given to the newlyweds with some light humor with a lot of meaning. The pastor put a double looped cord around Norma and George’s necks tying them together for life.

Rings were exchanged and then the pastor needed help to get George to kiss the bride, so the entire congregation had to yell,”BESO, BESO, BESO” (Kiss, Kiss, Kiss). Finally, George gave up trying to hold out and kissed the bride.

At the weddings here in Belize, the marriage certificate is signed at the end of the ceremony, so George and his new wife, Norma, had to sign for the first time as a married couple.

The bride and groom then walked out of the church as husband and wife!

As Marge and I were walking out of the church we were surprised to get a message that Norma and George wanted us to drive them back to George’s mother’s house for the reception; had I known that, I would have washed the car. So, our little truck became the limo back to the wedding reception with me driving, George’s oldest sister Marta in the front seat with me, the newlyweds in the back seat, and then about 12 people – including Marge – in the back of the truck. I drove very slowly since we were so loaded down, the road is very bumpy, and there are still some very deep ponds in sections due to our one annual dry season shower we got the other day.

Norma and George then took the traditional path to “their” house (George’s mother’s really, George will be building their own house soon).

As they neared the house, they passed under a large paper machete bell….

George pulled the string, and confetti showered down on both of them.

Norma and George on their porch.

…and with the ring bearers.

Congratulations Norma and George!!!

Cortes blossoms

2011-03-22T23:28:00.001-05:00

Fall is here again for us. This is the time of year that the trees shed their leaves and go dormant during the dry season. However, many trees blossom this time of year and show their brilliant colors, if only for a few short days. This is the Cortes tree that towers over our house. The Cortes is a VERY hard wood, fires can't even burn them down. We have one that has been laying in the horse pasture for the four years that we have been here, probably at least another 4 before we got here, and it has about 1/4 inch of rot on it and still weighs a ton. Any other tree would be almost gone by now.

The Cortes blooms once per year and can be seen from miles around. We can spot our particular tree from about 2 miles down the road.

Adventures of Flat Ariana!

2011-03-09T23:32:00.000-05:00

FLAT ARIANA

TRAVELS TO BELIZE, CENTRAL AMERICA

FEBRUARY TO MARCH, 2011

Hi friends, I am Flat Ariana and this is a story about my travels to the country of Belize. My hosts were Marge and Tom Gallagher, friends of my parents who moved to Belize in January 2007. They offered to host me so that I could see parts of the world that I have never seen and bring back some of my travel experiences to share with all of you.

Traveling envelope

I posted myself on February 5, 2011 in Webster, NY. Prior to sealing my envelope I stuffed myself with pancakes and tortillas, nice flat food so that I wouldn’t make the envelope too fat. I traveled air mail (par avion) for a total one way ticket of US$.98 and since I didn’t have any luggage to claim I got there without delay. I landed at the Philip Goldson International Airport, located in Ladyville, just north of Belize City around February 10 and then traveled 75 miles by truck to San Ignacio, a town near the border of Guatemala.

Welcome to Belize

I waited a few days for Tom to come to his post office box to get me. He doesn’t come to town too much but it was a good time to rest and get used to the heat. When Tom got me, he was happily surprised and had me meet the postmaster. It felt really good to get out of the cramped box and finally stretch my legs!

Post Office box

Post Office in San Ignacio

Since Tom was in town, we went to the market to get some fruits and vegetables. The market here is different than going to Wegmans. First off, we go out of the truck and walked up to this nice cement booth that had some Spanish women in it. There were no walls or windows, it was just out in the open! Tom spoke in Spanish with Lucy, the vendor and friend that helps him pick out just the right papayas, pineapples, chochos, starfruit, and macal. There are so many different things to find here, I didn’t know what many of the things were.

Lucy at the market

We went back to Marge and Tom’s place which is a little spot in the middle of the jungle for tourists to visit. I wasn’t sure what to expect since they don’t have electric and they are in the middle of the jungle. The house they live in is kind of small, about 22 feet wide by 30 feet long. It has only two rooms, one is like a family room and the other is their bedroom. They also have two bathrooms and two porches that have screens to keep the bugs out. Their back door is open all the time so their dogs can go in and out but there is a tall strong fence around the dog yard so the jaguars don’t eat the dogs at night.

The house for the guests is just the same, only there are 2 bedrooms, one in the front, and one in the back of the house and there is no dog yard. The louvered windows are open all the time; they never shut them, and they leave the doors open all the time too – what a nice change from the cold winter we have been having.

Guest house

Guest bed – sapodilla wood (from the chicle – gum tree)

Hanging out in my hammock

Since Marge and Tom are kind of busy this time of year I got to go out touring with the guests. Marge and Tom have been on all the tours so they know all about them but they stay home to work at their place or go out to run errands most days. (I am so glad they have guests, it would be kind of boring just watching them work every day).

My first day of touring was with Lauren and Scott, a wonderful young couple living in California. We went canoeing on the Macal River, where we had lots of jungle on both sides of the river. We saw huge iguanas, insect eating bats, and even a tayra.

Canoeing in the Macal River

We then went to the Xunantunich (Stone Lady in Mayan) archeological site, used from 650AD to 1000AD, which is right on the border of Guatemala. The Maya civilization flourished from Mexico all the way down to Costa Rica from 1,000BC to 1,500AD. There are many pyramids and Maya buildings all throughout Belize and Central America but only some have been reconstructed.

Welcome to Xunantunich

We climbed up to the top of El Castillo (The Castle), the largest temple at this site, and could see for miles around. There were all sorts of carvings that the Maya people made to decorate the temples. I couldn’t believe they did all the stone work over 1000 years ago without any power tools and there is no evidence that they even used the wheel to move things around!

Face of El Castillo

View from on top of El Castillo

I was very hungry after so much canoeing, climbing, and just looking around and I had to have something to eat so we went out for a bite to eat. I had a big burrito which is a tortilla filled with refried beans, chicken, salsa, covered in cheese and sour cream – yum, so much better than a Big Mac!

Eating burrito

Lauren and Scott took me horseback riding with them through the jungle one day. We rode through thick jungle and got to learn about the medicinal uses of the plants and trees, which trees were good for lumber (like the sapodilla tree, the sap was used for making chicle gum and the wood is great for lumber, like my bed). Joe, our guide grew up in the jungle and learned how to live here from his ancestors, using everything in the jungle to survive.

We stopped for lunch at Big Rock, a waterfall in the middle of the jungle, for a swim and got to jump off the big rocks into the deep pools to get cooled off.

Big Rock

We then went to another old Maya site called Caracol (snail). This is the largest Maya site excavated in Belize. The stairs on the temples are very high and narrow so you have to watch your step and be careful not to slip since there are no hand rails (I had to be extra careful not to slip into some of the cracks in the floor). I felt so honored to be able to climb the pyramids since back in the Mayan times only the rulers and priests were allowed in these areas, and the common people had to work in the fields to produce food for the ruling class. Back in those days there were about 1 million people living in Belize and most of the jungle was cleared farmland (hard to believe since a lot is now high jungle). Currently there are about 300,000 people living in Belize, and most of them are living in towns or cities.

View from Ca’ana

There were some interesting carvings in the fronts of these temples too; serpents, deer, jaguar faces, bats, and birds, all animals sacred to the Maya and each had their own meaning. For example the jaguar is a sign of power and wealth so the rulers would wear garments made from the hide of a jaguar and have the head of the jaguar on top of their head, kind of like the American Indians used to do with deer and bear pelts.

Carvings in front of temple

We got to go for a dip at Rio On Pools at the end of the day, a perfect way to cool off and relax before heading home.

Rio On Pools

Marge cooked dinner for me most nights in her kitchen that is not attached to her house. Since it is hot most of the time here in the jungle (Tom and Marge have not had the temperature go below 50 in the past 4 years) it is nice to have the hot cooking in a nice open building. Tom’s friends made them this palapa for cooking and eating and it stays nice and cool.

Palapa restaurant

Marge also likes it since the birds can fly in any time they wish to visit while she is cooking. (Oh, and as you can see, sometimes Marge is a little grumpy in the morning, but when she wakes up after her morning tea, homemade granola and yogurt, she gets more fun to be around).

Marge cooking

Nicole, a 10-year old from Utah, came while I was in Belize and I got to go to Green Hills Butterfly Ranch with her. We learned all about the different stages of butterflies. We watched them come out of the cocoons early in the morning and they hung out for hours drying and stretching their wings until they could fly.

Butterflies drying their wings

Butterflies usually live three to four months before they die. During that time, they lay their eggs on leaves that the little caterpillars will like to eat (like banana leaves) so that when the eggs hatch they can start eating right away.

Butterflies on flowers

Nicole and I then went canoeing into Barton Creek Cave. It was very dark and hard to take good pictures since our camera didn’t work well when we used the spotlight on the formations that were in the distance.

Barton Creek Entrance

We did get up close to some curtain formations and Nicole’s dad, Zef, held me up to get a good close look at them. The formations in the caves develop from water that drips from the ground over our heads and the minerals in the water are left behind to make the stalagmites (spikes sticking up from the ground), stalactites (like icicles from the ceiling), columns (when the stalagmites and stalactites join together), curtains (since they look like they are made from fabric), and many others. It takes about 100 years for 1 centimeter of the formations to grow.

Barton Creek curtains

It was nice to be heading out back into the sunshine at the end of the tour.

Barton Creek exit

One day I went traveling around with Tom and his guests, Lindsay and Julian, to do some errands and we went to a town called Spanish Lookout. To get there we had to cross a river that only had a hand crank ferry. Only three cars can cross at one time and there is a man who cranks the ferry back and forth all day long when people and cars want to cross.

Ferry to Spanish Lookout

Ferry crank

Another day, Tom had to visit with a friend of his and he happened to be working with a crew of men building a house. When houses are built here, they are not very big and complicated like in the United States since it never really gets cold. There is no snow or ice and most people spend a lot of their days outside.

Building local house

I got to hammer a few nails into a sapodilla post, remember the ones for my bed? The wood is so hard we had to drill holes into the post prior to driving the nails, and once I started a nail I could not pull it out even if I bent it. If I bent the nail, I had to cut it off and start a new one!

Driving nails

One of the favorite tours that I got to go on was to a Maya ceremonial cave called Actun Tunichil Muknal. We hiked about 2 miles to the mouth of the cave, swam into the beginning and then waded in the river with our helmets on in the dark. We turned out all the headlights at one point to see how dark complete darkeness was. I couldn’t even see my hand right in front of my face!

ATM going in

There were all sorts of neat formations, some like in Barton Creek Cave. I was really glad I had my laminated dress on so that I didn’t get wet!

ATM formation

We then climbed out of the river and up onto the rocks to see where the Mayas did their ceremonies inside the caves.

ATM climbing out of river

We saw some really cool pots that were used to bring offerings to the gods; this was to help the crops grow, make it rain, cure people from sicknesses, and all the other things that the gods controlled.

ATM pot

There are also human sacrifices in the caves so there are skulls and bones. I got a really nice close look at this guy!

ATM skull

One skeleton was almost all intact. It is covered over in a limestone coating that has helped preserve it in place.

ATM maiden

One set of guests took me over to Guatemala to visit an archeological site called Tikal. This site was really big the temples were very tall, much taller than the temples in Belize, but not as big at the bases. In one area the archeologists have rebuilt a plaza and put some thatch huts up like in the old days.

Tikal plaza

Tikal tall temple

A visit to the Belize Zoo was also a lot of fun. We got to see a lot of the animals that are in the wild here in Belize. This zoo is a little different than a zoo in the United States. You have to be careful not to put your hands and fingers in the cages since the cages are very close to the walkways. Here are some of the animals we got to see.

Boa constrictor

Tapir (the national animal)

Crocodile (wild, not in a cage)

Aracari (small toucan)

White lipped Peccaries (they smell nasty and are vicious!)

Puma (also known as red lion, cougar, mountain lion)

Howler Monkey (we heard these at night at Moonracer Farm, they sound like dinosaurs)

Jaguar (his name is Jr. Buddy and we got to be very close friends. The books are about Junior Buddy and the Zoo.)

Crocodile (this one is in a cage – boy he has big teeth!)

Harpy Eagle (he wanted to eat me)

Red-Lored Parrot (we saw these a lot in the jungle flying overhead in large flocks)

Scarlet Macaw

At the end of my stay in Belize, Tom took me to the nearest town, the village of 7 Mile, to meet Bernel Ruano, the son of Tom’s good friend Julio. Julio and Tom work together a lot building things like the kitchen palapa. Bernel took me to school with him and he made a Flat Bernel to help me get to know the other kids in the class.

Bernel in class

I also got to talk with the teacher. She was very nice.

Bernel and teacher

All classes are taught in English so I could understand everything. One of the biggest differences between our schools is there is no electricity at all. Also the doors all open out into a courtyard and there are no halls. The windows had to be open all the time so we could read and write. We walked to school in the morning, home again for lunch, then back to school for afternoon classes, then home again at the end of the day. It took about 10 minutes on the dirt road each way. Some kids had bikes to go back and forth but there were no buses.

School with logo and bikes

School courtyard

I got to meet Bernel’s brothers and sister. They were very nice and liked meeting me. They all smiled and thought I was on a great adventure.

Last year’s picture of Bernel’s brothers and sister. Bernel is on the right

Bernel’s youngest brother Melver was fun to play with too. He only speaks Spanish but I am sure he will pick up English very fast since everyone else in his family can speak English.

Melver

My final adventure was with Bernel to a park called Ka’ax Tun, or Rocky Mountain in Mayan. His father has worked very hard over the past 10 years to make this park to help educate school kids like me about ecology and how to take good care of the earth. We went out on the trails and then climbed on the vines. Bernel was a pro as you can see in the photos.

Bernel coming down vines

At one place Bernel jumped out off the rocks, caught a vine, swung around a couple of times and then came down. Tom was there to catch him in case he missed but he was fine. I can’t wait to come back to Ka’ax Tun to go in more of the caves and crevices!

Bernel vine jumping

I am so sad I have to leave Belize. Since it was a long, lonely journey to get here, Bernel asked if he could help keep me company on the trip home. I told him about only eating flat foods while we travel and he said he was fine with that, so Tom packaged us both up and sent us back to Mrs. Topping’s 3rd Grade Class.

Thanks For Choosing Belize!

Hopefully my classmates can help Bernel have some adventures with me when I return and then Tom can show Bernel and his class some of what we do up in New York State!

Adios Amigos!!! Good bye friends – I am off on my adventure home!!!!

My Apologies...

2011-03-07T18:08:00.000-05:00

...for such a long delay between blog entries. We were back to work with back to back guests ten days after my surgery, and when I had time not taking care of our guests, and it came down to a decision between blogging and napping...well, napping usually won.

Now, we've just come off a three day break, and although we have guests here again for a few solid weeks starting tonight, I'm getting much of my usual energy back - so back to blogging!

Sara & Casey

2011-03-07T18:04:00.002-05:00

Tom did the pickup at the airport for Sara and Casey from Vermont. They had planned this vacation almost a year ago, wanting to make sure they could do what they wanted for their belated honeymoon after getting married at the end of October. Although Milka and Lovre had arrived earlier at the airport, they went cave tubing with Selmo and the timing worked out perfectly so that Tom and Selmo met at the end of the Georgeville Road to bring all four guests up the road together.

On their first day here, Sara and Casey went to ATM with Gonzo and Carlos and the women from New York City. I had to laugh, because Sara was as offended as I would have been by the attitudes of the New York City women who wanted all the comforts and convenience of city living in the jungles of Belize. Women from Upstate New York and Vermont are just different animals than women from The City!

The next day, while Milka and Lovre went to Caracol, Casey and Sara took a day trip to Tikal. They were impressed with the site, and found climbing the temples at Tikal more strenuous than touring ATM! They remarked on how nice it is that you can actually climb the temples and really see everything inside and out, despite the fact that it’s inherently dangerous because you’re on top of very tall piles of rock without guardrails, and with very steep almost ladder-like steps – if you’re lucky, and if not it’s just the standard temple steps.

After two days of high-impact adventures, Sara and Casey had scheduled a down day to they could do what you’re supposed to do on vacation and rest. Casey actually rested, and hung around the farm doing a little bit of travel laundry and getting some hammock time. Sara wanted to get a taste of what it’s like to live in Belize, so she went with Tom to take Milka and Lovre into San Ignacio to catch the bus, and then went shopping in Spanish Lookout. She remarked that Spanish Lookout is “different,” but was surprised by how much you can find there if you know where to look. Sara and Tom were home for a late lunch, bringing barbequed chicken and flour tortillas home from one of the street side vendors in Santa Elena.

For their last full day at Moonracer Farm, Casey and Sara decided to tour Ka’ax Tun. We have not taken any guests there since Hurricane Richard in October, and Tom wasn’t sure what they would find because he knew that while Julio had been into the park, there hadn’t been any major cleanup effort. They found that a lot of big trees are down, and in one spot a falling tree knocked a large boulder loose, and that boulder is now blocking one of the trails. But, everything was passable, so they were able to see all of the highpoints of the park. Tom did return with some sad news, however – a white collared manakin who had a lekking spot right off the trail, and who was frequently there doing his little manakin dance, became a meal for a hawk. The lekking spot is growing over, and all that remained of the bird were some feathers.

Tom did Sara and Casey’s transfer to the water taxi the next day. They wanted to catch a 12:15 water taxi to San Pedro, but wanted to stop at Sak Tunich for gifts, Running W to pick up some meat to cook in the kitchenette in San Pedro, and the Belize Zoo. They managed to squeeze all three stops in, although Tom said they were a little rushed at the Zoo even though they left here shortly after 8AM. But, they made it to the water taxi with perfect timing, bought their tickets, and set off for the next leg of their Belize adventure.

Milka & Lovre

2011-03-07T18:03:00.000-05:00

After the birders left, our cabin didn’t stay empty for long since we had two couples coming in that same day. One couple, Milka and Lovre from Maryland, arrived at the International Airport fairly early, so Selmo did the pickup at airport and took them cave tubing. Tom did the later airport pickup, and the timing worked out so that he met Selmo at the end of the Georgeville Road and saved him the ride all the way up here and back to drop off Milka and Lovre.

The next day our four guests went to ATM with Gonzo and Carlos. They had a really good time, despite sharing the tour with a couple of women from New York City who weren’t quite up to the rugged adventure, and, in fact, couldn’t even believe that our guests were staying at a place with no electricity. How do you dry your hair in the morning?!?

On their final day they went to Caracol with Selmo. Milka and Lovre were the only guests who went, so they had a private tour of the Caracol site, as well as of Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Pools. They returned shortly before dark, and the ftour of us hung out in the kitchen while I did some prep work for dinner and we waited for the Tikal travelers to return.

Although they’ve lived in Maryland for over 20 years, Milka and Lovre are originally from Croatia. They moved to the US after they were married and their oldest son was born, so they have an adult’s perspective on life in Croatia. They felt very comfortable in Belize, and as we talked we realized it is because a lot of the things that are done here and the way people live is very similar to rural Croatia twenty years ago – no electricity, few cars, subsistence farming, and a relaxed attitude of hard work. Tom and I talked about some of the things that surprised us when we moved here, and Lovre just smiled and said “Of course that’s how it is.”

Milka and Lovre got a ride from Tom into San Ignacio, and took the bus to Belize City where they caught a water taxi to San Pedro for the next part of the trip. Sara and Casey, our other guests at the time, were also going to San Pedro so the four of them made plans to meet out there. It no longer surprises us that visitors’ paths cross so frequently here – it’s just the way it works.

Nancy, Denny, Joan, & Larry

2011-03-07T17:57:00.002-05:00

Our next guests, two couples from Massachusetts, spent two days of bird watching with David. Really, they spent two days just birding, since they never emerged from the cabin without binoculars around their necks, scanning the area to look for birds and listening to see what they could hear. Over the course of the two days, they saw 106 different species of birds, and heard but didn’t see another 12, which far exceeded our previous record of 70 seen and 37 heard – which was set by a former guest who recommended that this group spend a few days at our place birdwatching with David.

Our new kitchen palapa was a hit. Tom and I have been discussing whether or not we should screen it, but after sharing it with birders for a few days, we decided that we definitely want to leave it open so the birds can be more easily seen.

We get a big kick out of hosting birders. They don’t require any attention at all, and we have as much fun watching them as they do watching the birds. We started every morning early, so that everybody was in the dining room when the sun was just about to rise and the birds started calling and moving. Nancy, Denny, Joan, and Larry would sit down and start eating, but as soon as a bird chirped or moved outside the palapa, everybody would jump up and start looking at it with their binoculars. At one point a trogon landed high in a tree outside the palapa and was blocked from view by the overhanging palapa roof. Everybody rushed out to get a better look, and as the bird flew off and jumped from tree to tree, everybody followed. One more bird for the list! At some point the official birding would start with David, and they would set off down the driveway or off on a trail in the jungle to see what they could see. Each of our guests saw at least one bird that they hadn’t seen before, and even David was happily surprised to see a few that he didn’t think were in this area.

At night, when all we could do is listen to the owls calling in the jungle, we enjoyed pleasant discussions. Tom and I know the area where everybody lives, and actually went to horse competitions right across the road from Denny and Nancy’s house. Then, we found out how small the world really is when Josh, the writer of Lonely Planet’s Belize book, pulled up in the driveway to see our place. When he started talking to everybody, he asked if they knew a certain gentleman in their town, and they did – and Josh told them that this man is his brother-in-law, so they realized that they know Josh’s sister. In addition, Josh and I found that we attended SUNY Brockport for English degrees at the same time, so we had an interesting discussion remembering some of our professors.

Joan, Larry, Nancy and Denny left our place and headed for Tikal, before coming back to Belize to spend a few days at the Macal River Jungle Camp before going to Placencia for the final leg of their Belize adventure.

Barbara & Shap

2011-03-07T17:56:00.000-05:00

Barbara and Shap from Oregon arrived here after a stay in Crooked Tree. They took a transfer from Crooked Tree to Georgeville, where Tom met them to bring them up our road – yet another transfer driver who doesn’t want to subject his vehicle to the rigors of the Mountain Pine Ridge Road! They arrived in time to relax, because Barbara was getting a sore throat, and wanted to avoid the all out chest cold that was making the rounds in Belize, which she had been exposed to in Crooked Tree…fortunately Tom and I were over it by the time they got here!

The next day they headed off to Caracol with Eddie. They had thought about canceling the day before because of Barbara’s sore throat, but fortunately she felt better the next morning. So, they took off for Caracol and spent the entire day touring the site, with a stop at Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Pools on the way home.

The following morning started early, birdwatching with David. We again appreciated our new kitchen and dining room, since the bird tour began with coffee and breakfast under the palapa, watching the hummingbirds start moving and listening to the catbirds calling. The list of birds to be seen around the palapa was exhausted just as the coffee was finished, and Barbara, Shap, and David took off to walk around the property and see what they could see. After a half day of birdwatching, they ended up seeing a total 45 different species of birds and hearing an additional 21, for a total of 66 different bird species identified on or immediately around the property.

That afternoon, Tom took them down the road to go horseback riding with Joe. Both Shap and Barbara had commented that they could have been in better shape, so they felt that seeing the jungle from the top of a horse and letting the horse do most of the work was perfect for them. They saw jungle pools and caves, and lots of birds and butterflies.

The following day they got to sleep in a little since they’d only scheduled a half day’s worth of activities. After breakfast, they decided to get a little bit of exercise and walked to the Green Hills Butterfly Ranch, just a mile down the road. Tom gave them about an hour’s head start, then drove down to meet them to drive to Barton Creek. They toured Barton Creek with Carlos before returning to the farm for a late lunch. They spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, packing, and preparing for their departure for Guatemala and Tikal the next day.

The following morning, after a relaxed breakfast, Tom drove Barbara and Shap to the Guatemala border. There they met Hugo’s sister, who helped them through Immigration and customs in Belize and Guatemala and transferred them to Tikal, where they spent the next two nights. Before they left here, we had helped them set up a Placencia transfer with Gonzo from the border for the next leg of their trip. That part of the trip went well, with a stop in Santa Elena for barbequed chicken, although Gonzo said Shap and Barbara were a little annoyed when he got to the border to get them because they had been waiting there for two hours. Gonzo was there at the agreed upon time, but Hugo’s family had them there about two hours early because they expected that it would take a long time for Shap and Barbara to cross the border – which it didn’t. We’re not sure where the miscommunication occurred, but we will be advising our future guests who get transfers in Guatemala to make doubly sure the schedule is clear.

We’re now waiting for Shap’s promised write-up on their Belize adventure. He promised that he would send us something to post on this blog – so keep your eyes open for the next installment!

Update on BMA experience

2011-03-07T17:53:00.000-05:00

I returned to Belize Medical Associates a couple of weeks ago for my six-week checkup. The doc said everything was fine, although my 10 pound weight limit was continued until the end of March, which didn't thrill me, but didn't surprise me either. I'd been feeling pretty good, but was still a little uncomfortable and moving certain ways still hurt.

Now, two weeks later (and almost 2 months post-surgery), I'm feeling almost back to normal. I still feel it if I unintentionally exert myself - like if I try to shut Tinkerbell's door, which doesn't close straight, and has to be lifted and slammed at the same time - but I'm pretty good about remembering not to do things like that, and I think within a few weeks that won't hurt anymore. I went swimming at Big Rock a few days ago, and my bikini covers the scar - so my vanity is happy!

And we have one more compliment for Belize Medical Associates, because we know they didn't make us pay "the gringo tax." When I left the hospital after the surgery, we had paid their estimate, which we had received ahead of time. After my appointment, we stopped by the hospital office to see if we owed them any more. To our surprise, instead of asking us to write a check, they asked if we could wait a few minutes so they could cut a check for us! We received $400BZ back from BMA because their estimate had been $400 high. Needless to say, we were quite happy with that, and it was the icing on the cake for the whole BMA experience.

Cold! And dry…

2011-01-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

We’ve been here four years now, and while we know that’s not enough to make us experts on the annual weather patterns, we’re not alone in noticing that the weather this winter has been much different than the past few years. In each of the other years we’ve been here, December has been relatively wet, with the rain lasting into January and the beginning of February. This year, the rain stopped in the end of November, and we had six very dry weeks before we had a few days of showers, but now the rain seems to have stopped again. Plus, it’s been cold, at least by our standards, with nighttime temperatures in the 50s, and daytime temperatures frequently not getting out of the low 70s. We’ve had this weather in past years in January and February, but it seemed to arrive at least a month early this year. The locals say the dry season is starting early, and it certainly seems like that to us as the ground is starting to crack, and the leaves are drying up and falling off the trees, making it feel very much like autumn here. This has been bad for many of the farmers who planted crops in the end of November and beginning of December, expecting a couple of months of rain, but who are now either working to irrigate their crops or watching everything grow very slowly. The tourists have loved the daily wall to wall sunshine, and they like using blankets instead of air conditioners, but for those of us living here who rely on the rain not just for crops but in order to keep our water supplies flowing, it’s a little frightening. We will keep you posted…but in the meantime, feel free to do a raindance.

New neighbors

2011-01-22T11:49:00.005-05:00

We spent most of last week listening to bulldozers in the jungle. Our neighbors, Todd and Tatiana from New Mexico, are finally getting ready to make the move to Belize on the 75 acres they own in the jungle behind us.

Todd came to Belize shortly after the New Year to try to get things set up so he could come back in March to get a driveway put into their property, and to talk to the house builders in Spanish Lookout about building their house. Everybody always says that everything takes a long time here, but the stars aligned for Todd, and he not only managed to negotiate a good price for the house they want, but he also managed to get the driveway put into the cleared house site. He had to stay a week longer than planned, but he now doesn’t have to come back in March to do it. We were amazed that he could get it done so quickly, but everything just worked – the excavator was free for the week, the weather cooperated, and Todd was here, so it got done. And, the house site is beautiful, on top of a small hill nestled into the mountains, and the driveway is a pleasant winding road to the house site. Now we just have to wait for him to come back in a few months to see if his luck holds and he can get the next steps done as quickly!

Thanks, Caribbean Tire!

2011-01-22T11:49:00.002-05:00

We had another “only in Belize” experience recently with the Caribbean Tire store in Spanish Lookout. A few months ago, we had a lot of work done on Tinkerbell. She needed a new starter, and because the old starter had drained the batteries, Tom had to buy two new batteries. We were very busy with guests over the holidays, so Tinkerbell just sat. Last week, Tom wanted to move something big, so he went out to start her up, and absolutely nothing happened when he turned the key. Tom was kicking himself, thinking the starter was bad again just after we had all that work done, but he decided to check the batteries with our computerized battery charger, just to see if that was the problem. When he tried to charge them, the computerized charger kept giving him an error, saying the batteries were no good.

Tom took the batteries out of the truck and headed for Caribbean Tire, where he’d purchased the batteries. The guy at Caribbean Tire took the batteries to run his own tests on them, and came to the same conclusion as Tom – the batteries were bad, after only about three months of infrequent use. The batteries are warrantied for a year, so he prorated the cost of new batteries with three months removed, and started helping Tom purchase the new batteries. During this procedure, Tom mentioned that they were for a diesel Ford F-250, and the guy stopped and asked Tom why he’d purchased these batteries for that truck. Tom told him that the sales attendant at the store had told him that these were the batteries he needed for that vehicle. The guy working with Tom told him that the batteries he’d purchased were too small, and he should have purchased some bigger – and less expensive – batteries, but at least they now knew why the two batteries had gone bad.

So, they had a meeting of the minds to decide what to do – and the Caribbean Tire guy decided that it wasn’t Tom’s fault he’d purchased the wrong batteries and ruined them. He ended up giving Tom two new proper batteries for $30BZ – or $7.50US per battery! You can’t beat that for customer service, so thanks, Caribbean Tire!

Alex ‘s Return Home

2011-01-22T11:48:00.005-05:00

Our friend Alex was just here for his winter break from Julliard in New York City, and he arrived with a huge bag of books and school supplies for the schools in 7 Miles. He said put the word out among his school friends that the schools here needed books and supplies, and everybody gave him something to bring. When he delivered the goods, he talked to the officials in the town and at the school to see if he could do anything else to help, and they told them that if he wanted to do some fundraising, they would put any money he collected towards finishing the inside of the library. Right now, the library is just a shell, and it needs shelves for all the books, as well as furniture and wells to make a study space for the students. Alex returned to Julliard with a clear goal, and hopes to be back this summer to work on the project. Thanks, Alex, both for the supplies and for the effort to improve the school and the town!

Christmas dinner with a most excellent Running W rib roast

2011-01-22T11:48:00.002-05:00

Because we had vegetarian guests here for Christmas Day, we delayed our “Christmas dinner” until January 2, when we had an open night between guest bookings. I knew way in advance of Christmas that we were going to have vegetarians here, so I had sort of decided to skip the rib roast this year. But, I made my weekly stop in Running W one day in the middle of November and ran into Escandar. He asked me if I would be ordering the rib roast this year, and I started to say no and explain, and he looked so disappointed I stopped and asked why he was looking like that was such bad news. He explained that he already had the cow being sacrificed for The Roast picked out, and had scheduled the butchering for Dec. 13. Being a mush, I decided that I would get the rib roast anyway, and told him that I’d want it the week after Christmas rather than for Christmas day.

So, that week I picked up the roast. I put it in the refrigerator and pulled it out to show everybody I knew who gets excited about that sort of thing. We invited a bunch of friends over for Sunday night dinner, and I got the rest of the supplies to make the rest of the dinner, like the all important twice baked potatoes. I remembered how I had cooked the rib roast the year before, and did the same thing that day. It was perfect, again! Everybody loved the dinner and we all ate too much, and it was actually a lot of fun to have Christmas a little over a week after the real day. I can’t say enough about how good the meat is. The grass fed beef here is not as fatty as rib roast in the US, but it is exceedingly tender and tasty. Becky was here, and she’s a Dallas girl, and she declared it the best beef she’s ever had. It was so good that I went back to Running W early that week to see if they still had the matching roast from the other side of the cow. They did, so I asked them to hold it for me to pick up a week later so we could have another beef-o-rama with Julio’s family, which we did. And it was delicious again! Now we just have to decide if we want to wait until next Christmas for another roast, or if we can come up with some excuse to order one (or two!) for some occasion this year…and something tells me we’ll find some reason to do it!

BMA experience

2011-01-22T11:47:00.005-05:00

One of the most frequent questions we get about living here is what we think of health care in Belize. Our standard response is that we’re quite happy with it, although we haven’t had to deal with anything extreme. It’s affordable, the doctors are knowledgeable and compassionate, and unless you need some high tech life saving procedure, you will probably be cared for as well here as anywhere in the world.

We recently had to put our money where our mouths are, since I finally got to the point where I needed to have a long-delayed hysterectomy. Tom and I spent a lot of energy deciding whether to do it here, or to go back to the US to do it. We looked into our options, and decided to do it here for a number of reasons. First, we didn’t see any reason why the care wouldn’t be as good or better as what we would get in the US. We researched doctors, and found a surgeon recommended by just about everybody, Belizeans and expats alike, and met him and talked to him before making the decision. We also decided to go to a private hospital, Belize Medical Associates, rather than one of the government hospitals, mostly because this doctor is affiliated with Belize Medical Associates. Second, I didn’t want to travel to have the surgery, and then not be comfortable traveling after the surgery to get home. I wanted to recover at home, since if I’m going to take a trip to the US to visit, I’d rather do it when I feel good and can have fun. Our third reason was not really a decision point, but definitely sealed the deal – it was a lot less expensive to have it done here. We have only catastrophic coverage insurance in the US with a $5000 deductible, and the surgery costs more than $5000 in the US, so it would have cost us at least our $5000 deductible plus travel expenses – probably another $1000-$2000 – to do it in the US, while it was just under $3500 total here.

Not quite two weeks out, we’re quite happy with the decision to do it here. Everything went according to plan, and the care in the hospital was outstanding. Tom was allowed to wait in my room while I had the surgery, and he said that after the surgery the nurse sat in the room with me until I came out of the anesthesia. When I was a little more coherent, the nurse didn’t stay in the room, but came in to check on me at least once an hour, and helped me get a sponge bath and brush my teeth in the late afternoon after the surgery – which did wonders for making me feel human again. The next day, after the IV and catheter were removed, they left me alone except for coming in every four hours to check vitals, but if I needed something – like pain meds – somebody was there within about 30 seconds of me ringing the buzzer. And, best of all, when I was sound asleep for the middle-of-the-night vitals check, the nurse elected not to wake me and just skipped it so I could sleep. The surgeon himself was in three or four times a day for the two days I was there, and was happy to answer my many questions. In the US, I spent a fair amount of time with my mother in hospitals, and I remember wondering if anybody worked there since it seemed that my mom sometimes had trouble getting a nurse into her room, and she was always complaining that they woke her up in the middle of the night, and my experience here was the complete opposite.

There were a few notable differences between surgery here and surgery in the US. Here, I was still completely conscious when I went into the operating theatre, and remember being strapped to the table with my arms out. I had knee surgery 10 years ago, and don’t remember anything like that. And, the day after the surgery, the surgeon showed up in my room with a bucket and showed me what he took out of me. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure, or if he just decided that with my many questions, it was easier to just show me rather than explain. And, I actually appreciated it, because having him show me what was wrong made it very clear to me that the surgery was the right thing to do – and for the day of the surgery and a few days afterward, I was definitely wondering what I did to myself. I really respected the doctor for this because what he found wasn’t what he (or a few other doctors) had diagnosed, and he admitted that when he explained what he was showing me. I had to do a bit of disassociation as he was palpating my parts (“It’s just plastic, it’s not out of me…”), but, as I said, I now completely understand why I needed the surgery, and I might still be wondering if I hadn’t had the show and tell.

So far, so good with the recovery. I’m still a little sore…but I have a six inch incision in my lower abdomen, so I guess I can’t expect to be instantly back to normal. The doctor used to live up here and he knows the road, so he waived my two week checkup, figuring (correctly) that I wouldn’t feel like bouncing myself down the nine miles of bad road it takes to get to the Western Highway. He gave me his cell phone and his email so I can reach him at any time if I have any concerns, which I haven’t had so far.

Do I have any regrets about doing this in Belize? Definitely, no. Would I do it here again? Definitely, yes. And, we feel much more comfortable about some of the what-ifs we think about, knowing that we’ll probably need more medical care as we age.

Love the new kitchen

2011-01-22T11:47:00.002-05:00

Have I mentioned that I love my new kitchen? We’ve now been in it about a month, and the novelty of having a large well-lit space has still not diminished. We had a few guests who rented the whole cabin so I was feeding a lot of people for every meal, and we also had a lot of extras over the holidays with our guide friends stopping by or doing drop-offs or pick-ups and deciding to stay for a meal – which is the way we like it! I share the space with a few birds who seem to like to stop by to see what I’m doing; it has become routine for me to look up and see a hooded warbler or a wood thrush perched on the rail around the dining room, or to look at my feet and see an ovenbird or a water thrush hopping through the kitchen, or, once, to stand at the stove stirring something, hear a buzzing near my ear, and turn and see a hummingbird hovering right next to my head looking to see what I’m doing. And, we get WiFi in the dining room, so the dining room table has become our new office – and we couldn’t ask for better working conditions!

Steve & Karen

2011-01-22T11:46:00.006-05:00

The day Valerie and Jack left, Steve and Karen from the UK came in to stay with us for a few days. Tom picked them up at the International Airport, and their flight was early enough that they had time for a stop for cave tubing. Although they were married a few months ago, this was their honeymoon trip because with their jobs, this was the best time for them to travel.

They spent their first full day here horseback riding with Joe. They toured Joe’s caves, and then made the trek to Big Rock, which they really enjoyed. The horses were good, the weather was good, and they had a great day. They came back here to a party, because Gonzo had taken Lauren and two other guests from San Ignacio to Offering Cave, so there were nine of us for dinner. This gave us time to plan the next day for Steve and Karen, when they were scheduled for kayaking.

But things never seem to work quite according to plan, although everything always works out. Steve and Karen had asked for details on what they were doing that day, and we’d said we couldn’t really say, because things don’t always happen according to schedule. And, because Gonzo had arrived back in San Ignacio so late after having dinner here, he didn’t know until the next morning that the kayaking plans had changed, and what was going to be a kayak trip in the Mopan with Link turned into a full day canoe trip in the Macal with Tony, with a stop at the Chaa Creek Butterfly Farm. That, however, was fine with Steve and Karen, and they got to see a few things they wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Steve also took an unexpected swim as he leaned out of the canoe for a look at some wildlife, but nothing that could be ruined by water got wet, so all was well. Tom had to work in Belize City that day so he took Becky to the airport, and that evening Gonzo and Lenny brought Steve and Karen back to the farm and stayed for dinner again. Our guests this week found that although we only have two rooms and you might expect small, intimate dinners under the palapa, it’s not unusual for people to show up around dinner time, and mixing with the locals and finding out what it’s like to grow up in Belize isn’t difficult to do here!

For their final full day, Karen and Steve went on a hike with Melvin to the base of an 800 foot waterfall. They had the same tour of the farms behind 7 Miles as Al and Kathleen, and they made it all the way to the waterfall. They also made really good time on the hike, and were back here by mid-afternoon, in time to have a beer with Melvin.

The next day I dropped them at the Guatemala border so they could spend a few days in Tikal before heading to the cayes to snorkel and dive. I had arranged for them to be transferred to Tikal by Hugo, with a stop along the way at the Yax Ha archeological site. Hugo met us on the Belize side of the border, grabbed Karen’s bag, and took them off to get through immigration and customs between Belize and Guatemala.

Lauren

2011-01-22T11:46:00.003-05:00

Lauren from Colorado was our only single traveler of the holiday season, and she came here after spending time in Punta Gorda. She took an express bus from Punta Gorda to Belmopan, and then got a bus from Belmopan into San Ignacio. Neither she nor we had any idea how long it would take to get from PG to SI by bus, so we had made plans to meet at Mr. Greedy’s Pizza at 3PM. The buses were actually much quicker than any of us had anticipated, and she had arrived in San Ignacio before noon, so she checked out the market, went to an internet café, and went back to Mr. Greedy’s shortly before 3, and was there only long enough to be mildly harassed by the hangers out who think any woman there alone needs to be kept company. Immediately upon my arrival, Lauren started to get a good idea of how things work in Belize. As I was talking to her, one of the bartenders who lives in 7 Miles told me he was getting off work at 3, and asked if I could give him a ride home. It wasn’t quite 3, so I told him that Lauren and I would go to the market and then come back to pick him up. So, we went to the market, where Lauren got to hear all the local gossip I traded with Gloria as I picked up a few things that are better fresh. We then went back for JJ, who was almost ready, and when he got in the truck he asked if we could go up the hill to pick up his 18-month old son. Of course we could, so we did. We then headed out of town, with just a few more quick stops for this and that. Coming up the Georgeville Road, we picked up a few more people, and I explained to Lauren that the buses don’t run out here, and most people don’t have cars, and you get to know the “commuters” sooner or later, so it’s not really like even picking up hitchhikers. We took JJ and his son into 7 Miles, so she got to see Cayo’s version of the rural Belizean village, and then headed back to the farm.

Because she was traveling alone and [understandably] didn’t want to pay the single traveler premium for tours, we had agreed that we would just see what fell into place when she got here. Valerie and Jack being here and planning to go to Caracol on their own was perfect, and Tom and checked with them before Lauren and I even arrived home to make sure they didn’t mind a third person for their trip. They didn’t, so we spent some time that evening making plans for Caracol the next day.

While the three of them were at Caracol, I was in touch with Gonzo, who had found some people who wanted to go to the Offering Cave. Since we’re so close, he could pick Lauren up and take her for the normal tour charge, so as soon as Lauren, Valerie, and Jack arrived home, I posed the question to Lauren. She had been thinking about doing the ATM tour, but when I explained that the Offering Cave has a lot of the same features as ATM, minus the river, and that it’s a much less traveled cave, she was quite excited to make the substitution.

So, the next morning, Gonzo arrived with his other two guests, and Becky who stayed here to hang out and visit with me and Tom for the day. They did almost exactly what Gonzo had done with Cheryl, Liz, and Tom and few days before, although since the road was already clear, they had enough time after touring the cave to take the hike to Sapodilla Falls. They said the hike is less than a half hour each way from where they have to leave the vehicle, and Sapodilla Falls is definitely worth an hour’s hiking. And Lauren suddenly had the condition of the Rio Frio Cave road put into perspective when she saw what real Belizean off-roading is like! The whole group of them stayed for dinner that night, so we all stayed up too late – again – talking and laughing with our other two guests, Steve and Karen, who had arrived the day before.

The next day, Thursday, Lauren decided to just hang out here around the farm and actually take one day to relax on her vacation. It was a good plan, but it didn’t work out that way. The morning and the early afternoon were fine. Lauren set herself up in the sun in the yard with a book, and managed to get some reading done as well as seeing a wide variety of birds and a few small animals. Then, later in the afternoon, she decided that she should confirm her Maya Island Air flight from the International Airport in Belize City to Cancun for Saturday, since she planned to take her time getting from Cayo to Belize City, and was going to stay at D’Nest Inn before flying out on Saturday morning. The good thing was she decided to confirm the flight Thursday evening; the bad thing was she found out the flight had been canceled and nobody told her, despite the fact that Saturday flights from PGIA to Cancun had been canceled well before she left home for her vacation. We don’t get phone service here, which limited her contact options, but she emailed a friend in the US and asked him to get on the phone and find out what was happening. He confirmed that the flight had been canceled, so Lauren slipped into replan mode. It was a major PITA, but she finally figured out that she could bus from Cayo to Playa/Cancun on Friday, so she would be there for her flight to Colorado early Saturday afternoon. That’s what she did, and it worked out, although she has yet to get her Maya Island Air fare refunded, and she also lost her deposit on her D’Nest room, which she had to cancel last minute because she could no longer spend her last night in Belize City – not to mention it became a somewhat stressful journey rather than a relaxed day of seeing a few more sights. So, we are definitely discouraging people from booking with Maya Island Air and steering them towards Tropic Air if they want to use either of Belize’s domestic airlines.

Despite the stressful ending, we had a really good time during Lauren’s stay here. We used to worry when we booked single travelers because we were never sure how high maintenance they’d be, but since this situation ended up with us making a new friend despite adverse conditions, we’re now sold on single travelers!

Valerie & Jack

2011-01-22T11:46:00.000-05:00

Our next guests were Valerie and Jack from Alabama, who had rented a car and were driving around Belize with the long-term goal of moving here. They’ve been to Belize before, but had never managed to get to the Mountain Pine Ridge. They had wanted to stay here for more than one night, but we were booked solid so they took the one night they could get. Fortunately, they were very easy going, since when they arrived Tom was out trying to resolve our internet problems, and I was picking up Lauren in San Ignacio. They let themselves in the gate and made themselves at home in the dining room to wait for Tom’s return – exactly what we would have told them to do!

Tom got home and got them settled in their room, and then when Lauren and I arrived I finished making dinner. We had a great dinner conversation, since all of us come from very diverse backgrounds and have lots of stories to share. We got the plans set for the next day, when they were planning to drive to Caracol and take Lauren with them.

The Caracol day went almost as planned. They left here in the morning, with their lunch packed, and met the convoy at Augustine. They went to Caracol without a guide, and had no problems touring the site based on the informational brochure. They had left here too late in the morning to go to Rio Frio before the convoy left, so they decided to do that on their way back. It was a good plan, but that road – the same one where the Kia van had slipped off and had to be engineered out – must be in really bad shape because even with 4WD and Valerie’s expert driving, the small Suzuki SUV was not able to make it back to the cave. After doing what Jack described as a 36-point turn, they made it back to the main road, skipped Rio On Pools, and returned here shortly before dark with a very dirty car.

We had time for a quick Belikin before they headed off into San Ignacio, where they planned to spend the night before heading back towards the coast the next day. While they were out, I had made plans for Lauren to go to the Offering Cave the next day, so they promised to return when they have more time so they can do some of the other adventures that are so easily done when using Moonracer Farm as your base camp.

Cheryl, Liz, Tom

2011-01-22T11:45:00.005-05:00

Tom picked our next guests up at the Radisson in Belize City. Mother Cheryl was traveling with her 18-year old twins, Liz and Tom. Liz is studying to be a zookeeper, and she had scored an internship at the Belize Zoo, so Cheryl brought Liz down, with her brother, to make sure she wasn’t flying into a situation that was completely uncivilized. Sharon doesn’t indiscriminately hand out internships at the Zoo, so the first question Tom asked when he picked them up was how Liz managed to do it, and that was the first question I asked when they arrived here. By that time they had already been at the Radisson for a few days and had already been asked the same question more than a few times, so they all realized that Liz was about to embark on an experience that is much coveted.

On the way from the Radisson to here, they had time to stop at Jaguar Paw to go cave tubing after lunch at Cheers. Tom learned something on this trip – you can rent watershoes for $3US at Jaguar Paw, so no worries if you want to do that and you don’t have watershoes and don’t want to get your own shoes wet. Cheryl, Liz, and Tom had gone snorkeling and had visited Lamanai while staying at the Radisson, so they managed to continue their string of adventures on their transfer day.

The next day they set out for the Offering Cave. Cheryl and I had emailed prior to their arrival about what tours they could do during the one full day they were here, and we decided that since Liz would be spending more time in the country, staying here was a good opportunity for them to do something that is off the standard tourist track, but still a real adventure. Gonzo showed up at 8AM with Adrian, a gentleman from London vacationing in Belize. We were just finishing a batch of banana pancakes when they arrived, and they hadn’t eaten breakfast, so their departure was delayed while Adrian and Gonzo had the full-on Moonracer Farm breakfast. They then loaded into the Montero, picked up Don Antonio in San Antonio, and headed for the cave. The road hadn’t been cleared much since the hurricane, so Don Antonio packed a chainsaw, which apparently came in very handy. Gonzo let both Liz and Tom drive the vehicle and use it to pull trees out of the road, so half the adventure from their point of view was just getting to the cave – although that was fun too. They returned here with enough daylight left for a trip up to Big Rock. Gonzo drove them there on the fire road, so that was yet another 4-wheeling adventure, and I have no doubt Cheryl returned home thinking that we don’t have any real roads here in Belize! Gonzo and Adrian stayed for dinner that night, so the fun that began at 8AM didn’t wind down until well into the evening.

The next day Cheryl, Tom, and Liz had to leave to get Liz to the Zoo, but since she didn’t need to be there until the afternoon, they had time to go to the Butterfly Ranch on their own in the morning. Then, after the very long day the day before, Liz and Tom decided they needed naps (and I do remember that college holiday feeling of exhaustion after a whole semester and getting through finals), so Cheryl, Tom, and I hung out in the kitchen palapa. For Tom and me, this was the best part of the visit, since they are from a small town south of Syracuse, NY, and Cheryl grew up in Rochester. We remembered all of the same natural disasters (blizzards and snowstorms up there!), knew all of the places each other talked about right down to the road names and landmarks, and generally bonded based on our wealth of shared experiences. Apparently you can take the people out of Upstate, but you can’t get Upstate out of the people! They didn’t have to leave until mid-afternoon, when they all got in the little blue truck with lots of hugs to head for the Tropical Education Center and Liz’s internship – which, last we heard from Sharon, was going quite well!

Voltec, June, Ilsa, Sean, Ruth

2011-01-22T11:45:00.002-05:00

For June and Voltec and their adult children Ilsa, Sean, and Ruth, the Hopkins schedule shuffle was just one more glitch in carefully made plans that just didn’t quite go the way that was expected. June and Voltec live in Poland, Ilsa lives in Poland, and Sean and Ruth live in the US in New York and Florida. June had tried to carefully orchestrate everybody’s flight plans so they’d all end up in Belize for the holidays, but from the beginning the plans had to be adjusted. This is a hazard of travel any time, and especially during the busy holiday season, but everybody was willing to go with the flow and replan as necessary, and nobody let the minor schedule adjustments get in the way of having a good time.

Because this family arrived early in the day and because they had to cancel some of their Hopkins plans for their early departure, we helped them turn the travel day into a tour day by letting them take our little pickup into the Mountain Pine Ridge. The original plan was to go for a swim at Big Rock, but they took a left instead of a right at the Hidden Valley turnoff and ended up visiting 1000 Foot Falls first – a bonus! They talked to Pedro at 1000 Foot Falls and he told them how to get to Big Rock from there, so after viewing the highest waterfall in Central America, they made their way to Big Rock where they had plenty of time to go for a swim before heading back to the farm for dinner.

The next day they went kayaking and toured Xunantunich. This day also ended up requiring some scheduling flexibility, because we had all planned on having them go to Xunantunich in the morning while it was cool, and then kayak in the afternoon. However, Link, the kayak guide, had scheduled another group that wanted to do a full day of kayaking, and the morning portion of that trip was more what our family wanted to do. So, when they got to town, they discovered that they were going kayaking first, and then touring Xunantunich in the afternoon. This worked out fine, and they returned here in the afternoon, pleasantly tired after a full day.

We had a somewhat heated discussion over dinner because the “face” June had seen for their transfers and excursions had been Becky, Gonzo’s girlfriend. Becky was here on vacation for the holidays, and because Gonzo ended up guiding every day, Becky ended up taking care of a lot of the River Rat business issues. This was fine with us, and Becky didn’t really mind spending part of her vacation keeping business going, but June, who is a consultant who helps get small businesses running in developing countries, wanted to know why we were doing business with a US company rather than a Belizean company. At first we weren’t really sure what she was asking, and her kids were trying to sidetrack her to avoid a discussion, but when we realized that her very valid perception of River Rat was the very white Becky, we were glad she asked the question and allowed us to answer rather than just thinking that we were avoiding doing business with Belizeans. When we assured her that River Rat Expeditions is in fact 100% Belizean owned, and that all the guides are 100% Belizean, she felt better. And, the discussion energized all of us so that we ended up staying up talking and laughing until after 2AM. So much for being tired after returning from a tour!

The next day everybody transferred to Belize City, with Selmo driving again. He knew June wasn’t too happy when he had dropped her off the day before and wasn’t quite sure what to expect, so he was pleased that we’d worked out the misunderstanding and everybody was happy again. They were off for a brief stay in Caye Caulker before everybody had to head back to their far flung homes.

Tom, Sally, Bridget, Tommy, Patrick

2011-01-22T11:44:00.006-05:00

As Tom was dropping off our Christmas guests in Hopkins, Selmo was picking up our next guests, a family of five from Chicago consisting of parents Tom and Sally and their adult children Bridget, Tommy, and Patrick, in Belize City. Our little blue truck only holds four passengers comfortably, so when we have a party of five adults coming in, we need to call in the reinforcements with bigger vehicles. They had a late flight, so it was just about dark by the time they arrived here, but we had plenty of time for Belikins all around in the brand new kitchen before dinner.

On their first day here, Selmo picked them up bright and early and took them to tour the Chechem Ha Cave, which everybody enjoyed. After the cave tour, they were treated to a real Belizean meal with Gonzo’s mom, Lea, at her house overlooking the mountains that border Belize and Guatemala. They spent the afternoon floating down the Mopan in tubes, seeing the wildlife and Bullet Tree village life, with Tommy being the only one to capsize – but no harm done, although it gave everybody a reason to tease him at dinner.

The next day they took a full day horseback ride with Joe. Everybody always loves Joe’s rides, and this family was no exception. They enjoyed not only seeing the caves and swimming at Big Rock, but also getting a chance to talk to Joe, whose family is Maya and who has lived in San Antonio for his whole life. From what he said, Tom managed to squeeze a good number of the stories we’ve heard from Joe out of him, and Joe even told him a few things we hadn’t heard before about life in this area in the past. When we heard about their day, the thing that amazed me most was that even though it was just a few days after Christmas, in a very busy holiday week, they had Big Rock Falls all to themselves for most of the time they were there. “Busy” has a whole different definition in Belize!

They had to leave the next day on a Tropic Air flight out of the Municipal Airport in Belize City. Their flight wasn’t until 2PM, and you don’t have to show up too much ahead of time for the domestic flights in Belize, so they had time to take a quick visit to the Butterfly Ranch in the morning. That their schedule was so flexible turned out to be a good thing because Gonzo, along with some of the other transfer companies in San Ignacio, was having car problems. This 5-member family was leaving and another 5-member family was coming in from Hopkins, and with only one large vehicle to work with instead of two, the transfer schedule had to be shuffled. The family coming in from Hopkins was scheduled at the last minute for an 8AM pickup, with plans to arrive here, pick up Tom and Sally’s family, and get back on the road heading to Belize City by 11AM or so. It didn’t work out quite that way since Selmo started having trouble with the vehicle on the way to Hopkins, so that pickup didn’t happen until almost 9AM, and it was after 11AM when he arrived here. In the meantime, Becky had commandeered another van in San Ignacio, and she had driven here to meet Selmo to swap vehicles so he had a dependable vehicle for the Belize City transfer. We had the replacement van loaded and ready to go when Selmo arrived, so we loaded up Tom and Sally’s family, Selmo switched vehicles, and they headed for Belize City – and arrived at the Tropic Air terminal with 10 minutes to spare! We always tell people not to worry, things always work out in Belize even when it seems that all of the carefully made plans are crashing, and now we have one more situation to prove that it’s true!

Danielle & Mariah

2011-01-22T11:44:00.003-05:00

We had some unscheduled visitors during the Christmas week as well. Just as we were sitting down to eat one night, we saw lights at the gate. Tom went down to see who it was, and found two women looking for a place to stay. They had planned to camp at Augustine, but got a little nervous when they realized that they were the only ones there, and that they were the only women surrounded by an army camp of men. I’m sure they would have been absolutely fine and safe at Augustine, but they probably wouldn’t have been able to get much sleep. Our cabin was full, but since they had planned to camp anyway and had all of their camping gear with them, Tom took them to our palapa area, and they set up their tent under the palapa – very cool since they could leave the fly off since the palapa protected them from moisture, and bug free since the tent was screened. They then joined us for dinner, and were a welcome addition to the party.

The next day they decided to leave their stuff here while they took their vehicle to explore around San Ignacio. They ended up going to Barton Creek Cave, and then going into town and taking a trip to Xunantunich. When they returned that night, they found some lost people, with a baby, at the Junction, looking for Mystic River and unable to get their car started. They came and got Tom, who helped them start their car and gave them directions to Mystic River. They wanted him to go with them, but he declined, more afraid of the wrath of his wife if he ruined dinner than of upsetting people who were okay anyway!

They told us at dinner that night that they would be leaving the next morning and had scheduled a trip to ATM for the next day before heading to Monkey Bay and the Baboon Sanctuary. In the morning, they showed up, grabbed a quick banana muffin and headed out. We later heard from Gonzo, who ended up being their ATM tour guide, that they had a good time and continued on to Monkey Bay after the tour.

Ranjani, Praveen, Vishnu, Leela

2011-01-22T11:44:00.000-05:00

Our Christmas guests were a family of four from Washington state, mom Ranjani, dad Praveen, 12-year old son Vishnu, and 10-year old daughter Leela. The entire family has traveled extensively around the world, and we were delighted that they decided to spend part of their Belize vacation with us. Ranjani and I had corresponded extensively via email prior to their trip to help them make the most of both their time and their money. Ranjani had told me that they were also spending time on Caye Caulker and in Hopkins, and they wanted to go to Tikal while they were here. They ended up beginning their trip on Caye Caulker, and they then took the water taxi to Belize City where they were able to get a Linea Dorada bus to Tikal. I had suggested this plan of action because the Linea Dorada bus is relatively inexpensive and travels direct from Belize City to Tikal, and although it is not able to stop anywhere in Belize, it was an ideal way for the family to avoid our expensive transfer, get to Tikal for a few days, and end up in the western part of Belize where it’s much easier and less expensive to get here. Hugo transferred them from the Jaguar Inn at Tikal to the border, and Tom picked them up there. They arrived here early enough to walk around the property and see some of our jungle before dark.

On the first day they were here, they went canoeing with Selmo and Becky. They started in San Ignacio and canoed up the Macal River. Ranjani had expected more of a jungle canoeing trip, but in addition to iguanas and other wildlife along the river, they also got to see life along the river – people washing their cars, women washing clothes, and children playing in the river. After their canoe trip, they visited the San Ignacio market and had lunch at Hode’s before returning to the farm.

Then they went to ATM with Gonzo. Being Christmas week, a very busy week for tourists, the cave was busy but the tour guides were able to spread out the groups enough that it didn’t feel like a Disney World attractiogpn line moving through the cave. They were impressed not only with the cave, but also with Gonzo’s knowledge.

On their final full day here, they took a full day hike to the base of a waterfall. Melvin wasn’t able to guide them that day because he had just been called as a fulltime horse guide at Blancaneaux, but he contacted his cousin as a substitute so there was no problem with hiking through his family’s private land behind the Village of 7 Miles. Everybody enjoyed the hike, although they said it was too chilly to swim in the pools at the bottom of the waterfall. And, they made good time – they were back and waiting for Tom to pick them up a half hour before the scheduled pickup time, despite the fact that they guide wasn’t sure how quickly they would move with the 10- and 12-year olds. Next time Boris will worry about keeping up with the kids, not with the kids keeping up with him!

The family had originally planned to return to Caye Caulker for a few days, but because they felt that they’d seen most of the caye during their stay there, they decided instead to go to Hopkins so they could mix some more jungle adventures with the seaside activities in Hopkins. So, on their departure day, Tom took them to Hopkins so they could mix some snorkeling with some more hiking in the Cockscomb Basin Park. They had considered getting a taxi from Belmopan to Hopkins, but since it was the day after Christmas, which is Boxing Day and is a holiday here, no taxis were available in Belmopan, so Tom got to get a quick glimpse of the sea as well.

Tom, Kate, Cara, Dustin

2011-01-22T11:43:00.002-05:00

Our next guests were two couples, Tom & Kate and Dustin & Cara, from San Francisco and Oregon. They had all lived in San Francisco until fairly recently, and all four have been friends for a long time. They had originally inquired about staying for a longer period of time, but since we were already booked and only had two nights available, we worked with them to pick tours so that they could make the most of their time here.

The first day they were here Jake picked them up at 8AM to go to Caracol. Tom and Dustin are both engineers, so seeing the Maya’s engineering marvel of Caracol was high on their list of what they wanted to see while in Belize. They liked Caracol, but the gods’ payback for them being engineers viewing the Maya’s handiwork was that they then had to use their engineering knowledge, not to mention their muscles, to get the Kia van back on the road after it slipped off the muddy road and into a ditch on the way to Rio Frio Cave. Jake was a little frazzled with this turn of events, but the four guests just considered it part of the adventure, and it gave them a good story for the dinner table that night. Even with the mishap, they had time to stop and see the Rio On Pools, so Tom, Kate, Cara, and Dustin felt that they got more than their money’s worth on the trip.

The next day we said an early goodbye to them as Tom took them to Georgeville to meet Gonzo for their ATM tour. Because we couldn’t accommodate them for another night, we had arranged with Gonzo to deliver them to Crystal Paradise Resort after the tour, where they were spending the rest of their time in Cayo, while Tom delivered their luggage to Crystal Paradise on his way to Benque to pick up our next guests. We heard from them when they returned home, and were happy to hear that this plan worked flawlessly.

This group was the first to enjoy our new kitchen and dining room, and, as we’ve found with everybody who has since seen it, they were happy not only with the food, but with the ambiance. They appreciated things like being able to use our WiFi to surf the internet by kerosene lamp, checking in with family and friends in more civilized parts of the world who probably weren’t running off of batteries and lighting with kerosene.

Al & Kathleen

2011-01-22T11:41:00.000-05:00

Tom started December with a last minute, 2-week trip to visit his parents in Florida, which was a great Christmas gift for both Tom and his parents. Upon his return, however, it was right back to work since our first guests of the holiday season, Kathleen and Al from Oregon, arrived two days after Tom’s return. It wasn’t much like work, however, since we had a great visit with them and really enjoyed helping them get to know this area.

They arrived here slightly frazzled because they didn’t realize how far out we are – not necessarily mileage-wise, but because of road conditions. They got a bus into San Ignacio, and figured it would be easy to get a taxi here. They found a taxi driver who said he was willing to take them from San Ignacio to Moonracer Farm for $8BZ, so they loaded their luggage and jumped in the car. Unfortunately, because they didn’t speak much Spanish and the taxi driver didn’t speak much English, they didn’t realize until they were well on the way here that the taxi driver had no idea where he was going, and didn’t realize how far out we were on bad roads. He kept trying to drop them at every resort they passed all the way through Cristo Rey. Fortunately Al had looked at the maps on our website and had a general idea where they were going, so he was able to tell the driver to just keep driving. They finally got here, and the taxi driver had to not only tell them it was going to cost more than $8, but also admit that he was worried that his car was going to have problems navigating the 12 miles of bad road back to town. Fortunately for Al and Kathleen, it only cost $50BZ, which is the standard rate, so they didn’t end up paying any more than they should have – although $8BZ would have been nice!

For their first full day here they toured ATM with Gonzo, who had also recently returned from a trip to the US. As everybody is, they were quite impressed, not only with the cave, but with the tour. Gonzo and Carlos had combined their groups, so all the guests had the benefit of the expertise of both guides, which is interesting because both, being Maya themselves, feel a personal connection to the cave and share that connection with their guests. Because the connection is personal, it’s different for them, and all of the guests appreciated getting this difference in perspective.

On their second day they took a hike with Melvin. They didn’t really have a destination, but parked at Ka’ax Tun and hiked through the farms and into the jungle behind the Village of 7 Miles. They had originally requested a jungle hike, and they found the information that Melvin shared about the flora and fauna of the jungle fascinating, but they said they were somewhat surprised at how interesting they found the wealth of information that Melvin shared about the plantations, as he calls them, in the farm fields, from what was planted and why, to how it had to be cultivated, to what would happen to the produce when it is harvested, to generally how people manage to make a living farming on what looks like a pile of rocks. Melvin also took them back to his home for a Coke after the hike, and they found his stories of life in a very small village in rural Belize as interesting as the farm and jungle lore. Al and Kathleen had brought a package of school supplies to distribute to children in this country, and after their day with Melvin they ended up delivering the package into his safekeeping so he could distribute it to the schoolchildren of 7 Miles.

The next day Kathleen and Al were heading to Tikal for two nights, so we delivered them to the border with instructions about how to get a guide for the Temple IV Sunrise tour, and advice on getting back into Belize so they could finish their Belize vacation on Glover’s Atoll.

Merry Christmas to Me!

2010-12-20T16:14:00.000-05:00

The kitchen is done! Actually, there are a few more things to do, and some more permanent counters need to be built along with a pie safe, but they finished enough of the shelves and counters that I could fit all of my stuff in there, and moved my appliances from my dark closet of a kitchen in the house into this light, airy, and spacious kitchen.

It was a hard push to get the last few things done. It seemed like we were almost there, but every time I contemplated actually making the move, I realized a few more things needed to be done. The walls were done, the door was done, and the kitchen part of the building was lockable, but I didn’t think the one table they had completed would offer enough space to both store all my stuff and give me room to work. So, they built another table with shelves and hung some wire racks over the stove site and the center table. The second table still doesn’t have a top, but the shelves underneath give me plenty of space for storage, and I have more than adequate counter space, especially compared to the old kitchen – which had virtually none.

Just yesterday, Julio came to help and we did the big move. Tom and Julio moved all the big stuff, which involved disconnecting the gas and the plumbing in the old kitchen and connecting it in the new. I went out to transfer our guests to the border, and when I returned home not only were all the appliances out of the old kitchen, but they’d put them in the yard and thoroughly cleaned them – even the inside of the oven! Then we all just carried stuff out to the new kitchen. None of us could believe how much stuff I had crammed into my tiny kitchen, and how quickly it filled the new kitchen. I finally left the carrying to the men and I started stowing stuff, and it was just about dark by the time I had the kitchen in a condition where I could make dinner in it last night.

So far so good on how it works, although our first guests to eat out of the new kitchen are just about to arrive, so we’ll see how it works when put to the test. In the meantime, I’m enjoying sharing it with a hooded warbler and a great-tailed grackle (which I prefer to call crazy tailed grackles since their tails never seem to following them quite straight), although I might be less taken with the birds in the kitchen if I find they’ve decided to try the lemon squares I have cooling on the counter. We’re still debating about whether or not we want to screen it. The bugs aren’t really a factor here, and screen tends to get dirty and obstruct the view, especially of the many birds we have around here, so we’re going to try it unscreened for a while. But, if the bugs are too bad, or the birds sample my baked goods, we might have to screen it. We’ll see.

Dena & Steve

2010-12-14T17:19:00.000-05:00

Dena and Steve from Leeds, England, visited us over the US Thanksgiving week. Dena and I did a lot of preplanning via email because I was worried that things could be busy since it was Thanksgiving week and lots of people from the US would be here on vacation. As it turned out, our US visitors who were scheduled for that week postponed, so Dena and Steve ended up being here by themselves for five days.

Steve and Dena arrived in San Ignacio after using William’s Belize Shuttle transfer service to get from the airport in Belize City to San Ignacio. William doesn’t want to wreck his vehicles on our road, so his driver left them at Hannah’s where they were able to get a snack since they missed lunch, and Tom met them there and brought them back to the farm. When they left, we did the reverse and dropped them at Hannah’s where William met them to take them back to the airport. This worked out great as far as we were concerned. While we don’t mind doing transfers and understand that for many people it’s not only less expensive than renting a car, but also much less stressful, it was nice to have somebody else do the driving and put miles on their vehicle instead of ours, and after paying both us and William for our respective legs of the trip, Dena and Steve saved a few dollars.

Dena and Steve did the kind of vacation that Tom and I think we would do if we were guests at Moonracer Farm. The only thing they did that took them out of the Mountain Pine Ridge was their ATM tour, which, if you’re adventurous, is a must do when you visit Cayo.

The first day they were here they rode with Joe from his farm near San Antonio to Big Rock. This gave them a good introduction to the jungle, and in addition to seeing the caves on Joe’s property and the Big Rock waterfall, they got to see both the broadleaf jungle and the mountain pine ridge. They said they rode all day and didn’t see anybody else on the trail or at Big Rock, which surprised us since we expected people to be at Big Rock during the holiday week.

The next day Selmo picked them up bright and early and they headed back into the Mountain Pine Ridge. Their first stop was Rio Frio Cave, and then they made their way up to Caracol. On the way back, they stopped for a swim at Rio On Pools, and remarked that Rio On must be the place all the swank hotels use to model their natural-looking swimming pools. Selmo said the water was perfect in both temperature and depth so the area was just like a water park.

The following day I joined Steve and Dena on a hike from the back of 7 Miles to the base of a beautiful 700 foot waterfall in the jungle. Melvin was our guide, and he led us through the land his family farms, across government land, and then up the river to the base of the falls. Prior to coming here, Dena and I had discussed whether or not a guide was needed to hike in the jungle. I basically insisted that they use a guide, and Dena, slightly reluctantly, gave in, since she and Steve have hiked all over the world, frequently without a guide. Here, however, we don’t know of any trail maps, and especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Richard, many of the jungle trails are very windy with seemingly inexplicable detours, and it’s difficult to describe where you’re supposed to look for other trails and which way you should go. In addition, if you haven’t spent much time in the jungle, a guide is good both to tell you what to be careful of as far as the flora and fauna go, and to help you spot wildlife that most of us would never see on our own. During the hike, Melvin led us off the trail to see area caves, and pointed out a variety of birds we wouldn’t have seen including toucans, blue crowned motmots, a red capped manakin, and a crested guan. He also told us which trees weren’t safe to grab as we negotiated the muddy, steep, and often treacherous trail, and helped us keep our hands off the poisonwood, basket taitai, and give and take trees.

And, best of all, he got us to the base of the waterfall which, with the number of stream crossings we had to do, was an accomplishment since it would have been difficult for us to follow the trail alone since it used the waterway as the trail in multiple places, before shooting back into the bush. As we were hiking out, Melvin suddenly stopped in the trail and put up his hand for us to stop behind him. Steve, Dena, and I stopped, and Melvin gestured us forward and pointed to the side of the trail, where a very beautiful but very deadly coral snake was coiled. Chances are we could have walked by without disturbing it, and coral snakes are generally not aggressive, but at that point Dena turned to me and thanked me for insisting that we take a guide, and said that she didn’t even want to think about how many dangerous things they may have walked blithely by without Melvin’s eyes and jungle awareness.

For their final trip, Steve and Dena went to ATM. We usually send our guests to ATM with Gonzo, but Gonzo was out of the country so we booked Steve and Dena on a PACZ tour. PACZ is an excellent tour operator with a great reputation and great guides. However, for Dena and Steve, this trip was a little bit of a letdown after the rest of their Moonracer Farm stay. They’d gone horseback riding and hiking and visited Caracol with the two of them being the only guests of our hand-picked guides who are also our friends, and had come back raving about each tour. For the ATM tour, they were part of a fairly large group – two vans with two guides, and eight people with each guide. Dena was a little nervous about the trip; she’s a triathlete, so she’s a good swimmer, but she’s a little claustrophobic and wasn’t quite sure about swimming in a cave and could have used a little reassurance from the guide. However, one of the other women in the group was a non-swimmer, so the guide understandably focused most of his assistance and reassurance on the non-swimmer, who he judged to need it more than Dena. Dena understood, but remarked that it was a very different experience with a very different feel than their other three tours. Nonetheless, they really enjoyed the trip and were amazed, as everybody is, by what ATM offers.

The next day we dropped them at Hannah’s bright and early, where William met them to drive them to the airport.

The Kitchen - Finished floor and walls in progress

2010-11-22T17:28:00.000-05:00

One of the things we are learning with this project is that a lot of things that can’t really be seen have to be done in between the good photo opportunities showing a lot of progress. This floor was done shortly after the last blog post, but then a number of things had to be done to get ready for the next big step in building.

We decided that because I want the kitchen area of the building to be open, but it still needs to be secure because we will be storing things like alcohol in there, we needed to cage it in. In part, this is just good reuse of material we have on the property, but in addition to being secure yet open, it provides a good backing for the palmetto (pimento) sticks we are using for the walls. However, before the cage material could be put up for the walls and ceiling, it had to be taken down from the cages still standing on the property, which is an awkward and time consuming job. And, it’s not easy to handle in big pieces, so getting the walls up and straight was a job, and getting the large pieces into the rafters took a few extra hands.

Once the cage material was up, the next job was to take a day and go up into the Mountain Pine Ridge to collect the sticks. Tinkerbell was drafted for the job, and Tom went with a bunch of local guys who knew where the palmettos were, and how to cut the sticks. The local guys also knew the process of stopping by the Forest Department to pay for this sticks, which cost $.10BZ per stump. Pretty cheap lumber!

Once they had the sticks here and unloaded, we had a big conference about what we wanted the outside walls to look like. We decided that the walls should be four feet high in the kitchen area to provide a backsplash for the counters, and three feet high in the dining area so they don’t impede people’s view when they’re sitting at a table. Tom used his power mitre box and set up a line so that the sticks were fed to a board, Tom used the saw to cut them, and they were then stacked to the side.

The other part of the conference was what we wanted the sticks to look like. Many places around here have palmetto stick walls, but most leave the hairy bark on the sticks. We decided that since this is a kitchen, we’d rather have the bark peeled off in hopes of giving bugs one less place to hide. Plus, we like the look of the peeled sticks. But, it was quite a job to peel each stick!

Once the sticks were cut and peeled, the noticeable construction was able to start. They put up two guide boards between the supporting posts and inside the cage material, then nailed the sticks to the boards from the outside of the cage material. Because the sticks were all cut evenly, it took two people inside to keep them at the right height and straight…

…and one on the outside to do the nailing. Daniel made it a point to hammer the nails in from about a 45 degree angle so when you look at the wall, you don’t see metal nail heads on the wood.

His effort was well worth it. We’re quite pleased with the look of the walls, and are looking forward to getting the sticks up the rest of the way around the building.

Mimi & Doak

2010-11-22T16:38:00.001-05:00

The day Abigail, Staci, and Caleb left, Mimi and Doak arrived in San Ignacio. They are thinking of eventually moving to Belize, so they were trying where at all practical to travel like the locals and really see the country, dealing with the “burps” in the system as they went along. Since Tom and I try to live like that as well here, we thoroughly appreciated the effort and tried to help however we could, and while Mimi and Doak’s stay here wasn’t the well-choreographed stay of the completely pre-planned, pull-out-all-the-stops vacation, all four of us had fun and learned a bit.

I felt very badly about the first burp, because if I had put a little more thought into it, I probably could have prevented it. All through the planning stages of their trip, Mimi and Doak had planned to stay at the Belize Zoo’s Tropical Education Center the night before they came here, then get a bus on the Western Highway and arrive in San Ignacio around noon. After Hurricane Richard, the Belize Zoo was closed. I knew the Belize Zoo was closed and I knew Mimi and Doak planned to stay there, but it never occurred to me to ask them if they had confirmed their reservation. I just sort of assumed (yes, I know that little ditty about the word “assume”) that although the Zoo was closed the TEC was open, or that if the TEC was closed Mimi and Doak would have been contacted, but that wasn’t how it worked out. Mimi and Doak spent the first part of their vacation in Placencia, and discovered while they were there that the TEC was closed along with the Zoo. They had already purchased roundtrip Tropic Air tickets from Belize City to Placencia and back, so on their return they just spent the night in Belize City before coming here. They had no trouble getting a bus out of Belize City, but when they got to Belmopan they waited through three or four full buses heading west to San Ignacio, and finally gave up and got a cab, arriving in San Ignacio around 3:30, instead of 2PM, which is when they had anticipated their arrival based on the bus they caught from Belize City. I felt like a dope not only because I had totally missed connecting that they were staying at the [closed] TEC, but also because I knew they were going to Placencia, so if I thought about it I could have had Selmo bring them directly from Placencia when he dropped of Staci, Abigail, and Caleb, and the transfer cost could have been split. Mimi and Doak assured me that it was fine, and that they probably wouldn’t have done that anyway since they had their Tropic Air roundtrip tickets, but still…I don’t like to miss those things.

The second burp occurred on Mimi and Doak’s only full day here, when they had scheduled a much anticipated trip to ATM. We had some communications difficulties with the guides (life in the land of no phone lines or cell reception), and their guide never showed to pick them up in Georgeville. Since Tom was waiting with them, he did a quick replan and took them to Barton Creek Cave instead, which they had never visited, although it wasn’t on their “A” list like ATM. After visiting Barton Creek, they came back here for lunch – surprising me as I was finishing up my salad lunch on the porch – and then after lunch went with Tom into the Mountain Pine Ridge to visit Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Pools. Again, they assured us that it worked out fine because they know they’ll be back and can see ATM later, and they enjoyed what they did, but still…I don’t like it when things don’t go according to plan and our guests have to compromise on what they get to do.

Their departure day actually went as planned, and despite the fact that they had to leave, everything worked like it was supposed to; they had a half day horseback ride scheduled with Joe, and Tom dropped them off, the horses were ready, they went for a ride, and Tom picked them up and they came back here for lunch before heading into San Ignacio to stay at Rosa’s for their last night in Cayo. We had a minor panic attack because neither Tom nor I could place where in San Ignacio Rosa’s is located, but after reading a few TripAdvisor reviews that mentioned how it’s near a big nightclub, we knew it had to be the place next to Blue Angels – and we were right, finally, about something! After a relaxed lunch discussing politics and religion, Tom drove them into town and we thanked our lucky stars that Mimi and Doak were such nice, laid back guests who had an enjoyable time here despite all the setbacks.

Staci, Abigail, and Caleb

2010-11-22T16:02:00.000-05:00

Abigail, Staci, and Caleb in ATM (bottom to top)

November started with a four night stay by Staci, Abigail, and Caleb. They flew the red-eye TACA flight from LA, which put them into Belize before 10AM, so they were able to go both zip lining and cave tubing on their way to Moonracer Farm, and have time for a short nap before dinner when they arrived here. The next day they had planned to go to Xunantunich, not realizing that it takes only a half day to tour the site, so when Tom dropped them off with Selmo in the morning, Selmo very happily did some last minute planning and called Chechem Ha so they were able to take that tour as well that day, along with a traditional Belizean lunch at Benny’s. They following day they rode horses with Joe to Big Rock, and stopped at two different caves. This was good preparation for their final tour of ATM, which they did with Carlos on their last day here. Their order of go for their tours was intentional on our part, and when we explained why we had them start with cave tubing, then do Chechem Ha, then do the smaller, less explored caves, saving ATM for the last, they understood that if they had started with ATM, everything else would have been a little bit of a letdown.

Once again, we had a very enjoyable time visiting with the three of them each night at dinner, and stayed up way too late talking just because it was fun. Caleb and Abigail are interpreters for the deaf, and Staci and Caleb both work at the jail, so they had lots of entertaining stories about their jobs, which Tom and I thoroughly enjoyed. From here, they had Selmo transfer them to Placencia, where they spent the remainder of their vacation before heading home.

Can you help the Belize Zoo?

2010-11-03T17:14:00.000-05:00

While we didn't have much damage as a result of Hurricane Richard, the area around the Belize Zoo was hit quite hard, and the Zoo suffered extensive damage. The Zoo is closed for at least this month as they clean up, repair, and rebuild. And, of course, they need funds to do this because the rehabilitating will cost a lot of money, and they won't have any income during the time the Zoo is closed. If you would like to help, go to the Belize Zoo's website and click on the Hurricane Relief Funds donation button on the right side of the page.

The Belize community is pitching in with donations, volunteering time and equipment to help with the cleanup, and auction items for a few benefit auctions which will be held this month. But you can help no matter where you are!

A new chapter in water news

2010-11-03T17:05:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while know that in the time we’re lived here, we’ve had to work with a somewhat unstable water situation. We had been getting our water through a pipe from 7 Miles, but between more farmers getting on line for the water, and the pipe getting old and both filling in from the inside and leaking, less water was getting to the village and we frequently didn’t get any water at all for weeks on end.

Last summer, the San Antonio water system was finally finished. San Antonio has a bigger pipe than 7 Miles, and more than enough water was being delivered to the village. Because San Antonio had been getting water from 7 Miles, the pipe runs between the two villages. Because all of the people right in our area had been without water for months, people petitioned both village water boards to see if we could be switched so we would get water from San Antonio, and the water boards agreed that we should get San Antonio water, although we still pay the Village of 7 Miles.

Since that agreement was made, our water situation has been much improved, although there have been a few glitches in getting the San Antonio system up and running, and we’ve still had periods of time where we didn’t get water – but the periods of time have been a few days to a couple of weeks, rather than months. So thank you, San Antonio for letting us get your water, and thank you 7 Miles for consenting to give up a few bucks of our water bill to pay San Antonio for the service!

In addition, we purchased a couple of more 1,000 gallon tanks, so we can now store 4,400 gallons of water on the property. Right now we’re getting plenty of water, but the San Antonio farmers will be drawing more water off the system for irrigation in the dry season, and we’re at the end of the line whether we get San Antonio water or 7 Miles water. Plus, politics being politics wherever you are in the world, we don’t quite trust the water boards of the two villages not to get in a tiff over something and use our water supply as collateral, so we want to make sure we have a backup.

More kitchen progress

2010-11-03T16:46:00.001-05:00

While Tom and the guys have been very busy working on the kitchen these last couple of weeks, we didn’t have a whole lot of visible progress. The floor for the kitchen part of the building is of smooth concrete, but Tom wants the dining room part to be a little fancier. Adix, the mother of Hugo, the Guatemalan driver/guide we use for Tikal trips, has a restaurant in Guatemala with a floor that Tom really likes – log cuts laid into the concrete. Tom talked to Hugo about how they did it, and talked to some of the guys around here who have worked with concrete, and came up with a plan to get the floor he wants.

First, he went to Linda Vista lumberyard and ordered slabs cut from a hardwood tree. After lots of calculations on the part of the lumberyard manager, Tom, and a sample floor laid out near the mill by Hector, the man running the chainsaw, Tom ended up with 134 slabs.

Each about 3” thick, it took two trips to Spanish Lookout in Tinkerbell to get all the slabs back to Moonracer Farm.

Then the tedious task of sanding and linseed oiling each slab started, which is what has taken most of the past week and a half – and it would have taken even longer without some help from Julio and Ian over the weekend.

Finally, just yesterday, the work started on the floor. Tom said it’s a lot like tiling with slate, which he did in our house in New York. They put down a thin layer of concrete, then lay each cut into the concrete, and work on getting it completely level with the floor and the other cuts around it. Fortunately Tom has more patience than most people, and after a few very slow and frustrating cuts were level, he said it got a little easier.

They finished a little over half the floor yesterday, and had most of the other half done before lunch today, but discovered that a few more cuts needed to be sanded and oiled. The total number used on the floor will be 126, so Tom, Scott, and Hector were very close in their original calculations. Tom is planning to make some rustic night stands with the leftovers.

While Tom was sanding the remaining cuts, Julio started filling in the concrete between the cuts to make the level floor. He said it’s not as difficult as it would seem, mostly because he’s able to stand on cuts that are already in hardened concrete, so he can work from a comfortable position. With any luck, we’ll have the floor finished before the weekend!

Yvonne & Steve

2010-10-28T17:48:00.000-05:00

Yvonne and Steve from Tennessee decided to spend their entire Belize vacation in the jungle with us rather than splitting their time between the jungle and the coast or cayes. I’m sure they needed a rest when they got home, but they proved that it’s very possible to spend your entire vacation inland and not be bored for a minute.

Their adventure started as soon as Tom picked them up and they headed to the airport. That was a good first stop to discover that they’d left home with a camera memory full of pictures, so Tom able to download their camera stick to a CD as soon as they got home so they didn’t miss any real action shots…

…and they still managed to get some good shots, like this one of the kinkajou which we hardly ever see out of his hollow log.

Steve and Yvonne had left home very early that morning, so we made a fairly early night of it and planned activities for the next day that didn’t require a wakeup call in the morning. In fact, instead of taking their breakfast tray on the porch of their cabin, Yvonne and Steve came over and ate with us, and we had a leisurely breakfast, finishing our conversation from dinner the night before.

They then went off to tour the Green Hills Butterfly Ranch before heading to Barton Creek Cave. After coming back here for lunch, they headed up to Big Rock, where Steve even jumped off the Big Rock!

The next day, Steve went to ATM while Yvonne and I went for a horseback ride to Sapodilla Falls.

Yvonne grew up on a ranch in the very western part of South Dakota, and spent her entire childhood and young adulthood on a horse. So, she was quite comfortable on Nessa while I rode Glinda, and we were very able to keep up a non-stop stream of chatter all the way to the falls, through lunch, through a nice whirlpool-like soak sitting in one of the small falls, and all the way home! We got home, untacked the horses, showered, and Yvonne, Tom and I jumped in the car to head into San Ignacio to meet Steve after his ATM trip and get dinner in town.

Steve, Carlos, and the other two guests on the ATM trip stopped at Jumanji on the way back to San Ignacio, so Yvonne, Tom, and I had time for a Happy Hour stop at Mr. Greedy’s where we were entertained by a couple of expats also enjoying $3BZ beers and $2BZ rums. When Steve and Carlos found us, the first thing Steve did was look at Yvonne and say “It was sooo cool!” That pretty much sums up how he felt about the trip.

They had an early start the next morning, meeting Hugo at the border at 7AM on the way to Tikal. They had a beautiful day to see Guatemala and tour the site, and climbed all the temples.

The next day they were able to compare the two largest archeological sites in the region when they visited Caracol with Selmo. They also stopped at Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Pools, so they had a good overview of the Mountain Pine Ridge area.

On their final full day in Belize, they visited Cahal Pech in San Ignacio, and the Chechem Ha Cave. They were supposed to go to Xunantunich, but the ferry was out, so the “ruin” part of the Cave & Ruin tour was changed to Cahal Pech, where Selmo showed them around.

They also toured the Chechem Ha Cave with Lea, which was the only cave Yvonne explored while here, since she and I went riding on the day Steve visited ATM. And, they had lunch at Benny’s in Succotz, so they were able to experience some real Belizean food.

The next day we were quite sad to say goodbye as Tom took them to the airport. Yet again, we made good friends in a week, after a series of dinners where we just sat and talked. Steve has a very interesting job which provided endless hours off fascinating conversation, and Yvonne works in the schools, so she had plenty of very interesting stories as well. And, they were curious about how two professionals end up living and thriving in the jungle, so none of us were ever at a loss for words. Steve was kind enough to drop us an email the next day to let us know they arrived home safely, and we really appreciated knowing that they had traveled safely and had a great vacation.

Hurricane Richard Aftermath

2010-10-25T11:27:00.000-05:00

We came through Hurricane Richard with lots of downed trees (including one mango, boohoo), but all people, horses, dogs, and buildings are fine. The road was blocked by downed trees both north and south of our driveway; Tom was out clearing the road before 6 this morning. We're not sure how the rest of the country fared since the only news sources we have are international internet news services, but no deaths are being reported so we're hoping for the best. We talked to Julio this morning and he said the Village of 7 Miles is fine, with some trees down, but as far as he knows, no major property destruction or casualties. We'll be spending today clearing away the downed trees and fixing fence.

Tree down in the heliconia near the porch

More of the tree in the heliconia

View from our house toward the guest cabin

More of the view toward the guest cabin

Tree down on the path to Tony and Lodo. This one took down the mango.

Trees down in Tony & Lodo's paddock

Lodo says it was a very scary night.

We have some fence fixing to do

This one involved some fence as well

Tony says it wasn't THAT scary. Where's breakfast?

Small tree down near the tack shed

Tree in the road to the south of our driveway

Tree in the road to the north of our driveway

Path back to the palapa

More path back to the palapa

Tree down near the palapa

Trees broken near the top near the palapa

Palapa area, by the driveway. But nothing hit the palapa!

Carol, Lori, and Rob

2010-10-23T16:45:00.001-05:00

Our next visitors were a trio of traveling friends from Colorado. They had spent the first part of their vacation in San Pedro, and flew into the Municipal airport on a 9:30AM flight. I drove to Belize City with our friend Ian, who is living in San Ignacio until December, and who had spent the afternoon and evening before with us, getting out of the city. Ian and I spotted Lori, Carol, and Rob immediately when they got off the little Tropic Air flight, and we got their bags loaded in the back of the little blue truck and we all piled in and were on our way. Our first stop was a bank to get more cash, and after some quick calculations about how much money they needed and a couple of stops at a couple of different banks, we were on our way to the Zoo.

Lori, Rob, and Carol under the banana tree in front of the guest cabin.

We had an absolutely wonderful time at the Zoo. Put together five people who love animals, add a chance meeting with the Zoo director who gave us a private tour complete with feeding some of the animals that many visitors never even see, add a bit of adventure – holding a boa and petting a jaguar! – and the normally hour and a half tour turned into a three and a half hour adventure. Ian had been to the Zoo on his own before, and he said it was much more fun to visit with a group and actually take the time to watch some of the animals. We discovered that Rob is some sort of animal whisperer; he would stand and look into a cage to try to see the animals, and they would get up from where ever they were and come to the edge of the cage to look at him. It was amazing!

By the time we were done at the Zoo, we were all starving, so we made our normal stop at Cheers for lunch. After a leisurely lunch, we headed to Jaguar Paw to zip line. We arrived there at 2:45, fifteen minutes before they officially start their last zips of the day, but because nobody had been in the park since noon, all the employees had been sent home a half hour early and the park was closed. The good thing about this stop was that the park management gave me their phone number, so if we’re running close to the edge again, we can call and make sure somebody is still there before we drive the six miles off the Western Highway, especially during the slow season when some attractions are occasionally closed due to a lack of tourists.

Although they were mildly disappointed, we made the best of it and headed directly into San Ignacio from Jaguar Paw, and arrived at Cahal Pech in time for Rob, Carol, Lori, and Ian to tour the museum and the site. They left the site when it closed at 5:30, so we drove down the hill and into San Ignacio and did a little bit of gift shopping before heading to dinner at Erva’s where we had the usual magnificent service of Germo, and were joined by Shawn, an archeologist friend we met this summer when he was working with Becky at Caves Branch. We then did a little more shopping from the street vendors who are out at night in San Ignacio before heading back to the farm. We really made the most of this transfer day!

The next day Lori, Carol, and Rob toured ATM. We went through a small period of chaos because we weren’t sure if the cave was closed due to some rain we’d been having, and didn’t know until Selmo and Carlos met them in Georgeville if they were actually going to make it to the cave. But, lucky for everybody, the cave was open, so they had a great day in the Maya underworld.

They were only with us for two nights, so they were heading back to Belize City to go home the next morning. But, their flight wasn’t until mid-afternoon, so they had some time to hang around here in the morning. We had just started digging in the ground under the palapa to level the floor for the kitchen, so we showed Rob, Carol, and Lori how we were finding pieces of pottery. They grabbed knives and trowels and started digging, and we all found pieces of pots, which they thought was pretty cool – and we were glad to find someone else so fascinated by digging up thousand year old garbage!

Jennifer, Carla, & Pat

2010-10-21T17:55:00.000-05:00

We had a laughter filled visit with Jennifer, Pat, and Carla, a sister-sister-daughter/niece trio from Georgia, Virginia, and Washington, DC, who met in Atlanta and flew to Belize. I picked them up from the airport, recognizing them immediately as they walked out of the gate thanks to Jennifer’s forethought in sending me a photo of herself and Carla. We than went to lunch at Cheers, and then backtracked a couple of miles for a tour of the Belize Zoo, where we were lucky enough to run into Sharon who was walking around feeding chicken parts to the predators – which gave us an up-close and personal look at some animals we might not have otherwise seen.

Pat & Carla with a famous Moonracer Farm breakfast.
We have no pics of Jennifer since she was always behind the camera!

The next day Tom took them into town to meet Selmo, who took them on a tour of Xunantunich before handing them over to Link, who took them kayaking in the Mopan. After a great evening visiting, they were up early the next morning to head to the Guatemala border, where they met Hugo who took them to Tikal where they both ziplined and toured the site.

The next day they were heading to the water taxi to continue their vacation on the cayes, but thanks to the late afternoon water taxis, we were able to get a full days of touring in before they left. We started with a visit to the Green Hills Butterfly Ranch, early enough to still see the butterflies emerging from their chrysalises and drying their wings. We then traversed the rough road to Barton Creek Cave, where Jose paddled them through the cave while Louie and I watched Mango the monkey.

We got out of Barton Creek around 1:00, and started the run to Belize City. It was Belize’s Independence Day, so none of our usual lunch stops were open and we ended up stopping for takeout at a Chinese restaurant in Belmopan. That was fine, except a new speed bump had just been put in the highway between Belmopan and St. Matthew’s. That would have been okay, except I was talking, laughing, and trying to eat the fried chicken Jennifer was passing to me…and didn’t see the new bump until I hit it at about 55. I said something I probably shouldn’t write, and then looked in the rearview mirror as I hit the bump, and it looked like Pat and Carla were in a snow globe as they bounced up, surrounded by the flying fried rice. Lucky for me, all three of them have VERY good senses of humor, and we all started to giggle. They cleaned up the rice as best they could, and all the way to Belize City we all periodically erupted into fits of giggles. The car smelled like a Chinese restaurant, but by the next morning when I got around to finishing the cleaning job that was already quite well started, most of the rice was dry and I just swept it out! We made it the rest of the way to the water taxi, said good bye, and they headed to the cayes as I headed home.

The school children of 7 Miles got a big bonus from these three women. Jennifer is a sixth-grade teacher, and Pat is a retired librarian, and they arrived in Belize with an entire suitcase of school supplies. Because they visited over Belize’s Independence Day holiday weekend they weren’t able to deliver the goods to the school themselves, but as you can see from the picture, the kids were very happy and appreciative!

Christi & Mike

2010-10-21T15:46:00.000-05:00

This time of year here is usually very quiet tourism-wise, and very busy weather wise since it’s the height of the hurricane season. This year, however, has been exactly the opposite for us, with enough guests to keep us busy, and generally gorgeous weather. So, when we haven’t been busy with our guests, we’ve been busy being outside and having fun, or, as you can see from previous blog entries, building our new kitchen and dining room. But, I’m finally getting around to updating the blog with the visitors we’ve had since the end of August! Sorry for the delay, Christi and Mike!

Christi and Mike from Texas stayed with us for the last couple of days of August. Christi and I had communicated quite a bit prior to their stay, and, on our advice, they spent the first bit of the inland portion of their stay at Caves Branch because they wanted to do the Black Hole Drop. It’s an awesome tour and worth doing, but it’s very expensive to do it from our place because on top of Caves Branch’s tour price, you have to pay for transportation to get there and back, not to mention it becomes a very long day by the time you add close to three hours of driving to a long hike and the actual Drop. So, they stayed at Caves Branch and did the Black Hole Drop, and caught a Caves Branch transfer to San Ignacio the next day, where Tom met them.

The next day they toured ATM with Gonzo, and, predictably, loved it. The water was a little high and Christi said the going was tough at some points, but they conquered the cave and were amazed at its beauty and archeological significance.

They were only here for two nights, so they had to leave the next day for the cayes. Fortunately, they only had to get to the water taxi and didn’t mind having a little bit of time to kick back and relax, so we had a very enjoyable morning visiting with them. Tom and Mike discovered that they’re both Eagle Scouts, and Christi and I enjoyed sitting on the porch and just visiting. Then, off to the water taxi for the diving part of their Belize adventure at Xanadu in San Pedro.

Done with the roof, on to the floor

2010-10-20T17:41:00.002-05:00

Fortunately Tom and the crew made far better progress on the kitchen over the past few weeks than I have made on blogging! The following pictures should give you a pretty good overview of what they’ve done.

With Tom passing leaf to the guys on top of the roof…

…they made pretty quick work of getting the rest of the leaf tied onto the roof. The key was to get enough guys tying that nobody had to move back and forth too much. They just waited for the next leaf to be passed up, and then they tied it to the roof beams.

What amazed me was that while Tom was barely comfortable climbing the ladder to pass up the leaf, most of the tying crew completely ignored the ladder and just went up and down from the inside of the roof using the poles and the sticks in the roof.

When they had completed both long sides almost to the top, they put a couple extra layers of leaves over the gap.

Then they stuck short metal poles through the thatch perpendicular to the roofline…

…so they could set long metal poles on them, against the thatch, to hold down the roof cap.

Here’s a view of the completed roof from the inside.

And here’s a few of the work crew under the newly completed roof!

The next step was the floor. The biggest problem with the floor is that the very rocky ground in the back right corner was about a foot and a half higher than the ground in the front left corner. So, one day while Tom and I were out, Julio and Byron build a rock wall around the perimeter of the building and topped it with a level strip of cement that would be the floor level. They then started to fill in what was a rather obvious large hole with dirt and rocks from around the property, but it soon became clear that it was going to take weeks of back breaking labor for a few men to get the level up to where they could pour the concrete.

So, Tom ordered a truckload of sand, and it took less than a morning to move the sand from where the truck dumped it to under the palapa. The next problem was to get the sand mashed down so it wouldn’t settle after the concrete was poured. Tom tried pulling our little blue truck in and running it back and forth over the sand, which helped, although when the clutch started stinking they were back to a more manual method of flattening it.

The more manual method of flattening was basically wetting it enough to make it settle. Fortunately for us our water supply has been pretty dependable lately, so Tom and I didn’t get too anxious about it. We’re going to have different floors in the kitchen and the dining room. In the kitchen, we’re just going to have a flat concrete floor, while Tom is going to inlay some wood into the dining room floor. Since we don’t have the wood for the dining room floor yet, the floor is being made in two parts, starting with the kitchen. They cut some long boards to pour the kitchen section of the floor in two pieces.

They put some cage material in the floor, and then started pouring and flattening in four sections…

… making it level with another long board.

When it was all poured, it was left to dry overnight.

Byron has spent most of today working on giving it a smooth finish. I had to make the decision about what I want on the floor in the end, and I opted for the smooth concrete. If I wanted tiles, they would have left it rough because the tiles would adhere better, but I think that tiles tend to get slippery when wet – and my kitchen floor is always wet – so I think that a smooth concrete finish will be the safest and the easiest to clean.

So, you're going out to see your lovers?

2010-10-13T23:03:00.000-05:00

A funny Belize moment.

Tom and I were going out shopping today. I was dressed in a flowered dress with my favorite red strappy clogs, and Tom was wearing decent sneakers, Carharrt shorts, and a button up shirt. A couple of local friends were here working, moving dirt and stones into the area that we hope will shortly be our kitchen.

As we went to get in the little blue truck, we stopped to tell them what we were doing and to say goodbye. One of them said, in Spanish, "So, you're going out to see your lovers?"

Huh?

The answer: Uh, Tom, you're not in a sweaty t-shirt, shorts, and boots. Marge, you're not in your rubber boots, sweaty t-shirt and shorts, dirty, and surrounded by horses.

Obviously, you're not in your daily routine, so obviously headed out to see your lovers. (Novios, in Spanish.)

Us: Uh, yeah. We're going out with each other. So, yeah, we're both going out with our lovers. Bye."

We love these guys. They're so frank. And we love living in Belize.

Kitchen progress - walls and roof

2010-09-25T16:40:00.002-05:00

Tom and the crew made amazing progress on the kitchen building over the past couple of weeks. After getting all the cement poured for the footers, Tom, Julio, and Marvin went out in the jungle to find some suitable trees for the support poles.

They found the trees and carted them back to the Farm in Tinkerbell.

The next step was to strip the bark from all of the trees. The timing of the tree cutting was important, because all the wood and the thatch must be collected in the week before and the week after the full moon. It sounds like superstition, but we’ve come to believe it, and some scientific types tell us it actually makes sense because the water in the plants follows the moon like the tide, and the water level in the trees and thatch is at the right level for best preserving the wood when the moon is full.

When the poles were stripped, they started mounting them on the footers. With a combination of man power and ropes, they stood the poles upright and while some of the guys held them, somebody else would drill holes through the bottom of the log and bolt it to the bracket mounted in the cement.

The tree used for the corner pole is quite large and very heavy, so they used a different procedure to get that tree set on the footer. The day before, Julio, Marvin, and Tom built a large stand as a brace so they could mount a block and tackle on it to pull up the pole.

They strapped the pole to a chain on the block and tackle, and used the pulley to get the log in position.

They left the bark on the big log until it was in position so it wouldn’t be slippery, and then stripped it once it was up.

At the end of the day, all of the logs were up on the footers. Most of them were roped to each other or to trees so they wouldn’t fall over before they were hooked together by the supporting beams at the top.

The next day, the supporting beams were added, all the way around from the top of each log to the next, and across the structure for stability.

This involved lots of climbing, using both ladders and the logs. I find it amazing that construction workers in the US always seem to wear heavy boots. Here, the workers find it easier to climb on the logs with bare feet, so they usually work in Crocs or sandals, and kick them off when they head up into the roof.

They then had to go back to the jungle to get the smaller trees that would be used to build the whole frame for the roof. They hauled these sticks back to the farm, and then spent the better part of a day stripping the bark from them.

The first step to building the structure of the roof is to set up the pole that will form the peak.

They then start running poles from the peak to the side beams to form the sides of the roof.

All of the poles must be nailed to the top roofline pole, and that’s way up there. The ceiling of the building is about 10 to 12 feet above the ground, and the peak of the roof is 15 feet above that. You’ll notice that there are lots of tree branches hanging over the roof. These will have to be removed when the roof is done because cohune thatch roofs need sun, but the construction guys decided to leave them there while they worked on the roof both for shade, and in case they need to grab something attached to something to get their balance.

When the sides are on, more poles are added for the front and back of the roof.

Horizontal poles are added for more support because the leaf is heavy, and to support the structure of the roof. A single tree is used for each side without joining trees in the middle.

The next two days were spent cutting the cohune fronds to be used as the thatch. The leaves are better when they’re cut from cohune palms in the open, rather than trees in the jungle. Only a few fronds are taken from each tree so the trees aren’t damaged. The guys had a problem this day because many of the cohunes had wasp nests, and everybody was stung. Fortunately nobody is allergic to bees! The timing on this was perfect because they finished the structure of the roof two days before the full moon, so all the leaf was cut the day before and the day of the full moon.

All the fronds were hauled back to our place on Chuck and Marjie’s trailer. About 600 fronds will be used on this roof, and the weight really adds up. It didn’t help that they day they hauled them back it was raining, so everything was even heavier because of the water.

All the leaf was unloaded, and it then needed to be split. A couple of the guys split the leaf, and the others sorted and stacked it, organizing the split leaves by length and by which way the leaves grow from the spine.

The splitting of the leaf here took all morning, and by the end of the morning we had stacks of leaf everywhere. Although we’re going to need more leaf to complete the roof, this gave them enough leaf to get started.

The four guys from 7 Miles went up to start tying the leaf to the roof supports, while Tom fed the leaf up to them.

Tom doesn’t mind being the guy on the ground, for a couple of reasons. First, he doesn’t like heights, so he’s more than happy to let somebody else do the work the requires your feet to leave the ground. Second, he knew how all the piles of split leaf were organized, and he knows what order they need the leaf of the roof, so he can keep track of which leaves from which piles are going up on the roof in which order.

By the end of the day on Friday, we had a respectable start on the roof. They guys had intended to work through the weekend to get at least the ends of the roof done, but Tropical Storm Matthew changed those plans. The crew still showed up here this morning to work, but Tom and I decided that we didn’t want the risk of the guys up in the wet slippery rafters working with heavy slippery leaves…and none of them looked too disappointed at being sent home. Work will continue on Monday.

Visit to San Miguel, Toledo District, Part 3 – Hike to cave

2010-09-12T12:32:00.005-05:00

(Julio, Germo, and Tino) Germo’s cousin or uncle, Tino, I wasn’t too clear which he was, wanted to show us the project the town was working on, a walking path to a large cave up the river from the town. A couple of interesting parallels to Julio here: Julio and Tino are both chairmen for their villages, both have projects going to help the village, both are trying to promote more tourism with their projects to help provide more money for their towns, and both projects involve caves and hiking trails. Julio and I were glad to go out to see the progress on their project which they started about 6 months ago.

As we started out, we entered into sections that were thick with Heliconias that were well over our heads. Throughout the hike we kept finding sections like this, it was like a real hike in the jungle!

We had a beautiful shallow stream crossing that we used to wash our hands and faces to cool us off a bit.

Along the way we met up with some of the youths from San Miguel that are working on the project. Tino and the town council select workers from the local school graduates that wish to make some money to put towards their further educational expenses when they go to college (high school for those that live in the US). The workers are chopping the trail and planting hardwood trees along the way.

There are also a number of small shelters along the way with roofs that the workers have built so that in the case of rain or you just need a bit of shade, you can sit for a rest and enjoy the view of the river as you make your way to the cave.

Since the trail winds along the river side on public land (30 feet either side of a river is considered public access), we passed by numerous farm fields. I had never seen a rice field since Marge and I lived in the northeast US prior to Belize. Also, where we live in Belize, the foothills to the Pine Ridge, there is not enough rain and water to grow rice so we haven’t even seen it growing here in Belize, even though rice is a major part of the local diet.

The trail to the cave is not complete but most of the work is done, there is a section that still is not yet chopped though. Tino had to chop a narrow path for us for about a mile so that we could get through the dense brush.

We finally got to the cave area, but Julio and I were surprised to find that a hydroelectric station has been built on the river. A dam was built upriver from where we were (we did not see the dam, maybe next trip).

The cave was huge, the ceiling probably 100-150 high. We went through one section,

broke out into the thick jungle, then went back into another section. The river used to run through the cave and it looks like currently, when the rains are very heavy, there is water that passes through. Tino and Germo told us that the river did not run through the cave PRIOR to the dam being built.

We did not go very deep into the cave due to our timing, so we need to go back for some more exploring (another trip – hopefully when the trail is done and ready for tourists).

We left the dam area by foot on a road that goes back to town. About a quarter of the way back a truck came along hauling firewood to town so we all jumped in back and were happy for the lift. The plan for tourists is to have a canoe ready for the guests to enjoy a leisurely paddle back to town and enjoy the view of the jungle from the river.

After we all got back to town, the kids were excited to see all of us return so we played in the yard for a while.

That evening we had venison and vegetables, a very filling dinner after a long day of sightseeing.

Visit to San Miguel, Toledo District - Part 2 - Nim Li Punit site

2010-09-12T11:52:00.013-05:00

Germo and his brother Bernadino had planned a full day for Julio and I so that we could get a feel for what tourists would be able to see if we had anyone interested in traveling down to southern Belize. Our first adventure for the day was a tour of the archeological site known as Nim Li Punit.

Nim Li Punit is just off the Southern Highway up a fairly steep, rocky hill; I am not sure how a vehicle would do climbing the hill if it was raining and didn’t have 4WD. At the top though, the view is gorgeous, looking out to the south and east over the flat low lying areas going out to the sea.

Marge and I have been to a number of Maya sites and there is always something that sticks in your head to differentiate each site from all the others, and for Nim Li Punit it was the number of stela. Inside the museum there was a very tall, well preserved stela laying down to view,

along with a number that were standing up.

There were also various pots and tools on display that were found at the site.

As we were walking around the site we caught glimpses of agoutis running all about eating fruits that had dropped from the trees.

Germo and Bernadino’s little brother was along and he had a wonderful time trying to catch up with one.

One of the other notable items from Nim Li Punit was the open tomb that was displayed at the site. The tomb was open from the top and from looking down from the top you could see the cap stones and how far down the room extended; for one or two bodies, it was a lot of room.

After touring the site we climbed back in the car and drove back to San Miguel for lunch. Germo helped with making a lunch of breadfruit soup from the breadfruit tree we had passed the day before; it was delicious, and I usually don’t eat just soup for a meal. We rested up for about an hour and then we were off for our afternoon tour.

We’ve Started!

2010-09-11T12:12:00.006-05:00

I’ve been feeding our guests out of our very small kitchen in our house since we opened for business. It works, but it’s so small that I can’t get any help even when I need it, because only one person fits in the kitchen. Tom and I agreed that the next thing we need to improve our business is a bigger kitchen and a dining room. Around here, most people have their kitchens in separate buildings from the rest of the house. We thought this was strange at first – definitely not what we were used to – but after living here for almost four years, we’ve learned that like most customs around here, it makes sense for a bunch of reasons, with the primary reason being that getting the stove out of the house gets a big heat producer out of the house.

So, last week we cleared an area in our yard. It was a little bit of a challenge finding a big enough area in a spot where we didn’t have to cut down any of our fruit trees, but we did it.

We’re going to have the building mostly screened, and with an open thatch roof – again, in an attempt to keep the air moving so it doesn’t get too hot. The thatch roof will be built on a frame of trees, so Tom and Julio broke ground, digging holes to fill with concrete for the footers.

We made a couple of interesting discoveries as construction started. The first was that the area we selected for the kitchen is apparently a Maya house mound, since Tom was pulling bunches of pot sherds out of the ground.

The second was that sometime in the past, one of the previous owners of this property attempted to drill a well. Tom, Julio, and Marvin were collecting big rocks around the property to use as part of the foundation, and when they moved a rock in our front horse pasture, they found that it covered this drilled well. Julio tied a rock to the end of a 300 foot spool of fishing line to see how deep it is, and it fell off the spool and kept falling at the end of the 300 feet – so it’s pretty deep. The rock covering the well is not going to be part of the kitchen foundation since it’s back where it was to keep the hole covered.

After collecting the rocks, they piled them around the holes dug for the footers, and filled the holes and the rock edging with cage material before pouring in the concrete.

Mixing the concrete is a tough job, and given the relatively small scale of this project, they’re doing it by hand. We had a dump truck load of sand delivered, and Little Blue was called into heavy service bringing about 1000 pounds of cement from San Ignacio. Marvin, being the youngest of the three working on the project, got the honor of mixing the cement, sand, and water on an old concrete slab, and then helping Tom shovel it into buckets so Tom could wheel the buckets to Julio, who poured it into the footer holes.

The next step is to build the walls and create the cavity to be filled for the floor. The front corner is about a foot and a half lower than the opposite back corner, so we’re going to need quite a bit of fill, and it will be obviously built up on the side nearest the house. Looks like Tom and the guys will be out collecting more rocks this next week!

Calf Moooving

2010-09-11T11:28:00.001-05:00

We got behind this truck with Guatemala plates on the Western Highway last week. Now we know how to get a calf to Guatemala!