We took the turnoff towards Calla Creek, which is a dirt road through the countryside along the river. It reminds us of Nations Road in Geneseo, since it follows the river and is surrounded by pastures with grazing cattle. Of course the trees are palms instead of oaks, and the cattle are Brahmin cows, and the few horses thrown in are definitely not Genesee Valley Hunt horses, but the basic elements of the picture are the same. We found a wide spot along the road near a fishing hole to pull off and park, and we set off up the road. After slopping through the mud puddles which make up most of the dirt roads around here right now because of all the rain, within about a half mile we came to the village of Calla Creek, which has all of a dozen houses and a small clapboard church.
Suddenly we were surrounded by children. They came out of houses, and out of back yards, and out of the church, and out of the fields and ditches. None of them said a word, they just looked at us with their big brown eyes. We told them, in both English and Spanish, that the dogs were friendly, and they all sort of looked away and hung back. So, we continued our walk up the road with a trail of fifteen or so children following us. When we had walked through the town and decided to turn back (Mel isn’t good for much more than a mile or so any more), we were facing the kids, so we smiled big smiles and asked them again if they wanted to pat the dogs. They inched closer, and a couple of the braver kids reached out and patted Mel. Then a few stepped up and patted Nock and Lou. Within a couple of minutes, they were all patting all the dogs, checking out their ears and tails, exclaiming over Mel’s long nose (grande nariz), and jabbering away to each other and us.
At some point they were completely over their shyness, and they started asking us if they could have the dogs. We explained that the dogs are our pets, and we didn’t want to give them up, and the dogs are all pretty old anyway. So, they grabbed the leashes, with us still holding the ends, and traveled along with us talking away. When we were just about out of the town, we came across three horses grazing in the ditch that we had passed on the way into town. Like a flock of birds, the kids wheeled away from us and surrounded the horses. One of the kids had been carrying what looked like a chopped up longe line, which turned out to be a makeshift halter, so they haltered one of the horses and dragged it through the ditch and into the road to show to us. The horse was little and rangy and blind in one eye, but we made all the appropriate oohing and aahing sounds, which prompted one of the kids to ask us if we would like to trade the horse for Mellow. We told them no, we really wanted to keep Mel, and we didn’t have any place to keep a horse anyway, which probably made no sense to them since you just keep a horse in a ditch beside the road. With that they gave up their campaign to get a dog, and they dragged the horse back towards town, and we continued back to our truck.
Mel's face is finally getting better
On the way back to the campground, we decided to stop at one of the Chinese groceries to pick up some bottled water and see if anything looked good for dinner. We got some chicken, and some rice noodles for stir fry. When we got back to the camper I went to put the noodles in the cabinet and noticed a black spot. When I looked closer, I realized the black spot was moving. Then I realized that there were quite a few moving black spots in the package of noodles. I checked the expiration date; it was May 2006. Lesson number one with the $40 dog food was to always check prices before anything goes in the cart. I’d now learned lesson number two: always make sure nothing is crawling around in whatever you buy, and check the expiration dates.
Since we’ve realized that whatever property we buy, we’ll probably want to make some changes, we decided on Monday to take a drive over to Spanish Lookout. Spanish Lookout is a largely Mennonite community, so they have all sorts of farm stores with building supplies, appliances, tractors, hardware – basically whatever you need to build a farm and keep it running. There are two roads into Spanish Lookout from the Western Highway; one is only about three miles, but you have to take the ferry, and the other has a bridge and is mostly nicely paved, but it’s about 15 miles longer by the time you drive to the road from San Ignacio, and then take the long way around to the actual town.
We had intended to take the long way over the bridge, but we saw the sign that said “Spanish Lookout 3” which had a sign for horses for sale immediately under it, so we changed our minds and headed down the ferry road. This was despite the fact that we had just heard a horror story from Greg (the campground owner) about how some people were drowned because just as they loaded their car on the ferry, a drunk driver came down the hill and hit them, knocking their car off the ferry and into the river. When we pulled up to the crossing, there were three cars in front of us, and the ferry was just heading towards our side from the other side of the river. We pulled over and turned off the ignition. It reached our side, the cars drove off, the people who had been riding outside the cars jumped in the cars, and they drove away. The ferry can only fit three cars at a time, so the three cars in front of us pulled onto the ferry and it started crossing back. When it came time for us to load, one of the crossing workers came up to our truck and said “Di passenger have to get out di vehicle,” so I got out and jumped on the ferry to ride on the side while Tom drove on, giving me a good chance to look down the river. When we got to the other side, I did what the other passengers had done, which is to jump off and run up the hill so that Tom, being the first truck in line, could drive away from the ferry so the other cars could get off before letting me get back in the truck. We continued towards Spanish lookout, although we didn’t stop to see the horses for sale because they were down another road in the opposite direction from where we were going. When we get a place and are ready for horses, we’ll make a trip especially for horse shopping; it’s probably dangerous for me to look now because I might just decide that keeping a horse in the ditch is okay if I see one I like!
Tom, who just got a new battery in his watched, timed the crossing: five or six minutes each way, with a few minutes to load and unload, so each cycle took twelve or thirteen minutes. That meant we waited about 20 minutes for our turn, which meant it probably would have been just as quick to drive around – but we seem to be getting better at operating on Belizean time, so we just enjoyed the ride.
We found lots of stuff in Spanish Lookout, and got a list of prices on everything from gutters to tractors. We’re not sure what we’ll need, since we don’t know what we’re buying yet, but we feel pretty confident that we can find everything we need somewhere around here, and for the most part the prices are comparable to prices in the US. There are a few things that are more expensive, like appliances, but there are also a few things that are less expensive, so it seems to wash.
It continued to rain for most of Monday afternoon, so I decided to cook since it’s cool enough that the stove doesn’t heat up the camper too much. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying shopping at the open air farm markets, and have been trying some of the fruits and vegetables that we don’t see up north. We’d been given a chocho by our camping neighbors who were heading to Guatemala earlier in the week, and found that we liked it. It’s sort of like a squash, but it has just one big seed in the middle, like an avocado, and a green prickly skin, and it has a lot more substance than a squash. I decided that it could be used like an eggplant, so I set out to make chocho parmesan. I didn’t want to use canned sauce, so I made my own sauce, which was sort of a cross between Italian style tomato sauce and salsa. I sliced, breaded, and fried the chochos, simmered the sauce, and then put it in a pan layered with cheese, which is very fresh and readily available around here. I baked it for about an hour and we ate it over rice, also grown and harvested locally. Tom, who was tentative because he’s not all that fond of eggplant parmesan, said it was much better than eggplant, and I liked it just as much.
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