Going to see a man about a horse

Selwyn working on the door

Selwyn and his finished door

Easy up on the pony! And easy down, too.

Heading out on Esmerelda

A well-deserved bath after a long ride




Tom and Selwyn continued the effort on the first cabin. More doors installed!

I went to see a man about a horse – really. I rode 2 ½ miles down the road on Esmerelda. On the way there, I saw two cars, but seven horses being ridden. Three of those were a guide and two tourists from MET, a horse resort just down the road, but the others were just people like me, going somewhere. The horse was already sold – traded for a week’s labor to a guy who installed a fence for the guy selling the horse. I talked to David, the seller, because we know each other because we put an offer in on his house. As two Americans, we were shaking our heads over the difference in money between Belize and the USA. In Belize, the horse was worth a week of work. That translates to about $150BZ, or $75US. Seems like a dirt-cheap horse to us, but to a Belizean…it’s a week of work, and a week when the worker won’t have that money for food and whatever else he needs to spend to support himself and his family. But, he now has transportation for as long as the horse lasts, which should be a while since it’s not a bad horse.

I also made last minute plans to go to San Ignacio on Thursday. We received an email last week from the real estate agent telling us that he had some paperwork for us. We’d been planning to make the trip into town on Friday, but realized on Monday that this Friday is Good Friday, a bank holiday, so we thought we’d put the trip off for a week. However, I called the real estate agent just to see what was going on, and he said that he was leaving town for a week on Friday, so I decided to get the paperwork so we can make sure everything is in order over the weekend.