More Things Learned

Tom pointed out to me that in last week’s blog entry, I neglected to mention the most important thing he learned that week – Belikin Beer will be delivered right to our door, a whole truckload if we want it. We’ve been buying beer and water at the distributor ever since we arrived in Belize. Last week, Tom was working out by the road and the Belikin delivery truck drove by, and the driver apparently recognized Tom as someone who buys cases of beer at the distributor. He stopped, and asked Tom if he knew he could have it delivered. Tom explained that he usually only gets a case every couple of weeks, and that he goes to the distributor because that’s where it’s the cheapest. The driver said it didn’t matter, because a case is the same price off the truck as it is from the distributor, and they don’t really care if they stop to drop off one case or 50 cases. So, despite the fact that we’re out in the sticks, we’re on the route to the big lodges up the road, so we now have our beer delivered right to the door, and soda too if we want. All we have to do is put the empty cases out by the road so the driver knows to stop, and the empty cases become full. How cool is that?

The other irony of technology in the wilderness we’ve found is that our vet in San Ignacio will diagnose and prescribe treatments for the animals via email. We can’t make an appointment because we can’t use the phone, so we’ve been trying to catch him every time we go to town. However, he’s been going to Belize City to be treated for a back injury, so we haven’t managed to find him. Tom finally suggested that I email him our questions with pictures, and see what he said. Stout has had a little lump on his foot, and we bought ivermectin for Beli that I wasn’t sure was the right stuff, so I sent him questions about those two things, and within 24 hours he’d responded with a very detailed answer, and a prescribed treatment for Stout. We think the vet should start his own website and he’d probably get rich.


Over the past year, we’ve had a number of people ask if they can hunt on our property because we have a few trees that attract gibnuts, also known as pacas, also known as the Royal Rodent because, we were told, the meat is so good that when Queen Elizabeth visited Belize, she was served gibnut. We’ve told everybody who asked to hunt that it was fine with us, as long as we could sample the meat if they got anything. Either nobody has actually shot a gibnut on our property, or they shoot them and eat them before we get any meat, but in any case we had not tried the meat. We buy our meat at Running W on the Western Highway, and one day when we were there Tom asked the guy who runs the store if they ever sell gibnut. Dennis said no, but the next time we were in he told us that he’d talked to his boss, and was going to get us some. When we went in this week, we were told that while they didn’t have a fresh one yet, they’d found some in the freezer and had smoked them, so Dennis and Escandar, the owner, gave us a half a smoked gibnut. Escandar told me to cook it just like a ham. I didn’t really believe him – how could a rodent be like a pig? – but he’s right, smoked gibnut is just like a ham, from the taste and texture of the meat right down to the skin and the fat under the skin, which is delicious if you live by the “pork fat rules” saying, and probably somewhat nauseating if you don’t like fat.


There’s a lot of meat on a gibnut; the half we had weighed almost six pounds and the bones are fairly small. Tom and I ate the hind leg for dinner one night, then we all worked on the ribs for lunch for two or three days, and as I write this the shoulder and front leg are in a pot cooking into a lentil curry soup. Escandar says we should use the cages we have here to raise gibnuts for meat, and we’re actually thinking about it even though we know that if we’d ever told anybody we were going to move to Belize to raise gibnuts, we’d have been told that were nuts – which may in fact be the case, but I guess we’ll see.


This week’s big project on the property has been the sign. In keeping with our wood motif, we’re hanging out boards with wooden letters, similar to park signs in the US. Since each board takes a while to put together since we’re making all the letters for both sides out of wood, we’re doing them one piece at a time, and we started with “ROOMS.” On Tuesday, Tom finished one side and hung the sign out to see how it looks from the road. He left it there for a couple of hours while he made the letters for the other side, and then went out and took it in to finish. As we ate lunch, we were joking that the tourists are now going to start pouring in because we have a sign. As we were finishing lunch, the woman who is working on a property down the road pulled in and asked if we had rooms available because she had some friends coming in from San Pedro and they needed a place to stay. So, despite our joking, the sign did pull in some guests, who stayed for two nights. The morning they were leaving, I took the boy who was with them out for a ride on Tony. As we were coming back up the road, he looked at the sign and asked “Is Rooms the name of your business?” A logical question for a kid, I guess, but we’re trying to hurry to get the rest of it done and hung by the road.


The other completed project is a people gate next to the vehicle gate across the driveway. We’ve had a gap there since we moved the big gate away from the road, but we wanted it blocked in case horses get loose. The hibiscus is already growing in along the barbed wire, and it’s actually starting to look inviting.


I never posted a picture of the second completed guest room. Tom and Selwyn finished the second bed for that room last week. The far bed in this picture is made out of milady wood, and the closer one is made of jobio.


The jobio wood is beautiful, as you can see in this closeup. All I can think when I look at it is that it makes me hungry; it looks like a chocolate caramel vanilla swirl ice cream!


These beautiful Shower of Gold orchids are growing in the sapodilla tree off the porch of Tom’s shop. We’re not sure if they were put there by the original owners of the property, or if they’ve just grown wild there.

We’re Still Learning

This has been a week of suddenly figuring out things we’d heard about over the past 15 months, but hadn’t really understood. The first thing, which made us wonder how much money we’ve thrown away, or, more accurately, dumped in the dogs’ stomachs, is that we found that the local feed mill makes its own dog food as well as its own horse feed and feed for other livestock. We knew to ask about the horse feed since most mills in the US make horse feed, but it never occurred to us that a mill would make its own local dog food. I dimly remember somebody mentioning it to us when we first got here, but I was on a mission to find dog food that was as similar as possible to what we fed in the US. We did, to the tune of $53BZ for a 40-pound bag, which wasn’t too much more than we were paying in the US. Last week we ate lunch with Frank from the real estate office, who also has four big dogs. We were lamenting how much big dogs can eat since we now have two more big dogs than we did when we came here, and Frank told us he would have gone broke by now if he hadn’t discovered the local dog food. I was a little more ready to listen since we go through the 40-pound bags at an alarming rate, so when we went to Spanish Lookout last week, I asked how much the local dog food cost, and how it compared nutritionally with the bagged stuff.

Nutritionally, it’s very close, and perhaps even a little better. It’s about the same protein and fat levels, and lower fiber. And, the thing that really convinced us that we should at least try it is that it’s $10.45BZ for a 25-pound bag, so for $21BZ we get 10 pounds more than we’ve been paying $53BZ for in the imported bag. However, it’s not kibble, it looks just like horse feed, which I guess is what kibble looks like before its kibbelized. I weighed it so I could figure out how much to give the dogs, and it weighs the same as the kibble cup for cup. We’re not sure how well they’ll like it, but I guess we’ll start mixing it in with their kibble and hope for the best. We’ll probably start giving them biscuits again so they have something to crunch, although I’m not sure that really matters since we always mix the kibble with water and it gets mushy anyway. We’ll let you know how well this latest Belize experiment works in a restaurant review by Louie in a couple of weeks.

The other thing we learned was a just-in-time lesson about the Belize timber industry and logging regulations. We knew loggers needed permits to harvest most of the hardwoods. What we didn’t know was that it’s illegal to even have in your possession hardwood that has not been harvested legally – sort of like having an untagged deer in your freezer in NY. We’d learned a little about this a couple of months ago when our Minnesota neighbor Mark from down the road had a mahogany tree and a cedar tree cut down on his property when the crew was clearing to put in the electric poles. We sort of got in the middle of a tussle between Mark’s caretaker and Mark’s neighbor about who was going to take the lumber, and neither of them was even considering Mark. When we realized what was going on we talked to Mark and to the two of them, and resolved that both the neighbor and the caretaker could have some wood, but that Mark also wanted some lumber so he could have some furniture made from wood harvested from his land. The neighbor ended up overseeing the collection, milling, and distribution of the wood, and showed up here one night with a list of the wood milled for Mark, along with a bill for the milling and, presumably, Mark’s share of the permit fee. Tom went to Mark’s and picked up Mark’s share of the wood, and we have it stored in our shop so it won’t disappear from Mark’s property before he gets to use it.

Yesterday Tom and Selwyn and a couple of other guys were working at Mark’s to finish clearing his front property line. They’d done most of it a month or so ago, but had to give the cut wood time to dry so they could burn it, and they had a few more burn piles to make. They spent most of the day there, and Tom brought them all back here to pay them for the day’s work. As they were getting ready to leave so Tom could take the guys to San Antonio, a Ministry of Natural Resources truck pulled into our driveway. I was out for a ride, but Tom said the officer made small talk with him for a few minutes, then asked to walk away from the truck, and then started asking Tom what he knows about the timber laws in Belize. Tom gave him a quick outline of what he knew, which was pretty quick because it wasn’t much. At this point Tom started to figure out that he wasn’t here just for a visit and wanted to talk to him about something specific, so he explained that he had to take the guys to town and asked if they could talk some other time since the officer didn’t want to talk in front of the work crew. The officer said he would wait while Tom did the trip. Just about this time I rode into the yard, so Tom had a whispered conference with me, told me the officer was going to wait, and that I should talk to him in the meantime.

I untacked Tony and turned him out, and sat on the porch with the officer, whose name is Lizandro. We discussed life in Belize, life in rural areas in general, what it takes to acclimate to Belize’s climate after forty-some years in the cold, and things like that. When Tom returned, the real reason for the visit came out as Lizandro gave us a pretty detailed rundown of Belize’s timber laws – in a nutshell, if any downed hardwood is used for anything, the Forestry Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources must issue a permit and stamp each piece of rough-cut lumber, and you are in violation of the law if you have any unstamped rough-cut in your possession. Tom and I realized where this was going, and mentioned that we had a pile of rough-cut in our shop from the property down the road, and asked Lizandro if he could show us the stamp since we had been told that a permit was issued for this lumber, but neither of us could recall seeing a stamp.

Well, that was because the lumber wasn’t stamped, which we suspect Lizandro already knew. Despite everybody and their grandmothers hearing about these two infamous trees, and despite the fact that the Forestry Department had in fact stamped at least some of the lumber from those trees, the boards in our shop were not legal and the Forestry Department had never issued a permit for their use. Tom mentioned that he had been going to take them to one of the mills to have them planed, and asked what would have happened. Lizandro explained that if a Forestry Department officer finds somebody transporting illegal lumber, the officer may seize the lumber, impound the vehicle, and arrest the driver, no search warrants required. Tom asked about the mills he uses, and asked if they would be looking for a stamp. Although Lizandro said that the mills Tom uses are fairly reputable, they probably wouldn’t bother to check on wood that was quickly in and out of their shop, so the biggest risk to us would have been in transporting the lumber.

We’re not quite sure how word got to the Forestry Department that we were harboring illegal lumber that we didn’t even know was illegal, but we’re really glad that we’re honest and not only didn’t try to hide the lumber, but asked if Lizandro wanted to see it before he even had time to inquire. We're also really glad he showed up here before Tom tried to take it to the mill, because I'd hate to be writing a blog entry about my experience learning how to get Tom out of a Belizean jail. We then asked if it was a problem that we had it now, and he said now that we’d told the story of how we got it, and showed it to him, and discussed it, it would be okay, and he’ll stop by sometime soon and stamp each board so Tom can truck them to the mill. The kicker is it isn’t even our lumber, but that doesn’t matter if it’s in our possession. What you don’t know can hurt you here, and we’re really glad we were investigated before we got ourselves in trouble.

The Cicadas Say the Hot Season is Coming

While the temperatures have still been relatively cool, in the mid 80s, and we’ve still had some rain, we can tell the hot and dry season is coming. We’ve been hearing the cicadas at night, and just this morning Tom noticed that the yellow-flowered Cortez tree is in bloom again. I swore the Cortez trees were blooming earlier this year than last, but Selwyn assured me that this is when they always bloom, and the past year has just flown by.


This is a strangler tree. Small strangler vines take root in the branches of another tree, and start sending shoots down the host tree’s trunk and into the ground. The strangler vines grow and grow and surround the tree, and eventually the host tree is killed. In time, the dead host rots away and leaves a hollow tree of strangler. The holes you can see here aren’t rot, they’re just gaps in where the vines didn’t connect as they formed their own trunk.

Medical Systems

Tom and I have gained a little more insight into Belize’s medical system over the past few weeks and have had a chance to directly compare how some things are done in the US and how they’re done here. A little over a month ago, I found a lump in my breast. This happened twice before while we were living in NY. In NY, I’d waited a week or so to make sure it wasn’t something that would disappear, then called my doctor. The doctor in NY always had me come in immediately, and then I’d start the rounds of “we don’t think it’s anything, but because you’re in the high risk group, we’d better do a mammogram.” Then the mammogram people would say they didn’t think it was anything but I’d better get an ultrasound. Then the ultrasound people would say they didn’t think it was anything, but I’d better get a needle biopsy. Then the surgeon would say he didn’t think it was anything, but it would really be best if he just took it out. So then, in both cases four to six weeks after finding the lump, it was gone and that was that.

Here, I found the lump and waited a week or so, then walked into the local hospital, told the receptionist what was happening, and asked if I could either see a doctor or make an appointment for a mammogram. She told me that the mammogram machine they used to have at that hospital broke a few months ago and they couldn’t get the parts to fix it, so if I wanted a mammogram I’d have to go to Belize City. I asked if they had an ultrasound machine. They do, but I said I guessed I’d like to see a doctor first. So, she had me sign in and I had to wait for the doctor. Before seeing the doctor, a nurse takes your vital signs. We were chatting and she was looking at my chart (which only had that visit since I’d never gone there as a patient), and she suddenly looked at me and said “YOU found a lump?” I said yes, and she asked how often I checked, and I told her once a month or so, and she asked how I found it. I told her that because I know I’m in a high risk group since my mother had breast cancer and I’m in my 40s with no kids, not to mention all the carcinogenic chemicals I’ve had my hands in because of the horses, I do monthly self exams. She couldn’t get over the fact that I found it, no matter what I told her.

The doctor, a Russian woman, was also surprised that I found it. I pointed out to her that it’s really pretty big, and if I did any sort of self exam, it would be hard not to find it. She agreed that it should be checked, and asked if I minded getting an ultrasound. I figured I’d have to make an appointment and come back in a week, but she took me out of her office to the cashier where I had to prepay $55BZ for the ultrasound, and then took me to the ultrasound technician. He found and measured the lump in the ultrasound, and also registered surprise that I’d found it myself. He then walked me back to the doctor’s office, then went and developed the film, and then met with the doctor, and they called me into the office. This all happened on a Tuesday afternoon, and the doctor was a little upset that I wasn’t there in the morning, because she thought I needed to talk to the surgeon, and he’s only at that hospital on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so I had to go home and come back Thursday morning to see him. I had waited about 45 minutes to get in to see the doctor, but once I was in her office, the rest of this happened within about another 45 minutes – an hour and a half for what would have been a couple of weeks of running around in the US. The only unfortunate part of the whole visit was that while I was waiting I was trapped in front of a TV tuned to CNN and broadcasting one of President Bush’s press conferences. Fortunately, they’d already taken my blood pressure before I was subjected that stress.

I went back to the hospital on Thursday morning and met with both the doctor I had originally talked to, and the surgeon. The surgeon said that I could go to Belize City for a mammogram, but he felt that he’d end up doing a biopsy anyway, so he recommended that we just do it then. So, with both doctors and a couple of nurses, they got out their biopsy tool – a thing that looks like a sparky that pokes in and grabs a piece of tissue – and did the biopsy right there. The surgeon, who went to school, trained, and practiced in the US before moving to Belize, was then full of apologies because the biopsy results take two weeks, and he was sure I was used to much faster turnaround in the US. I told him that the biopsy results might be faster in the US, although not definitely, but that so far I’d found the Belize process to be a whole lot more efficient than in the US.

Those two weeks were a fairly long two weeks. In the US, I was always more aggravated than worried with the US habit of saying “we’re pretty sure everything is okay, but…” However, I apparently found that more reassuring than I’d realized, because the doctors here didn’t do that, and I was more than a little worried. The doctors here said exactly what they thought – it felt like a fibroadenoma, but was more attached. It also felt like a cyst, but the ultrasound showed that it was solid. It’s in a spot where over 70% of all breast cancers occur. And, I’m in that damned high risk group. Plus, between the surgeon and the doctor, they’d spent about four hours with me, which has not been my experience in the US, so I was worried that they were spending so much time talking to me.

Despite my worries, it’s benign, another fibroadenoma. However, the talk with the surgeon here was very different than with the surgeon in the US. In the US, he’d asked if I wanted a needle biopsy or to have it removed. I said a needle biopsy would be fine, and he said no, he’d rather remove it. When I mentioned this to the surgeon here, he sort of grimaced, and said something to the effect that even removing a smallish lump is surgery, and elective surgeries in Belize generally aren’t a good idea. He also suggested a different long term plan since we’re living in Belize. When we left the US, I figured I’d schedule an exam and a mammogram for whenever we were in the US. The surgeon here suggested that in addition to that, I should think about the genetic test and find out what kind of cancer my mother had so that if this happens here in the future, they’ll know if I’m in the high risk category, or the really high risk category, and if I’m in the really high risk category they may handle it more aggressively. And, he said, I may want to do an MRI rather than a mammogram in the US, just to be more thorough when I am checked.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about all of this. I can get all this stuff done in the US, but because our insurance is just catastrophic coverage, and because all this stuff in the US is so expensive, it could cost me a fortune to do what the Belize surgeon recommends. Here, the ultra sound, the biopsy, and the hours with the doctors cost me just a little over $100US, probably less than I would have paid in co-payments even when we had good insurance in the US. I also got the impression (although we didn’t directly discuss it) that if the lump had been malignant, the surgeon would have recommended shipping me back to the US for treatment, even though he remarked numerous times how seldom he saw women who found their own lumps, and that Belizean women could learn from me. Tom and I also spent a lot of time talking about what we would do if…and didn’t really decide anything, so I guess it’s a really good thing that it’s just another benign lump.

Hooky and Hammocks

Because Selwyn was on vacation all week, Tom and I took a little time to play hooky too. On Thursday afternoon we quit work at about 1:00, and drove up to Rio On Pools. It takes about a half hour to get there, so we were there for a good hour before the Caracol tour traffic started coming in, and it again amazed us that these beautiful spots are right off the road, and we go so often and nobody is there. Of course the rocks filled with sunbathers when the Caracol convoy came, but by then we’d had plenty of sun and had warmed our bones on the sun-baked rocks after taking a dip in the cool clean pools.

The other thing we did while Selwyn was off was to buy hammocks, which we’ve been talking about doing ever since we moved into this cabin ten months ago. We decided we needed hammocks for the guest cabin porches, so a couple of weeks ago we picked up a string hammock in San Ignacio. We hung it on the porch to the back guest room, but it wasn’t very comfortable. The center seemed to be too tight, and you couldn’t just relax in it, you had to balance so you wouldn’t roll out. We thought we were just being dumb gringos who didn’t know how to hang a hammock, so we had some of the neighbors come over to look at it, and they assured us it was defective. When we bought it, the guy at the store said it was his last one, so we were hoping to get our money back. We’ve also been looking at some folding wooden suitcase stands most of the furniture stores around here carry, and had been thinking about buying one so Tom can use it as a model and build some. When we took the hammock back, as we expected, the guy just offered to give us our money back, but he’d just been to the bank and didn’t have a lot of cash. Another customer was in the store and was just about to buy stuff, so we said we’d wait until she checked out and then figure out what to do. As we were browsing in the store, I spied one of the folding suitcase stands holding a stack of placemats. Tom, always the dealer, offered the guy an even exchange for the hammock with the used suitcase stand, which the guy was happy to accept. We’d already bought two new hammocks which cost a little more than half what the original had cost, so without shelling out much more cash we had two hammocks instead of one AND a used suitcase stand to use as a model.

Now the only thing we have to decide is if it’s a good thing to have a hammock on our porch, since both of us have noticed that it seems to call our names every time we walk past.

How Big is Easter in Belize?

A few people have asked if Easter is a big deal in Belize because the country as a whole is so religious, and because Central America in general is known for big Easter celebrations. I can’t answer for the whole of Belize because we’re sort of isolated out here and even when we go to town we don’t see that many people, but from what we’ve seen, it’s widely celebrated, but not as overtly religious as you might think. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both national holidays, so of course everybody appreciates a four-day weekend. And it is definitely a religious holiday, but I think because people in general are more religious all the time, it doesn’t seem like such a high religious celebration. In the US, we know a whole bunch of people who only go to church on Christmas and Easter, so these holidays seem like big religious celebrations. Here, most people go to church regularly – weekly or even more frequently – so not that many more people get revved up for Easter services, and Easter week isn’t any different than every other week of the year. Personally, I find it’s sort of a let-down here, and I didn’t realize until I started thinking about it this year that I apparently celebrated the pagan aspects of the holiday, getting hope that because it was already Easter, spring must be on the way, and winter will be over. Yes, I know that’s symbolically the resurrection anyway, but here where the weather is always nice and warm, the holiday just doesn’t seem so much like a cause for celebration.

Speaking of Easter symbolism, we had a sort of morbidly funny conversation about chicks with Olmi and Damion. We see all the new batches of chicks because they come to eat the grain when we feed the horses, so we know how about how many little chicks are running around at any given time. We noticed that one hen’s chicks all disappeared, so we asked if they’d been killed by a snake, or foxes, or ‘possums, or some other wild animal. No, we were told, it was Eduard, Marta Uno’s one-year-old, who killed that batch of chicks because he’d pick them up to play with them, squeeze them too hard, and pop their heads (really, that’s what they said). Tom and I were horrified, but Damion and Olmi assured us that all the little kids, even the too-cute Zulmi, occasionally kill chicks if they’re not being watched closely enough. Now we know why they’re so nonchalant about our concern that Louie and Nock will go on a chicken killing rampage.

Victims of the Government (she said with a smirk…)

Part of the reason we were able to get as much done as we have over the past week and a half is that our nine guests for Easter had to cancel the week before. Everybody around here likes to blame the government for all of their woes, so now we can jump on the bandwagon since the government is to blame for our cancellation. The woman who was bringing eight other people was planning to be in Belize to close on some property she is buying in the north of Belize. After the elections in the beginning of February, the Lands Department put a hold on all title transfers for land that has been titled in the past five years during the previous party’s term in office because the current party suspects that land that should not have been titled was titled in return for political favors. Some of the land in question is conserved land or forest preserves, and I guess the theory is that if somebody was granted the title in return for a political favor, and the land should have remained in the country’s possession, the title will be revoked. I have no idea how much land the current party is de-titling, but our friend says she isn’t worried about her parcel, it’s just an annoying and expensive delay since she had to change her flight reservations to the end of April, when the Lands Department should have this all finished. This should work out better for us; we were a little anxious about our first big booking being for so many people, and now we’re just hoping we can get a few smaller parties in here to practice before we have so many people at one time. What we’re really hoping is that Marjie’s land deal goes through without any further difficulty or delay.

Progress Update

Selwyn was on vacation from the Thursday before Easter and all last week, so while we didn’t move quite as quickly as we do with a third person, we still got a lot done in the past week and a half.


The screen door is hung on the front room in the guest cabin, and that room is all finished, cleaned, made up and ready for guests. The back room is also finished, but only has one bed because Tom is still working on the second bed for that room. When he finishes this bed, we’ll have four very sturdy beds made by Tom and Selwyn, using the local hardwoods. The first bed they made was a mix of sapodilla and milady, and then they made another two beds using only one of those kinds of woods per bed. Sapodilla is a very red hardwood, and is Tom’s favorite. Milady is very pretty; it’s a pale almost creamy yellow wood with a pink grain.


The bed Tom is making now is jobio (pronounced ho-BE-oh), which is a light wood with a grain of a light and dark brown; it reminds me of chocolate and carmel on coffee ice cream. When the jobio bed is finished, Tom is going to make a bed for us out of purple heart, a very dramatic wood with very light stripes mixed with very dark purple. The grain is very fine, and the color changes, which are very distinct, don’t seem to really follow the grain so a 2x4 can start at the bottom being all purple, then mix through part of the board, and then be all light at the other end. I’ll post pictures when it’s done.


In preparation for guests, Tom and Ronald and Wilton, the boys next door who work here once a week, have been clearing trails. We can now walk around the bottom of the hump that holds our water tanks, and can climb from our back property line up the backside of that hump. They also cut a trail through the jungle and around the pasture from where our barn will be, and have cleared off a big part of the property line. The trails still need some work since they cover some pretty rough terrain, but I managed to walk them in my rubber boots and shorts, which is an improvement from the jeans and hiking boots outfit that was required to cover that ground before.

While Tom was working on the bed and on the final details in the guest cabin – things like putting siding boards around the bottom to hide the plumbing and floor joists – I’ve been working on our web page. I think I have most of the content down, and now I have to make it look pretty, which is very slow going. I’m leaving it out there at www.moonracerfarm.com if anybody wants to take a look, although you have to remember that IT ISN’T DONE AND IT WILL LOOK NICER. If anybody has any comments or if anything that’s there leaves questions in your minds, please drop me a line and let me know. I’m far enough away that it’s probably even safe for you to be critical. ;-)

Wild Life in the Jungle

While we’ve made a lot of progress on the guest cabin and the property, the interesting stuff this week has been the animals around here, both wild and domestic.

The night after I last posted on the blog, Tom and I were playing cribbage – which we do almost every other night on the nights when we’re not playing dominoes, barely able to tolerate the excitement of living out in the jungle – we suddenly heard a roaring. The dogs all pricked their ears and started barking, and Tom and I looked at each other and…smiled.


It was the howler monkeys, which we hadn’t heard since the dry season last year, and I don’t know if we’ve ever heard them this close to the cabin. They sounded like they were just on the other side of the road. They raised a ruckus for fifteen or twenty minutes, then either calmed down or moved on to feed somewhere else. But, they were back at about 4:30am, waking both us and the dogs. We get all out of sorts if the dogs bark and wake us at night or early in the morning, but we both thought it was sort of cool to have the howler monkeys wake us. We seem to like thinking we’re waking up in Jurassic Park, which is how the howler monkeys sound. This is what they sound like: Howler monkey sound


Although we like the howler monkeys, we like the kinkajous less and less. Actually, it’s not the kinkajous themselves we dislike – they’re pretty cute and sometimes entertaining to watch with a spotlight in the tree over our cabin – it’s the fact that they throw stuff onto the metal roof in the middle of the night and wake our dogs, which always results in a five dog howling concert, with two cranky people yelling “Shut up!” at the top of their lungs. We’ve asked, and so far our neighbors say we haven’t disturbed their sleep. If I remember correctly, the kinkajous, also known as nightwalkers because they only come out at night, won’t be around much longer because they’ll eat all the fruits off the tree, so then we’ll get a good night’s sleep again.


Tom found this little hummingbird nest with babies in it in the little tree just outside his shop. We’ve been watching them, and sometimes they all lie in a row sleeping, and sometimes they’re all up with their mouths open. They don’t “peep peep peep” like other baby birds, they just sit there silently waiting for their mother. I have no idea what kind of hummingbirds they are since the Birds of Belize book has about six pages of hummingbirds that all look the same to me, but they’re bigger than the ruby throated hummingbirds we saw in NY.


We’ve also had a lot of other wild bird sightings. We saw an ocellated turkey on the road near San Antonio, which was about the same general size as the wild turkeys in NY, but a little taller and thinner with a very blue head. We’ve had so many toucans in the trees lately that we’ve stopped running out to look at them every time we hear them. The parrots are also back and very busy. I spent about ten minutes one day just watching two large green Amazon parrots feed in one of the trees. They acted like a couple of Sumo wrestlers. One would start pulling at the fruits, and the other would slowly waddle sideways along the branch with its wings puffed out, and would try to bump the eating parrot away from the fruit. The eating parrot would push back, and then instead of eating they’d start waddling back and forth bumping at each other and yelling. Eventually one of them would remember that they were on that branch to eat, and they’d start eating again.


I’ve also seen green jays in our yard, which are much more stunning than the blue jays we’re used to.


We saw a crimson collared tanager on the road near here. We seem to be turning into amateur birders, and the binoculars and the Birds of Belize book are almost always out on the table.

On the domestic animal front, I got on NessaRose last week. We were told she was broke to ride, but when we got her we didn’t think she’d ever be sound, so we didn’t really care. For the past month or so, she’s been walking sound in the pasture, and has even started trotting and cantering and kicking up her heels a little with the other horses, joining them in their Terrorize the Chickens game, led by Elphie, her yearling filly. So, I decided to see if she was rideable, and she is. She’s a little squirrelly when she’s being handled on the ground, so I wasn’t expecting much, but as soon as I put the saddle pad on her she calmed down and just acted like she knew what was happening. I saddled and bridled her, walked her around for a minute, and then got on, and she was a perfect lady. She felt a little short, but not lame, and she did exactly what I asked. I have to do a little research and make sure walking her under saddle is the best thing to do to help the leg continue to get better, but it looks like we’ll have another tourist horse.


Tom did a “first” today. He took a 1500 pound bull to the butcher. The bull belonged to Mark from down the road, and he realized when he was here a couple of weeks ago that prices for bulls on the hoof were going down as we get closer to the dry season, so he asked Tom to try to sell him ASAP. Tom asked around, and the best offer he got was from a butcher near Iguana Creek on the way to Spanish Lookout. Yesterday we took Tinkerbell over to Iguana Creek to pick up the butcher’s trailer, and then towed it up the very bumpy Georgeville Road and left it at Mark’s place, so Pepe the bull could contemplate it for his last night. Tom left early this morning, a little worried both about loading the bull and about pulling the loaded trailer down the Georgeville Road, but everything went fine.


Tom said Pepe was on the trailer in about two minutes, the trip down the road was slow but uneventful, and they had no trouble unloading him onto the scale at the butchers. I didn’t want to go because I felt bad taking Pepe to be butchered, which makes no sense because a) I eat meat, b) I’m not all that fond of cows in general with their snotty noses and diarrhea butts, and c) nobody really liked Pepe because he was sort of scary and not at all friendly. Fortunately Tom did not experience any of my qualms, and it didn’t turn into too much of an adventure – although next time I buy beef I’ll be wondering whom I’m eating.

Steps

We now have new steps on the guest cabin. The steps on our cabin are okay, but they get slick when they’re wet or muddy, and they’re a little steep. The new steps are 12x2 sapodilla planks, and they’re very solid. We joked that if a hurricane ever hits here, the entire cabin will be gone, but the steps will still be stuck where they’re mounted to the front porch. Tom has ordered the wood to build a similar set to the back porch of that cabin, and if we ever get enough ahead that we’re not in a panic trying to finish things to get ready for something, we may replace the steps on our cabin.


Sharon Matola of the Belize Zoo wishes that we already did that job. She was here a couple of months ago on a cool rainy day to talk about the cage donation, and as she was leaving she slipped on the steps. She went down fast and landed with her back on the steps, and did some nerve damage, which she just figured out last week after a visit to the doctor to find out why she was still in pain after a couple of months. But, she was here today with Tom Pascarello from SUNY Cortland to talk about SUNY Cortland interns coming here, and she told us that she’d written a song about falling down and getting old and not healing as quickly as she used to. After lunch, Tom P pulled out his harmonica and Sharon got out her guitar, and they played the song for us. Sharon and Tom have done a CD of some of the music Sharon plays for and about the animals at the Zoo, so we can now say that Moonracer Farm has had live entertainment by international recording artists!

Shawn (don’t worry, he’s fine!)

One of the hardest things for us about leaving NY was leaving our horses, especially Shawn, who we bought as a four year old, lived with for 16 years, and who taught us more about horses and horse sports than any single horse should be capable of doing. He got both of us started in eventing, took us on lots of great trail rides, and he and Tom were a very successful driving team. When we moved, we sold him to a friend who is involved in the Granger Homestead driving program, knowing he was going to a good home. Well, he’s doing even better than we could have expected, and we have to thank Geoff, his owner, Denett, our friend who runs the Granger driving program and keeps her horses at the barn where Shawn is boarded, as well as Dawn for working with him as part of Denett’s herd, Kim, who owns the barn where he lives, and probably a bunch of other people that I’m forgetting, including the supportive spouses of everyone mentioned above. Denett just emailed us this picture, which she photographed from the front page of the Geneva, NY, Sunday newspaper, of Shawn giving sleigh rides to students at Granger, with Geoff driving and his daughter Serica riding beside him. Tom and I now think that we were meant to move so Shawn could go where he belongs, since if he stayed with us we’d either still be working him competitively, probably too much for a 20+ year old horse, or we’d be ignoring him in favor of bringing Patrick along. Being owned by Geoff and living at Brock Acres with the rest of Denett’s herd, he’s still working, but not too hard, and he’s still being admired – which anyone who knows Shawn, knows means a lot to that horse!

Weather

Since people always ask, I’ll just say up front that the weather here has been beautiful. We had a run of perfect, sunny, 80 degree days, then a few days when it was cool and rainy, and now we’re back to 80 degrees and sunshine. The cool rainy days were actually kind of refreshing, and let us get caught up on inside stuff that we don’t like to do since we both still want to be outside when it’s nice. Of course, when it goes down in the high 50’s at night we now sleep with a sheet, a thermal blanket, a quilt, and two Jack Russells because we’re so cold, but that’s kind of …nostalgic. And then it warms up again. We are heading into the hot and dry season, when we’ll have more than our fill of 100 degree days and we’ll be wishing for rain, so we’re enjoying this in-between weather while we have it. And, I still check the weather reports for NY, so I’m feeling bad for everybody up there with that nasty, cold, icy, snowy weather. I started out gloating, but now I just feel bad – but I’m still glad to be here instead of there.

New front gate

We now have a new front gate, set back from the road. The old gate was not only falling apart, but also didn’t look very welcoming as you drove up the road. Tom and Selwyn set the cabbage bark 6x6 10 foot posts (approximate weight of 300lbs per post) last week, and Tom built the gates in his “spare time” after Selwyn left from work at the end of the day and on the weekend.


Tom set four fence posts Sunday evening towards the shop side of the gate and we are planning on training the hibiscus onto the barbed wire fence to make a nice natural visual block of the water tank and generator shed. We’re putting a people and horse gate to the side of the driveway gate, and we hope the area that’s now open at the end of the driveway will allow the birders who frequently stop on the road to pull in and get out of the road on our blind curve.

Our next scheduled guests…

We have an official booking for Easter weekend – for NINE guests! Our friend Marjie who came here with her fiancé Chuck in October (and who used her awesome therapeutic farrier skills on NessaRose, who is now so sound I’m considering putting a saddle on her to see what she knows) is coming to Belize for Easter, and is going to bring a Belizean family she has befriended to our place. Lots of stuff is going on in Belize on Easter weekend, so we’re planning to go to the horse races in Burrell Boom, watch a bike race, and I don’t know what else. It will be busy, but lots of fun.

So, we’re again in a mad rush to get ready for guests. I can’t wait to get to the point where we’re not rushing to get ready for every next guest. But, for every guest that comes, we see things that we can do better for the next guest, and those things frequently involve undoing or redoing something we’ve done, which takes time we haven’t really accounted for in our mid-range plans. For example, when Mark was here and we were trying to keep the room clean, we noticed that a line of sawdust reappeared across his pillow after I dusted. When we looked, we realized that one of the boards – directly over the headboards of the beds, of course – was infested with pinworms, which would leave their little trails of sawdust. So, although the first room in the guest cabin was “done,” we stripped everything out of it, including curtains and bedding, so Tom could spray the whole cabin with Dursban again. It’s not a bad idea to do it anyway once in a while since it keeps the creepie crawlies out, but we would have rather not had to do it after just one guest was there, but we had to do it right away so the smell would be gone before Marjie’s crew comes for Easter.

The smell is already waning, and Tom and Selwyn should be able to get in the cabin in a day or two to finish the final touches on the back room. And, they can build the back steps, and put up the screen doors, and put up the toilet paper holder, and…did I say that cabin was almost done?!?

Camper moved

In addition to getting the generator out of the middle of the property, we’ve finally moved the camper. Tom hooked it to Tinkerbell and backed it in behind the shop, where it’s still visible, but not right in the middle of everything. Our neighbors are building a new house, and we offered to tow the camper to their place to use as a bunkhouse while they build, but they declined. That’s probably a smart move on their part, since once we got it out of here, we wouldn’t want it back, and then they’d have to figure out how to dispose of it. So, for the time being, it’s still a storage locker until we have more place to put stuff, and until we figure out how to get rid of it.


And, we figure the grass will grow pretty quickly so pretty soon we won’t even be able to tell that the camper was parked in the middle of everything in the last owner’s barn for over a year!

Generator is finally in the shed

The good thing about the generator breaking and needing to go to Spanish Lookout for repairs is that it got it out of its redneck generator shed between the cabins. When it came home, it went directly to its new hut near the shop by the road. It’s much quieter in the cabins, although we can still hear it. Our neighbors also say they can’t hear it as much, so everybody seems happy with the move. Now we just have to dig the trenches and lay the cables, since both the electric and the water systems are pretty much where we think we want them.


The view from the front steps of the guest cabin is much improved without the camper and the generator right in the middle of everything.

First guest since we’re official!

We have had a couple of very eventful weeks. Shortly after getting our BTB license to operate, we found out that Mark, our neighbor down the Georgeville Road, was coming to Belize for a little over a week, and last week he became our first official guest. He now has two houses, plus an orange grove (which we put an offer on before we bought the property we are on now), down the road, but since his plane didn’t get in until after 4:00pm, he would arrive after dark, and he decided to stay here his first night rather than having to open his house and get it up and running in the dark – and without electricity, it would be very dark. So, we decided to use him as a practice guest and fixed the room up just like we would for “real” guests, aka people who don’t already know us.


The gods apparently decided to test us. We got everything cleaned up and all the linens washed, and had the beds made and the towels hung in the clean room. Mark was due to arrive Wednesday night, and late Wednesday afternoon I was in the room taking pictures for our website. Suddenly the generator made a weird snapping sound, Selwyn ran over to it, yelled for Tom and turned it off. The belt that runs the cooling system had snapped, so the generator was out of commission until it could be taken to the shop. This wasn’t a huge big deal, except for the fact that Mark has sleep apnea and has an electric machine that he uses at night. It will run off an inverter and battery, but since we hadn’t planned to shut down the generator right then, none of us was quite sure the battery was completely charged. Nonetheless, we got 3 neighbors, Selwyn and Tom to all lift the generator into the pickup so I could take it to Spanish Lookout Thursday morning.

Then, after that drama, as I went into the bathroom to take photos, I noticed a big puddle on the floor in front of the toilet. At first I thought the toilet had started leaking, but then I noticed that water was running down one of the studs behind the toilet, so we figured out that we’d sprung a leak in the roof, and water was running down inside the ceiling and coming down the wall. It took us a little while to figure this out because Tom’s parents stayed in that room when they were here in January. It rained the whole week they were here, and there weren’t any leaks then, but apparently the storm we had Wednesday afternoon had enough driving rain to push the water under the roof cap and into the building.

Fortunately for us, Mark wasn’t a “real” guest, and he had a little Honda generator at his house down the road. He ran down the road to get it, and we used that to finish charging the battery needed for his machine, so he didn’t suffocate during the night. Unfortunately for us, that weekend was the Spanish Lookout 50th anniversary community celebration, so everything was closed from Thursday afternoon until the following Monday morning – which means we didn’t get the generator back until the next Tuesday. So, it was a real good thing for us that Mark was in town and we were able to borrow his generator for the basics like getting our batteries charged, even though we couldn’t run any of the big tools or appliances. I’m sure we could have borrowed it even if Mark wasn’t in town, but it was nice that he was around so he knew why we were using it. And the leak in the bathroom worked out okay since Mark fell into the friend guest category – we just told him not to wear his socks in the bathroom, which are the same instructions I used to give Tom’s mom when we traveled together in the camper, where the bathroom floor became the shower floor and so was always wet at night!

Despite the challenges of our first guest night, we had a really fun week with Mark in town. He was busy closing on the orange grove property, but we did a lot of stuff together. Mark and Tom went to the Spanish Lookout celebration, where they experienced their first Belize tractor pull, which is a little different than tractor pulls in the US. In the US, the tractors try to pull big weights, and the tractor that pulls the most weight wins. Here, a tractor pull is more like a tug-of-war; a big rope is tied to the back of a tractor, the tractor pulls as hard as it can, and the object of the game is to see how many people it takes to keep the tractor from going forward. I didn’t see it, but Tom and Mark said that a small 20HP tractor can be stopped by about 20 people, but the big tractor they had, a 9300(?) John Deere with something like 400HP – with 8 wheels higher than your head – takes over 200 people. The people are volunteer spectators so they’re of all sizes and strengths, but Tom and Mark said it was fun to watch, especially since it was raining and it was a very muddy event. Spanish Lookout is a Mennonite Community, so they didn’t have events like female mud wrestling, but I guess this came pretty close.


Mark ate a lot of meals here rather than cooking for himself in an unused kitchen, so we had a lot of time to visit. He was demonstrating his Polaroid camera taking a picture of Tom and Nock. I just happened to have our camera on the kitchen shelf, so I caught this live action scene of Tom trying to hide behind the devil dog instead of being photographed.

Mark’s new property backs up to the Barton Creek Mennonite Community, so on the Sunday he was here we took a ride into Barton Creek to see if he could see his back property line. It turned out that we couldn’t, but we decided at the last minute to stop and talk to the family who farms a few acres of Mark’s property, which, coincidentally, is the same family who sold us our horse Tony. When we first pulled up, the parents weren’t home, and the whole pack of kids came out to meet us, with the eldest son toting a shotgun. The son recognized Tom and realized we were friends, and disappeared around the back of the barn and returned a few moments later without the shotgun. We talked to the kids for a few minutes, introduced them to Mark as their new neighbor, and were on our way down the driveway when the parents came home. They invited us up on their porch, where we discussed the area and Mark assured them that they were welcome to continue farming what they’d already cleared and planted, as long as they didn’t clear any trees. The porch faces west, so we were sitting in the hot afternoon sun, and one of the younger sons came out with a pitcher of water and a glass. Yes, one glass. The mother poured some water in the cup and asked if I wanted it. I declined, mostly because I’d drunk most of a pot of tea for lunch and wasn’t thirsty. Tom and Mark also declined, but then Franz, the father, assured us that it was well water and was safe to drink. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that we were a little confused over the ritual of sharing a glass, and none of us wanted to do anything offensive. After being told that the water was good, Tom felt that they wanted us to drink, so he had a drink of the well water – and said it was very good water. He didn’t get sick, so I guess it was.

Since we hadn’t been able to see the back property line on Sunday, on Wednesday Selwyn and I saddled up the three horses and ponied Tony down to Mark’s place so Mark could tour his back acreage on horseback. He’d never ridden a horse before, and we were delighted to find that Tony was a complete gentleman to the non-rider, and was very well behaved. Mark actually did extremely well for a first-time rider; he was very well balanced, and he wasn’t afraid to give Tony a kick and point him where he wanted him to go, so Tony wasn’t getting any of the mixed signals that non-riders sometimes give horses, kicking them to go and pulling on their faces to stop at the same time. And, Mark actually had enough fun and thought it was such a great way to tour his property that he asked us if we thought we could find a good horse for him to keep at his property when he’s in Belize! We haven’t looked too hard (yet!) so the rest of the Beckwiths don’t need to worry!

Mark left for Minnesota on Thursday morning, and left us as messengers for some more business for his Barton Creek neighbors. When we drove in with Mark (in his rental car!) on Sunday, we got stuck in some mud, so we were a little nervous about taking Tinkerbell into Barton Creek. The government re-graded and re-rocked the road that leads from the Georgeville Road to the Barton Creek Cave, but has not done anything with any of the other roads in the Community, and we needed to drive on other roads to talk to the people we needed to see. So, on Saturday afternoon we saddled up Tony and Glinda and headed down the road to Barton Creek. We hadn’t yet gone in the back way through 7 Miles, but figured we could find it on horseback, and we did. Unfortunately, in our opinion, it was a little too easy to find because the Community is expanding its farmland, and is in the process of clearing jungle. I had ridden on part of the road before, and it was a nice path through the jungle. Now, almost all the way from 7 Miles to Barton Creek, it’s a pile of downed trees and chopped brush. When we were in Barton Creek, we talked to one of the Mennonite men we know, and he asked where we lived. We told him, and told him that we have 50 acres. He said that he hoped we were leaving it as jungle, because he thinks that’s how Belize should be. Tom and I stood there with our mouths open, until Tom finally made a comment about how apparently all Mennonites don’t think like that since we just rode through a long stretch of destroyed jungle. The Mennonite kind of winced and agreed, but said that people need more land to farm. I guess that’s why the Belize government has created areas like the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve that can’t be cleared for farming, because even if individuals may think it’s not good to clear too much jungle, if individual property owners want to raze their forests, they can – and once it’s chopped, it’s gone, at least for the long time that it takes for the trees to grow again.

Hi Janie!

Our friend Mark from Minnesota who owns property down the road was here in January with his daughter Janie and her friend Ali. Mark has since told us that Janie will be reading this blog as a way to keep up to date with what’s going on in Belize, so we wanted to say hi to Janie in Australia from Belize, as well as to the rest of the S.I.T. Study Abroad group!

Things I forgot to say in the last blog

Typically I post the blog stuff, then leave that webpage up so Tom can look at it while I make dinner. As we did that last night, Tom pointed out that I completely neglected to post our progress on the guest cabin and the property, which we do as much for ourselves so we can go back and track our progress as we do for everybody who wants to know what we’re doing.

Anyway, the progress report is that the front room is completely done, even down to the little piece of shower grouting that I needed to do, and the back room is done except for a few shelves, screening the porch, and putting up the steps. The generator is [finally] just about to be moved down near the road, and all the workshop stuff, like the table saw and lumber stock, is following the generator down to the shop. Our friend Mark from Minnesota is coming down this week and is going to spend his first night here rather than trying to get his house open when he arrives here in the evening, so it looks like we’re getting all cleaned up just in time for our first guest now that we’re legally open!

The other thing Tom got a kick out of that I neglected to mention is that we’ve had a few different people contacting us because they’ve been reading the blog. Most of these people – a couple from London, a man from Colorado, a couple from California – have contacted us via email, but one gentleman showed up at our gate because he drove to Belize and is just poking around for a couple of months, and since he’s been reading our blog he figured he’d stop by and say hi since we don’t have phone service here. We’re delighted to be contacted by all of these different people, and are glad people are reading and enjoying this blog, and hope people are finding it useful and informative.

New email address

If you haven’t caught the change on this website and you somehow missed our mass emailing, please note that we have new email addresses: tom@moonracerfarm.com and marge@moonracerfarm.com. Selwyn also has a mailbox at, you guessed it: Selwyn@moonracerfarm.com. We will be shutting down our Compuserve account sometime in the not too distant future.

We’re open…sort of

When I last wrote, we were planning to pick up our Police Records the next day, and then go to Belmopan and Belize City to deliver our residency and Belize Tourist Bureau (BTB) applications. It didn’t happen quite like that, because our Police Records, which were supposed to take two weeks, ended up taking more than four. They weren’t in Belmopan, we were sent back to San Ignacio, then San Ignacio told us to go to Belmopan, and they still weren’t done. We finally picked them up Friday a week ago in Belmopan, and took last weekend to put all of our paperwork together for both our residency applications and the BTB application.

We set out on Wednesday with a list of additional copies we needed for both applications. But, before we even made copies, we had to go to the attorney’s office to pick up our incorporation papers, which were done. We then got our copies, and put together a packet with each of our residency applications, and a copy of each application, and a copy of each to keep. We did the same with the BTB application and, all organized, we set off for Belmopan. We went into the Immigration office, got our number, and then got our passports stamped for another two months, a process we will have to repeat until we get our permanent residency approved. We had arrived at the office around 11:15, and at noon Tom asked if the office closed for lunch. We were told that they continued working, so we stayed, but it seems that a lot of people didn’t because four or five numbers were called for people who weren’t there right around noon, and then it was our turn. We handed our packets over to the Immigration officer, and she started through them. As it turns out, they didn’t want an application for each of us, and they didn’t want copies, so we added all of my paperwork to Tom’s packet, showed the officer a few originals so she could stamp the copies we submitted, put a whole bunch of unnecessary copies back in our bag, and were out of there before 12:30 with our interviews scheduled for May 14.

We grabbed a quick lunch at the market, and set off to drop a truckload of cage scraps at the Zoo. That took all of 10 minutes, and then we were off to Belize City. We hoped we had everything in order for the BTB, but figured they’d look at our application and send us away to get some more papers. We were very pleasantly surprised to find that we were wrong, and we were very much impressed with our experience with the BTB. I had emailed some things to a gentleman at the BTB last week, and had told him that we were coming in sometime on Wednesday, although we couldn’t say what time because we weren’t sure how long we would take at Immigration. We showed up, the receptionist called the hotel department to tell them we were there, and a very helpful gentleman came down and took us into a conference room. We spread our application out on the table and started going through it with him, and he gave us the spiel on the BTB’s role in the tourism industry in Belize, and what the BTB has to do with hotels and lodges. He told us that they recommend that people thinking of opening a lodge come talk to them early on in the process, and Tom and I both wilted a little figuring that was his way of saying we had a long way to go. But, he then continued that it looked like we had done our homework and had everything we needed, so if we would give him $90BZ he would get copies of our application, get a copy of our temporary operating permit, and provide us with all the forms we need to be a legally operating hotel in Belize.

We had no idea it would be that easy and figured we’d get way more of a runaround. We probably made our lives more difficult than necessary by doing our permanent residency and BTB applications at the same time, but the flip side of that is that the applications required some of the same documentation, so submitting both applications at the same time prevented us from having to redo some of the forms. We’d heard horror stories about both these processes from other gringos, but we're starting to think that in a lot of ways it's way easier to do business here than in the US, which wasn't what we expected. The only problem is that there aren't any clearly defined processes so you sort of have to feel your way, but that's the hard part and once you know what you're doing, it's cake. There's a huge difference in attitude between here and the US, because here the government officials seem to feel that they're here to help you, not just give you the run around and show you how important they are which seems to be the attitude of a lot of US officials. That may just be our experience, and we still have a way to go before we get our permanent residency and we’re really not ready to open yet, but so far so good doing business here.

The other thing that made us laugh is that because we want to offer tours, we should get a Tour Operator license. While we were at the BTB, we met with the Tour Operator coordinator and reviewed the application with him. We don’t yet have everything we need for that application so we aren’t ready to turn it in, but we had to laugh because he told us that they technically only grant the license to Belizean citizens and permanent residents, but since we are a Belizean corporation, if we want to give them the application money and bring money into Belize by offering tours to travelers, he didn’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be granted the license. Anybody who knows me has heard me rant up and down about how I sometimes wonder if my money isn’t any good because I’ve had so many experiences where I’m trying to do or get something which involves paying somebody to do something for me, and the person or organization I’m supposed to pay gives me the runaround until I can’t figure out why I’m even bothering to try to do business with them. So far, that isn’t how it works here.

The other thing that has made us go “hmmm” a few times is the differences in the legal systems between here and the US. We’re opening our property to the public, and will be offering activities that could be dangerous, such as horseback riding. In the US, we would expect to be insured to the eyeballs with liability insurance for the hotel, for the horseback riding and other tours, for our vehicles, and for anything else somebody could theoretically decide they wanted to sue us for, including errors and omissions. Here, we’ve questioned the attorney, multiple insurance companies, and the BTB, and have been told that we really don’t have to worry about it because we are a Belizean corporation, so if anybody wanted to sue us it would have to be done in Belize courts, and the Belize courts simply don’t try cases where the person bringing the suit to court could be at fault. This kind of insurance simply isn’t offered here, with the exception of liability insurance for our vehicles, which we have increased in case a tourist is injured in our truck. We were told that we could get a standard waiver for activities like horseback riding if it made us feel better, but we really don’t need it. We probably will have people sign something for those activities just because many people don’t realize how dangerous it can be, and providing a waiver is a good way for us to communicate the danger to our guests – but I’m always going to hear the attorney in my head saying “do you feel better now?” every time I pull out the form.

Silly Gringa

When I realized that I was going to have to learn some Spanish to get along here, I was partly excited that I’d learn something new, partly scared that it would be hard, and partly just resigned that I’d either learn it or I wouldn’t, and that would be that. I expected that it would be a little difficult and a little fun, but I had no idea it would be as funny as it’s turned out to be. It’s funny partly because of the mistakes I make, like mixing up peeing and baking, but the other funny part is how our Spanish speaking friends handle us and help us.

Of the families next door, the only household where neither of the parents speak English is Julian and Marta (Marta Dos). However, all of their kids are more or less fluent in English, so when we talk to them we usually have one of the kids around who will translate as we speak. What’s funny is that as we’ve learned more and more Spanish, more and more of the conversation happens in Spanish – and if we say something in English the translating kid will say it to the parent in Spanish, and if we say it in Spanish, the translating kid will just repeat what we said, usually word for word. I’m not sure if they even know they’re doing it, but it usually gets me laughing, and Marta Dos has the best laugh and it doesn’t take much to get her going, so by the time we’re five minutes into a conversation Marta Dos and I are usually laughing hysterically, and Rosa, Ofelia, or Iris is usually completely perplexed about what we think is so funny.


Yesterday little three-year-old Zulmi had me laughing. We’ve found that the little preschoolers are some of the best teachers, so while Tom was talking to Marta and Julian, I was playing with Zulmi and talking to her. She had a little plastic dog doll which she was pushing around in a little plastic wheelbarrow, and I just recently learned that the Spanish word for wheelbarrow is “carreta.” So, I pointed to the wheelbarrow and said to Zulmi, “Esta carreta?” She looked at the wheelbarrow, looked at me, picked up the wheelbarrow in one hand, pointed to it with the other, and looked me right in the eye as she very clearly and slowly said in completely un-Spanish-accented English “w-h-e-e-l-b-a-r-r-o-w.” I repeated “wheelbarrow” back to her, and she very solemnly nodded. She then picked up the little plastic dog, pointed to that, and again very clearly and slowly said “c-h-u-c-h-o,” which is the local Spanish word for dog. I repeated that back to her, she nodded again as the silly gringa proved to be a good student, and then she went on with pushing the dog around in the wheelbarrow, or the chucho in the carreta, or vice versa…whatever mix of languages we’re learning that day!

A Dilemma

We were faced with a bit of a dilemma this week, and we did what we think was right, even though it wasn’t really what we wanted to do, although we think it will turn out okay. Most of the men we’ve met around here have questioned us about working in the US. Because so many gringos, like us, come down with enough money that they can buy property and don’t have to work too hard if at all, the perception is that if you go to the US you can get a job, make huge money, and return to Belize a rich man. Plus, most Belizeans know that it’s not hard to make $10US an hour, which is half a day’s work for many Belizeans. Whenever our friends have asked us about this, we try to explain that it’s not that simple in the US, and that the cost of living is higher, and there are all sorts of expenses a Belizean would encounter in the US that would chew up that $10/hour very quickly. So, even if a Belizean would make a whole lot more money in the US, getting most of that money back to his family while he was living any sort of a reasonable life in the US – away from his family – isn’t as simple as it looks.

Anyway, a friend of a friend in the Rochester area owns a landscaping business and gets work visas for Mexicans and Belizeans so they can legally come to the US and work for him for eight or nine months of the year. He contacted us and asked if we know of anybody who might be interested. We laughed because just about every man we’ve spoken to in the year we’ve been here would be interested at some level, and then we got some more information and asked if the prospective employer wanted us to talk to anyone. He sent us his list of qualifications, and told us to go ahead and ask our friends. This is where the dilemma came in, because Tom and I looked at each other and realized that because this deal sounded so good – and is good, really, for the right people – we really didn’t want to tell our friends about it for fear they’d jump at the opportunity. But, we then counseled each other in our grown-up voices, our friends are adults who can make their own decisions. And, are two people who chucked their established life and successful careers in the country where all of their friends and families live to go to a country where they only casually know a handful of people and have no jobs qualified to make a decision like that for somebody else? No, of course not [we said in those grown-up voices]. So, we wrote down the information and trotted off to our neighbors to give it to them.

And they’re interested, and may know other people who are interested. We talked for a good hour, and warned them of other expenses they might encounter, and told them of some of the differences between here and there that might surprise them – April snowstorms, for example. We also told them about some of the things they might like, and let them know that part of the reason we would try to talk them out of taking a job in the US is purely selfish on our part, because we don’t want our friends and neighbors to go away for a long time. Yes, I know, that’s what we did to our friends and families in the US, but that’s also how we know that it is difficult and hurts, and the hurt may not be worth what they’d be paid. So, now we wait and see what they decide, and if any of them are offered a job and decide to go, we load their suitcases with the fleece and wool socks we’re not wearing, give them hugs goodbye, and say we’ll see them in eight or nine months. Olmi has already come to tell us that she’s pretty sure Damion wouldn’t do it because they don’t want to be apart from each other for that long, but we’re not sure what anyone else is thinking. And, we’ll tell a few more people we know about the chance, and then just see what happens.

Power?

When I last posted, it looked pretty definite that power was coming this way. It may still be heading in our direction, but now we’re not so sure when it will actually get here, and if it will happen in our lifetime.

The poles that were put in between here and San Antonio have gone as far as they’re going for now, so we’re not getting it from that direction, although it’s now less than a mile away from here on the San Antonio Road.

From 7 Miles, they’ve chopped and put survey markers for the poles in all the way to the Junction, but other than that, we haven’t seen any activity in a couple of weeks. Poles have been erected on the side of the road to within about a half mile of 7 Miles, but no more poles have been dropped. It would seem that they’ve done enough work that the power company should at least erect the poles the rest of the way into 7 Miles and string the wire from Maya Ranch at Mile 5, but we haven’t heard anything about when that might happen, and we have no idea if poles and wire for the two miles to the Junction will ever appear.

We should know soon, however, since the General Election was held on Thursday, and the party that had been in power for the last 10 years was ousted, and the other major party is in, which means Belize has a new UDP Prime Minister and a bunch of new area representatives. Whether this administration will finish what the previous administration started is anyone’s guess, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Progress

We’re at the point in this project where we’re not seeing any giant steps in progress, even though everything we’re doing needs to be done before we can open. Tom and Selwyn have been doing the finish work in the second room of the guest cabin, and the devil is, as they say, in the details. The walls and ceiling of the second room are complete, most of the shelves are up, the bathroom vanities are finished, and Tom has just a little bit of tiling to do in the shower and then I can grout it. Selwyn needs to screen the porch to the second cabin, and they need to build stairs for both rooms, and they have one more bed to finish…and that’s about it.

We’re taking a trip to Belize City tomorrow to drop our paperwork off at the BTB, and we’re hoping to pick up the last piece of paper we need for our residency applications in Belmopan. It’s taken longer than expected to get our police records back, which may have been a good thing because while we’ve been waiting I met a woman who lives with her husband in Succotz, a village on the other side of San Ignacio near the Guatemala border, whose blog explained to me that the income tax form required for our permanent residency applications is really a form that must come from the government’s income tax division saying we’ve never filed income tax in Belize. We just weren’t going to submit anything for that requirement, but I think Kay’s blog has probably saved us a return of the applications and a couple of trips to Belmopan.

Miscellaneous Updates

Nock seems to be doing fine. We’re still giving her the pills for her liver, but she’s been off the anti-vomit medication and the antibiotics since the end of last week, and she seems to be back to her normal self, jumping in the air higher than the counters while she’s waiting for her food bowl to be put on the floor. We’ll take her back to the vet for blood tests in a couple of weeks, and see what’s going on with her then.

My leg is also healing, but slowly. I spent much of last week limping around, which seems ridiculous for a wound caused by a simple puncture, but in the last couple of days it’s been draining and seems to be less annoying. The worst of it is that it’s right where the tops of my rubber boots rub the front of my calf, so I haven’t been able to wear my favorite footwear in over two weeks! Fortunately it hasn’t been raining too much so I haven’t had a serious need for rubber boots, but they’re still convenient to slip on to go out in the horse pasture or walk through tall wet grass in the morning.

We’re Well Protected

Our bedroom opens onto our back porch, which opens onto the fenced dog yard. We never put a screen door from the porch to the yard, and at night we generally sleep with the bedroom door open so the dogs can go in and out as they want. Usually, that works just fine. However, a couple of nights ago, Tom and I were startled awake by a big ruckus in the yard of barking, snarling, snapping 80 plus pound puppies. Tom sprang out of bed and grabbed a flashlight, and ran to the door. He could see the puppies fighting with each other with something between them, so he ran back into the bedroom for his slippers so he could run out and see what they were doing. As he was heading in for his slippers, Beli followed him in and Stout stayed out in the yard. From the porch, Tom could see Stout hunched over something, worrying it and still snarling. Tom went into the yard, and pulled Stout off his quarry…a sock one of them must have stolen from the laundry hamper!

It’s good to know that if any miscreant socks with bad intentions scale the seven-foot dog fence and try to get into our house, our guard dogs will take care of the problem!