More Horse and Nature Stuff

Things have been very quiet around here for the past couple of weeks, and while we’d rather be frenetically busy taking care of guests, I’ve made the best of a little bit of down time and some very nice weather to get out in the jungle on the horses. They need to be kept in shape anyway, so I’m working, not really goofing off…right? Really, the exercise is good for them, it’s good for them to get the complete grooming they seem to only get when we get them ready to ride – and, I love heading out in the jungle.

I have not been disappointed with wildlife sightings. I saw a snake the other day, although I’m not sure if it was a coral snake or a king snake. It was moving quickly to get out of my way (or out of the way of the horse’s hooves), the horse was moving along the jungle path, and I didn’t stop its crossing to see if red touched black or yellow, which is how I remember to tell the difference between the very venomous coral snakes and the harmless king, or false coral snakes: “Red touch black, friendly jack. Red touch yellow, dangerous fellow.” Whichever, it was pretty and didn’t cause any harm.

One day as I was out on Glinda with Recona, I heard a whole bunch of squeaking from the trail around a turn ahead of me. I first thought it was some kind of bird, but as I rounded the turn, I saw Recona leaping, spinning, running and generally dancing and having a wonderful time in the middle of a swarm of coatis. Coatis are like pointy raccoons, and they tend to run in groups, sometimes very large groups. This was a group of probably 20 to 25 coatis, and they were crossing the trail as Recona happened upon them. It was too much fun for a young dog to bounce around amid the coatis, who were intent on getting across the trail and into a grove of scrub trees and away from the annoying dog. They seemed to realize that she just wanted to play, and none of them got aggressive with her (nor she with them), and even as Glin and I came upon them, they just ran around us too, squeaking and hurrying towards their tree grove goal. Glin pricked her ears, got on her toes, and gave them a “What the heck…?” look, but within a few seconds they were well off the trail and in the trees, and Glin, Recona, and I continued down the trail.

On that same ride I saw a white hawk right on the edge of the Pine Ridge and the broad leaf forest. We see them occasionally, but they’re always impressive because they’re so beautiful, and it’s nice to see them in the pines because it’s so much easier to get a good look at them there instead of in the more restricted visibility of the broadleaf jungle.

I’ve also been seeing a lot of tapir tracks in the Pine Ridge. I haven’t yet seen the actual animal, but I’ve been keeping my eyes open, especially on a trail I ride that has a few stream crossings, and tapirs love water. While I’ve seen tracks around the water and on the mud trails, oddly enough the clearest tracks I’ve seen were where the trail crosses the road – but that’s probably just because the road was freshly graded and the mix of fine sand, gravel, and a bit of mud was perfect for imprints. I’m a little nervous about seeing one on the horses because their prints are huge – probably six to eight inches across – and the animals are big enough to be intimidating to a horse. Even our well-broke US horses didn’t like cows, and I’m not sure how our less well-broke Belizean horses would like coming face to face with a mountain cow – but I’d like to find out!

Just yesterday, I took off in the beautiful sunshine and headed out on what has become my normal route. It’s a route with hills and streams, it takes about two hours of walking and trotting with a few places where we can gallop, and it keeps us off the road so Recona can go. When I was about as far out as I get, the wind suddenly picked up and the temperature started to drop. Within a few minutes, it was pouring, which was completely unexpected because it had been so nice when I’d left home, and I’d been in the jungle long enough that I hadn’t seen the fast moving squall blowing in over the mountain tops. Recona wasn’t all that happy about getting wet, but I actually like being out in the rain in the jungle. The acoustics change with things being both louder as the rain beats on the leaves, and quieter as the dry groundcover gets wet and you can no longer hear all the little things scurrying around in the underbrush. The colors also change, with all the greens getting darker green and the grays turning black; it’s just as beautiful as the jungle in the sunshine, and you see and hear different things. Just as I came up a hill out of the jungle and onto the pine ridge, the sun broke through the edge of the squall and a beautiful rainbow appeared, hilltop to hilltop, ahead of me. It disappeared as we trotted towards it – which was fun in itself with Glinda seeming to get a kick out of splash-splash-splashing through the running water on top of the sandy trail – but we trotted back into the jungle and started heading down the hill towards home. Just on a hunch, I decided to take the small detour and check out the vista that looks over MET, a neighboring horse resort. My timing was impeccable! There was a beautiful rainbow rising out of the bottom of the bowl and off over the mountains we’d just traversed. I don’t think Glinda and Recona really appreciated it, but I thought it was well worth delaying all of our dinners for a couple of minutes!

Lodo’s First Pedicure

Little Lodo is now seven months old, and he’s been put in Tony’s care and seems to have adjusted to being separated from Nessa and Elphie, mom and sis. We noticed a couple of weeks ago that his little baby foal feet were starting to look like horse feet, and that they needed a trim. Tom decided that he’s going to make Lodo his project, and since filing off a little bit of Lodo’s toes seemed pretty simple, he could do it. So, we caught Lodo and Tom did it. Just like that. Catching Lodo is the toughest part of the job because he thinks it’s a game to play Catch Me if You Can whenever we try to get him, but once he’s attached to the lead rope, he’s actually a fairly tractable little fellow. He gave Tom all four feet (one at a time of course) without any protests or kicking. Tom said it was easier than trimming the dogs’ nails!

Symbols and Fairy Tales

I can’t help it. I spent too many years studying literature, and when a trail of symbols is set in front of me, I’m compelled to follow. And, I was once again amazed at the commonalities of symbols, myths, and religions across cultures, time, and far flung parts of the world, and well as by the synchronicity in our life.

When we explored the cave (which we now know is called Cuevas de las Ofrendas, or Cave of Offerings) we found a couple of different carvings of jaguars. The carvings were in different styles. One was like a child’s drawing of a jaguar, with a roundish head, roundish body, roundish genitals, and line legs and tail. The other was a stylized representation of a jaguar’s face with eyes, nose, and teeth. Gonzo explained that the one more like a drawing represented an actual jaguar, or the Mayan god Chac, while the more stylized one was like Tlaloc, who was the Aztec equivalent of Chac, with both being rain gods represented by jaguars.

So, at some point over the past couple of weeks I pulled down my The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya by Mary Miller and Karl Taube, and looked up “jaguar,” Chac, and Tlaloc. The book confirmed that both Chac and Tlaloc are gods represented by jaguars, or were-jaguars, and that both are gods of rain and lightning. In addition – and this is where it became interesting to me – Tlaloc’s paradise is known as Tlalocan, which is where “the deformed – dwarves, cripples, and so forth” go as the “special charges” of Tlaloc.

When we bought this property, it was known as “Chac Mool,” which, according to the book, is what the statues and carvings of Chac discovered at Mayan temples were called. We toyed with leaving that name, but then decided that we’d carry on with our farm name from New York, and call the property and business Moonracer Farm. We came up with that farm name years ago because we had a whole bunch of rescued dogs and horses, misfits and outcasts, and because King Moonracer is the King of the Island of Misfit Toys in the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas story, we called our farm Moonracer Farm.

I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. We bought a property named after a Mayan god represented by a jaguar whose Aztec counterpart had as his special charges the misfits of that time in Aztec history. A thousand years later, whoever crafted Rudolph’s Christmas story put a bunch of misfits under the care of a godlike lion. We chose to use the caretaking lion’s name as our farm name, and then moved to a property already named after a caretaking feline god. Who says we’re in charge of our own destiny?

Cheri and Geoff

Our last set of guests to date was Cheri and Geoff from the Yukon, who are spending three weeks in Belize to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. They spent a week with us, and are now spending two weeks kayaking and canoeing with Island Expeditions, a Canadian company that runs kayak and canoe tours throughout Belize’s mainland and on the cayes. We had been in frequent contact with them for the past month or so helping them to plan their stay here, and had a little bit of an anxiety attack when Cheri emailed a couple of days before they were supposed to arrive that she wasn’t sure if they’d be getting out since it was -40 degrees in the Yukon. Before you run to your thermometers (like I did) to see if that’s Celsius or Fahrenheit, I’ll tell you that it doesn’t matter; -40C is almost the same as -40F, and whatever you want to call it, it’s cold enough to ground planes. They managed to get out despite the cold, and arrived at the airport a little ahead of schedule where Tom met them and transported them back to the farm.

They had told us they wanted to do a lot of hiking while they were here, so we figured the best way to get them started was to send them out on the horses with Selwyn right away so they could cover a bit of ground and get a little bit of an orientation on both the area and the jungle. They visited Sapodilla Falls, and by the time they rode home they were ready to get out of the saddles. The next day was Saturday, so Tom took them into San Ignacio so they could see market day in the morning, and then in the afternoon we all took a ride up to the beautiful Big Rock Falls for a swim. Sunday they took a day trip to Tikal, which entailed a very early start, although they were back and ready to be picked up at the border at just a little after 4PM.

We had originally planned to take them to Benny’s for Belizean food that night, but that morning Tom and I had a brainstorm (despite the early hour) and decided to see if Gonzo wanted to join us for a hike to the cave Antonio, the Elijio Panti park warden, had told me about when I was riding with Mike and Stacie. We had arranged to meet Selwyn and Antonio in San Antonio early Monday morning (7:30 early, NOT 4:30 early), so instead of dinner at Benny’s on Sunday night, we picked up Gonzo in San Ignacio and all came back to the farm for a steak dinner and an early night to get ready for the hike.

I’m not sure if Antonio thought I would take him up on his offer to show me the cave so quickly, but whatever he expected, he was more than ready to show us the park. Tom and I were a little worried about hurting Selwyn’s feelings because Cheri, Geoff, and I were the tourists, and we had Antonio, the park warden, as a guide, plus Gonzo, a very experienced guide, and although he was on this trip as a spectator, it could have looked to Selwyn, our “official” guide for the hike, that we were putting him under the supervision of the big guns. Selwyn, however, took it all in stride and saw it as the opportunity it was to learn from more experienced guides even as he was doing his job as this tour’s guide and making sure Cheri and Geoff were comfortable and safe and giving them all the jungle information, one of Selwyn’s specialties, as we hiked. We figured the hike is about six miles each way, through the farm fields behind San Antonio and then through the jungle. Monday was the beginning of what turned out to be a very rainy week, although for a long hike, the drizzle was actually more pleasant than the hot sun would have been. We took a rest at the park’s visitors’ center, where Antonio told us more stories of the beings that haunt the park and the pranks they’ve pulled on his family, and then hiked up to the base camp set up near the mouth of the cave. We took a break and had a snack, and then headed into the cave.

The cave is huge. It has multiple entrances to different rooms, although the passage to the main part of the cave is fairly small and is smaller because the Maya had built a wall to block it. Antonio knows his way through the cave, and has been there enough times to show us lots of interesting things – where the pottery “trash piles” are, stones that were polished by the Maya, burial sites, and geologic features of the cave. We were also glad Gonzo was able to join us, since he put his archeological knowledge to use and found lots of fascinating things Antonio hadn’t noticed before, such as rock formations modified by the Maya, which weren’t clear until Gonzo pointed them out because while we aren’t quite sure what they are supposed to be, the same shape appeared in three or four formations, and it is too much the same to be a coincidence of nature. He also found charcoal writing on the walls and some of the formations, bones and teeth in the burial site, stairs carved out of the rocks indicating the path the Maya used through the cave, and carvings in the large rock at the entrance to the cave. We turned what Antonio says is usually a one hour tour through the cave into a two hour plus tour, but we were all fascinated by the learning investigation. We finally decided that we have to go back, camp for a night, and spend a couple of days in the cave, minus Cheri and Geoff, unfortunately, and that intention finally got us out of the cave and back to the base camp where we had lunch before hiking six miles out and back to Tinkerbell parked at Selwyn’s house. We all came back to the farm to shed our wet clothes and warm up with showers, then headed into Succotz for the dinner at Benny’s that had been planned for the night before – much hungrier than we would have been if we’d had the early dinner on the way home from Tikal.

Tuesday was another drippy day, but Cheri and Geoff made the best of it by taking a hike around our property with Selwyn in the morning, and then visiting Barton Creek Cave in the afternoon. On Wednesday they toured Caracol, and stayed mostly dry despite occasional drizzle. They were scheduled to meet their Island Expeditions group at the Zoo’s TEC Thursday afternoon and had planned to go hike at St. Herman’s Cave and see the Inland Blue Hole, but because of the rain that was abbreviated to a tour of Belmopan and a search for a machete and sheath for Geoff to take home to clear land in the Yukon, and an early drop off at the Zoo for the day time tour. It’s continued to rain for the past two days, so we’re hoping that Cheri and Geoff are staying relatively dry and warm…although whatever the weather, it must be better than -40!

Generator woes

Right in the middle of a crazy busy few weeks, the big generator broke down last Monday. We had just finished running a load of laundry through the washer and dryer, when the engine kept running but the lights in the house suddenly started going on and off. Tom ran down and unhooked everything and turned it off, but because we were done the laundry and we had about a gazillion things to do with our guests, and because we can use the small generator for charging batteries and running lights and the satellite, he didn’t get time to take a look at it again until yesterday. It was raining yesterday morning – it’s been raining all week – but Selwyn, who has been working hard and who is suffering from a mild case of the flu, dragged his butt to work because he knew Tom was planning to get the big generator out of its hut and take a look at it, and although it has wheels, it takes at least two men to carry/drag it over the rocky ground from the hut to the porch of the shop. The two of them wrestled it into the shop, and then Tom took Selwyn home.

When he returned from San Antonio, Tom took a look at it but couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t generating power. At lunchtime, he took the cell phone up the hill to call Elvis – a very good electrician in San Ignacio, not the late singer. Neither of us has gone that far over the deep end yet. Elvis said that if Tom could bring it in, Elvis could take a look at it. So, Tom and I wrestled it up some hardwood ramps and into the back of the new truck, and Tom took off through the pouring rain to San Ignacio. He came home with not-so-good news; the motor needs to be rewound (whatever that means) so he has to take some part to Spanish Lookout on Monday to be drilled out, and then Elvis will rewind it. We’re not sure when it will be done – hopefully sooner rather than later – but until then we’re hoping we don’t have too many guests so we don’t have to do any laundry, and we’re hoping we get enough water pressure from the pipe to fill the tank on top of the hill, because we don’t think the little generator will run the water pump. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Tinkerbell’s list of woes

Not that we have to justify anything, but Aaron, our wonderful mechanic when we lived in NY, sent us an email saying he liked the new truck, and was surprised that Tinkerbell had lasted as long as she had as our only vehicle. Tom responded and started listing all the things that are wrong with her at this point, and was amazed at how long the list was. So, we’re posting it here just so you can all see how much can be wrong with a vehicle and it’s STILL on the road in Belize!

From Tom to Aaron:
The roads down here are taking their toll on Tinkerbell. The body is literally falling apart:

• left fender is breaking off
• the doors don't shut right all the time
• the electric windows don't always work
• I had to disconnect the electric locks
• I helped a welder remount the drivers side of the cab back up off the frame
• the tailgate falls off if not strapped onto the back
• the exhaust has been reattached 6 times
• one of the gears in the differential had to be replaced
• the automatic transmission is a bit tricky to drive with since you have to work the gas different ways to get it to shift up and down
• the gear shifter indicator on the dash is broken so you have to count clicks to figure out what gear you are in
• the windshield wiper knob is broken
• the inside door panels keep popping off the door frames
• the passenger door has to be shut with the button pushed in to keep it locked
• the screws holding the plastic trim in the cab have broken the plastic mounts
• the seats are whooped
• we can't get the inside rearview mirror to stick to the windshield anymore
• the light for the radio and clock is burned out
• the headlights are starting to shake loose out of their sockets
• she needs her fuel injectors cleaned and fixed up to get better than 10mpg (that would be about $400US)
• the windshield has a couple of rock chips in it
• the backseat is uncomfortable to ride in for more than a quick trip
• the drivers seat doesn't always latch back on the sliders after pulling if forward to get into the back seat
• the front gas tank has some rust holes and some cracks from rubbing on brackets so we can only use the rear tank
• etc.
You get the idea? It is still usable but I don't let Marge take it out for fear of it falling apart while she is driving it. I have gotten so that when I go out to town in Tinkerbell and wear a specific shirt, I am almost guaranteed that I will have to crawl under the truck to do some work on her to keep her going - it has happened about 10 times with that particular shirt now and if it is a rainy day, I refuse to wear that shirt since I don't want to crawl around in the mud! Tinker is still good for hauling loads up our road and we will keep her for farm use for a while, at least, until we have to put some major money into her, which at that point, we will not have any problem selling her as a parts truck since the engine is still running great.

By the way, even though we’d never named our vehicles prior to Tinkerbell, we think we’re going to have to give the new truck a name since we won’t be able to call it “the new truck” forever. We’re leaning towards Bluebell since it’s blue (even though it looks more brown in this picture), the name would be in keeping with the bell theme, and we see the bluebell flowers all over down here. However, we haven’t yet decided if it’s a he or a she…

Not much time off – Hooray!

After Mike and Stacie left just before New Year’s, we thought we were going to have five or six days without guests. We were sort of looking forward to a little time to catch up with ourselves and do all the things that don’t get done when we’re taking care of guests, but we were pleasantly surprised to have two sets of walk-up guests. One, Max and Marinda from Switzerland, stayed only one night, but we enjoyed each others’ company over dinner and breakfast, and they left with promises to contact Lonely Planet – where they say most of Europe gets travel advice – and give us a good review.

The next set was Kristi and Ray from Utah, near Moab, who were traveling through Guatemala and Belize and making plans as they went. They wanted to do a few things in the Mountain Pine Ridge and didn’t want to make the drive in and out of San Ignacio every day, and also didn’t want to pay what the big resorts in the Mountain Pine Ridge charge, so they said they were very glad to find us. They ended up spending three nights here, taking a drive up to Rio On Pools for a swim and a hike the day they got here, then spending a day at Caracol, then spending another couple of days hiking in the area. They left here and took an ATM tour with Gonzo on their way to hike in southern Belize, and Gonzo told us they were pleased with the accommodations and were planning to return at some point – good news for us since in addition to being glad to hear that we’re doing a good job with the business, we really enjoyed their company.

Busted!

I debated whether or not to put this in the blog, but finally decided that since everybody who reads this blog knows the dogs live with us, it wouldn’t be much of a shock and even potential guests hopefully won’t think they’re coming to a pit if I explained our latest business hurdle.

All restaurant and bar licenses issued from San Ignacio are issued in January of each year. In the beginning of the month, the business owners must have a notice put in one of the local newspapers, then the Department of Public Health makes an inspection, then the owners all have to attend a meeting in San Ignacio, and then the restaurant and liquor licenses are issued. Last year, we didn’t find out about this until the last minute, so everything was rushed through and we never had the Public Health inspection. This year, Tom started the paperwork flow a few weeks ago, and on Wednesday the Department of Public Health pulled into the driveway. I was home alone and eating lunch on the porch, and the four inside dogs were sitting on the porch with me. Before I could let the Public Health people in the house, I had to put the dogs out, of course with much noise and ruckus. The inspector took out his checklist, asked a few questions, then asked to see the kitchen and dining area. He gave me a very serious look, and informed me that we were in violation of the Public Health rules because the dogs had been in the kitchen and dining area.

Honestly, we knew this, but had considered it sort of like speeding – a law that lots of people break, and for the most part no harm comes to anybody from it, and as long as you don’t hurt anybody and/or don’t get caught, nobody really cares. I don’t think we’ve eaten out in Belize where dogs haven’t wandered through the dining area, and most kitchens are also open with dogs wandering around. Our kitchen and dining area are in our house, our dogs are house dogs, and of course they were in those two rooms. I don’t ever want anyone to get sick from eating anything from my kitchen, and I’m probably a little nuts about making sure everything is clean and food is safely prepared – but I hadn’t yet swept that day so dog hair was obvious on the floor throughout the area, and of course the inspector had seen the dogs sitting with me when they pulled into the driveway. He was actually very fair, and passed us on all the inspection points, and then wrote down three “recommendations” on the back of the form, which isn’t part of the officially submitted carbon copy – pets out of kitchen and dining areas, clean the areas, and remove dog bowls from the areas. I signed that I understood the “recommendations,” and promised that I would comply by the meeting on Tuesday.

And, I have. The dogs are now very unhappy and making us a little crazy with their whining because they are blocked from the dining room and kitchen, where we spend a fair amount of time and where they used to hang out with us. The dog bowls are in the bedroom, where the dogs now eat and have their water. I washed all the dishes stored at dog level, did the daily sweeping (I didn’t tell the inspector that he was looking at only one day’s worth of dog hair – I really didn’t think that would help my cause!), and gave the whole kitchen a good scrub, which it was due for anyway. Nock protested by peeing on the bed, which didn’t accomplish anything for her other than that she now has to be outside with the Ruckus Twins rather than locked in the bedroom if we’re not in the bedroom with her. Our dogs are probably cleaner, less pest and disease ridden, and better immunized than most people, but the rules are the rules, and since we’ve been busted, we’ll comply.

Happy New Year!

I missed sending out a Merry Christmas greeting to everybody last week, but this week I have the time to post our Happy New Year wishes. We can’t believe we’ve been in Belize almost two years, but it’s been two good years, and we’re hoping for the same for everybody in 2009. Happy New Year!

New Wheels

We finally had to suck it up and do something we’ve been putting off for too long – buy a companion for Tinkerbell. Before Christmas, Tom was leaving San Ignacio with our guests, and Tinkerbell quit. Tom managed to get her into San Ignacio, drop her off at the repair shop, and rent a SUV to get everybody home. No harm done, but it can’t happen again, and Tinkerbell just isn’t completely dependable any more. So, Tom did some quick research, visited a few car dealers, and managed to find a good deal on a new 2007 Isuzu D-Max, which is a small, four-door, diesel, 4WD pickup truck. It hardly seems like a truck since we’re so used to Tinkerbell, but it has a much better suspension, and a four door cab that can hold four comfortably, with seatbelts for six. It seems like a car, but that’s probably a good thing since it’s easier to get in and out and passengers don’t bang their heads on the ceiling as we traverse the rough roads around here. Tom picked it up the day before Christmas and picked up our Christmas week guests, Mike and Stacie, on its maiden voyage, and then took everybody for a Mountain Pine Ridge tour to Rio Frio Cave, Rio On Pools, and Big Rock as a Christmas outing.

Mike & Stacie

We just had an incredibly eventful week with Mike and Stacie from Santa Clara, California. They spent the first part of their Belize vacation diving from Caye Caulker, then spent a night at the Belize Zoo where they pronounced the night tour “awesome” but delivered the sad news that Ellen, the black jaguar, had just died of cancer. From the Belize Zoo they went cave tubing at Jaguar Paw, and Tom picked them up there in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. They met the very tired, muddy, and happy CheChem Ha adventurers in San Ignacio, and then we all returned to the farm for dinner. On Christmas, everybody went to Rio Frio Cave, Rio On Pools, and Big Rock, and then came back for our traditional standing rib roast prime rib dinner with twice baked potatoes.

On Friday (Boxing Day here), Mike, Stacie, Dave, and Tom all went to Actun Tunichil Muknal, aka the ATM Cave, and spent a good day exploring the Mayan underworld with Gonzo. Saturday we saddled up Tony, Es, and Glin, and Stacie, Mike, and I packed a lunch and went on a trail ride to Sapodilla Falls. We had the usual pleasant ride through the jungle, and then arrived at the falls to find, for the first time in my experience, two other horses already tethered in the “parking lot” at the top of the falls. The horses were from Blancaneaux, and as we were hiking down the trail, the Blancaneaux guide and his guest were hiking out, so we had the falls all to ourselves for lunch and a swim. As we were getting ready to leave, a group of local people came in and were sitting downstream for us. We waved and said hi as we walked by, and didn’t think any more of it until we were almost at the top of the trail when I heard “Mrs. Tom, Mrs. Tom” behind me. It turns out one of the men in the group was Antonio Mai, the chairman of San Antonio’s water board and warden of the Elijio Panti National Park. He worked with Tom on the water line up in the hills near Hidden Valley in March 2007, and when one of the men with him told him that I was “the girl from Chac Mool [the previous name for our property], Mr. Tom’s wife,” Antonio ran up the hill behind us to meet us. He told us all sorts of things about the park and its history, invited us to ride with him sometime to a cave in the park, and taught us a little bit of the Mayan language – how to say “white man” (Mike), “white girl” (me), and, when Mike pointed out that Stacie is Chinese and not white, “yellow girl” (Stacie). He also told us a few myths of the jungle about beings who lure people into the jungle for various mischievous reasons, and we spent a half hour laughing together.

Early – and I mean early – Tom dropped Mike and Stacie off in San Ignacio and they left for an overnight tour to Tikal, Guatemala, where they had a good time exploring the park and archeological site. They took a zip line tour Monday morning, did some shopping, and we met them in San Ignacio Monday evening. We all went to dinner at Benny’s, a restaurant that serves Belizean food in the town of Succotz. We had empanadas, tostadas, garnaches, and salbutes as an appetizer, and then sampled each other’s dinners. Mike ordered chilmole, a black soup with chicken and a boiled egg, Stacie had cow foot soup, and I had pibil, which is a sort of pulled pork. All were delicious. Tom, not being an overly adventurous eater, ordered fried fish, so he got to eat his dinner without having to share!

On Tuesday we headed down the Hummingbird Highway to Caves Branch, where we’d signed up to do the Black Hole Drop. The four of us had signed up, but Stacie woke up in the middle of the night with a strong feeling that she shouldn’t do it, so it ended up that they went to the Inland Blue Hole and St. Herman’s Cave while Tom and I did the Black Hole Drop on our own, mostly because we hadn’t done it before and thought we should do it so we can advise our guests. Stacie was very wise to trust her instincts, because it was an awesome trip, but difficult for a few different reasons. The hike to the Black Hole, which is a 300+ foot sinkhole in the middle of the jungle, was tough. It takes over an hour in good conditions because the terrain is very hilly and rocky, and the hike is mostly up hill. On Tuesday, it was raining off and on, so the hike was made even more difficult because the trail was very muddy, and very, very slippery with lots of steep drop offs at the edge of the trail. It reminded Tom of working on the water pipeline, and he was glad all he had to carry was a day pack with water and rappelling gear and he had two hands to climb up some of the steeper portions of the trail. Not counting guides, there were nine people in the party, and by the time we got back to the bus at the end of the day, five of the nine had fallen on the trail and were covered in mud. Tom and I were luckily not among the fallers, but we were also pretty muddy because doing the drop itself meant sliding backwards off a mud-covered limestone overhang. After getting buckled into the rappelling gear and clipped to the ropes, my stomach was in my mouth and I was shaking despite my pep talks to myself about how people much less athletic than I am had done this. I informed the guide that I was NOT going to look down, and he just said, “That’s fine, now lean back, push off the rock, and feed the rope up.” I did as instructed, swung down below the overhang, spun a 180 on the rope, and forgot all about being nervous. It was an incredible experience to be hanging out in space, basically at ground level, looking up in one direction at the jungle rising above me, and looking down at the top of the canopy below me. I slid slowly down through the canopy to the bottom of the sinkhole, not because I was afraid to go fast, but because I wanted time to absorb what I was seeing as I dropped from one world to another. Tom had descended on another rope at the same time – although a little more quickly – so we landed almost together at the bottom of the sinkhole. We joined those already down and watched the rest of our party descend, with everybody, without exception, awed by the experience. The guides fed us a great lunch, and then we hiked around the bottom of the sinkhole, climbed up the side where it was a little shallower – but still a very tough climb which included a very rickety ladder – and hiked down the muddy hill and back to the point where we met the bus to take us back to the Caves Branch Jungle Lodge. Click here to see a description of this trip – sorry, but we forgot our camera, so we can’t wait for more guests who want to do this so we can go again and remember the camera!

By the time we got back to Caves Branch, Mike and Stacie had caught a ride to Belize City, where they were going to catch the water taxi to go back to Caye Caulker for a couple more days of diving and snorkeling. Stacie had completed her diving certification before they headed inland, but the certification dives focused more on skills than on seeing fish and the beautiful coral formations on the reef off the coast of Belize, so they wanted to try to get a couple of more days of reef time before they had to head home. We’re sure Mike and Stacie will be back to visit Belize!

Dave & Tamis & kids

In the last blog entry, I briefly mentioned what we’d been doing with our friends from Seattle, Dave, Tamis, and their kids Mia (5), and Evan (9). After that entry, we had another week of adventures before they had to leave the Saturday after Christmas. Although Tom took them to the airport while I went with Mike and Stacie on a trail ride to Sapodilla Falls, we both found that evening that we really missed hearing kids’ laughter coming from the cabins. We were amazed how attached we could get in just a little over two weeks!

Although we’re still really missing them, we can look back on the time they were here with nothing but pleasant memories. We did so much I can’t possibly go into detail for all of it, but Dave is an awesome photographer, so I’ll just include a few of their pictures.

We found that when the adults wanted to hike somewhere, the best thing for Mia and Evan was to put a saddle on Tony and toss them up. They liked riding, the adults liked walking a little more quickly, and Tony is always a good sport.

One day we saddled up and headed down the road to the Butterfly Ranch, where we saw many beautiful butterflies and learned a lot – more than we knew there was to know – about butterflies.

Another day we took a hike through the jungle and to the vista overlooking MET and the road to 7 Miles.

It’s a nice hike through the jungle to get to the vista, and the view is gorgeous once you get there.

Tom and Selwyn took everybody to Barton Creek Cave, where they paddled into the cave and then swung on the rope swing at the Barton Creek Outpost’s swimming hole.

Late one afternoon, the boys – Dave, Evan, and Tom – took off for Big Rock. They swam, jumped off the rock, and then hung out and watched the sunset, hiking back up the trail just as it was getting dark. Mia was distraught that she had missed an adventure, but fortunately she got to visit Big Rock on Christmas Day and see that she hadn’t missed all that much, at least as far as she was concerned.

Mia was much happier at Rio On Pools, where the Pools are kid friendly and the slides between pools are adventure enough for a small person. The whole family went there twice during their stay, and would have gone again if they had been able to stay longer.

On Christmas Eve, I went with Dave, Tamis, Evan, Mia, and Selwyn on a tour led by Gonzo and his friend Becky, a ceramics archeologist (sorry if the title isn’t quite right, Becky!) on a tour of Chechem Ha Cave.

We saw lots of fascinating artifacts, tons of cool cave formations, and got to climb through some very narrow passages in the cave.

I, unfortunately, used Selwyn as a crash landing pad on one of the descents (thanks, undependable knees), but Sewlyn was okay and I was just muddy. What’s new? It wouldn’t be an adventure is I wasn’t covered in mud!

When we got out of the cave, we had a delicious lunch. It wasn’t the main course, but we got to sample a freshly roasted armadillo – which was surprisingly good. It tasted like chicken, of course.

Although we had a lot of other adventures, we also had some welcome downtime. Here’s Evan snoozing in the hammock with Nock.

To read about the adventure from Evan and Mia's point of view, visit their blog at http://leftelbow.blogspot.com/.

Busy Season

The past week has been crazy busy, and a whole lot of fun. We’ve had three separate parties of guests, and we’ve had – and are having – a blast with all of them.

First, we had Jon, Karen, and their son Myles from Philadelphia here for a couple of days. One day they went to Barton Creek and canoed into the cave, and on their second day they packed a lunch and visited Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Pools.

Then we had Bobby, Andy, and Steve, all from Ohio, here for a couple of days. One day they took a horseback ride through the jungle and the Mountain Pine Ridge to Big Rock Waterfall with Selwyn, and on the other day they went to ATM.

The day they left, Tom picked up Dave, Tamis, Evan, and Mia at the Zoo and took them shopping in Spanish Lookout and San Ignacio – a real taste of life in Belize. Since then, they’ve toured Xunantunich and Barton Creek Cave, stopped at the inland Blue Hole on their way to Hopkins, and spent an overnight at Jungle Jeanie’s By The Sea in Hopkins. They have another whole week of adventures lined up before they head back to Seattle.

About the only bad thing that’s happened lately is that poor Recona was “attacked” by army ants. We always tie her under the house by the steps at night because she’ll spend the whole night patrolling for and barking at the multitude of armadillos around here, and because we don’t want her to be jaguar bait. We woke up at about 5am one morning to Recona shrieking by the door. Tom grabbed a machete and ran outside and found that her entire area was overcome by army ants, which were biting her just because she was in the way. Tom unclipped her and got both of them out of the army, and Recona rolled in the mud while Tom sprayed her with bug killer. She was a muddy, stinky mess, but after a bath later in the day she didn’t seem to be any the worse for the wear. Phew!

We have a couple of busy weeks lined up with more guests coming in on Christmas Eve and staying for a week, and a steady line of guests expected through January and February. We’re having a blast running our business and taking care of guests – it doesn’t even feel like work!

Belize Zoo 25th Anniversary

Tom spent this past weekend at the Belize Zoo's 25th Anniversary Celebration. While there he...


...saw the unveiling of the harpy eagle statue donated to the Zoo.

...watched the harpy eagle wedding.

...helped John, the Tropical Education Center Manager, Wilford, an assistant at the Zoo and TEC, and Miss Murial, the Cook at the Zoo.

...and had an up-close encounter with Junior Buddy, the Jaguar Ambassador at the Zoo, with Sharon and guests who stayed at the Zoo for a night and then drove Tom home, Jon, Karen, and their son Miles.

Great picture!

John and Cindy, our guests over Thanksgiving weekend, emailed this picture of two aracaris in the give-and-take palm right outside our cabin. It's too good to not post! Thanks, John and Cindy!

Eeek!

As I was standing in the kitchen making dinner last night, I felt something go plop onto the top of my head. And move.

My first thought was that it was a bat, which we occasionally get in the cabin. I didn’t want to put my hands to my head to brush it off because I was afraid it would bite me and I really don’t want rabies shots for Christmas, so I didn’t move and very calmly (I thought, given the circumstances) said loudly to Tom, who was working on the computer in the other room, “Tom. Come here. Immediately. You need to get this bat off my head.”

I pulled my collar tight around my neck so it couldn’t go down my shirt and bent over so Tom could see the top of my head. He started to laugh, and then brushed at the “bat” and I felt it jump to my shoulder. I turned my head to look just as this turnip tail gecko jumped to the kitchen door and scurried up out of the dogs’ reach. It paused long enough at the top of the wall for Tom to get the camera and take this picture, then disappeared back into the ceiling where it can continue to do its job eating scorpions and spiders.

Brrr!

It’s been very cool here the past couple of days. The high temp has been in the 60s, and every night has been in the 50s. We know it’s nothing like what all of you in the Great White North are enduring right now, but it’s very cold to us. Even the dogs are feeling it; Louie managed to make me wrap him in my shirt which kept us both warm, and all the dogs have been doing their best to get into our skins.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

Thanks to everyone who emailed Happy Thanksgiving wishes to us! I’ll be catching up on emails over the next couple of days, so you should hear from me.

We had a great Thanksgiving. Cindy and John, a couple from south of Syracuse, New York, were here for the holiday, so even though it isn’t an official holiday here in Belize, it was a holiday for us. Tom, Cindy, John, and Selwyn spent the day exploring Caracol, Rio Frio Cave, and Rio On Pools, and I spent the day doing what I always do on Thanksgiving – cooking, which is something I really enjoy.

A number of people asked via email if the holiday was celebrated here, and as I was cooking I was thinking about how even though it isn’t officially celebrated, I think this is the first Thanksgiving, probably in our adult lives, when we’ve really had time to stop and think about how thankful we are for lots and lots of things. When we were kids, Thanksgiving was just a couple of days off from school, which was an event to be celebrated, but we didn’t think much about giving thanks for anything. When we got out in the real world, it was still a long weekend, definitely a good thing, but I don’t think we ever even took the time to think about the real purpose of the holiday. We were always too wound up about something else – work that didn’t get done before the holiday, travel plans for the long weekend, worry about the weather for whomever was traveling, the expense of traveling, deciding where and with whom the holiday would be celebrated, making food, fretting about other people making food, stressing because we couldn’t be in more than one place at a time, wondering if everybody would get along and behave themselves, worrying in advance about all the stresses associated with the holidays, and…all the rest of the things grown ups worry about on a regular basis, but probably more at holidays.

Here, in the quiet of my kitchen, I actually thought about all the things I give thanks for on a regular basis. A big one is that despite the great distance between our family and friends and us, we manage to remain close, thanks in part to email and modern technology, but mostly to all the people who matter and who make an extra effort to stay in touch with us like they do. Some have even traveled here to visit, for which we’re very thankful, and we’re thankful that we’ve both been able to travel and visit family and friends. On the subject of people, I’m also thankful for all the people we’ve met here who have become friends, and just for the people that regularly take a little extra time and effort to make things go easier for us and everyone else. I’m thankful that we found a place where can live happily with our animals in a beautiful warm spot in the world, and share that place with others. I’m happy that our business is going well, and that I was spending Thanksgiving not just cooking, but doing a job that I love to do at the same time, and that Tom was out sharing Belize with our newest friends and also working and having fun. For the first time in my life – no offense to former employers intended since I’ve always liked my jobs – I was able to understand how people could say that even if they won the lottery, they’d keep doing their jobs. In fact, we feel sort of like we’ve won a lottery living and working here in Belize, and we’re thankful for everything everyone has done for us over the years that enabled us to get here, including Tom’s parents who sent us here on vacation. Little did they suspect what would come of their kind action! We can only hope that those around us can find as much to be thankful for as we do – and if they can, we’re truly thankful.

Congratulations to Selwyn!

It’s been a long haul with a lot of paper chasing, but Selwyn finally has his tour guide license from the Belize Tourist Board. He’s taken all the classes, done all the internships, snipped through all the red tape, and he’s finally a tour guide. We received notice that his application was approved, and the next day had him do his first tour, taking our guests Cindy and John to Caracol and then to Rio Frio Cave and Rio On Pools. Nothing like jumping right in! John and Cindy said he did a great job – of course! – and Selwyn is now brushing up on all he needs to know to tell our next wave of guests all they want to know about Belize.

What’s New?

The answer around here, not much. We’re continuing work outside, landscaping, planting, and trying to get good grass in the pastures for the horses.

Speaking of horses, we haven’t had any Lodo pictures lately, so here’s the newest.

We call him the little Beach Boy because his mane, forelock, and tail are black, but he gets bleached blond tips from being out in the sun all the time. You might have to blow up this picture to see it.

We’re still watching him grow, although we’re a little distressed about Elphie, since she’s almost two years and he just turned five months, and there’s not a whole lot of difference in their sizes. Because of the perspective of this photo he’s not quite as big as he looks in comparison to her, but he’s still way closer to her size than he should be given her age. Plus, he’s a solid little fellow; when we pat him, we don’t feel any ribs or even fat, just a solid little guy.

The only thing that happened of any interest is that Tom broke his thumb, just in time for needing to get ready for guests we had over Thanksgiving. Tom is really embarrassed, because he didn’t even get a good story out of the happening. He was in San Ignacio and met two people he knows in front of the police station. They were walking in front of the station, right in the middle of town, talking, and he just slipped and fell into the two-foot-deep cement ditch that runs in front of the station. And it was on a Thursday morning, a week before Thanksgiving, so he couldn’t even pretend it happened when he was out partying in town!

He went behind the police station to hose himself off – he knew where the hose was from working there – and then rounded the corner and ran into our friend Escandar. He said Escandar took one look at him and asked what was wrong, and as soon as Tom showed him the thumb Escandar whipped out his cell phone and called his orthopedic doctor in Santa Elena, who took Tom immediately. He then sent Tom for x-rays, which showed that he’d completely broken the bone in the first joint of his thumb, which turned out to be a good thing because his thumb nail acted as a splint so a cast wasn’t necessary. He sent Tom home with some pain medication and instructions to keep the hand elevated. Tom, of course, had to finish his errands, so he came home with a very swollen, bruised, and sore-looking thumb, but he was then pretty willing to follow the doctor’s orders (except take the pain pills – they messed up his stomach). A week and a couple of days later and it looks a lot better, although it’s still bruised and swollen.

The only other “exciting” thing to happen is that we got a good long look at a male green honeycreeper in one of the tangerine trees. We hadn’t seen one before, and when we looked it up in the bird book it says it’s another uncommon sighting. It looks like what the Joker from Batman would look like if he were a bird. This website has some good pictures.

We also seem to have a hooded warbler nest right outside the kitchen window since we’ve had lots of baby hooded warblers fluttering around, and Dad seems to be in the habit of perching on the cage right outside the window and checking out what I’m doing in the kitchen. Aren’t they striking?

NBC Today Belize video link

Here's the link to NBC Today's videos. The one called "Wildlife in Peril in Belize" is the Belize Zoo feature, but there are also a number of other pieces about Belize. Look for the Matt Lauer "Ends of the Earth" segments.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8004316

Driving Pony

Thanks to the great weather for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot with the horses. I’ve taken all four saddle horses on long trail rides almost every day for the past couple of weeks, and one day even managed to convince Selwyn and our friend Gonzo to ride with me. That was a funny ride for a couple of reasons. First, as we were riding through the jungle chatting, Selwyn started to laugh. I asked him what was funny, and he said he’d explain later. The next morning I asked him what was so funny, and he asked me if it had registered how the three of us were talking. I was puzzled, but when Selwyn asked what language we’d been speaking, it registered that Selwyn had been speaking Creole, Gonzo was speaking Spanish, and I was speaking English…and we were talking to each other. I’m definitely the weak link of the three of us since those two are fluent in all three languages, but I’ve learned enough Spanish and Creole relating to things we frequently talk about – like things in the jungle – that I had no trouble keeping up. The funny thing was we didn’t even realize we were doing it for quite a while, and then only Selwyn realized. The other funny thing with that ride was that we ended up doing a short stretch on the road right at the time people were driving home from their jobs at the resorts. Since Gonzo and Selwyn are guides and have lived in this area for their whole lives they knew most of the people in the vehicles passing us, and I’m out on the horses enough that most people know who I am. We could see a lot of people doing double takes when they realized who we were, no doubt wondering why the gringa who’s usually out bombing around in the jungle on the horses all by herself suddenly needed not one, but two guides!

Besides riding the saddle horses, I put Elphie back to work. Our training philosophy is to just do a little with the young horses from the time they’re babies, so that nothing we do really surprises or scares them when we start training them. Since we’ve had Elphie we’ve been doing things like putting a saddle and bridle on her, ponying her on trail rides, and over the past few months I started ground driving her. She had a month or so off between the rain and a cut on her eye that we were watching, but she’s been doing great with everything, so after ground driving her around for a little while, I decided to see what she would do if she had to pull something.

We didn’t bring much driving tack with us when we came here, and she’s so small I don’t think most of it would fit anyway, so I’ve been, umm, creating tack as we go. We use an old trail bridle with rope for the long lines, and I’ve tied some baling twine on an old English saddle where the stirrup leathers would go. That keeps the lines at about the right height so they run along her back rather than tangling around her neck. When I decided I wanted her to pull something, I put another baling twine loop below the long line loop, took one of our longish English girths and rigged that up as a breast collar with the ends through the baling twine and another piece of baling twine running over the saddle to keep the “breast collar” at the right height. As a drag, I found a five gallon bucket with a lid, and put a chunk of coconut palm log in it for weight and noise. I put a piece of rope through the handle, and I dragged it up and down the driveway a few times while leading Elphie. She shied away at first, but quickly got used to it dragging beside and behind her on both sides, the side where she can see as well as her blind side. Then I hooked the rope without the drag to the two ends of the girth/breast collar and leaned on it to see if she minded having weight on that. She was great about that too, so I tied one end of the rope to the buckle on the girth, ran it through the handle on the bucket, and then ran it through the buckle on the other end of the girth with a long tail sticking out which I could hold as I drove her so I could let go and let her get away from the bucket if she panicked.

She was great. She dragged the bucket all over the property, walking and trotting, and never even spooked. Tom was working on the computer in the house, and when he heard the big noise he came out and was surprised to see me driving Elphie around with her very calmly pulling the very noisy bucket behind her. It was a little hard for me because the bucket would bounce and roll as we hit rough spots, and I kept having to jump it as we turned – although next time I’ll know to adjust the lengths of the long lines and the rope holding the bucket so the bucket stays ahead of me. We’ll probably pony Elphie into Barton Creek at some point and see if we can find a Mennonite to make a simple driving harness for her. She’s almost two so we don’t think she’s going to grow a whole lot more, but we’ll wait a bit and then Tom can build a little buggy for her to pull. We’re bummed that she’s so small because she’d probably make a great little trail horse since she’s so quiet, but we think she’s too small for me to even get on and ride. There’s a guy in town who works with horses and who is very small, so we may talk to him about backing her so kids could ride her, but we’re not sure he’d want to work with us to do it (cowboys don’t take advice from girls), and we don’t know if he’ll believe us that since we’ve been working with her since she was a baby, backing her will probably just be a matter of getting on and riding. We’re afraid that he’ll want to “break” her Belizean style, which means a big-ported curb bit with three inch shanks instead of my big fat eggbutt snaffle, lots of kicking and whipping and yanking on her mouth, and the general philosophy that you need to scare the sh*t out of a horse to break it. It might be a good test to see if she’s as quiet as we think she is, but we don’t want to do it to her; she’s just too sweet. We’ve even considered just finding a kid to see what she does, but horse accidents happen because people do stupid things, and putting a kid on a never-ridden horse probably counts as a stupid thing.

Hidden lines

Finally, after more than a year and a half in this cabin, we’re getting rid of the hoses and extension cords that have been running over the ground supplying us with water and power. The water is now running up and down the hill in a 2” pipe with valves to keep it where it belongs and moving in the right direction, and the extension cords are being replaced with real electric cable run through PVC. Tom and Selwyn dug the trench mostly with a pickax and shovel, although they had to pound through a few good hunks of limestone with the sledgehammer. The white spot you can see on the side of the trench near the house is pulverized limestone. I think they wanted to take the sledgehammer to me a few times because I got great pleasure out of yelling off the porch and asking them if they were sure the trench was deep enough to get the water pipe below the frostline. Then I’d go in the house and giggle and leave them pounding the rocks. Seriously though, both Tom and I are getting great pleasure out of being here right now since we’ve had an exceptionally beautiful week, and we’ve talked or emailed a few people in the US who have told us that the weather in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic states has been awful.

As I sat here typing…

I’m writing this blog entry sitting on our screened porch. I heard a flapping and looked up, and this Blue Crowned Motmot had just landed on a branch right off the porch. He looked at me, I looked at him, I grabbed the camera since I was in the process of downloading pictures for the blog anyway – and managed to get this shot of him getting a good look at me. Sorry for the graininess – the picture is taken through the screen with our crappy old camera. This bird’s name comes from the hooting “mot mot” call he makes in the early morning just before the sun rises, which is our wake up call every morning. You can’t see it in this picture, but these birds also have distinctive “racket tails,” so called because they pull all the quills out of their tail feathers except for a “racket” right at the end.

Belize to appear on NBC’s Today Show

Tom stopped by the Zoo last Tuesday, and everybody was buzzing because NBC’s Today Show had just been there over the weekend filming for a feature scheduled to air on Monday, November 17 or Tuesday, November 18. From what our friends at the Zoo said, the feature was about the Zoo, but now the whole country is buzzing because the spot is on all of Belize, so the Today Show crew were spotted all over the country – which is even better.

So tune in to the Today Show this Monday and Tuesday, and if you miss it then, I’ll post links on our websites, and I know a link will be posted on the Zoo’s website – and probably on every other Belize website.

Bye-bye, C-Zero!

The camper, also known as C-0 since our cabin is C-1 and the guest cabin is C-2, has made it to its new home. It’s silly, but we were a little sad to see it go. It definitely didn’t owe us anything. We packed all of our belongings in it to make the two-month road trip from New York to here, lived in it during our trip and for the first four months we were on this property, used it for our shower for a little while after we moved into the house, used it as guest quarters until the guest cabin was habitable, loaned it to our neighbors for shelter while they were tearing down their wooden house and building a cement house, and used it for storage until the shop was done.

Four or five months ago I responded to a query on line about whether anyone had a camper in Belize that they were willing to rent or sell. A couple from Oregon, Gale and Art, are in the process of moving to Belize. They own land in Bullet Tree, which is just the other side of San Ignacio, and they were looking for something they could put on their land to live in until they have another shelter built, and which they could then use for storage. The camper isn’t much, but everything works and the price was right, so we made a deal that made us all happy. We were just about to move it when the rains came, but Gale and Art were happy to go with the flow, and finally yesterday Tom got it out of here and situated where Gale and Art want it on their land. We were worried about getting it out of here to the Western Highway, and about getting it back to and parked on Gale and Art’s land, but Tom took his time and made it, with everything intact. We hope Gale and Art find it as comfortable and useful as we did, and that they appreciate the fact that they just bought a camper that is on at least its third incarnation. Not bad for a 32-year old tow behind!

Things We Ponder in Belize

Maybe this is a sign that we have too much time on our hands, but here is an example of the types of things we ponder here.

Why do bats arrange themselves so neatly when they sleep during the day? Whenever we look at these bats, they’re always parked almost equidistant from each other. Sometimes the line goes around the corner, and then the bats around the corner are arranged with the same distance between them.

I don’t want to take my boot trees out of my good tall dress riding boots, but these boots need trees so the ankles don’t break too much. So, for the past week or so, I’ve been trying to figure out which liquor bottle is the best size for my boots. At the moment, I’m leaning towards the Caribbean White Rum. The One Barrel bottle is too fat, and the Bel-Mer wine bottle is too thin. It figures that the Caribbean White is the right size, because that’s the one type of bottle that we don’t save for the local beekeepers since it has one of those stupid dribble tops that don’t detach. Guess we’ll just have to finish another bottle of Caribbean White.

Drying Out

The Flooding of 2008, as the Belize media is calling it, seems to be over for the Cayo District, although serious flooding is still occurring in the Belize, Orange Walk, and Corozol districts to the north and east of here. Tom made it home on Saturday, and by the beginning of the week we were able to get in and out to the Western Highway without any trouble. The road crews have been very busy repairing washouts all over the country, from washouts like the ones between here and the Western Highway, and major washouts on the Western and Northern Highways. Spanish Lookout became accessible Thursday afternoon over the Bullet Tree Road, and just this weekend most of the low lying bridges are expected to finally be above the levels of the rivers.

Here are pictures of the washouts that prevented Tom from getting home last Friday night.

This is the culvert that washed out in Cristo Rey. You can see how far the water has eroded the road bed under the roadway.

This is the view from the top. The road drops off on the side that is flooded, so you can see that the washout under the road took out a pretty good chunk of support.

Just outside of Georgeville, a private road goes up the hill. The water came down that road and down the Georgeville Road in the flash flood mentioned in the article in the previous blog entry, and washed big rocks into the road, as well as a lot of loose gravel and a significant amount of mud.

Even when the flash flood subsided, water was still running down the road, covering it in many places. Tom said a lot of water must have been running down the hills to move the rocks he saw in the road.

The wet weather was pushed out of this area by a front that moved in from the north. We’ve had a very nice week with lots of blue sky and pleasantly cool temperatures only in the low 70s during the day, and the high 50s at night. We’ve had a little more rain just last night and today, but we’ve been able to get lots of outside stuff done this week. Tom and Selwyn finished putting up the fence to divide the back pasture into three paddocks, and we’ve started turning all six horses out to graze for a few hours every day since the ground is now dry enough that their hooves won’t do too much damage. Tom and Selwyn have also been nipping off the tops of the grass in the new pasture so we can get enough seed to plant the second half of the middle pasture and the front pasture. Selwyn seeded half the middle pasture before the rain started, and while the rain washed some of the seeds to low spots in the ground, it looks like some of it has taken and the front half of that pasture is starting to get green.


Selwyn also weed whacked the grounds, so it doesn’t look like we’re being overtaken by the jungle again. The camper is due to disappear this week. We sold it to some people in Bullet Tree and we were just about ready to deliver it when the rain started. We hope it’s finally dry enough this week that we can get it to where it should be.


A few weeks ago we planted coco in front of the guest cabin, and that has really taken off and makes it look like we’ve made at least a feeble attempt at landscaping. We’ll have to dig it up eventually, but then we can either plant something else, or, since it grows so quickly, plant some more coco. We planted it this time just because it does grow so fast, it will make the place look nicer for this year’s tourist season. I also planted a row of papaya seeds behind the coco, and to my surprise they sprouted.


Selwyn’s mother gave us a really good papaya a few months ago, and when I said how good it was she told me to save the seeds, dry them, and then plant them. When she gave us another papaya, I took out the seeds, washed them, and then put them on a plate on top of the refrigerator for a couple of months, stirring them around when I thought of it. They looked all moldy and dusty and I didn’t think anything would happen when I planted them, but they sprouted. We left some in front of the guest cabin, gave some of the seedlings to neighbors and friends who wanted them, and moved some of them to this spot where one of the big cages used to be and where we’re now planting different kinds of bananas along with the papaya seedlings.

Tom hasn’t worked with the boys from next door for a few weeks between being busy with guests and the wretched weather. Today, however, was dry enough that they’re out chopping property line. Tom says the boys (Ronald in the back row, Wilton and Hector in front) are doing a great job, and it’s a much more economical way than the way we originally got the line chopped through a very expensive contract with Bol, Selwyn’s dad.

Animal Update

I finally got brave enough to take Tony out for a ride. I correctly predicted that things would have fallen in the trails with all the wet weather, so despite the fact that he’s slow as mud, I took Tony rather than Glin or Es because it’s easier to chop with him than with either of the mares – I can actually chop high stuff from his back if I’m careful, and if I have to get off, I don’t have to worry about him turning and running for home (Es) or sticking his nose out to see what I’m chopping (Glin). Plus, when Tony gets stuck in vines he stops and does what I tell him to get out of the tangle, where both of the mares tend to go straight up when that happens. The mares’ method is actually more efficient as far as getting unstuck, but Tony’s way is definitely calmer and safer. The trails were still pretty wet, and some of the trails seem to have turned into hopefully-temporary streams even though it hadn’t rained in a few days. Seeing the condition of the trails after a few days without rain made me feel less like a wimp for not going out before this – part of me had wanted to ride and was telling the other part that I was being a wimp for listening to Selwyn’s caution about flash floods, but it looks like the caution was well founded. It was really nice to get back out in the jungle, and a few good wildlife sightings enhanced the ride. I saw a flock of aracaris feeding in a trumpet tree, which I haven’t seen for a while, watched a collared forest falcon fly through the canopy, and was accompanied for a short way along one of the trails by a hollering troupe of howler monkeys. I was looking for big cat tracks since we’ve heard more rumors of a jaguar in the neighborhood, but the ground was actually too wet to hold any tracks. The birds are reminding us that while it’s getting cooler here, it’s getting much cooler in the north and we’re seeing a lot of the migratory birds. We’ve had a noticeable increase in warblers, thrushes, and tanagers, and the Birds of Belize book has been well used as we try to identify the new arrivals.

Recona dressed up as a purple-eyed dog for Halloween. Really, what happened was that she got a botfly infestation right around her eye, and her eye was looking more and more swollen. Fortunately we’ve learned to recognize the symptoms, and we’ve come up with what seems to be an efficient way of treating it. I’m not sure if it’s available in the US, but here we can get a purple spray that is an antiseptic, antibiotic, and insecticide. It’s great for all the little scratches the horses and dogs get because it cleans the wound and keeps the bugs off the wound. It’s really great for botflies, because it kills the larvae in the animal, and keeps the breathing hole from getting infected. We just spray it or wipe it on the infected spot, and in a day or two the larvae dies and the breathing hole scabs over. All we have to do is pull off the scab. Sometimes the dead larvae are attached to scab, and sometimes we have to squeeze the spot and the larvae come out in a gob of pus. It must feel good to the animals to get it out because they never complain or try to pull away. We squeezed five very small larvae – about as long as a grain of white rice, and about a quarter of the diameter – out of Recona’s face, and she never pulled back or snapped at us. Fortunately, we haven’t yet had the need to try this method on people, but it’s certainly easier on the animals than the way Selwyn removed the one from Tom’s arm.

This weather has been tough on the animals. Recona and Ness both had botflies, and I feel like I spend half the morning running around and taking care of the rest of the animals. Elphie cut half the eyelashes off the eyelid of her good eye, so I’ve had to treat that carefully. Lodo has a scrape on his leg and a cut on his nose, both of which require purple spray at least once a day, which involves both of us getting purple spots all over since he hasn’t learned to just stand still yet. All the horses have rain rot, and have little clumps of hair peeling off their rumps, and I’m just waiting for them to get scratches or thrush, which they’ve somehow managed to avoid so far. Recona has a swollen foot, and we’re not sure if it’s another botfly, or if she has an out of joint toe. Good news for the dogs is that we’ve found that Frontline Plus does kill Recona’s fleas, so all five of the dogs are scratching a whole lot less than they were a month ago.

We feel very badly for people with lots of animals, because if we’re having this range of difficulty with animals that are basically our pets, we can’t imagine what the farmers with herds of cattle, sheep, and pigs need to do. We have heard that lots of farmers lost crops or pasture – which quickly adds up to tens of thousands of dollars for them – but as far as losing animals in the floods or needing to provide extra veterinary care, the news seems to be mostly good. The government is telling farmers that they should vaccinate their livestock against black leg disease, an infection that seems to be more prevalent when the weather is wet, but we have not heard of any big livestock losses due to this disease.