Dennis retired on Friday.
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined the 3, yes 3(!), retirement
gatherings that were held for him. It
was a wonderful send off for him.
While packing up photo albums and miscellaneous notebooks,
stationery, office supplies today, I found a journal that I started writing on
our January 2005 trip to Belize. That
particular trip was the first one after we had sealed the purchase of our beach-front
jungle property nearly 7 years ago. From
my writing it is easy to see that we were fairly naĂ¯ve about many things, but
our “lessons learned” haven’t been too distressing.
No photos today, but here is an excerpt from the trip 7
years ago.
A big adventure
today! Ralph took us on a tour that
started innocently enough. We went south
past Punta Negra and Punta Ycacos into the Port Honduras Reserve Area. The day was overcast and rained off and on,
mostly on, nearly the whole day. We
stopped at Abalone Cay were the Reserve Ranger Station is and met George, the
ranger. He showed us a beautiful
hand-painted map of the reserve with its 108 cayes, 4 of which are even more
protected than the others. This area is
beautiful. Payne Creek, Golden Stream,
and several other rivers drain into Port Honduras. In spite of the cayes, the water is very deep
in many areas. Back in the logwood days,
it was a major port that sailing ships and, later, steam ships came to. We saw the old tracks that were used to
deliver the logwood to the water’s edge.
At Abalone Cay, we climbed to the top of the lookout that is in the
center of the station. The views were
terrific even though it was very overcast.
It must be spectacular in clear weather.
I hope we can go back. The station
built in 2001 as a project with one of the British military groups that train here.
After looking at the
map of Payne Creek, we asked Ralph to take us backup the creek. It was lovely. We saw kingfishers, a green heron, swallow,
etc. From there we headed out to W.
Snake Cay for lunch. A lovely little cay
with a white sand each that had a lot coral bits and shells washed up on
it. Two pairs of pelicans were diving
into the turquoise water and an osprey was perched in a dead tree on a little
spit of sand. The water was wonderfully
clear and I could see incredible corals down below. We explored the cay for about 15 min (it’s
small) and then ate chicken curry and rice lunch that Elna packed for us. We got back in the boat to head by toward
Monkey River and maybe stop at another cay to snorkel if the sun came out. But the boat wouldn’t start. Ralph finally for it started, but then it
wouldn’t go into gear. He worked on it
for about 30 min before radioing for help.
He finally got hold of someone who got hold of Elna who contacted her
brother George to come and help us. It took about 1½ hour for him to reach
us. In the meantime we were at anchor
and the sea started to pick up a bit.
Dennis felt a little queasy, but I was OK and even managed a little nap being
rocked by the water. George arrived in
his little boat and after only 15 min, he and Ralph got the engine going and in
gear. Now the anchor was stuck. More boat maneuvering to transfer the anchor
line to George’s boat so he could pull it from the other direction. In the meantime, the engine has stopped
again, so we are in a boat without an anchor in rough water near a coral
caye. It took about 5 min to get the
boat going. So we finally headed back to
Monkey River with George leading the way in his boat. The waves are higher now and we are getting
air born every so often. Still nothing
as bad as when John Moore took us from Gale’s Point to Rendezvous Cay. But after one particularly had landing, the
throttle cable broke, so we were just puttering along. George realize something was wrong and came
back to check on us. He had a piece of
wire that Ralph used for the throttle, but it still wasn’t very good. Another boat from Monkey River also stopped
to see what was going on but they couldn’t help either. Ralph suggested we transfer to George’s boat
so he could get us back to the village.
We finally did make it back just fine and even had time to
go visit Sam and Martha that same day. I
recall that the rainy, misty morning on Port Honduras was magical with soft
silver light all around, melding sky and ocean, and hardly a sound to be heard. Looking forward to going there again.
In 10 days, the cat and I will be on our way to Belize. Lots to get done in such a short time …