Traveling Away From Home

I've kept a low profile for the last month or more because I have been busy with traveling (and other things).  First, by boat from our place to the airstrip, dodging the light sprinkles of rain.  From there I caught a flight on a small plane to the international airport.

The purple line marks the route of our boat from WilDen (our place) to the canal next to the Placencia Airstrip, 15 miles.

The Placencia Airstrip, serviced by 2 local commercial airlines - Maya Island Air and Tropic Air.

Placencia Airstrip to Dangriga Airstrip, 35 miles.

On the Tropic Air flight at the Placencia Airstrip.

Taxiing down the runway.  The canal to the left is where I got dropped off in our boat a little earlier.  I hopped out of the skiff and walked down the runway to the terminal - after looking both ways for planes.  ;-) 

In the air over the Placencia peninsula.

Looking toward the Cockscomb range with shrimp farms in the foreground.

Looking down on the north end of the Placencia peninsula.

Banana farm below, with jungle on either side.

Maya Mountains and jungle in the mist.

A development called "Sanctuary" near the village of Hopkins.

The Coastal Highway.  Travel at own risk during the rainy season.

Citrus farm next to the Hummingbird Highway.

Misty jungle with nearly hidden farm clearings.

Airstrip at the town of Dangriga.  This was a quick stop to take on additional passengers.

I flew on the the international airport just outside Belize City to catch my flight to the US.

Dangrigia to Philip Goldson International Airport, 45 miles.

 The photo below was taken in my destination city. 

Where was eye?

More coming soon.

Taking out the Trash

Such an easy chore to take out the trash - NOT!  At least not here in Englishtown.  Oh, it's easy to take it out of the cabana.  We bag it up and then stack the bags underneath the cabana until it's time make a trash run.  And we hope that no dogs find it before we can make the trash run.  It's the trash run itself that can pose problems.  We like to take the trash to the nearest landfill about twice a month.  Sometimes that frequency is just not possible. The most recent "sometimes" lasted from October through January; 4 months of trash!  It is such a relief to have the trash cleared out of our house (click to listen).

Four months worth of trash loaded into our work boat.

Trash accumulates when you are in the midst of a construction project.  So much packaging for supplies, especially for the things that are shipped from the US.  Boxes inside boxes, taped up for shipping, untaped and retaped by Customs.  Fortunately, our shipping agent, Easy Shipping to Belize (highly recommended - very professional and helpful), consolidates many items to minimize boxes.  But still we accumulate trash faster than we can get rid of it. A big, perhaps even the biggest, source of our trash is what we collect off the beach.  Mostly plastic shoes, bottles, toothbrushes, etc.  An unending source of trash that is sometimes more than we can handle.  It hasn't been too bad lately.

Yesterday was the first day that we (read "Dennis and Nevan") were able to make a trash run since October.  Various events conspired to keep us out of the landfill.  The main thing was the deplorable state of the Monkey River Road (MRR).  Other things that keep us from making the trip are rough seas that keep us from getting the trash to the MRR and the car being in for repairs.  Below is the route we take to get to the landfill with the MRR in red.

The route to the landfill from WilDen (our place).  The sort of cross-hatched areas between the MRR and the sea are shrimp farms.

We compost all our food waste and lots of paper waste.  But we are still left with cardboard, plastic, glass, metals - all of which would be recycled in the US, but not so here.  The first thing to do in preparation for making a run to the landfill is to make sure the bags are still intact and closed.  The strong UV light degrades the plastic bags in short order; nothing worse than picking up a bag of trash and having it fall apart on you, literally.  Then you load the bags and loose items into the boat for the short ride (in purple on the Google Earth image above) from WilDen to the beginning (or is it the end?) of MRR.  Then off-load the bags into the car or truck.  Our car is being repaired, so we sought the use of our neighbor Nevan's truck for this trip to the landfill.  Good thing since it would have taken at least 5 trips in the car.  It took about 40 minutes to drive the 12 unpaved miles of MRR and then just a few minutes on the Southern Highway to reach the landfill.  Once at the landfill, you carefully make your way along the pot-holed track back to one of the "big holes" into which you throw your bags.  As the "big holes" get filled, they are burned to make room for more trash to be thrown on top.  Eventually the "big hole" is no longer even a small hole and new "big hole" is dug.  Sometimes they scrape the track to make it easier to get to the big hole and sometimes they even scrape dirt over the old big holes.  It's not a very sophisticated operation.  But it is free and fairly close by.  Since there is no other option, that pretty much settles it.

The view from our house is so much nicer with no trash bags in the boat.

I never tire of looking at this.

The greater yellowlegs don't care about the trash as long as it is not in the water.

Two of the three greater yellowlegs that have been visiting our house this winter.

A dusky-capped flycatcher hangs out in the tropical almond tree in front of our house.

The view to the west of our house is pretty nice, too.  You can see why those are called the Cockscomb Mountains.  They are also called the Sleeping Giant.  I think he is having a good dream ...

The Cockscomb in outline against the sky.