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.

Belizean Coconut Oil Snow Globe Thermometer

Oh, the fun we have in South Englishtown!  Yesterday and today it was watching the coconut oil, which is a pale golden liquid when the temps are in the mid-70s, slowly solidify as the temperatures dropped into the the mid-50s.  Sort of a Belizean take on a snow globe plus thermometer.  Here's what we saw:

Little fuzzy pearls in golden liquid at 12:44PM, 72 degrees.

This particular coconut oil is my favorite.  The flavor is so delicate and light. We buy this at a roadside stand on the Hummingbird Highway.  The Hummingbird Highway crosses the Maya Mountains and connects the coastal town of Dangriga (to the north of us), to the town of Belmopan,the capitol of Belize.  From there you can get to the Cayo District to the west or the Belize District to the northeast.  We basically have to travel on the Hummingbird Highway if we go anywhere out of the Districts of Toledo (where we live) or Stann Creek.  Gives us lots of opportunities to get coconut oil.

The whiteness of the pearls shows up a little better with the flash.

The stand that sells this coconut oil is located strategically next to a pair of VERY NARROW,single lane bridges.  They sort of have the Key to the Highway (click to listen).  All the vehicular traffic has to come to a near stop before proceeding across the bridges; plenty of time to sell coconut oil, honey, corn on the cob, pineapples, etc. to travelers right through their car windows.

As the pearls solidify, they gently settle to the bottom of the bottle.

Roadside coconut oil is processed manually by grinding the flesh out of the coconut shells using a hand-cranked drill that has a toothed bit with a semi-circular profile to fit perfectly into the coconut shell.  The apparatus, called a coconut grinder, is for sale at lots of local stores and many families make their own oil.

The air temp was down to 70 degrees by 6:00PM, but not much change in the coconut oil.

Once the coconut flesh is ground up, the coconut milk, which contains the oil, is squeezed out of it. There are different methods to separate the oil from the milk, and I am not sure what the local method is.

Looks sort of like small tapioca pearls.

The minimally processed oil retains its delicate aroma and flavor, but is not over-whelmingly coconutty.  I use it for baking, popping corn, pan frying, sautéing, and more.  I also add it to body lotion or use it straight on my hands when my skin is dry.

By 9:04PM it was down to 67 degrees - that is cold in these parts!  The oil is essentially solidified, although it has a marbled look.

These 2 bottles were purchased at the same time, but you can see there are differences in their appearance and solidity.  This could be due to how much water is in the oil, how emulsified any water in the oil might be, and also to how many carbon atoms are in each molecule of oil; the more carbons, the sooner it solidifies. Other factors could include how much air is incorporated into the oil and the amount and nature of impurities present.  Oh - and one bottle is slightly shorter and fatter than the other, that could have an effect too.  Our bottle of commercially processed Belizean coconut oil was totally solid at 72 degrees.

Same bottles as above, but reversed as to which is upright and which is on its side.

I left the bottles over-night on the veranda and a cold night it was!  The coldest we have experienced in our 3 years in Englishtown.  When I took the photo below at 6:53AM it was 56 degrees on the veranda and only 57 degrees in the cabana.

The solid coconut oil is a lovely creamy white color.  

Fuzzy sock and fleecy jacket time, though not for long.  As I write this at 11:00AM, it has already warmed to 73 degrees and I am back in flipflops.

A Real Hot Day Trip

Life is moving along slowly here in South Englishtown.  On Tuesday, Dennis and I made a trip to Belmopan, the capitol of Belize.  We had unknowingly picked what was to be a day of record setting heat across all of Belize, indeed across the entire Yucatan Peninsula, for our excursion.  It was Real Hot in the Shade; click here to chill out to the music of Third World Reggae - one of my favorite reggae bands - as you read the rest of this post.

We needed to arrange for phase 2 of the solar power installation in May or June and to pick up some hardware supplies and food items that we can't find more locally.  The trip takes about 3 hours each way, so we made an early start in order to get back home before dark.  

We drove along the Monkey River Road (red) to the Southern Highway (yellow) to the Hummingbird Highway (purple) to get to Belmopan, about 100 miles there and another 100 back. Plus what ever driving around for the errands.  The thin grey lines are the boundaries between the 6 districts in Belize.  We live in the Toledo District and Belmopan is in the Cayo District.

We were on the Monkey River Road (dirt road through jungle and orange orchard) by 7:30.  Although the road was quite dusty, it was in very good shape - it only took about 30 minutes to travel the 12 miles to the Southern Highway. The Southern Highway takes you through the low coastal flats of orange groves, banana farms, and other agricultural endeavors surrounded by jungle and open savannah.  We made our usual stop at the Shell Service Station at the beginning of the Hummingbird Highway to buy a chicken and bean johnnycake (for me) and chicken torta and coffee (for Dennis).  

The Hummingbird Highway is breathtakingly beautiful.  It passes through the jungle-covered Maya Mountains which rise up steeply from the coastal flats; the scenery and vistas are stunning.  Equally breathtaking, in a very scary way, are the 7 just barely single-lane bridges that cross over creeks and rivers cascading down the mountains.  In theory, you take turns with oncoming traffic to cross over the bridges.  In theory.  Click here to see what happens when somebody isn't paying attention.  It is not as grizzly a scene as it could have been.  Of course the big tanker trucks carrying crude oil from the oil fields in the town of Spanish Lookout get the first turn every time.  The tanks clear the bridge rails by mere inches on either side. Major chunks of concrete have been knocked off the guard rails where drivers have mis-judged the clearance.  We don't drive this road after dark.  I'm sure you can understand.

We did our business with ProSolar to get on their installation schedule, did some window shopping for a new gas generator in the event ours needs to be replaced, took a quick look at Hummingbird Furniture (nice, but too expensive for what you get), and got all our shopping done at Builders' Hardware all before lunch.  For lunch we split a warm brown rice salad and fajitas del mar at Blue Moon restaurant; both were excellent.  I had a tamarind juice to drink, which was quite refreshing.  The day had gotten hotter and hotter; it was up to 104F (40C) by the time we had finished lunch.

With the AC blasting, we drove to our next stops - a new-for-us hardware store called Gallardos, a Chinese grocery store, Brodie's Supermarket (it actually is a supermarket, although on the small side by US standards), and a produce stand. We were back on the road by 2:00 and back to Monkey River by 5:00.  Elan picked us up at the river's edge in his brother's boat and helped us get our various purchases over to our seaside dock at Englishtown.  Fortunately, it doesn't get as hot here on the coast as it does in the interior of the country - the high was only(!) around 96F, but it was still real hot in the shade and it stayed real hot well after sunset.  Lucky for us, it did cool down some during the night and while the next day was hot, it was not real hot.  

I will close with a handful of photos that I took  when it wasn't too hot to take a slow stroll around.

Crinum lilies with a visiting bee of some sort.

Moon flower.  They are open at night for one night only; I caught this one early in the morning before it closed.

Orange flowers on an unidentified tree.  The color is so intense that the camera can't quite cope with it.

Weed with yellow flowers.

Small butterfly, not phased by the heat.

Orange spiny caterpillar.  I believe this will be a Gulf Fritillary butterfly,  Agraulis vanillae.

The heat has broken several days ago.  Didn't even need to use a fan last night.