Our Local Bar

Last Sunday was a damp, drizzly day.  So what do you do on a damp day?  You go to your local bar.  Our friend Craig has a small outdoor bar covered with a good palapa to keep the rain off, so Dennis and I walked about 1 mile up the beach to Craig's BareBones Beach Bar.  We took some mutton snapper to grill on his big grill and also some shrimp ceviche, green salad, and some homemade bread to toast on the grill.  Martha joined us and she brought some pork ribs to grill.  It was great to be out of the rain but still be outdoors since the temperature was so pleasant.  A great way to spend a damp afternoon.

Dennis and Craig grilling the fish at Craig's bar. I really like how he used bamboo to skirt the bar. 

Yesterday we got 2 new water vats.  These vats store about 500 gallons.  We were surprised by the cream color; usually they are black to inhibit algal growth in the water.  Even though they weren't black, they did seem to be opaque, so I hope that will be OK.  Each vat is about 5 ft in diameter. With us down here full time, we will need to collect and store more during the rainy season to last us through the dry season.  Dennis and Richard will get these plumbed in with the other 7 vats.

They are big enough to crawl inside, which you have to do to clean them.  The opening is about 20 inches in diameter.

On the south side of our cabana, there are 4 dwarf yellow coconut trees.  They are called yellow because the coconuts are yellow on the outside and also because the palm fronds turn yellowish as they get older.  We like these coconuts because they are disease resistant, they have delicious coconut water, and they bear abundant fruits.

Coconut palms on the south side of our cabana.

"Dwarf" is a relative term!  They are certainly tall enough to provide some welcomed shade to the cabana.

Look at all those beautiful yellow coconuts!

Another plant whose fruits we enjoy is the guava.  Our guava tree is bearing lots of fruit right now.  Each fruit is roughly pear-sized when mature.  We pick them before they are ripe, otherwise the birds get them.  I made a batch of guava and lime syrup that I will use to flavor yogurt, fancy drinks, and desserts.

Immature guava fruits.  The brown on the leaves is due to the salt spray and windy conditions.  The tree seems to be thriving in spite of the salt and wind.

I do leave some for the birds, but it is hard to be sympathetic to the birds when they take a small chunk out of multiple fruits instead of concentrating on one fruit!   

Our first Christmas Day in Belize and Boxing Day in Englishtown

Christmas Day dawned warm and beautifully sunny, a novel experience for us.  We spent a quiet day together unpacking Dennis’ bags instead of presents.  We did have presents for each other though - mine for Dennis was a Belize activated cell phone and his for me was the hard won cell phone signal booster.  Sort of an anti-Gift of the Magi (by O. Henry).  

Our Christmas tree was a habanero pepper plant given to us by Joy that we decorated with our parrot ornament given to Dennis along with the Santa Claus snow globe and a skirt of "mosquito netting" at his retirement.

 Our special bash was on Boxing Day when we were joined by Chris and Sue and later by Martha.  Chris and Sue brought a Christmas brew by the Belikin Brewery of sorrel beer (delightful) and a real find in Belize - port!  They also brought some nice cheeses.  Dennis and I had been saving a very special bottle of cognac for over 6 years to celebrate our arrival in Belize.  We had bought the cognac in France while visiting some other friends connected to Belize – a story for another day.  We also had several bottles of Freixenet cava.  We cooked chicken breast fillets wrapped around goat cheese and a casserole of broccoli and cauliflower with cheese and sour cream.  Also served a lovely fresh green salad with tomatoes, onions, and green peppers and fresh baked bread. Martha made a spice cake that Dennis served with sautéed sweet yellow plantains in a reduction sauce of Kahlua with shavings of the locally produced Goss chocolate on top.  Now to those of you not living in a third world country, this may seem pedestrian fare, but in these parts, this is haute cuisine!  We started in the early afternoon and enjoyed food, drink, music (yea! Dennis brought down my Bose IPod speakers!), each other’s company, and then more of the same for many delightful hours.  Martha, whose husband we met back in 1999, and who we finally met in 2004 when she helped us find this very property, and Chris and Sue, who we met in 2005, are the folks who we have been anxious to join in Belize.  It was all the celebration and more that we had been looking forward to for 8 years.

The End of an Era

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 naïve 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 …