Three Years Ago Today, Part Two

Dennis and I celebrated our first New Year's Eve in Belize three years ago today. And it has been an exciting, exasperating, exhilarating, exhausting, exquisite, expensive, and expansive three years!

In 2013 we started construction of the addition to our vacation cabana to make it suitable for full-time occupancy.  Still not completed, but the end is in sight.  2016 will see us moving in.

Lots of butterflies.

Our friends Julie and Phil helped us celebrate my retirement after I spent most of 2013 commuting back and forth from Belize to Rochester for work.

The deck decked out with pennants to celebrate my retirement.

Out in the jungle behind our cabana are wild orchids.

Orchid flower stalk after the rain.

Orchid in bloom.  

Orchid seed pods.

Along the Monkey River Road we often see chachalacas.

Boom chachalaca!

 The weather is always interesting.

Waterspout at sea.

Also along the Monkey River Road are provision trees with their gorgeous blossoms

These flowers peel open like a banana to expose their showy pompom flowers.

The sea casts up its treasures at our feet.

Beautiful silver and teal blue chondrophore hydrozoans about the diameter of a bottle cap wash up now and again.

 Battles are waged in the jungle.

Male blue land crabs get feisty as mating season approaches.  The fighting claws on these huge fellows are bigger than my hand.

 Birds survey their water-side domain.

Bare-throated tiger heron looks out from a treetop along the Monkey River.  They also patrol our beach and Black Creek.

Out in the jungle are the remains of past civilizations.

Dennis in the partially restored Mayan ruins of Nim Li Punit.

The photos above are only a small hint of what Belize holds for us.  There is so much to explore and experience in our new home country.  So much to look forward to in 2016 and the years to come.

Wishing you all a peaceful, happy, and healthy New Year, where ever you are.

Sitting Pretty in Belize

Finally back home in Belize and sitting pretty, just like the hermit crab below, after being in the US far longer than I had hoped to be.  

This lovely hermit crab was tucked into the edge of a coconut palm. 

I went back to Rochester, MN at the beginning of March to finish my work there.  My official retirement date was June 30th. The decorations on my office door (below) were from the very thoughtful party they put on for me.  Let me just say that I wasn't the only one with tears in my eyes.

Part of the decorations from my retirement party at work.  The party included very moving presentations from people I have worked with for the last 20 years.  I was very touched and pleased to be remembered in this way. 

I was able to make a couple of trips to Belize to see Dennis and Max between March and June (including a side trip to Chicago to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary seeing Joe Bonamassa in concert - click here to see some Bonamassa on youtube), but was stuck in Rochester from June 9th through August 16th; the longest Dennis and I have ever been apart.  Finishing up at work, being away from Dennis, and not being able to stay in our house in Rochester made those last months fairly stressful and depressing for me.  I am fortunate to have wonderful friends who let me stay with them, borrow their cars, and use their effort to help me do the things on my very lengthy "to do" list.

Our house is on the market again after a couple of months I spent doing some work on it. Got the long driveway resurfaced (it looks great), tended the neglected garden, put in a new backsplash in the kitchen, painted some rooms, bought some new furniture for the den, and got rid of some old furniture.  I will be happy when it sells.

Dennis was very busy at our place while I was gone.  He added a new deck along the south and west walls of the cabana and started on the addition for the cabana.  The original interior space is only 680 sq. ft.  The addition will give us nearly 600 sq. ft. more, but more importantly will give us more outdoor space and provide the roof at the right orientation to mount solar panels.  He also got our satellite dish for internet signal (ViaSat is the provider) that is so much faster than what we had cobbled together earlier.  Over the next few weeks I will post more about our progress and other things that are going around here.  For now I am happy to have made a graceful exit from work so we can concentrate on creating our new life in Belize.

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 …