Dear Anonymous

Dear Anonymous
Thanks for clearing up the points that I missed on your comment. How did you know? Were you lurking about in the bushes? Me and Candy thought it was a private survivor BBQ. Next time bring the cocktails. We do not need another dog though.

The Fox & Flowers in Placencia

Just a short bit on the fox. He or she came to grab the tortillas we threw down in the garden. There is a whole family living behind Candy's house but only one came out for a portrait.

Beauty on the Beach:

Visit to Placencia

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my good friend Candy in Placencia. Every time I go, there are so many changes it makes my head spin. The best change is the road in! It's not finished yet, but boy is it nice to drive without shaking my car to pieces and scrambling my already fragile brain. It was hot & dry so I still had to endure a little dust and dirt but at least my car was still recognizable when I got home.
First thing we did was drive to Seine Beight for beer to wash out my clogged throat. Relaxation and chat is how we spent the rest of the day.

Day two was for BBQ survivor style! We got potatoes & wrapped them in foil. We got corn on the cob and wrapped it in foil. The chicken thawed in the fridge. We had no matches or fire starter. We didn't know any boy scouts in the area. We were roughn' it! We had to use primitive methods to start the fire. Newspaper, kindling gathered by hand (okay... it wasn't our hands), and a lighter. But we did it. We got the fire going and before long we could put a bigger log on.

Two hours later we were ready to throw in the potatoes.
Candy's question: "How long will they take?" - My answer "I dunno."
A little later we turned the potatoes and added the corn.
My question: "How long will the corn take?" - Candy's answer "I dunno."
We turned & waited & repeated several times.
question: "Is it time to put the chicken on?" - answer "Sure.. why not."
We put the chicken on the grill that had been rubbed with an onion to keep it from sticking. A little later we turned the chicken. It stuck! Next time we should use a bigger onion.

We continued to turn everything until we were too hungry to wait any more, took it all upstairs and proceeded to unwrap the potatoes. They were done. A little burnt all over, but some was still edible. The corn was next. See above sentences following the word potatoes. Next the chicken. A little bit of burn here and there, raw in the middle but perfect around the edges after taking the skin off. We ate... we enjoyed... we survived!!! We went to bed.

Next time we're going to kill our own food and rub sticks together to make the fire.
Well okay by me, as long as there's beer.

Engagement in Belize

Yesterday I met my daughter and her boyfriend at the Tourism Village in Belize City. They were cruising on the Norwegian Jewel and decided to look at the diamonds in the shops. Well... they found one, bought one, and right there and then. Carlos got down on one knee, looked into her eyes and said, "Sabrina, will you marry me?" She smiled, then cried. They hugged, I hugged her, I hugged Carlos, I cried, Then we went and had lunch at the Biltmore to celebrate. We had a great day, but it went way too quickly. Back at the dock we said our goodbyes, cried some more and they were off to Mexico.
Congratulations you guys. Love you.

Name that Fly

Hey! I've been visiting Placencia and spotted this fly but I don't have a clue what it is. The lady was laying her eggs on a sea grape leaf. My hope is that it is not a doctor fly. They are usually yellow but maybe the females bearing eggs are orange. Any one who can enlighten me?

To my faithful readers (I know I have at least 3) I will start with my continuing saga of Hobo the wonder horse. As much as I love that horse, he was no fun to ride anymore so I traded him in on a pregnant mare. She is absolutely beautiful to ride, and gives me no trouble on the trail. Hobo is now up in the Orange Walk district being a cow horse. He herds cattle and is in training to be a rodeo horse too. I can't wait to see him in action! (With someone else on him of course).

My new horse, Sexy Sadie will give birth to a paint pony if it takes after it's dad. She will be ride-able for a while yet, but boy is she getting fat! This picture was taken before she really started to show. I'll post a more recent one soon.

By the way... I've moved again. I'm now living in Santa Elena on the river. It's gorgeous here! I have a beautiful view of San Ignacio Town and the broken bridge. Yes, the bridge that was rebuilt in November of 2009 is now being rebuilt again in January of 2010. Not a great record for bridge builders that's for sure. Also, not very convenient for the thousands of commuters that need to cross at the Hawksworth bridge and wait at least 5 minutes (I imagine it's much longer in rush hour) in a long line up to continue traveling along the Western Highway or especially people who now have to walk an extra mile to get to the market on Saturday. But... I'm sure it will be much better once it's finished and back in operation. In the meantime, I'll relax in the hammock and watch the iguanas.

What did I do????

I picked myself up and dusted off and started walking toward where Hobo went. I walked and walked for what seemed liked miles and still there was no sign of him. Turning back seemed to be the best decision since hadn’t thought to bring any water and was already feeling quite dehydrated.
I had brought my phone so I pulled it out of my pocket and flipped it open. “Who can I call for help?” I wondered. Juan doesn’t speak much English and he probably won’t answer the phone anyway and I’m not even sure if he knows how to drive. Everyone else is pretty far away. So I’ll call Hobo’s trainer. He lives nearby and he’ll probably know how to help. I looked at the cell phone’s screen to find his number. NO SIGNAL! Oh %#%@! Now what?
I started waling back toward the main road hoping to get a signal along the way. I was hot and tired and thirsty but I didn’t want to stop and rest for fear of not wanting to get up again. I came upon a fork in the road that I’d never noticed before. Having absolutely no sense of direction I didn’t know which way to go. I looked around for hoof prints in the dry dusty road and thought I could make out a few coming from the right so I went that way. About a quarter mile later I arrived at a dead end. Apparently Hobo is not the only horse traveling this road. Back I went to the split and continued my journey. At this point the sun was directly overhead, the breeze had calmed to a whisper and I needed to stop for a bit. My ribs had started to hurt. I rested a bit, then walked to the next shady spot and rested another minute. I did this for at least another mile, then found an up-side-down bucket on a hill under a tree and sat there feeling quite dejected and depressed. But… my phone made its “you’ve got a signal” sound and I called my friend to come help. He was home and said he’d be here soon. So I waited, and waited, and waited like at least an hour. I called my friend back but there was no answer.
The swishing sound of a machete made me jump up in a panic. When I turned to see where it came from I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a farmer in an orange grove clearing some brush. He spoke no English at all, but did understand that I was hot and thirsty so he went and cut me some oranges. I was ever so grateful and thanked him the best I could.
It was lunch time and the farmer and his helper were going back to the farm and offered me a lift a little further down the road on their tractor. I accepted. When we got to his driveway, we heard whistling and whooping from down the road. The farmer whooped back (apparently this is a form of communication when looking for someone) and there was my friend with a couple of helpers. Yea! I was rescued!
He wasn’t able to bring the car any further than about a mile in because of the ruts in the road and had walked up the road looking for me. I thanked the farmer again and we all walked back to the car which really wasn’t very far away at all. I could see why he couldn’t go any further. There was a huge rut in the road that probably would have ripped the bottom of the Hyundai Elantra right off. That would have been devastating for me too since the car used to belong to me and I was still quite fond of it.
The car was carefully turned around and we all piled in and went back to the ranch for water, frozen treats, a rest and a truck.
Off we went again, this time on a quest to look for Hobo. We managed to get by the big rut and several more potholes, rocks, hills and even a small stream before reaching the dreaded ‘grassy driveway’. The truck scrapped by the brush and I worried that I may never be able to turn around. Backing out of this would take a lot of patience which I’d pretty much run out of by now.
We were now at the turn where I bailed off; the next turn went up a steep muddy hill. I stopped and we all got out. My friend and the boys fanned out and looked in the bush and I walked up the hill. There was Hobo, sauntering back towards me like nothing had happened!
More later…

Hobo the Amazing Wonder Horse

I love the feeling of vertigo. Since I don’t do drugs, I can only imagine what it might be like to be high on marijuana and watch a segment of CSI or Boston Legal where they fly over the city above some of the highest structures in the world looking down at the streets and cars below. I already find it completely intoxicating watching this while stone cold sober. Perhaps that’s the reason I took up skydiving even though I’m quite terrified of heights. Well, maybe I’ll blog about my skydiving days another time but right now I want to talk about Hobo the amazing wonder horse.
I suppose I should apologize for not writing anything in my blog for a whole year but I won’t. I just didn’t feel like it. It’s not that nothing happened… in fact it was quite an interesting year, so I may backtrack a bit once in a while. In the meantime, I’ll catch up a bit on the chickens:
Gertie is fine but her baby got eaten by a snake. Needless to say, she was beside herself with grief. She did however have 4 more chicks and they disappeared from right under her (literally) the very next day. She seemed to take that in stride but I was very upset. Miguel and I flushed out a 6 foot Blacktail snake from under the coop the next day and disposed of it. I think you can put that all together without explanation.
A very nice lady from Armenia (the village in Cayo, not the country across the Atlantic) who works at Puccini’s in Belmopan gave us 2 small Belizean chickens to replace the two others that died; one from a respiratory illness and the other, a victim of the snake. About 4 months ago, Gertie hatched 6 healthy baby chicks. This was a marvelous feat for a chicken with no rooster. Okay, we cheated a little. Eggs fertilized from 3 different roosters were brought to her from Armenia Village. There are 2 black chicks, 2 yellow, 1 brown and 1 white. Gertie loves them all and they get along together famously.
Let’s talk about Hobo. Hobo went to horse training school and learned all the good things a great riding horse should know. I started riding him and we went together on many enjoyable outings. He did however have a teeny tiny little flaw. It seems he did not like to walk or trot or stop when asked to, so riding him was a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t that he would not walk or trot, but it was a constant struggle to keep him at a comfortable pace. I was given lots of advice of course. “Put a harsher bit on him.” “Run him for miles and miles every day until he gets tired.” “Sell him.” “Shoot him.” The list went on and on. I refused to do the first but did try the second. The result of this was that he was even harder to handle and wanted to run even more and further and became no fun at all to ride. I persisted and still rode him every day. He seemed to be getting better so I decided to take him down Prayer Mountain Road. The scenery was lovely, the road sandy and good for footing as well as tree lined for shade. It couldn’t have been a nicer ride. After about an hour the road changed to more of a grassy driveway with brush on both sides. It was extremely pretty; the perfect laneway, flat and solid. Since Hobo had been such a perfect gentleman, walking, trotting, loping and stopping on cue every time, I asked him for one more canter before turning around to go home. Off we went at a nice steady comfortable pace. A couple of minutes later I asked for a stop so we could turn around and head back home. Hobo’s reaction was “He, he, he… I’m just getting started,” and began to run faster. I leaned back and pulled the reins tighter while asking for a “whoa” to no avail. By this time he was running at breakneck speed and admittedly I began to panic. I pulled on the reins until his chin was touching his chest and he still ran on and on. At this point I was pleading and begging him to stop. Instead of stopping he pulled his head forward, pulling me forward as well, connecting my right ribs to the pommel of the saddle. I decided to give him his head back, thinking that he must be getting tired by now and would stop very soon. This proved to be incorrect. On he ran. Thus far the route was still grassy and straight, but I spotted a sharp turn to the left coming up and since I was using an Australian saddle with no horn to grab onto I thought (funny how the mind works quickly in survival situations) “I have two choices; one: grab his mane and try to stay on (I had long since taken my feet out of the stirrups because I would rather be thrown than dragged), or two: bail”. I opted to bail. Since I hoped he was going to slow down a little for the turn, then jumping off would be my best option. I landed on my feet, did a PLF (parachute landing fall) on a nice soft grass patch and watched as Hobo tore off into the distance and around another corner.
To be continued… If you’re so inclined to be curious