Last Saturday, our son Randy and his beautiful wife Stacy hosted a going away party for us at their home in Gilbert, AZ. It was a great  chance to see friends and family that we haven’t seen in quite awhile. Randy had smoked up a bunch of pork for sliders, there was green chili bacon mac & cheese, lots of sides and snacks and enough beer to keep everyone happy, plus there was even a three bin margarita machine making good frozen slushy drinks. A great time was had seeing everyone and telling our story about our adventures in Belize. We can’t wait to finish up the next house so we can start having friends come down to see this wonderful place that we will be calling home. Thank you again Randy and Stacy and everyone else who stopped by to wish us well on our next journey. I’m sure we will see a lot of you down in Belize at some point.

Yesterday our shipping container arrived, a twenty footer that we now own. In order for us to be able to ship this by boat from Houston to Belize it had to be ocean certified. From what I understand, none of the containers in AZ are certified so we had to get one from Long Beach, CA. So now it is time to get down to some serious packing and get this thing on a truck next week and headed towards Houston and ready for it’s Caribbean cruise to Belize. I’m sure the kids will be happy to get their garage space back and actually be able to walk through it again. So that will be our Memorial Day plans, packing up all our stuff and getting it ready to ship.

We checked the trail cameras again and found not quite as many animals as before, but I think that might be because there were people there every day during the construction of the house. There were still some pictures of coatimundis, jaguarundis, lizards and one big black bird on the camera that we had never seen before. After a little research, we decided that the bird was a Great Curassow that grows up to 10lbs. and reaches a length of 39″. The male has black feathers with a yellow beak and is common throughout Central America. The species is threatened due to loss of habitat and overhunting, so this is great to see one roaming around on our property.

We also saw a gray-necked wood-rail walking along the road at the property. Of course we didn’t know what it was until we got out our handy bird guide. We just thought it was an interesting bird that we have never seen before, turns out it is very common in Belize. I assume we will be seeing more of these at some point.

Sometimes we see lots of iguanas, geckos or other small lizards, but this time it was all about the Jesus Christ lizard. They were everywhere, from the place we stayed in town to all over the property. In case you are not familiar with this lizard, it is the one that stands up on its hind legs and runs when frightened. It can even run on water, hence the name.

One last thing before I close this out, I’ve got to show another picture of a plant. We don’t know what it is, but it is big, green and right at the entrance to the driveway. The rainy season is just getting ready to start so I’m sure I will be posting lots more pictures of interesting plants.