After seeing Mike Nash play a couple of great shows at The Bluff, we invited him and Melissa up to our place for a BBQ. Great food, lots of cold drinks and even a game of darts. Mike kept saying how he is just blown away by everything in this side of Belize. So much that he is planning a big songwriters get-together up here next year, plus it looks like he will be back up our way again in March. If you haven’t checked out his music yet, you definitely should. He has some excellent beach and drinking songs as well as some very good country songs. I guarantee he will become part of your playlist.

We have been seeing a lot more critters moving around here lately, it must be that time of year or because the rains have lightened up. The Aracari Toucans have been around here quite a bit lately, most likely eating whatever is ripe in the trees. Last week there were at least five of them in the trees above the garage. Then a couple days ago there were 12-15 around the back patio. There’s a real good chance that a couple of these are the ones that were living in the power pole a couple of months ago. We have also been seeing some big Keel-Billed Toucans flying around, but nothing worth taking pictures of yet.

The same night that all the toucans were out back an agouti was also out wandering around. Then a little while later two Kinkajous were in the trees above the patio. Kelley tried to get a picture of them, but it was too dark and they didn’t turn out. In case you need a refresher on what a Kinkajou looks like here’s a picture I pulled off the web.

Since we’ve been here, we’ve seen probably at least a dozen different types of lizards around here, but not a Green Tree Anole. Well, the other day that changed when I saw one run across the yard and jump up on the trash can. I tried to get him off the trash can, but instead, he jumped on my arm and ran up to my shoulder. He stayed there long enough for Kelley to get her camera and get some pictures.

When we tried to take him off my arm, he jumped up on my head and sat there for a while. Finally, he ended up jumping off my head and onto a tree. I know this would have freaked a lot of people out, but it’s all part of the fun of living in the jungle.

Another lizard that we have around here is the Turnip-Tail Gecko. We only seem to see them on the outside of the house and in the garage. As you can see they have big sticky feet and can climb just about anything. These guys are fun to watch when they move because they have a great wiggle when they walk.

Around here there’s always some kind of critter to take a picture of. The other day Kelley spotted this translucent, Green Lynx Spider eating what looks to be some kind of flying ant or wasp. These spiders are usually hard to spot because of how well they blend in with the green plants. The Green Lynx is a hunting spider that does not make use of a web for capturing its prey.

I was checking the trail cams the other day to see if there was anything interesting on them. There were three different dogs, a domestic cat, an agouti, lots of possums and a bunch of different birds. And then there was a big surprise, an anteater walking by with another one on its back. After reading a little more about these, it says that a mother will carry a young on its back for about the first year before they go out on their own.

Our raspberry plants are at the peak of production right now. We are picking a least a half-gallon jug full every few days. The other day we pulled some mangos from the freezer and Kelley made a raspberry mango crumble. I love a good apple or peach crumble, but the raspberry mango combo was out of this world. The only thing that could have made this any better would have been a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of that hot crumble.

Over the past few years, we have seen a lot of different types of mushrooms around here, but this is one that we’ve never seen before. It looks like a flower, but it is actually a Rounded Earthstar mushroom. Like most of them around here, it’s an inedible mushroom, the only ones that we know are good to eat are the oyster and the wood ear. I’m sure there are other mushrooms that are edible, but we just don’t know what they are yet.

Just thought I’d share a picture of this giant fern we have growing next to the house. We have no idea where it came from and we have seen no others like it around here. We assume a bird or some other creature dropped a seed at some point and it just started to grow. It’s a big beautiful fern and it just keeps getting bigger. Maybe we’ll collect some of the seeds and see if we can get more to grow.

For a couple of days, the rain stopped, the sun came out and the cool weather went away.  So we took this as a sign to escape to the beach for a little vitamin-sea. We headed over to our favorite beach town of Hopkins. It was a short 2 1/2 drive from our place and that included a stop at Bertha’s Tamales. It was just a quick overnight stay, but that was still plenty of time to hit our favorite beach bar and even a little time in the swim-up bar at Jaguar Reef. It was great seeing some of our friends down there and a good chance to work on our mid-winter tans.

In all my postings I like to reflect on all the positive and good things happening in our lives. But just like everyone else, there is a lot of other things going on that no one wants to hear about. Almost daily around here something breaks, needs repair or maintained. I don’t know how many times our water is shut off because of a pipe break or the internet goes out or we lose power. We are constantly cutting the jungle back so it doesn’t take over the yard. The garden and all the plants around here need tending to almost daily. During the rainy season, there is a lot of mud everywhere! Recently Kelley broke a tooth that had to be fixed and I fell off a ladder and messed up my back. Plus a lot more other things that we all deal with in everyday life. Granted we love living in the jungle where every day is a new adventure, but everything is not always rainbows and toucans.

I just want everyone to know that we prefer to post all of the fun and interesting things around here and not all the other shit that nobody really cares about. I mean seriously, do you want to hear about how it took us two days to weed the garden or how we spent all day in the mud repairing a broken water pipe. I don’t either, so I’m mostly going to keep posting all the fun and interesting things around here that make us happy and I hope you will continue to follow along.

Hope to see you in Belize soon!