Can’t believe it’s already the second week of  August, it’s like we haven’t gone anywhere or seen anyone this year. Oh…that’s right, no one has.

Now it looks like our future travel plans are on hold for a while more. Due to the spike of Covid cases in Belize, they have postponed the opening of the international airport indefinitely. This really hurts us as we were supposed to be in Arizona at the end of this month for the birth of our first granddaughter. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we will be able to travel once again.

A little more on our internet update. A couple of weeks ago we were supposed to be all hooked up and flying along with high-speed internet. Well, we still couldn’t get a constant, strong enough signal down to our property. So the main antenna on the hill had to be raised another 25’, trees had to be cut out of the way, another repeater antenna was put up on someone else’s property and our antenna was raised another 15’. Now finally we have good upload and download speeds and it is great!! So great that we were able to video chat with Randy & Stacy and the grandkids the other day. It’s been two years trying to get good internet, but now video chats, good cell service, and even Netflix, wow! Plus it reaches all around the property even in the casita. The gap on the mountain top in the picture below is where they had to cut trees and put up a 150′ antenna so it would reach us.

There seem to be a lot of smaller birds in nests right now. We currently have a nest in our papaya plant, cocao plant, coffee plant and our macadamia nut tree. We’re not sure what kinds these are in the picture, but mom is a tiny bird not much bigger than 2″.

I mentioned last time that we saw our first green iguanas, well it must have been a good hatch as we have seen quite a few around the property. Currently, all the ones we have been seeing are about a foot long and very bright green. It will be great to have them roaming around the property as long as they don’t eat too much out of the garden.

Here’s a little info on the green iguanas in Belize. During mating season the big dominant males will take on a bright orange color to attract the females. After mating, the female iguana will lay between 20-60 eggs in an underground den. The juveniles will take about two years to mature where the males can reach a length of up to seven feet making them one of the largest lizards in the world. There is a hunting season for iguanas in Belize where they are commonly called Bamboo Chicken. We have not tried any yet, but with a name like Bamboo Chicken, we can guess what it tastes like.

We’ve all seen praying mantis egg sacks on walls and trees before, but have you ever seen one being laid? Kelley got some good pictures of a praying mantis actually laying down her egg sack out on our front gate. It’s amazing how big this was coming out of her and she is only about half done with it.

We’ve always thought that our front gate needed something on it, but we just weren’t sure what. The other day while we were having lunch at one of our favorite restaurants we saw two slate carving hanging on the wall for sale. They were each about the same size, facing opposite directions and they were toucans, how much better could it be. When we got them home it should have been a five-minute job to mount our new toucans to the front gate, but we all know how a simple project can go. Once we got them ready to mount we really noticed that the whole gate should get a fresh coat of paint before we put them on. So now if you get to the end of our road, where the power lines end and you are still not sure it’s the right place, it’s the one on the left with the toucans on the pillars.

Recently a big cohune palm tree fell across our road. The guys working on our internet chopped it enough to get around it, but it was still sticking out in the road quite a bit. So last weekend we got the Jeep out and hooked it up to the winch. With the help of a snatch block we got it pulled off to the side of the road without any problems.

Not much has really been happening down here lately and with the rise of Covid cases and our new lockdowns, we expect it to be pretty quiet for a while. Take care and be safe, and hopefully, in the not too distant future, we can get together somewhere for a cold beer.