The house is still moving along at record speed and we couldn’t be happier as his plan is to have it done by December 1st. Right now he is bringing in people who specialize in drywall, electrical and plumbing so that his crew can continue doing what they do. The red zinc roof is on now that the insulation and all the wiring for the ceiling lights and fans are in. The flooring is all down even around the deck outside, there is still a little of siding to finish, but that should not take more than another day. Starting next week the drywall guy will be here and should have it all in by the end of the week. At this point everything is on schedule including the cabinet guy, the granite guy, window guys, etc. We are so excited to have this all come to a reality and who knows, we might even be able to put up some Christmas lights this year on our brand new jungle home.

The garage is getting close to being empty of all the wood for the house, which is good because we are filling it up with other stuff. Although it is starting to look like a hardware store with all the appliances, door handles, air conditioner, light fixtures, water heater, propane tank, fans, etc. Very soon it will be empty again and I will be able to have a real garage where I can actually work on stuff and not have just a big storage shed.

Now that rains have seemed to have stopped for awhile, it was time to get a water line up to where the new fruit trees are. Of course, no matter how much you plan you know there will be one little thing about the job that won’t go right, and that is what happened to us. It seems that when the original water pipe was run it was all 2” right up to the property line. So when we ran ours down to the house we stayed with the 2” pipe for the whole run. So we buy all the elbows, T’s, reducers and shutoff valves to make this all work. Two inch pipe at the driveway coming in and two inch pipe at the house, everywhere except where I had dug to splice in the for the new line, it was 1 1/2”. No problem I’ll go the the little hardware store in the village to get all the new parts. Perfect except I had forgot that I now needed a couple of feet of 1 1/2” PVC so the shutoff valve would be above the ground. So back to the store for some PVC and of course they didn’t have any, so now we have to run to town and the simple water line has turned into a two day project. No problem I’m sure the trees can wait one more day for some more water.

We are always looking to try new and different foods, especially when they are indigenous to the region. The other day we stumbled across some local wine that is made not far from us here in Belize. It is a Sorrel wine from Swirly Head Fruit Wines. It is made from Hibiscus sabdariffa, in Belize it is called “Sorrel” and in Spanish it is called “Flor de Jamica”. It’s an organic wine that is made with all local ingredients and taste like a good rosé. We will definitely be buying more and maybe even go for tasting if they offer it.

A few yeas ago we took a picture at the market of something that we did not know what it was, but now we know that it was Sorrel that can be used to flavor all kinds of stuff including wine and even Belikin beer during the Christmas season.

Scary things in the jungle

Living in the jungle is something new to us and getting use to some of the sights and sounds that we are unfamiliar with takes some getting used to. All of a sudden it is dead calm and you hear a bunch of branches rustle and you can’t see what it is through the dense jungle. Is it an animal jumping around or is it just branches falling and it is even worse when it is totally dark outside. One night when it was very dark out we were doing dishes out back in our little temporary sink with just a small light when a big possum runs down a tree about 10’ from us. A little scary when you don’t know what it is at first. There are lots of animal noises that we hear in the night, for instance the big thing that kept running under the house for awhile, still not sure what that was. Sometimes we hear wild cats (not your typical house cat), every so often you can even hear the howler monkeys and a bunch of other animals we have no idea of what they are. We were even informed by the vet in town to be careful of the vampire bats.

As far as insects go we have seen more insects and spiders in the 4-6” range than ever before. At night when you shine your flashlight on the ground all you see is eyes shining and looking at you from everywhere. These are just small 2” spiders that will run from you if you get close to them, well sometimes, one did make Kelley do a little dance one night.

The ground spiders and the tarantulas are our favorite because they usually just go away from you unlike others that make big webs that you could unknowingly walk into when you are strolling through the jungle. That’s the last thing you want is a giant spider stuck to your face.

Then there are the big black scorpions, a little scary when a 4” scorpion takes 4-5 smacks with a shoe to kill it.

You have heard of it raining cats and dogs but have you ever heard of it raining snakes? The other morning Kelley was outside when she heard a loud thud on the big blue tarp covering our house. It seems that a snake had fallen out of a tree and landed on the tarp, and people say we should be careful of falling coconuts.

I think the scariest thing we have experienced living in the jungle was this unforgettable cry we heard. One night we were sitting outside enjoying a cold beer when we heard what sounded like a child crying.  It went on for only about ten seconds or so and then it was gone. We looked at each other got our flashlights and a machete and started looking around. After about ten minutes of searching we sat back down and tried to figure out what we had just heard. The next evening about the same time we heard it again and this time we swore it said “Help me”. Up to that point we assumed it was an animal of some type, but now we were getting a little freaked out. By the next morning we had forgotten all about it, but as the sun started to go down we started to think about it again. That night after dinner we decided to stay inside and watch a little TV. Then about the same time as the other nights there it was again, crying and then a very clear cry for help. That’s when we decided that we should just turn off all the lights, lock the windows and door, get the machete and the pellet gun ready just in case. At that point we were pretty much scared shitless. We never did hear that same sound again and to this day we still don’t know exactly what it was.

All the bugs and the animals are for real, but as for the child crying… HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Oh and one more scary thing. The other day we were driving around and all of a sudden out of nowhere this big Jaguar appears.

We are not trying to scare anyone away, but like anywhere there are bugs, snakes, bats etc. We in fact we have only seen 2 small snakes, 3 scorpions and 2 tarantulas since we have been here. We just thought it would be fun to highlight the few we have seen just in time for Halloween.