A year in the life of a Hammock

We have been here a year and the time has flown ,each week presenting us the challenges of living in another country. The 3rd world is indeed a strange place to live where common sense has no place , and simplest tasks are mountains to climb. Luckily we never thought we could or have ever  tried to change how things are done down here , we just sway and bend like the coconut trees 🙂  … Our 6 months old TV died last week ..NO Guarantee’s , no refunds so i took it to a little wooden shack in the back streets where a guy fixes TV’s all of which are the cathode ray tube type with the huge backs..i’d got him to fix a power pack to some speakers that broke before ,so did not hesitate to try him again…  i told him the power had just gone off and to trace the short circuit … ( it was that or throw it )  he rang me 6 hours later saying it was fixed ..i got there and the guy wants 150bz dollars ….he had me over a barrel (not literally 🙂  )  so i ask him why so much he says the power pack was not working and a new one costs 150bz  i say but i have  not gotten a new power pack you traced the fault and  repaired ..   i say  i’ll pay you this time BUT next time don’t rip me off and i’ll send other people here he says ok and fixes Bertlams flash light for free….  Remember  to him every gringo  is a millionaire …… It has taken a year but we have encountered our first Porcupine …we didn’t see it but  witnessed it’s devastation this morning , Zeus was outside the door as usual and i said to him are you not well as he’d been eating grass  and it was still sticking out of his mouth …on closer inspection they were porcupine quills in his nose and inside of his mouth , i took the needle nose pliers and set about pulling them out he was really good until the ones inside his mouth so i placed a stick into his mouth so when i pulled the tricky ones out he would bite the stick and not my fingers off ..it went incredibly well assisted by Nurse H   🙂 …… i went to feed Phoenix and Kilya and was greeted by faces full of Quills , they were very good and Doctor Dave retrieved them all without much fuss , they were just pleased to be rid of them …i couldn’t resist snapping a photo of Phoenix before the extraction procedure.

cocktail stick holder / kerplunk / porcupine hunter

We had a weekend in Caye Caulker a belated Birthday present for H , a quiet  picturesque Caribbean island  just 18 minutes away from us by light aircraft ..of course we are on a budget so we took the Thunderbolt water taxi to save money so we could eat well and drink our socks off. It was everything we remembered from a previous trip staying at Mara’s Place near the split, it was glorious weather as usual down here and we ate lovely Cuban sandwiches and tucked into roast pig at night. Mara’s place has a private dock looking out towards the reef with the turquoise waters so we took advantage lounged around ..sensibly we bought factor 30 banana boat water resistant suncream , unfortunately the chemist do not stock suncream down here , so the only place we could buy it was at the No Guarantee’s No refunds store , we applied thoroughly and sat out in the sun ..it was either fake or an accelerant for sunburn , after only  one hour i was tingling a bit so we sat in the shade , only realising we’d been burnt to a cinder joining the “Lobster Squad” . left Caye Caulker and headed to San Pedro an over commercialised Sh*t hole of an island , eventually after walking the wall to wall of clubs bars and cafe’s we found a lovely place in a horrible dock area away from the main drag. we were the only ones there and the bar tender asked if we wanted to see his babies he walked along a little dock with us and then i saw the monsters lurking below  HUGE tarpon , these fish were easily 150lbs +  and right at the bottom was “The DADDY” ..a while after some people turned up for a bite to eat and went to feed the tarpon by hand which we have done before in  the Florida Keys  ..you simply wiggle the fish above the water the tarpon jump up and grab the fish , they have no teeth. So a girl from the party said she have a go , they had obviously dressed up for dinner and i thought how brave she was wearing such a nice dress that was going to get splashed with water ..she bent down wiggled the fish nothing happened and she dropped it in the water , the bartender says have another and hold it further out from the dock .. the BIG DADDY tarpon jumped up swallowed her whole arm and pulled her off her feet into the water in a split second , as she was going under she put her other arm out and the bartender  managed to grab it, he Pulled her  and the tarpon still attached to her arm half way out of the water before it let go , it was the funniest most shocking thing I’d ever seen and her arm was bleeding from grazes on her arm from the fishes vice like grip..If only  i would have videoed it

Relaxing on Caye Caulker before the “Lobsters” appeared

The weather has been calm over the past week and i took full advantage kayaking over to Jill & Benny’s  who like 3 1/2 miles across the bay , this was the first round trip and i was rewarded with a decent size Jack  , that we cooked up with lemon and butter sauce. The next day i Kayaked to the Rio Hondo  River which is the border between Belize and Mexico and the bay was like glass flat calm   , as soon as i started back the wind picked up and i battled the 5 miles back into breaking waves i stopped in at bird island and caught a 2 1/2 foot barracuda which we ate that night and hooked a big cat fish that nearly capsized the kayak as i brought it close to unhook it…  two great  days …………     Cody and Vickman brought me some water colour supplies down so i did Bertlam a couple of pictures of his palapa  and house ..it’s good to be painting again and looking forward to improving my techniques with the brushes