Family visit

What a lot of joy we got from the visit from my cousin Roger, his son Matt and Matt's partner Lenae.  The 10 days seem to whip by so fast and now they're gone.  Roger's goal was to relax, read and just enjoy Belize, which we hope he did.  There couldn't be a more comfortable guest than this dear man.  He's already talking about when he comes back.  Hope it's soon.

Matt and Lenae were great.  Matt is the same age as our son, Tim.  I have to tell you that their energy level is much greater than ours, but what a lot of fun we all had.  I had never been to Caracol, and that was one of the top things on Lenae's list, so Roger and I accompanied the kids on a tour.  I was so glad that we took a tour rather than drive our truck.  The road is long and rough, but the trip in the Maya Walk van was great.  Lots of terrific information.  The changes in the environment on the way up are startling and unexpected.  I hadn't seen the pine forests of the Mtn Pine Ridge area.  Of course they look rough because of recent fires, but having come from Oregon, I was disappointed in them.  We passed thru and reached the jungle of the mountains.  It was all incredible.  I'm always so overwhelmed by all I see and then have trouble describing it.  I'd make a terrible tour guide.  We passed a huge abandoned camp with lots of buildings.  Our guide told us that the government won't allow them to be occupied, moved or torn down.  What a waste!

Of course, Caracol was fantastic.  It's not a trip I'd want to make every day, but it's a trip I'm so very glad I made.  I can't begin to keep up with the younger, stronger legs of my younger cousins, but had fun just looking and absorbing the beauty of the place.  There are so many similarities with the Mayan sites and yet each is also different.  What an incredible history.

On the way back we stopped at the Rio Frio cave which was so surprising and interesting.  Then, down the road a bit were the Rio Frio pools.  Wow, at the end of a long trip, this is a must see and enjoy spot.  The pools are beautiful and the water so refreshing.  This body doesn't get out in a bathing suit in front of others, but I would still recommend jumping in to the water for most folks.  I felt I could just camp there (not allowed) for weeks and enjoy the cool and calm.

A couple of days later Matt & Lenae too a tour to the ATM Caves.  They were thrilled with the experience and enthusiastically tackled every part of the trip.  I have to state right here that Matt is a river guide on the Salmon River in Riggins, ID and Lenae works for the Idaho Fish & Game Dept., so this was all right up their alleys.

We let the kids use our old Trooper to explore around Cayo and then it was time for all to head home.  The sad thing is that it took them over 1 1/2 days to get back to Idaho and a long day for Roger to reach New York.  There lies the down side of living in Belize.

We were so happy to be able to share our little corner of the world with family and look forward to more visits.

I have to add that I lost a lot of my favorite photos.  I still don't know how to manage all the settings on my camera.  Darn!    Just have wonderful memories.

Secondhand Lions

We are having a wonderful visit with my cousin and his family.  The weather has cooperated and been lovely.  Some clouds, occasional rain and cool nights.  Can't beat that!  Belize has about 12 hours of daylight year round, so it's dark by 6:30 every evening.  We've watched a couple of videos.  We have quite a collection of those we bro't down from Oregon and the ones from the market in San Ignacio.  We always manage to watch The Secondhand Lions, as it's one of our favorites.  None of our family or friends had seen it.  If you haven't, you are missing a treat.  I can't figure why it didn't make a bigger splash when it was released, but it has to go down as a classic.  With Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, Haley Joel Osment and Kyra Sedgwick, how can you go wrong.  Please beg, borrow or steal a copy and watch it.  You won't regret it. 

We just have a couple more days with family and then it will be back to our normal schedule, which really isn't one.  We'll putter around the grounds, raking leaves for compost and will try to finish putting the ta-tai on the handrails.  I'll post a photo when I get done.  Nothing too strenuous, just keeping busy. 

I've had a couple of emails from new friends, asking questions about living here.  I'll try to answer very soon.  I love hearing from you and will do my best to give honest, answers.  I'm sending a hug to all of you.  That may sound corny, but you can never have too many hugs.      Gale

Family visiting

We're now enjoying a visit from my cousin, Roger, his son, Matt and Lenae.  I'm feeling like a real goose as they came in yesterday and I had my days mixed up and had planned to pick them up today from the airport.  What a shock when I got a call from Roger asking me if I was almost there.  They ended up taking a shuttle, as it would have taken me 2 hours to get there.  They're fine with it, but I'll be beating myself up over that for months.  They're so lovely to have as guests.  We hadn't seen Matt since he was a tiny boy, so this is a wonderful reunion.  We love being able to share the bush and the wonders of Belize with family. 

We had two technicians here last Sunday to check on reprogramming  our solar batteries.  The news wasn't good.  They think our accident probably destroyed their recharging ability.   Next Sunday Elvis will bring up a battery charger capeable of charging the 24 volt system in order to bypass the restrictions of the inverter.  This will be our last hope.  We're getting enough energy during the day to handle our useage, but the batteries aren't able to store enough to get us thru the evening and night.  We'll then have to just use them until they're totally destroyed and hope then we'll be able to afford new ones.  How sad to only get two years use.  For now we're just focusing on enjoying our very welcome visit of family.  It's hard to complain when we're having scattered clouds and temps in the low 80's when the rest of the world is cold.  My glass is still half full.

Visitors

We have a small group of wonderful friends here in Belize, but there are times that we feel very cut off from the U.S. and our past life.  For some folks, that's why they're here.  That's not the case for us.  We came for economic reasons.  We sorely miss our family and friends.  What a joy it was to have a visit, albeit a short one, from our dearest, long time friends, Marge & Jack.  We've known Marge since our children were in preschool together.  It's scarey to realize how long ago that was.  They're such delightful people.  We could have spent weeks together, but we picked them up from the airport on Sunday and they returned to Florida on Wednesday.  Lots to catch up on in a short time.  We've had a lot of rainy weather, but Belize put on her best face for them.  It magically became a little overcast (which kept it from being too hot), but no rain for their visit.  It was beautiful.  Art & I laughed as it started raining right after we returned home.  I feel so blessed now to sit back and think about our wonderful time together and am so thankful that they continue to include us in their lives. 

Concorde AGM battery problems

I've been trying to post for a couple of weeks, without success.  Finally had to move to Firefox to remove error message.  Still not sure what caused the problem with AOL.   Well, here I am again.

We had a really tough three weeks from Christmas on.  Problem one was the generator.  Our Briggs & Stratton had bad rings and we search all over the country without success.  We ended up by ordering from the dealer in Belize City.  We didn't realize they were special ordering.  I was told it would come in with their regular parts delivery.  We finally got the rings three weeks later to the tune of $240BZ.  In the meantime we were afraid of depleting our batteries even more, so spent the last of our reserves buying a Honda EU generator.  This was another real lesson.  The recommendation from several people was to buy a Honda.  We went to Universal in Spanish Lookout and saw lots of Honda engines, but on Asian bodies.  These were much cheaper than those at the Honda dealer.  We asked lots of questions and found that the reason these are so much cheaper is that they're reconditioned motors and parts for the entire machine are hard to get.  Enough already! !  We bo't the little Honda 300 from the dealer.  It bro't me to tears to spend such dear dollars on another generator, but that's the hazard of living off-grid.  The beauties of this model are, first, it's an electric start.  My muscles cried, hallelujah!  It also functions on demand.  Most generators run all out, all the time.  This little guy starts out at idle and then only increases power as needed.  Thus, it's extremely quiet and very fuel efficient.  This is keeping us functioning, but we are still having battery problems.

We have AGM sealed batteries.  You're not supposed to equalize these, but they won't take a deep charge.  The inverter keeps shutting the generator off.  Elvis and I researched the web and found that there is a way to recover.  He just hasn't been up to try it yet.  Hoping to tackle that problem this week.

Was sad to get an email from Elvis saying that he'd get here as soon as possible, but he had a burglary at his shop and they stole a lot of his merchandise.  Thievery is a huge problem here in Belize.
 
Our water pump had to be disabled as it wouldn't shut off.  That's what initially impacted the charge on our batteries.  Disabling it meant carrying water into the house.  That's when you regret having a house on stilts (not really).  We were lucky that we have a Rotoplas adjacent to the guest house so we could get water from it.  By using our camp shower, we managed fairly well.  

We pulled the pump and found that the supply hose had ruptured.  Wow, why don't we have a few more problems?   Now comes the real embarrassing part.  They changed the installation of the pump to galvanized pipe, but water still wasn't getting to the pressure tank.  The switch seemed to be ok.  The problem turned out to be the new ceramic filter I installed.  It was impeding the water flow.  That's what caused the rupture in the first place.  That was a really tough $500 lesson.  We're back to the paper filters. 

With company coming from the US this weekend, we're relieved to be functioning again.  Things still aren't perfect, but heck, they never seem to be anyway.  We'll just keep fumbling along.  Two old gringos learning new lessons every day. 

Electricity problems continue

It's been a tough holiday time here at Dreamer Farm. We still haven't solved our electricity problems. Wouldn't have had so much trouble if our generator hadn't gone out at the same time. Hoping the parts will be in this week. Of course, this all had to happen during the holidays. Since Christmas was on Sunday, the following Monday was a holiday and then Tuesday was Boxing Day (thanks to the British), so nothing was open. We had help from an electrician who assured us that our batteries were ok, but there was an unknown drain on our system. Now, another problem surfaced with the backup generator we borrowed. It kept dieing. Not again! ! ! Elvis (yes our electrician's name is Elvis) diagnosed that the drain seems to be that the water pump in our cistern isn't shutting off. It appears that the switch directing this has gone bad, but since we couldn't charge the system because the generator didn't work, we were stopped. He took the generator back to try to fix it, but we've now gone thru the New Year's holiday without water. We were able to turn on the breakers for the house, so we have lights but are having to carry water from the Rotoplas. We have bottled water to drink and resurected our camp bag shower, so we're surviving.

Santa came to Belize again

We dug into the duffle bag, stored under the bed and dusted off Art's santa suit. He would have enjoyed being Santa for more kids down here, but ended up just visiting with one group. What a lovely experience tho'. We've met a wonderful young couple who have opened a Pancake House in San Ignacio. The restaurant is next to their house, which gives them a nice situation with little overhead, and he's the minister of a small church which is across the street. They get no outside help with their funding, but give most of what they have to the children. The 19th of Dec. they fed 85 children a beautiful breakfast of bacon, an egg and pancakes and made up really nice gift bags for each of them. Art was delighted to share in this experience by being Santa to this excited group. Like children everywhere, they had stars and hope in their eyes as they gave him their wish list along with generous hugs. How we wish we could give each of them at least one special gift. We see the children here as well loved and cared for. It's so common to see a father holding the hand of a toddler, walking down the street. Most of the kids are clean and dressed proudly by their doting parents. So much of what little the parent's make is used for school fees and to take care of their children. Why do so few have so much when so many in countries like Belize, have so little? Santa's magic isn't able to fill the gap.

Early Christmas with friends

We're blessed by having a few, very good friends here. Yesterday we celebrated with a lovely Christmas dinner at Betty & Robin's. The brother and sister-in-law of our friend, Diane were here for a couple of days from Florida. There were about 12 of us enjoying a fantastic dinner with more goodies than is probably healthy. We all pitched in which makes it less stressful for the host. We had a wonderful time just visiting and enjoying the sharing. We even had a round-about gift exchange. The weather turned out to be lovely so we managed "the hill" just fine. I'm so tired of worrying about our darned hill, but at least it wasn't a problem yesterday. Diane will be returning to Florida with her family for about five weeks. I'll really miss her, but am so happy that she'll have this time away.

As usual, I forgot my camera, so can't include photos, but maybe I can get some later.

It's difficult to be away from beloved family during the holidays, but some of the sadness is diminished by the hugs and companionship from dear friends. May we all be so blessed.

Happy Holidays, Gale

Generator problems

We bought a Briggs & Stratton generator because, in the States, it's easy to get parts and they're very reliable. When our generator started to spit oil at us we took it in for repair. The fellows determined that the piston was good but the rings are bad. They just tell you what they need and we have to do the hunting. This turned out to be an almost impossible quest. We left it at Perfecto's shop, in pieces, carrying the piston and as many numbers from the machine as we could find,with us to Spanish Lookout. It seems inconguous that the Mennonites are the only ones in Cayo who carry parts for machinery, other than cars. Seemed like a siple task. Go over, get the part from Universal Hdwr, where we bought it, and return. Wrong! They didn't have it and said they needed better numbers. We visited three stores with the same results. Nada! Ok, back home. We have a three year old phone book in which I found the number for a place in Ladyville that specialized in B & S. They were able to tell me where to look on the machine for the model number. It was hidden way inside. After getting those numbers it turned out they didn't have them either, so we had to resort to ordering them. They might be in this week or after the first of the year. When they finally arrive we then have to figure out how to get them up here. Ladyville is adjacent to Belize City. For now we're functioning on whatever we get from the sun. Thankfully, today is occasionally sunny, so we should be able to get through the night with moderate electric use.

Once the generator problem is solved, we'll then have to assess is our solar is working properly. Hope we didn't damage it by having to pull the batteries down so far. Live and learn folks. These old folks are still learning some really hard lessons. Blessing to all. Gale

Trying times

If you decide to try to live in Belize you have to be aware that the elements are hard on machines and people, things break and they're expensive to fix or replace.

Today was one of those days that feels as tho' you're being knocked down and every time you try to get up, someone else hits you a good one. We had to take our Toyota Tundra in for repair because, when it was converted over to butane, the fellow jambed the air filter into the headlight, causing a short. I was thinking that my night vision was getting worse, but discovered that one headlight was barely on. Also, we've been down here over two year so it needed a good tune-up. $$$$s.

The inverter for our solar system has been giving us very confusing messages, including no a/c power. We've tried to figure it out from the manuals, but they might as well be in Russian for all the good they did us. We could manage, at times, with the generator as backup, but it started using oil like crazy. The last couple of days it used a gallon of gas @ $10+ and a pint of oil. Took it to a fellow who does small engine repair. Has to tear it down and is probably a bad ring. $$$s.

The solar inverter gave us all kinds of blinking warning lights. (Take a deep breath). Could be bad batteries, bad inverter or who knows what. All huge dollar problems. To get local help we have to phone to Belmopan and hope for the best. HUGE $$$s. I tried to email Backwoods Solar in Idaho, but didn't have the power for the satellite, so when we took the generator in for repair we found a WIFI spot and tried to send. Bummer! AOL couldn't send emails right then. I was ready to scream or have a nervous breakdown. I took a deep breath and we headed for home, stopping to buy minutes for our cellphone so that I could phone the US. I can't sing the praises of Backwoods Solar enough. We bo't our system and appliances from them and they've always been available with patient help.Today Shawn talked me through our problems, helping me make adjustments to the settings. He told me he'd had the same issues with his system and the what we were doing was fine and he didn't see a major problem. Phew! That one was a big relief. I was able to breath again. Still, because it's so cloudy and rainy right now, we won't have much chance of producing solar power, so we'll have to supplement with lamps, but we have hopes that soon we'll be back to something resembling normal.

The trouble with a day like this when you're past earning an income and living not only off-grid, but in a whole country that feels like it's way off-grid, is that unexpected, heavy expenses are really frightening. The pot never get replenished.

We're going to go out (when the road dries so we can get down the hill) and buy a turkey or ham and I'm going to fix a Christmas dinner for us and put this out of our minds for a bit.
Blessings!

Art's home

Thanks for the questions about Art's health. I'm happy to say, after having to extend his trip for over a week, he's now home and doing fine. It's going to take him a long time to be totally free of his problem with his leg, but he got wonderful care with the VA in Bend, OR and came home with medicine and instructions. He'll get checkups here as follow-up.

Our dear Bailey was so much company for me while Art was gone and he missed Art, but seemed to adapt just fine. The telling thing tho' was when Art came home and Bailey saw him. Wow, he just about turned himself inside out trying to get to Art. We've settled down now and are slowly getting back into our rut.

At the last minute I decided to fix a Thanksgiving dinner. They don't celebrate Thanksgiving down here, but the Mennonites do raise turkeys, so it's not hard to get one. They're VERY expensive tho'. We invited a few friends to share with us. One couple are Americans who have lived here for 15 years. Another couple are German and Austrian and a lady, who's husband is working in Florida, is Canadian, so we had quite a mixed group. It turned out wonderfully. Everyone contributed something, which made it easier. We missed our Thanksgivings in the States with family, but it felt good to be with friends. The best part is that we got to enjoy the leftovers.

We're having the best weather right now. It's cold at night, so we had to put a blanket on the bed, but it's warm enough during the day to still wear shorts (only around here). We have to remember this time as it will get really hot in April and May.

Army (cleaner) ants

Seems I just keep going from one crisis to another. I'm going to preface this by saying that prior to moving here, we lived in the mountains or Oregon at 4200' elevation. That meant we had very few bugs. No fleas or snakes and because they sprayed in our area, no mosquitos. Now, fast forward to Belize. I've been chewed and nibbled on by a whole range of things from tiny no-see-ums to mosquitos and an assortment of flies. OK, if I pay attention and put on repellent, my pale gringo skin is relatively safe.

It was dry here for a couple of weeks and now it's started to rain a little. During our tree cutting operation I noted a line of ants moving down the hill. Rene said that that's because it's going to rain. OK, they're down there, fine. Yesterday they were back on a new path, going between the bodega and our house. Funny, for a bit they went one way, then an hour later, they were going the other way. Finally, they went the first direction again and by nightfall, they were gone. Whew!

Well, today, as I was eating breakfast on the veranda, I noticed a couple of ants on the table. When I looked down there were lines of them marching along the edge of the house. Here I have to say that I've heard from lots of folks about the cleaner ants and that if you just let them in the house, they don't damage anything, they just eat dead bugs and bits and clean your house and move on. Ick! Ick! I just couldn't handle that, altho' heaven knows I'm not a very good housekeeper. Maybe that's it. I could imagine them keeping busy for weeks! I couldn't bring myself to kill them as they're just doing what they're programmed to do, but I didn't want them in the house. I put Bailey out on a line as they were starting to swarm around him and he was totally confused and then I got the spray. I sprayed the doorways and at the base of the house and in front of them on the side of the house to discourage them from going those directions. I then sat back and watched them trundle the length of the veranda, down the pillar and within about 15 minutes they were gone.

Every day is an education in the bush.