Just Belize

We are still in Belize counting down the days before we have to leave. The customs officer said no more extension after this. Hurricane season is no excuse to stay here, leave after 30 more days. We have already put in our blog how rude he was but I still don’t like it. When you travel like we do, you soon get into a routine to get by when you do stop. This make traveling more fun I think. Pam catches the produce man twice a week here in the marina bring produce to be taken out to the islands. There private islands and cater to guess that can pay. To us round tomatoes are like a treasure when you find them. Pam is always trying to get them. Tomato in most of the Caribbean are roma tomatoes and they cook with them more that they eat them raw. Roma tomatoes are native to this hot climate and will grow out of a rock. Need very little care but just don’t have a real tomato taste to me. You can buy a steak here but they are all frozen. When we go shopping Pam will say. You want to gamble on a steak. I think were about even on it being good or bad are It’s Pam saying you know we paid a lot for this, to me saying I wish we had a dog. It mite could eat this. We had a dog here at the marina that ran away. Maybe Pam fed it too much Belize steak. We are trying to leave but this is the time to be here. It’s finely cooling down some. When you get up at daylight and its under 80 degrees it’s going to be a fine day. The pace here is slower than most gringos or use to and when we leave we will miss that. This is main street and this is what they say is a prosperous town not a village.

 Maine Street in Placenica, Belize

Walking here is still a way to get around. Bicycle are better and you are doing good if you have motor bike, a car you’re about rich. Remember if you own a car down here you need to know where you can buy gas. You don’t just take off going somewhere with out a little planning. Out of town here there is a lot of villages that have no power. I have been surprised about that and how many people that want to know about wind generators or solar panels.

Two of the Mennonite welders with local helpers

The Mennonites that have been working doing metal work on a big barge they are building here have found Pam. She is the go to person to get parts from the US to fix there sewing machines now. This is so different working with them. They can’t own a car but it’s alright to ride in one, can’t own a computer but Pam finding stuff for them online an her computer is just fine to them. Her turning them on to Lehman’s Nonelectric Catalog in the US that caters to the Amish was fun to watch. We live in a strange world I guess where you can go online and buy things to live with out anything modern. Where you can live like your great, great  Grandparents lived but buy what you need to live that way shopping online on a computer and pay with your card. There is a lot of people here that live simple without having to go to all that trouble.

This is a mountain range we see everyday. It is called “Sleeping Giant” 

More Time in Belize

Last week we had to go to immigration and ask for and extension to stay 30 more days in Belize. Didn’t go to well. I expanded we needed to stay because of it being the top of hurricane season. We got our extension but he was very rude. The only reason we are telling this is because I have put in a lot of our blogs. “It’s real out here” and not just sandy beaches and clear skies every day. This is the 3^rd time we have had this happen. Once in Guatemala, and once in the Bay Islands, Honduras and now here. It’s like they have the power to make you leave and they really don’t want you here. Remember each time you go to see them, you have to pay to stay. Dealing with the officials takes up a lot of your day when you do have to go see them here. Here you have to go to Big Creek. You can take a cab and ride a long time going a round and pay $100 US for the cab ride there and back. We met some people that did it that way. Said they didn’t want to be bothered with riding the Hokey Pokey ferry across, then finding a cab to take them on to the offices at big creek, then having to do it all over from the other side. It’s a shipping thermal where ships come in. We take the ferry. Money is always and issue with us and living in Belize is not cheap. The ferry is $5 US each way. You need to be there maybe 30 minutes in the morning before they say they are going to leave because if the boat gets full, they leave then. If it’s not full you wait until it is. Full means these long fiberglass boats have every seat taken and every one sets down carefully so as not to rock the boat it’s loaded so. These boats are hand built here and are just working boats. For the most part the ride is pleasant as you go full speed through the Mango Creek up busy canals and dock at a little dock.

Hockey Pokey ferry dock at Mango Creek

Everyone feeds the catfish at the dock

On the other side with cabs drivers all coming at you, all at one time wanting to take you to immigration. Cabs in “all of the Caribbean” are humorous at times and none seem to have door locks that work, most of the time they have to open the door for you and we have had to help from the inside to get out. Most are honest but always get a price before you get in. Check to see what language they speak and that you can make them understand where you want to go. In Belize they say their language is English, Not true at all, not even most people, “A lot speak Creole” that is not understandable English by a long shot. Then there is Garfunkel and Spanish, the Mennonites speak German and don’t run cabs. They don’t drive. Against there religion to drive a car but they will ride in one if they need to get somewhere. Then you have the Mayan that speak Ketchi. My Spanish is bad but Pam and I get by with it. On the ferry we met some people from Ohio and they said they had trouble with our English. Pam and I were born in the deep south in the US. We don’t hear an accent when we talk. If you set near the street in most places, maybe near a store here in Belize, you will here a lot in different languages spoken. I cheat sometimes when I walk up to a group of white people, I don’t say. Does any one speak English, I just say “How are y’all” Maybe that the reason the Ohio people called Pam and I “countrified” and hard to understand. It uselessly works and we usually know who understands deep south English quick. It never works on the Russians or the French. If your thinking about coming this way. Remember this, All of the Western Caribbean is so different you can choose what you want to see. We are preparing to come home to re-outfit our boat. It is cheaper to live in Louisiana than here, Louisiana is not our home, our home is where the boats is but we do still consider the US home and there’s things you can get there you just can’t get here. Maybe you can have it’s shipped here, that’s costly. We are now like some one on vacation taking in as much of this as we can while were here but in a way looking forward to being back in the US. I know we will be busy there but that is always fun preparing for our next trip. Hopefully we are leaving there with in a year to go back to Southport NC where we built the boat and then on to Southport, England. This will be a ambiguous under taking but with us it’s always the trip not the destination . Where ever we make it , It’s the adventure that important and this has been a great adventure and remember this. We are still here and taking the “Pamela Ann” back Maybe just another great adventure coming soon.

This is the most used form of transportation in Central America

Trucking In Belize

We are still in Belize and the hurricanes are still out there. We are chicken to try to cross the Gulf right now so we are staying here until it is quieting down out there. There is so much to love in the US. Like shopping and having things to shop for, that’s not the way it is here. In some ways we are looking forward to getting home to where we can buy a good steak, maybe a new flash light battery that not already out of date by a year or more. In another way we will miss the Western Caribbean. It is so different here. Some people here call not having to worry about the little details in every day life like you do in the US, freedom and it’s true. Have a light out on your car. No problem unless it the only light left burning on your car, then you just need to drive slow and use a flash light to see how to get home. I won’t ever drive down here at night again. Driving a car with a flashlight in the rain with one lane bridges on their highways and Mennonites with their horse and buggies on the roads too is just too much freedom for me, Sometimes. I’m just amazed at watching people using there freedom here. Here at this marina, they load barges every day to go out to the island here they are developing for the tourist. There is truck of all kinds coming in here day and night. Pam and I drove big rigs for a living when we were young. Her driving got her licenses taken one time for too many speeding tickets and that the tickets she, even with her being young with long red hair couldn’t talk her way out of but in her defense if you get a cop behind you in the US he is probably going to stop you and if he does he is going to check every thing until he can find something to write you up for. A California highway patrolman would have a heart attack if he seen some of the vehicles they drive down here. Almost all the trucks down here came from the US. When there about out of any condition to drive on US high ways and it cost to much to fix. They send them down here for sale.

One of the trucks from the US

They just don’t worry about little thing like lug nuts holding the wheels on , mufflers , light , wind shells, they are small thing down here. If you have some of your lug nuts missing off your wheels, maybe you can’t buy them down here because most trucks have some missing. Maybe you just have to steel them off another man’s truck and that takes time to find some one not looking. I have looked and they don’t look like they are broke, they’re just missing.

How many lug nuts does it need?

This one has enough to stay on the truck.

This flange on this truck ( I was walking by and he was checking his oil). Maybe hard to buy down here and just a piece of pipe welded this close to the blower won’t last long. Different metal.

Very Good Exhaust System

You can order something from the US and wait a month for it to get here, pay top dollar for it , pay duty tax, pay sales tax and open the box to find maybe just the clamp left. You can raise a lot of hell about where the flange went but It won’t help. You will need to just start over. This is the main reason Pam and I are going back to the states to refit our boat. Cost too much here. Then there’s the fun of going to a store here like the hardware store and asking for a number 2 Phillips driver bit for a drill. They speak English here. When the woman finely comes back from the back, it’s a number 2 Phillips bit 3/4 of and inch long. You say, “I need it for a drill maybe 2 inches long so it want slide back in the drill chuck.” She may say “Maybe you just need to know how to use a drill. This is a Phillips number 2 for a drill. That will be 4 Belize dollars or 2 dollars US.” For just one little 3/4 inch drive bit. You walk out in the hot Caribbean sun happy you found something. You get use to the lectures on how dumb you are for not knowing your tools down here and how they use them are maybe the lectures are you don’t know how to imper-vise with what you can get down here. Some how I get over it quick and realize it just like every ones says “ Just another day in paradise.”