Belize, our new home.

"A little Madness in the Spring is wholesome even for the King."

- Emily Dickinson

Our house is finished, except for some finishing and repairs. We've moved in and it is glorious. We still might be a bit mad many seem to think. Two and a half years ago we had two properties and successful careers in London.

Now we have one house in Belize. Right now, we are spending all of our time and energy on the house, meanwhile trying not to spend too much money. It is amazing how quickly a project like this can swallow cash.

We have some pictures of the inside, without our furniture, before we moved in. I know that many of you have asked us to put up pics of the inside with furniture, but blogging is an interesting thing in terms of your home and privacy, so all you'll get here are pics before we moved in. If you want to see it now, you'll have to drop in, or email and ask nicely for some private pics.

Entrance and Kitchen

Doors to back porch and dining area

Bedroom

Shower tiling

Super cool Jetsons style lighting

We have to be honest and warn everyone that we don't have a guest room. The house has one bedroom and a bathroom upstairs. We have an office and bathroom downstairs, but we didn't finish work on the bathroom so that we could spend money elsewhere in the house. We do not have a sofa bed.

So, if you want to come and visit and stay with us you'll have to bring an air bed or a tent. Camping on the roof might be quite fun. In fact, our roof can be seen from this aerial picture, taken by Colette when she went to Belize City to collect our shipment from England. All of our worldly possessions.

A free Belikin to the first one to spot our roof

Colette had to go over to meet our trusty customs broker George. He really is wonderful and did a brilliant job. Message us if you need a good customs broker in Belize. Once we have cleared customs, our items are shipped by boat to San Pedro. Our shipment arrived in two big crates and they had to send a little Bobcat forklift truck to help get them off the truck. We had been moving house and emptying boxes all day. When this arrived at 5:30pm when we were just about to relax, we nearly died. But we piled in and emptied the crates by 10:00pm.

All our worldly goods

May is Mothers' Day time. In San Pedro, the Mothers are treated like queens for a day with a huge Mother's Day Extravaganza held in Central Park. Food, drinks and entertainment were laid on by San Pedro Town Council for nearly 800 mothers. Colette was honoured to have been asked to assist. She worked as a server along with other volunteers. She managed to drag along her friend's son, Junior as he was visiting San Pedro from his home in Ladyville on the mainland. Most of the volunteers were highschool kids from San Pedro High and Colette was supposed to organise the serving of food and drinks to a table seating 70 women. Colette had Junior and two lovely helpers from the Highschool. Colette has not served a table for over 20 years so she spent a lot of time apologising and offering to get napkins for various ladies.

Delightful Miss San Pedro welcomes Mothers

'I love you Mom' Gifts for all Mothers

Preparing for a whole lot of Mothers

On the other hand, the kids from the High School were on the ball. Junior and the two girls (yes Colette's team of servers consisted of four) were amazing and it was apparent that all of the Mothers had a wonderful evening. When the Mothers arrived they were greeted by Miss San Pedro (we apologise for the deterioration of photo quality but Colette's little digital has nearly died) and given a gift. They were then seated by a local dignitary. Meanwhile, the servers went crazy taking orders and bringing drinks. After over 750 were seated, with extra tables and chairs having to be found because so many attended, a turkey dinner was served. Then the tables had to be cleared in preparation for dessert. Meanwhile, there were various prizes and competitions involving Mothers jumping up and running around a lot. Hilarious, absolute chaos but organised and everything went smoothly.

The High School Boys give the Mothers a treat

But just for a moment, think about organising a meal for over 750 women, with unlimited alcohol available to them, using only teenage volunteers and it all going off without a hitch. Unbelievable. We do love our little island and what it can accomplish.

How many Mothers?

On that note, we've been observing our local elementary school develop. They are called Ambergris Caye Elementary School and we think they are great. We know a lot of the kids and their parents. The school is adorable, run incredibly well, the kids are very well behaved and happy and they have just installed this fantastic adventure playground for the kids.

School is not available for free to children here. Many churches run schools, which subsidise the costs heavily to make an education available to most. There are also a number of other private schools on the island, Ambergris Caye Elementary being one of them. Just because it is private does not mean the children have wealthy parents. Many parents work two and three jobs to keep their kids in school and have high aspirations for their children. Things are changing and the quality of the schools are improving. Also, many children are supported by wealthier members of the community, local charities and the schools themselves through scholarship programmes.

A playground worth screaming about and do they scream

Now that we have our precious belongings, we've been able to go through our old photo albums. We thought you'd enjoy seeing these old pictures of us. Can you guess which one is Maya and which one is Colette?

A few other things before we sign off. We'd like to thank our friends for their amazing patience with us during this house building project. We have been no - shows at so many parties that we're sure we are now on the Z list. We love our friends here on San Pedro and abroad and really appreciate your support.

We'd like to thank the lovely Capt Jeff yet again for allowing us to fill our freezer with fish. He is a great fisherman, friend and we love him.

Finally, we'd like to thank The Tudors for being the sexiest, most beautiful and dramatic show on TV for a long time. If you haven't watched it - do!

The tawdry and terrific Tudors

February Retox and March Madness

Home is Where the Heart is

This amazing series from the Lunar Eclipse on the 20th of Feb 2008 was taken by Maya

Life has been a whirlwind recently. Colette had to take off to London for two weeks in February and that threw us all out of sorts. Both of us were dreading it. Colette, because traveling always makes her ill and the weather was freezing in the UK and Maya because she was going to have to deal with the house project all on her own.

We both had our adventures in those two weeks. Maya of course, fished. Big thanks to the wonderful men in our life, Bill and Capt Jeff, for making the these fishing days possible. The deep sea fish with Dilzon was an absolute adventure with swells of six - ten feet. Maya says the boat literally kept going straight up at a 90 degree angle and then WHAM, it would hit the water again. Colette was pleased she wasn't around to experience this particular day out.

This is Maya holding Bill's Wahoo (does that sound rude?)

This is Maya holding the Jack that she caught.

This is what Jack steaks look like.

Meanwhile Colette arrived in London and stayed with her great friends Anna, Pete and Vanessa. It was very hectic and full of entertaining social events. Just after Colette arrived, Anna had a brilliant success with her PR campaign for Litter Kwitter. Oh yes, we must share with you about this interesting product. It assists you in teaching your pussy to poop on the pot. If you really want to see this amazing device, check out http://www.litterkwitter.com/en/index.php . She actually somehow got Ricky Gervais to plug it on the Richard and Judy Show. Hilarious.

Anna watches a cat using the Litter Kwitter on TV

Within two days, Anna had roped Colette into appearing on an daytime TV show - for those Brits reading this it was the Alan Titchmarsh Show. Colette was helping her to plug another amazing animal invention called the Paw Plunger, http://www.pawplunger.co.uk/ . The world is full of these amazing things that you just can' t live without.

Some of Colette's mates organised a surprise drink in town. That was the beginning of the end for her liver. Almost every day, friends organised drinks. Tons of them. Mostly red wine. Colette sends her love and thanks to all of her wonderful friends for helping to keep her drunk throughout her stay. Petey, Anna, Vanessa, Smiley, Sam, Carolyn & Caroline, Roger (the lingerie idea is a winner), Chamois, Ingrid, Hilary and everyone else who will probably now be offended that they weren't mentioned. You guys are true British heroes. Well except for Ingrid, who is a Spanish hero.

Colette reports that London is still cold, grey and dirty although traffic seems to have definitely improved. The weirdest thing was that no one spoke English. A huge influx of Eastern Europeans and people from other countries has made London feel like a foreign country. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be quite difficult when you asking for directions to the Post Office and no one can help you.

While Colette was away, the house continued under the careful supervision of Maya. It will be weeks before we move in. We can finally unpack. Both of us have come a long way. We can't wait.

Stucco day at Mermaid Manor

The living room looking towards the kitchen.

The bedroom.
The screened porch.

Back of the house

The Magnificent Mermaid Manor.

Maya finished another one of her paintings. This one is of the fish god.

Fish God

Colette arrived back from London and went straight into the Belize International Airport restaurant. She ordered Stew Chicken and smothered her rice and beans with Marie Sharps, so much so that the waitress warned her to go easy. Home truly is where the heart is and our hearts are in Belize.

Politics but no Political Correctness

Politics but no Political Correctness

Belize February 2008

Carnival

This week, Belize got a new Prime Minister, Dean Barrow. This is after 10 consecutive years under the PUP Party. Belizeans showed clearly that they wanted change, with a landslide victory for the incoming UDP party.

Outgoing Prime Minister of Belize, Said Musa, on the left and new Prime Minister of Belize, Dean Barrow, on the right

The build up to the election included hard hitting TV advertising, parties, banners, t shirt wearing and flag waving. Pretty much like an election anywhere else. There certainly were no holds barred with 'Musa Abusa' (Musa being the outgoing Prime Minister) as a slogan for the UDP opposition and 'Dean Barrow is Dangerous for Belize' as a slogan for the PUP Government.

Musa Abusa

For Lower Electricty and Telephone

All A We Da One

Fi U, Fi Me, Fi all o We

During the same week as election was Carnaval on San Pedro. We were extremely priveleged to be invited to participate in the old San Pedro tradition of Comparsa. A Comparsa is a dancing and singing group, which travels from home to home, performing and collecting money for charity.

Dancers looking fresh on Day 1

Naughty songs in Spanish - 501

Gringa Mestiza

Comparsa at it's finest

Pretty Mestiza

One sexy Mestiza

Each night, each Comparsa has a different theme. We were in Miss Rosa's Comparsa group. We had to dress up in character and learn a new song each night. The first night we were 'Modern and Sexy Mestizas'. We were all dressed in traditional Mestiza outfits. Some of the members shortened their skirts or added IPODs to the outfit. Our song was all in Spanish. The Mestizo culture is strong and vibrant in San Pedro as the island is actually just an extension of the Yucatan Penninusla, cut off by enterprising Maya folk a thousand or so years ago so that they didn't have to boat all the way around to the end of the penninsula.

The second night is when political correctness went out of the window. Fortunately, Belize has not been scourged with self censorship. I wasn't 100% sure of the song, but I know it had orginally been written by a local musician. The Comparsa had changed the lyrics. Most were in Spanish, except the chorus, which was in creole and went like this:

White man have nothing to do
Black man ony smoke di weed
Chiney man da fu cook di cat
Spanish man baila Carnaval

Ole, Ole

We sang loud and proud dressed up in our various costumes. I was the lazy white man (understandably white men are considered lazy here as they all have workers do everything for them). Several women, some black, some lighter skinned, blacked up when necessary and with fake rasta dreads, were dressed as black man. They all carried huge gigantic, fake joints - sucking and puffing as they danced along. Another lady dressed as a 'chiney'. This is what Chinese people are called in Belize. The 'chiney' lady carried a metal wok and stir fried a cat in it, bravely represented by a stuffed Garfield.

The song caused a great deal of mirth amongst the homes that were visited. We must point out that part of Comparsa is about making a fool of yourself and being ridiculous, so our toughest competition were a group of local men, dressed as women and singing crude songs, dancing and dry humping eachother all the way down the road. Now, let's put this celebration in perspective for you.

The groups dance every night for about 5 hours solid. Each group is led by a truck with some sort of sound system. There are children's Comparsas, which tend to be raising desperately needed funds for their respective schools are held earlier in the evening. When the adults come out, they have a free supply of booze coming from the back of the truck. On our pick up truck there was a man and a keyboard set along with speakers, a big cooler full of ice and booze, a bucket full of rum punch, 5 gallons of water and about 10 children. Fortunately, children here learn how to mix a rum punch very young and they love getting adults drunk. So they were very keen to make sure the rum was always plentiful.

Getting grown-ups drunk

Rum keeps everyone dancing

Comparsa ladies have beautiful hair

What the kids really want to do at Carnival is paint. San Pedro has a unique element to Carnaval, which doesn't exist anywhere else. On the day that Carnaval starts, the Town Board cover the park with sand. Businesses cover their signs with plastic. And the Town Board provide all of the children with bottles of water based paint. The children (and quite a few adults) run around for the next few nights painting eachother. Paint does get everywhere even though the kids are pretty respectful and don't paint those who don't want to participate. It is surreal to see gangs of hundreds of children flocking down the roads, all covered from head to toe in paint.

Da Girlz show how it's done

After three days of dancing, everyone was broken. Colette couldn't walk for two days and still cant ride her bicycle. Maya was in charge of making sure that we could plug into each house, so she faithfully followed the truck carrying a pile of extension cord, dashing in every house to find an electrical outlet. She doesn't hurt quite so bad.

Meanwhile, life goes on for us on the domestic front. Our house is nearly finished. After all of the warnings and bitching we heard from everyone about what a nightmare building a house would be, we've been so lucky. The house is a bit bigger than we anticipated and somewhat overwhelming.

Mermaid Manor grows

Aerial view of our 'hood'

We try to take advantage of our wonderful surroundings every day. Maya is getting to be quite a good nature photographer. All of the nature pictures here were taken either from our garden or a neighbour's garden.

Jesus Lizard

Roseate Spoonbill

Upside Oriole feeding from Hibiscus

Birds like to party too - Wading bird gathering

In the midst of all of this, we went to Belize City to look around. It is a very run down city and there is a lot of crime, so we don't recommend it as an overnight destination except for convenience. Nevertheless, it is the old capital of Belize and has a rich history. We went to see the Museum of Belize and it was really fascinating. It is built in what was originally the old prison and that in itself is a fascinating story. The photo here is of St. John's Cathedral. It is frequently referred to as 'the oldest building in Belize', which we find ironic as Belize is one of the best places in the world to see Maya pyramids. It is though, the oldest Anglican Church in Central America and is also very cute.

St. John's Catherdral, Belize City

Belize continues to enamour us on a daily basis. There is so much to do here and so much that we want to do that we are excited continually. So, to our friends who are living in the rat race, who get up every morning to take the same route to work, to do the same unfulfilling, but well paying job, to come home the same way, get drunk on Friday, recover Saturday, see friends on Sunday and then start all over again on Monday - think about this. Getting up naturally early every morning because the birds are so lively and enthusiastic about the new day, going out to your own garden to pick fresh fruit looking at the dozen different colours of flower growing around you, smell coffee roasting at the coffee maker down the road and drink your coffee knowing it was roasted yesterday, walk down to the beach stopping to chat with neighbours and friends, walking along finding interesting items washed up on shore, watching sea birds hunt, spotting interesting new marine life, then head home to cycle into town, taking your time as you meet so many friends along the way, do some work, head home for lunch, make your way back into work, maybe walking the beach this time, then come home to grill fresh fish and watch the sun set, listen to spanish music and reggae drifting on the breeze, watch the wildlife and think about how wonderful tomorrow is going to be.

Feeling trapped?

Just fly away.

Then and Now

We've been getting nagged about not blogging for a while so we'll begin with excuses and then get on with the blog. Firstly, Colette was away for ten days in October. This threw us out of kilter a bit but she had a really good time with her family in Georgia. When she came back we finally went ahead with our plans and our house is finally being built. Oh, had we mentioned we'd bought some land? Since she has come back, we've been just a little bit busy. So now that things are relaxing again, here we are to update you with all of our antics.

So, off Colette goes and abandons Maya to hang out with her Mum and her family in Georgia in the USA. Colette spent much of her childhood in Georgia and so it brings back fond memories. The first place they stayed was at the country house called Long Pond. It really is something out of a movie. It belongs to the family of Colette's Mum's Husband and we both love staying there. You feel like you are stepping back in time when you are there. Meanwhile, Maya finished one of her wonderful paddles.

Longpond is an amazing pre civil war house

Look at the size of those Oak trees in Georgia

Colette did some shopping for us as some things are quite difficult to get in Belize. Egg cups. She had a really hard time getting egg cups so that we can eat our boiled eggs and soldiers in the morning, but that was one of her little successes on this trip. The biggest one though was buying Maya a brand new fishing rod. You see, Colette organised a visit with her lovely friends Bill and Becky. They met at the amazing Bass Pro shop in Savannah, Georgia. Bill and Becky came all the way down from South Carolina for this excursion and much fun was had by all. Bill is such a sweetheart, he offered to bring the rod down on his next visit as a big surprise for Maya. He even bought an extra large rod carrier. It is very difficult at this stage, not to make rude jokes about rods, so we'll leave that to your imagination. We must also mention that Colette now knows she does not like Bison burgers.

Colette wonders where the batteries go

Bill and Maya's Big Rod (Special thanks to this special man for bringing this and many of his own gifts - We love ya!)

Colette really enjoyed picking her Mum's brain (actually, you have to wonder if this was an exchange of ideas or just an excuse to drink excessive amounts of wine) about ideas for our house as we had just bought some land before Colette left. Colette's Mum has just finished building her own house and understands the stress involved with the experience (time for more wine). They spent a night on St. Simon's Island at the family's beach house and Colette always says this brings back memories of her childhood. St. Simon's Island is very beautiful and very memorable.

The amazing Live Oak streets on St. Simon's Island could inspire memories even if you didn't have any

Upon Colette's return we proceeded with building. We are extremely lucky to be working with some excellent people on this project and everything so far has gone very smoothly. We will update the blog with pictures of the build as it goes along, but just to give you some ideas here is the build up to today.

Our lot before we started major clearing

Major progress with clearing

A gate appears in our massive fence

These are the pilings being made that will hold up our house

And this is a piling after it has been put in the ground

This is our septic tank for our poop

These are the foundations for our downstairs office

This is what the lot looks like now. Don't worry we are already growing new plants

We've also been doing little projects here and there. The first you might like to look at is The Cave Diver. This is a promo trailer for a programme that will be submitted to National Geographic. Maya directed it and Colette did the voice over. http://youtube.com/watch?v=LgF_WAbpCho . We worked with some really lovely people on this and it is just another reason why we are sure we have made the right decision. We have so many friends who are still in the rat race and not enjoying it. Get out! Get out now! There is so much out there to do and see and live. Don't waste your lives being miserable, doing the same thing week in and week out. Follow your dreams.

Another project that we've worked on are posters for World Aids Day. The local Aids Commission asked us to put together a couple of posters based on their ideas.

On top of all that, we brought out a set of Christmas Postcards for San Pedro. They've been very popular and are now being used by the Town Council as their official Christmas card.
































We are often asked what we miss in San Pedro. What do we miss from our previous lives? We don't miss much. Probably a bit of culture would be nice. We only have live music on the island and there is not much variety. No comedy or theatre or anything else like that, well unless you enjoy laughing at sunburnt tourists and drunk local gringos. But to be honest, our lives are so full, rewarding and fun why would we look back. Obviously we miss our old friends and extended family, but not enough to go back. Just for your sakes, we have and here is a quick photographic look at our previous life. Enjoy looking at it. In the meantime, think about us as we are just off to go on a sunset cruise with a bunch of friends.

Our house in London and Colette's old 4x4, which lovingly is still in the 'family'

Our Ikea kitchen, which was lovely but nothing like the custom hardwood kitchen we will have soon.

Evey single day we saw our local shopkeepers. We'd buy our morning papers here on the way to work

Every morning we would take the Tube to work. This is our local station, Blackhorse Road.

This is Knightsbridge in Central London. Busy and grey

In the evening, we would buy our papers from the news stand. It is different going from two papers a day to once a week.

There were some places to get peace and solitude in London and the Serpentine was one of them.

But our favourite little oasis in London was our wonderful garden.

Flags and Flags - You work it out

After the hurricanes and then moving back into our house, we have been recovering. It has been a very hectic month for us, but a very quiet time for San Pedro. We have two seasons here – high season and low season. These are determined by the number of tourists that visit and the number of tourists that visit can be severely affected by the number of hurricanes that visit us. Whether or not the weather is nice, low season is very low here. We love it, but we don’t have a business to keep running. Every year at this time, most of the businesses close. Restaurants and hotels shut up shop and their staff gets time off. Some places shut for the whole of the season. This time of year is a struggle for everyone who depends on tourism. The beaches are empty, the streets quieter than normal and crime goes up. We don’t have a lot of crime here, but desperate times call for desperate measures. That said, two women we know have been victims of crime in the last month or so. One of them scared the burglar so badly with a butter knife he ran away and left his bicycle behind. The other one grabbed the mugger’s hair until he had to bite her to get her to let go. He got caught of course and her stuff was returned. So, advice to all of the bad guys – us girls on San Pedro are tough. Don’t mess!

Speaking of messing….once we moved in, Maya had to face the dreaded bodega. A bodega is a name for a storage shed. This shed had been used for storage for a long time without having ever been cleaned. Rats had been living in it as well as a 3 foot long iguana. Colette removed a dead rat, nearly threw up into her hand and refused to set foot into it again, so it was left to Maya and she was truly heroic. We now have a clean a fully functioning bodega for all of the junk we have collected in our short time in Belize.

Even though it is quiet season, we all find plenty to keep ourselves occupied. There have been a number of parties, including our own. We had a combined birthday party with about 8 other people. We’d all had our birthdays ruined by the storms and decided to have one big birthday bash. This was on a Monday night at the Roadkill Bar. For those of you who haven’t been to San Pedro, the Roadkill Bar sits on a road junction. It is outside of a nightclub called the Barefoot Iguana. It consists of a bar, an 8 foot gap, and a fence to keep you from falling into the road. On Monday nights, they play bluegrass music. Our lovely friend Drummer Dan was recovering from a gallbladder operation – more on that later – and a local accountant (who really does look like an accountant) took his place. We were all a bit stunned to see him setting up the drums and he did a damned good job as well. San Pedro is like that, people surprise you all the time. Drummer Dan did turn up to show his face and his belly to all and sundry. Here are a few pictures of one of the fundraisers – this was a yard sale, which in San Pedro tends to involve the recycling of junk like the stuff in our bodega – that ensured that Dan was able to pay for his surgery. Just another reason why we love living here.

Of course we don’t have pictures of our party because we were too busy having a good time. And while we were having a good time a golf cart full of stunning women went by. By stunning, I mean they were dressed up like glamour goddesses, made up like drag queens (maybe that should have been a giveaway) and they received plenty of hoots and hollers as they putted by. Given that this was the most rocking place in San Pedro that night, they turned around, came into the party, danced, posed for pictures and disappeared into the night. When they left, many men had smiles on their faces as women here don’t often dress up in sequence, high heels and mini skirts. We found it amusing that most of these guys didn’t notice (or did they choose not to notice?) that this was a group of women who averaged about 6’6” in height. Still not getting it?

Ok, we’ll have to crack and get to the point. 150 gay, lesbian and transgendered divers spent a week in San Pedro. They were from all over the world. Aussies, Brits, USA ‘ers, Dutch etc. They belong to a group called Diving for Life that does a big dive trip annually to raise money for HIV and AIDs charities. So far they’ve raised over half a million dollars just by organising dive trips and having a bloody good time. They made a substantial donation to the local Aids charity, spent a lot of money on the island, tipped (from what we hear) extremely generously and generally brightened up low season on San Pedro to no end.

On their last night, they held a costume party and of course, we were invited. Now some of these guys and gals brought a whole suitcase just to hold their costume. So, we were certainly not disappointed. We have to admit, our birthday bash was great, but this party was fantabulistic.

We mustn’t forget that during September is Belize’s Independence Day. Everyone is very patriotic and flags fly from every golf cart and house. We examined some of the flags and found them to be rather odd. Belize’s flag is the only flag in the world with human images on it. So that makes it kind of unique. The two human forms are supposed to represent a Mestizo person and a Garifuna person, but the flags that arrived from wherever they were making them cheap and in bulk, made it look like they were both Chinese, just one coloured brown and one coloured yellow. We did some research into the flag of Belize and discovered that the Latin phrase, sub umbra floreo, on the flag means ‘in the shade we flourish’, which is very apt we think. Have a look at some of the flags we saw and if you really want a giggle, log onto the Belize Government’s home page and note that the flag is backwards for some reason. Obviously, we wouldn’t want to comment on the politics of our host country or make any comment on the backwardness of the flag on the Government website, which by the way is http://www.governmentofbelize.gov.bz/ .

We want to dedicate this blog to John, Krista and Gerrard. They have gone back to the freezing, icy cold of Canada and left us here. John was Maya’s best fishing friend forever fishing buddy. We miss you guys!

Also, a big shout to Capt Jeff. Always a wonderful host and a great friend.

San Pedro's new roving reporter - Maya Meets

The storms are over and we have some lovely weather now here in San Pedro. We are all trying to recover from the whole post hurricane come down even though we still are wearing shoes because the beach is still not completely safe for bare feet. So yesterday we went to our friend's 'surprise' birthday party. Of course, surprises are pretty tricky to organise here and this was no different. It was a great day on the beach. There was pot luck, BBQ, some funky drumming and of course, the most important ingredient, a bunch of fun people. Check out Taco Girl's blog for pictures (it is on our links list). Because it had been a surprise, another party had been planned for later at Pedro's Inn. For those of you who don't know Pedro's Inn, it is the closest thing we have to a British style pub on the island. It has everything you would expect at a Brit pub - a pool table, low ceiling, dark smokey atmosphere, loud music of the rockish kind, excellent cold draft beer, lots of drunks behaving badly, an adorable bar maid and a grumpy landlord. It does have one unique difference - Walter. Walter is the our favourite rasta pizza chef and he has to have a big chef's hat to hold in all those dreads.



We had received an invitation earlier in the week to go along to Pedro's on the same evening to meet the new British High Commissioner for Belize. Britain doesn't have an embassy or Ambassador in Belize, they have a High Commission. So here is a picture of Maya meeting the new High Commissioner, John Yapp. He seems like a pleasant chap. Poor guy took up his post right in the middle of the hurricane chaos. The second picture is of Colette with our friend and neighbour, Jim Mohammed. He is the head of our local National Emergency Organisation and has proved, yet again, that his background, personality and training make him the best man for the job.



Since we've been here, we've known a local young man named Kenny. He was 18 when we first met him and we have seen him go through the normal frustrations that all young men experience at that age, but of course this is compounded by the fact that he is from a developing country, where a good education and hope for the future can be elusive. Earlier this year, he enlisted in the Belize Defence Force (the Belize Army), known as the BDF. He just got his first proper leave and came to find us. Bless his little cotton ones - he had heard it was our birthday and brought us this painting. We don't know where he got it or who the artist is, but it is a very nice Belizean painting and we were hugely touched. Thanks Kenners!



We get a lot of feedback about our blog from people all over the world and we wanted to get back to you on some of it. Firstly, the most hilarious feedback we have had recently: We bumped into a local businessman who was off of the island during Hurricane Dean. He thanked us for our blog and told us that he had noticed a picture of one of his properties that we had posted when we were showing how people were preparing for Dean. He noticed that things weren't as they should be and phoned his staff. He told them that he could see that some things needed to be tidied up. They asked how he knew, so he said that he could see everything they were doing on Google Earth. They believed him and freaked. We are still lauging about that one.



Better than that, two wonderful regular visitors to San Pedro brought us chocolate and champagne. What a treat. Chocolate that hasn't melted 25 times and isn't white on the outside. That is a novelty here. But these were spectacular, gourmet style chocolates. Thank you Leah Ann! We haven't drunk the champagne yet. Anyone who knew us in the UK knows that we are huge fans of champagne, but of course it is not too expensive in Europe. Over here, it is way too expensive to justify. We just haven't been able to bring ourselves to touch it yet. We just keep it in the fridge and look at it. Sandy and Ed, you guys are too sweet. These guys brought us the champagne at the very beginning of their holiday and then they had to evacuate for Hurricane Felix. Hurry back!



On one final note. We had a comment on a previous post asking why we didn't go somewhere safer? When a cat 5 hurricane is heading for Belize, we don't think there is anywhere safer than where we are unless we leave the country, which just isn't practical. To the person who posted - if you have a helicopter or private plane and contacts with immigration and the agriculture department in a 'safe' country so that we and our pets can get out, please come and pick us up the next time a hurricane comes our way, it would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, we'll listen to our local experts. We trust their advice as they have been through a good few hurricanes here. Their advice is that if we have plenty of supplies and a strong concrete place to stay, staying put is probably the safest thing we can do.

After Hurricane Felix

Because Belize was mentioned so frequently in the international news reports on Hurricane Felix, many of our friends and family were very concerned. Some had complained that we hadn't written of our survival on our blog, so we felt compelled to post this picture, taken last night, to prove that we are fine.

The picture below was taken by the Hunter Aircraft that flies into the eye of hurricanes to get important information to help us all know what is going to happen. The pilots that fly these planes really do risk life and limb and the trip into Hurricane Felix was reportedly a very frightening experience for them. Luckily they got out OK and took this spectacular picture of the moon rising over Felix's eye wall.

We are now so grateful for a lull in the hurricane threat, that we decided to post one more picture hat has nothing to with hurricanes. We are sick of hearing about them for a while. So, the picture below was taken outside of our bedroom window. Green iguanas can be hard to spot as they aren't common in our area. Green iguanas are known throughout Belize as 'Bamboo Chicken' and are hunted for their meat and eggs. It is not uncommon on mainland Belize to be driving along with young men standing on the side of the road holding up tethered green iguanas in the air for your inspection. They are now a protected species as they are endangered in Belize and there are iguana breeding programmes being spearheaded all over the country. Belize is such a beautiful and awe inspiring place to live.