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

Ladies and Gentlemen ... The amazing smallest banana in the world

Welcome to our new Exploring Belize blog. We hope you enjoy the pictures and stories .

Stunning Tropical Fan Palm Flower - we pass it every day when walking the dogs

We've moved house. It has been so busy but even moving home in Belize is fun if you have the right attitude. We're going to tell you how it went for us and then you can compare it to how it is where you live.

This is the view we are leaving

How did we get so much stuff?

Midas pretends to be a black bag

Well, we have no furniture to speak of, so getting some was a necessity before we moved. We had two weeks to prepare. Colette had to take a shopping trip and this meant flying over to Belize City. She spent the morning with a lovely guy we know there and hit the furniture shops. There are only three in the city. One of them is Courts, which seems to use it to get rid of all the stuff they can't sell anywhere else in the world. The other one we won't name but let's just say that we will not buy furniture from a shop that smells like a nursing home. That just left the good old Mirab's furniture shop. Impressive place and very professional. As good a range and as well displayed as any good furniture shop. Expensive though because everything is imported. Furniture is weird here. We have some of the best wood and carpenters in the world, but they just haven't grasped sofas. We'll be doing more furniture shopping later so hang on. Anyway, Colette picked the Paradox Cocoa and we've put up a picture here. This is a catalogue shot. Our new pad
Rain on our first day in the new placeHappy Hibiscus the first morning We are so grateful to finally be comfortable. Well almost. You see, the house is hot. Very hot. It got up to 41degrees celcius one afternoon inside the house. This is a problem. Not only does the house get hot, but the floors, the walls and furniture heat up too. This has made everything a little tricky for us, but we love the place and have a really nice landlady who is trying to help us sort it all out. It makes sure we spend a lot of time outside, which is great and we've got a yard here that we and the dogs enjoy.

Maya getting into having a yard

Cultivating aloe vera
Anyway, back to moving and furniture. So, we bought the sofa and asked for it to be delivered on a certain date the following week. Sofa was delivered perfectly on time and in great shape. We also had to get a bed. We figured that since we plan to buy a place and live here permanently, that we might as well invest in a really good bed. It just arrived in the middle of writing this blog and it hasn't been put together yet, but we've taken a quick picture of the headboard just so that we can smugly rub in what a beautiful tropical, custom made, mixed hardwood bed we've had made. We could also rub in how much we paid for it, but we'll just let you drool.

Our new king sized headboard
So, the bed was made beautifully to our specs, the sofa turns up on time and of course we need some men to move us. So Colette calls a number she has been given by a friend. She tells the guy on the end of the phone to bring two more guys to our address on Friday at 10am. He says fine. By Thursday we decided we didn't want to rush too much - which is the effect life in Belize has on you - and called the guy again. Can we change it to Saturday? No problem at all. They turned up on time and had us moved in within 1 1/2 hours. How is that for service? We also had the cable tv and internet all connected on the same day. Everyone came when they said they would and everything worked.

Belize Barbie greets you at our new front door

We are sharing our porch with this baby iguana
It's not been all work. We found a little dog on the street. She was so cute. After a couple of days of asking around we put up posters and ads and found her owner. Her name was Angel and she was adorable. After the poster went out, we got calls from people all over Belize, just wanting to find out if she was OK. Check out the poster and pics.

Devil meets Angel

The poster that got Angel homeThose of you who know Midas will also know that she is no Angel herself. Her new favourite sport is hunting, chasing and killing a really cool lizard called the Jesus Lizard. The reason they are called this is because they actually can run across water. They also are very good at playing dead and this is where Midas gets her thrills. She can kill the same lizard ten times and it just hops back up to life when it thinks she isn't looking. Shame some of Angel's disposition didn't rub off on her.

The Jesus Lizard

We also managed a fun snorkel trip with our wonderful neighbours and their family. We went with one of our favourite snorkel guides, Tulu. We have to pinch our own bottoms every time we get the chance to go out on the water. It really is like it seems on TV. Bliss.

The Caribbean Sea - there is nothing like it

During this trip Maya realised that we didn't have an unfortunate party picture to put up this month, so she has provided the shot.

Maya offers herself up as the unfortunate party picture shot

We have amazing friends here and they have been dropping by to see our new pad. One of them brought us a healthy little mint plant (thank you Cindy) and another has brought us a Basil (sorry Diane, no picture), so it will be Mohitos and pizza all round before long.

Our first herbs from Cindy

We've been spending a lot of time in the garden and it is so nice to be outside (especially when it is hotter indoors than out). We have bananas just about ready to pick. We can't wait. We eat a lot of fruit here, banana, papaya, mango most days. But to grow your own is just dreamy.

Bananas growing in our own back yard

This week we have banana pie, banana burritos, banana salad, banana bread...

We did buy some apple bananas to help us be patient while our own nanas grow. Check out the smallest banana ever. Maya had to eat it after we made sure we could share it with you by taking snaps.

Maya eats the smallest banana in the world

The smallest banana in the world measured up to a Bic
Well as it is so hot, it is time to put this blog to bed. More will be coming soon as August is going to be a jam packed month for us - both of our birthdays and lots of other exciting things. Not only that, we have a fab new blog site to play with. Stay tuned.