On December 19th 3 guests from Poland arrived and Andy moved into his new apartment (greenhouse). The guest’s names are Bob and Marlena and Marlena’s father Hendrik.
December 20
Life in the jungle: I started my morning in the coconut field. It’s been a long time since I chopped in the coconut field. Marlina helped de-vine fruit trees in the coconut field. After lunch, I headed to the ponds to cut grass. Once again, a very long time since I worked at the ponds. I found some jaguar scat at the ponds. It started to rain and then I broke my lawnmower. Today was overcast and cool all day until it started to rain in the afternoon.
Baby Brown or Striped Basilisk
December 21
Life in the jungle: I started my morning in the coconut field, that was until Pepper joined me (she escaped). Pepper escapes the yard often. Marlina helped in the coconut field again. After lunch, I headed to the village for new rubber boots. My boots sprung a leak the day before. I also picked out lumber for Andy to make a bunk bed. Somehow that was the end of the day. No rain today. This morning was overcast and then turned nice and then back to overcast.
December 22
Life in the jungle: I started my morning in the coconut field. Along with Marlina, Bob and Hendrik also helped in the field this morning. The lumber for Andy’s bunk bed was delivered from the hardware store. I then took Bob and Marlina on a tour of the farm. I then took a late afternoon nap and was awakened when I was told cyclists from Austria showed up a day early. Just the day before I received a request for hosting by a cyclist. Things are so chaotic right now, what’s one more guest? Except he showed up a day early. There was no real rain today but it was overcast and cool all day. The mud is getting a little irritating.
The chicken coops, a complete muddy mess
December 23
Life in the jungle: This morning I gave Frans-Peter (the cyclist) a tour of the farm. After breakfast Andy and I built his bunk bed for his apartment. We finished right before dark. There was just a light sprinkle or two today. There was rain tonight.
December 24
Life in the jungle: Today was a nice day all day. Today is also supposed to be my day off but with a house full of people working outside to escape the chaos only made sense. Besides laundry, I spent a good portion of the day installing some trim on the apartment. Not a lot of pieces of trim but a bunch of pieces that had challenging angle cuts. Today was the last day the Collard Arcari Toucans were in the yard. They had been eating seeds from a tree behind the house every day since the 18th.
Adding trim to Andy’s apartment
Collard Arcari Toucansin the backyard
December 25
Life in the jungle: Today the house became empty—first the Austrian left to continue his bike ride to Panama. Shortly thereafter Andy left for Hopkins for a few days. The Polish wanted to have a conversation with me about what living on the farm might look like for them. They left to further explore Belize with no plans to return during this trip. (A pleasant surprise.) Almost a week of chaos that overall went well to an empty house; and on Christmas day. Nice!
Frans-Peter continues his travels to Panama. He would arrive in Panama on March 15, 2024
And then I got a call from Jamie (son of Joseph from across the river) about bringing me a plate of food. I like Joseph and Jamie. I said sure, and to let me know when he was coming. In the meantime, I was able to completely clean the house and move my stuff back to the main bedroom all before I heard back from Jamie. Except he tricked me into coming out to the village for Christmas dinner. It’s a good thing I like Jamie. I visited Verna Mae on my way home and biked home in the dark.
December 26
Life in the jungle: Today was a day to allow me to recoup from a crazy week and a half of chaos and perhaps a bit too much drinking yesterday. It took a bit of effort and motivation to get myself in gear this morning. The day started overcast but turned into a nice day. The muddy conditions are horrendous but I feel like things may be starting to dry up. I spent the day doing small jobs to prepare to get back to regular work tomorrow. I fixed a flat tire on my spare bike, cleaned my bike tools, and planted a few seeds (Sapadilla, lobster claw heliconia, and some kind of palm). I also made a few material lists for some remaining projects that require lumber. I also did a little computer organizing.
Sapadilla fruit
December 27
Life in the jungle: I started my morning chopping in the coconut field. Thanks to the help from the Polish visitors last week, I am making progress. After lunch, I spent the entire day researching social media scheduling platforms. I hate the idea of paying to share social media posts but if I hope to monetize my channels and grow my audience substantially, I need to churn out a lot of short reels. There are a lot of platforms out there now. It took pretty much the whole day to research. After a full day’s research, I have decided on Socialbee. Andy returned home after spending a few days in Hopkins. The weather was good all day. The mud is finally starting to dry up.
Mud everywhere
December 28
Life in the jungle: Last night we had a river pump problem. This morning, we discovered Andy forgot to glue a PVC joint from last week and it popped loose. Andy needed to put in an Amazon order. I decided to add to the order in preparation for starting to bike tour again (soon). [I can report almost a year later I have not had a chance to do any bike touring in Belize and have no idea when I will get the time.]
After over two weeks of not posting goal coaching posts, I posted Unlocking Success: The Power of Persistence and Grit to Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, and my website. I then focused on connecting my social media scheduler to my platforms. Can nothing go smoothly? I hate platform learning curves.
There was a tiny bit of rain this evening.
The Central American Cribo snake caught last week
December 29
Life in the jungle: Today was extremely frustrating. One of my more frustrating days in a while. I continued working on this social media scheduler but had extreme difficulty with upload speeds. Even though I got a bunch of short reels edited (while waiting for slow upload speeds) I feel confident that I wasted an entire day. On top of that, it was overcast and quite cool (cold). In the evening there was rain. [In a few weeks I would abandon the whole idea of a social media scheduler.]
Belize Part 105 (Dec 14 to 19)
Of Note: At this time I am currently 11 to 12 months behind in posting my Belize blog posts due to having no internet for the first 18 months of living in Belize.
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of words or people that may or may not be part of this blog post. This glossary will be at the bottom of every blog post for Belize.
Wayne – He is the son of the original owners of the farm (both owners are deceased). The original farm was two – 30 acre parcels minus two – ¾ acre parcels for my house. In 2017 Wayne sold me 40 acres of land from the original 60 acres (one 30 acre parcel plus 10 acres from the second parcel). Wayne lives in his parent’s house and has a few cows on his remaining 18 acres of land.
The ponds – I have two large (300ft long x 50ft wide x 10ft deep) ponds on my 30 acre parcel of land which is basically a jungle. I have about 60 coconut trees (mostly mature) around the ponds. In my first two years of living in Belize, I also planted about 250 assort fruit tree seedlings (Lime, jackfruit, custard apple, pomegranate, and avocado).
The coconut field – I have about 400 coconut trees planted (various growth states) on about 3 acres of cleared land of my 10 acre parcel. I have planted about 350 assorted fruit trees (lemon, starfruit, mango, soursop, cashew, lime, orange) all raised from seed since my arrival in Belize in 2021.
The river lot – my house sits on an ¾ acre lot. I have a second joining ¾ acre lot that allows me river frontage on the Belize River. I call that my river lot.
The dry – Belize has two main seasons. The rainy season and the dry (no rain). The wet is obviously the rainy season.
Chopping – using my machete to clear brush, vines, weeds, and unwanted trees. Generally, when I chop I am removing unwanted vegetation around my baby fruit trees.
Andy – A fellow Canadian who rode his dirt bike from Canada to Belize. When I offered him the use of an apartment that I recently built and the use of my greenhouse Andy decided to stay in Belize permanently and start a hot sauce company here.
