gone with the wind

well folks, hurricane richard has been and gone last night. it hit the belizean coast around 5pm or so and was  90mph winds, when it got to us in cayo it was probably 60mph, which isn't hurricane strength anymore. actually to our surprise we slept through most of it. it was very windy and swirly around 1-2.30am, and we heard a few cracks as branches got blown off trees in the garden. then it went very silent and calm around 3am, robert said we must be in the eye of it now - this kind of freaked me out thinking we were surrounded by it. so we were expecting it to kick in again maybe an hour later, but it never did - so either we are still in it and it is a really gigantic eye, or it was just the edge we got and the eye didn't pass over us here. i think it is the latter. power has only just come back on, around 24 hours after going off at 8pm last night, so i haven't known what's happening today in terms of where the storm is now etc. having no power makes one much more creative, i played my guitar earlier outside (have to make the most of the daylight hours when there's no electric lights), and did some tidying up and a few code word puzzles (like a crossword but with no clues, just numbers instead). i just had dinner at len and cathy's next door, and the power went off again during cooking, but came back on fairly soon, so we still go to eat our pasta. my head torch came in really useful for this minor crisis.

in the middle of the stormy night i had remembered i'd left a sock hanging on the washing line. pah, that'll be long gone robert said. but lo and behold, the sock remained this morning. perhaps due to its smallness (it was a small ankle sock with little cartoon dogs on it), the wind had just gone around it instead of pinging it off the line - i bet a bath towel wouldn't have lasted. i believe some of the wooden shack type houses in the city got blown down, but apparently there weren't any deaths, which is good. the island didn't suffer any damage apparently, as the storm hit central belize and missed the north and south bits which is where the island is (in the south). the national storm evacuation organisation here that decides when to evacuate the islands and open the hurricane shelters, is called nemo - i guess this stands for national emergency something something. i think it's funny that nemo is latin for nobody - i guess this isn't a widely known fact otherwise more people would find it funny too. from the island they called the coastguard to see if they would help with getting the (lots of) workers off the island, and the coastguard said no, you've got enough time, do it yourself. nice. thanks coastguard. we had to call them before with a minor emergency a few months ago, but it was saturday night and they were obviously out partying as nobody answered the phone...

here is a list of animals we have had in the house recently:

a tarantula - twice - the same one, we're pretty sure. the first time he was in the bathroom, the next time he was in the kitchen. we figured out where he was getting in and blocked it up with some kitchen paper.

a frog - he was in robert's shoe, a shoe that hadn't been worn for a while. he tried to shoo him out of the house, but gave up pretty quickly and told me that the frog was in the house somewhere as he couldn't get him out. i found him today, the frog, by the shoes and shooed him outside with the broom. this is the main purpose of having a broom in belize, to shoo things out of the house with. this frog is pretty docile and slow so it took a while to steer him in the right direction.

a bat - in our bedroom of all places. i have heard noises in the roof and in the walls here, and we sent francisco (the guy that mows our lawn for us) up into the roof space with his machete. from the amount of noise i'd heard up there, i was expecting him to report back that a pack of wild dogs were living there. he reported back that he had found one bat. francisco speaks only spanish, bat in spanish is murcielago, a pretty cool word. i was amazed that it was just one bat making all that noise. the other night i had just got up to go to the bathroom and when i came back in i saw something drop from somewhere onto my pillow. i yelped and grabbed robert (formerly asleep), and said help help. i didn't know what it was, until it flapped around the room a bit, then flapped out and we never saw him again. seriously i don't know where he is and i have looked around the house, and there are only 4 rooms and there aren't exactly any hiding places. mystery bat.

some dogs - luz next door has 3 dogs - the newest one is negra from the island, we brought her up here in the back of the truck as she had been eating the wildlife on the island and had been banished. she's really sweet, and always tries to get in the house, but we don't really want the dogs in the house. i let her poke her nose in for a bit and look around, and i always feel bad for squashing her nose in the door to get her out. the other 2 dogs are called chica - little girl, and chicita - very little girl. they are still getting used to negra being around and sometimes fight. we are trying to teach negra not to run after us when we leave in the truck because one of these days she will end up squashed on the road if she doesn't learn.

it reminds me of the old lady who lives in the shoe with all those animals around. there are obviously others that don't really need a special mention, like tiny ants, and medium ants, and flying ants, and spindly spiders, and those weird wormy centipede things. nice.

i bought some chocolate pop tarts as a treat the other day, from belize city. i had 2 for breakfast and felt sick. i think 1 is my limit. this morning we had got up at 530 to go check the storm damage, and there was no power so no way to toast my pop tarts so i went without. robert had secured the hangar with steel wires to make the walls less blow away able. we were expecting at least a ton of flooding in there from the rain, but nothing actually happened at all. this was good news as there is a lot of stuff in there.

things i have learnt recently, mainly from watching a david attenborough show - i think it was planet earth, this is a pretty amazing show -

a whale eats 1 tonne of krill per day (krill is plankton basically)
krill is the most abundant species by weight, on the planet - good job too as those whales need to eat a lot of them
the himalayas were created when india crashed into tibet, they are still growing (this i can't quite believe, but sir attenborough wouldn't get a fact like that wrong)

some questions i still have:
why do pandas have black eyes?
why do whales have white on the underside of their fins?
how old is david attenborough these days?

and now i am watching an interview with george clooney on tv, talking about world democracy quite convincingly. i tried to watch seinfeld earlier, but the channel information list was wrong, and seinfeld wasn't on even though it said it was - this was pretty upsetting for me. we watched half of the jane austen book club on sunday, until the satellite signal went down due to the storm coming, this was also upsetting, but not too much. you have to get used to these upsets when living in belize, they are pretty constant. and now i have just heard the funny noises in the wall again - they are always worse when robert isn't here - he is on the island for a few days this week.

that's all for now, adios x

flying flying and more flying, and a tarantula

here's biggles ready to go flying!

a bird's eye view of some local cows with palm tree in foreground.

dam it. the latest in the 3 dams near us, this is the vaca dam. pretty mucky water, i think it's the time of year.

there goes mick over the green green fields of cayo.

me and mick flying into the sunset, followed by robert and belinda with the camera.

kim and biggles.

me and kim and the truck outside our house in cayo.

mick me and biggles and the 2 planes.

me and mick before takeoff.

the hills and clouds and sky and a bit of the windshield.

mick flying over succotz.

.

our wing and mick off in his plane in the distance

and again.

that's us to the left of the tree.

and last but not least, mr hairy tarantula and robert's hand in an attempt to show some perspective

cookies and spiders

for some strange reason my computer has gone all european, it keeps automatically redirecting google.com to google france all in french, and the yahoo page goes into german. i thought this might be some internet hacking by some angry non english speaking person who wants the international language of communication to be something other than english. but i think that was just my conspiracy theory paranoia getting the better of me. perhaps it's just a setting on the computer but je ne peux pas le figurer out....

so last monday me and robert were down in placencia - he was headed to the island for the week, and we were  doing some banking at belize bank before he went. there was a girl outside the bank, with braids in her hair and lots of homemade bracelets on. she was at the pay phone and had the phone in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, about to call somebody. it was my friend kim, and she was about to call me to say she was here! quel coincidence. i knew she was in the region, and was heading that way from livingston, guatemala, but i hadn't heard from her since my last email. she has been cycling from panama for the last 8 months, she started on a macmillan charity bike ride which went from panama to nicaragua, through costa rica, and from then on had been on her own. (we met on the mexico bike ride in march 2009). she is very cool, has been doing art projects with children along the way including 3 months painting a huge mural on a hostel wall in salvador. she is very chilled out and always smiling, which is pretty essential when you're doing such a huge ride on your own. she's met loads of nice people along the way and not had any trouble being a single female cyclist, and i think it's so inspiring that she's done all this on her own. kim, i salute you.

we hung out for the day in placencia and robert headed to the island to check on the work out there and supervise it. tuesday i took the bus back to cayo, with friends belinda (the yoga teacher) and jude (her husband) - they were headed to guatemela to look at tikal before heading back to canada. belinda was looking forward to eating sushi and other such things that don't exist in belize. kim set off on her bike towards dangriga, and from then to cayo to see us again. i hung out in cayo at the house there, did some cycling, spent most of my time at the lovely neighbours - len and cathy from canada. they are staying in belize for another 6 months, then maybe heading to uruguay. cathy makes the best cookies i have ever tasted anywhere in the world, i'm going to get the recipe from her. my baking tends not to be too successful, apart from that amazing loaf of brown bread i once made - remember helie? (helie was pretty upset as she was teaching me how to make bread and my loaf rose more than hers even though i'd been complaining the whole time what a procedure it was and couldn't we just go buy a loaf instead - i said it was beginner's luck - maybe it was reverse psychology and the bread wanted to prove me wrong by being amazing).

kim turned up again on the friday morning having cycled up the hummingbird and stayed with some interesting people along the way. friday i cycled to belmopan to meet robert who was headed back to cayo from the island. he got there before me, but fair enough he was in a car. it took me 1hr 45 mins, not too bad, it's 26 miles more or less. a little hilly but nothing serious. i had to stop to give my poor feet a break after an hour or so, they get really sore due to all their silly problems. i'm hoping this will sort out in the next 6 months and stop being a problem altogether then. 

we have had a tarantula in the house on 2 occasions recently. the first time he was sitting right by the toilet on the wall in the bathroom. we yelped a bit, and then robert put him a box and took him outside. we showed him to len and cathy first. tarantulas are pretty docile, they don't tend to run around really fast like little spiders do. for this reason i don't mind them too much. they really aren't aggressive, and will only bite you if they're really provoked apparently. i wouldn't want one in my house generally, but all in all i think they're cool. we found a really huge cricket type bug at the hangar which was pretty crazy too, he had bright red wings underneath when he flapped them, and long spindly legs. kind of like those praying mantis things.

in other news - we have eaten a lot of pancakes with orange and sugar; the climate has changed and got much cooler and less humid - this really really helps - we sleep with a blanket on now and no fan on; i have read a book called always a game - by a guy who made his living from gambling, and who len and cathy met through a house swap holiday thing, it's a really interesting book. i am now reading our man in havana by graham greene, and might carry on with it now with a pancake. we had an amazing ultralight flight yesterday morning. will post some pics on the next blog.

over and out x