First off, let me apologize for not writing anything sooner, but after our trek across, North America and a major chunk of Central America, Mic, the dogs and I were pooped. And I mean pooped with a capital P. We have now had a little bit of rest and recharged to start the next chapter in our lives.
Most of you would have probably thought that we were going to take it easy when we arrived. Well, so did we. Ha - fooled you! When we arrived we immediately started doing some work on the house. I think we were prompted for a number of reasons; a) it was not in the truck and b) it was good to be doing something aside from sitting. We replaced boards on the deck, replaced most of the front entrance stairs, hired a crew to prep the site for the arrival of the container and had them string fishing line in the eaves to keep the pesky bats at bey. More about the bats and some of our other local wildlife later though.
With the weather here on Roatan, we were advised by our local handyman to make sure the container was elevated off the ground for a number of reasons including flooding during the rainy season and pest - no big ones, but mostly the insects. The pilings are ready and we await the arrival of our container.
When we left Canada we were requested by our logistics company to prepare a fully detailed inventory of our belongings. We wound up with 143 boxes from the house and 145 from the shop - that doesn't seem fair that the shop had more boxes than our house - must be a guy thing, right Mic?
Oh well, everything was carefully packed and loaded. We were told that our container would be arriving March 15, tomorrow. Can't wait! No, don't get too excited as we learned just last Friday that
we needed to have a value added to every line item on both the household and the shop inventories.
Well, that pretty much ruined our plans for the weekend.
However, when we received the copies of our inventories from the Honduran customs authority, it had been translated into Spanish and we had to input our values on each line. Thank goodness we did not have to convert every item into Lempiras, the Honduran currency. The funniest thing however, they asked us to check their Spanish translations?!? Thank goodness for English-Spanish-Spanish-English dictionaries. On a side note, my Spanglish is definitely improving and I actually ordered my desk and office chair last week mostly in Spanish. I have a long way to go though, but it is fun learning our new language. Mic is reading the subtitles on Netflix, so he is improving too.
The dogs are loving their new home and enjoy running throughout the yard and chasing any passerbys in our neighbourhood. They already have a few fans and a few neighbours that laugh. It is pretty funny, as we have quite the menagerie right now with Paige and Willie our Jack Russells; Molly our huge and growing Doberman puppy (the flatulance has improved thank goodness), and our tenants two island dogs; Diego and Annabelle. They are quite the motley crew.
The dogs have discovered some of the new wildlife we have including bats, geckos and iguanas. In fact, Willy who has decided he is my office dog, keeps looking for the gecko that chirps to us every morning. Yes, it is common to have geckos in your house in the islands - they too eat pesky little insects. Our gecko, Juan, as Willy and I have dubbed him, is our new mascot for our home, Casa Tropical.
Bats are also very common in the Caribbean and they are good to have around as they eat lots of insects and are pretty harmless; just ugly as sin. Since we bought our house a year and a half ago, we have been trying to figure out how to keep the bats around, but out of the eaves; especially over the pool where the inconsiderate little things would leave pits from fruit in the pool, and of course make a huge mess.
Well, this week, we learned how to deal with bats. Yes, you were right Ed! Today's tip is about how to deal with bats; fishing line. You can put it in rows, on diagonals or any other pattern which keeps them from getting their little claws into the corners and crevices of the delves of your roof or anywhere they should not be. Since we had it installed, no more messes around the deck. Once Mic is set up with his workshop, we are planning on building some bat houses, which will give them a place to hang out away from the house, but they will stay around to deal with the mosquitos and other bugs. Now we just need to do the carport - the truck is kind of a mess now if you know what I mean.
I too had a funny instance yesterday as I prepared to vacuum the pool. The pool had not been used in the last few weeks and we thought that now that we had the bat problem under control, we would clean out the pool, fill it up and give it a good vacuum. As I went to fill the vacuum hose with water, out jumps a ting black gecko onto my arm and he looks up at me as if to say...lady, you are disturbing my siesta...he then proceeds to jump off my arm swim around the pool, got out and scurried away in the sunlight.
That is about all for now, but please check back every few days for more installations of All Paths Lead to Roatan!
So glad you're back to blogging again. And thanks for the tip on the bats. Might have to try that at our place!
ReplyDeleteHanks Statia Girl. Glad you are finding our blog useful.
ReplyDeleteThe green one is an Anole and they never come in the house except by accident. They can change color to a chocolate brown and the males have a bright red flap under their chin that they show when they are upset, challenging or excited. The bob their heads and then hold their head up to show it off. Pretty cool. The inside geckos are a boring putty color but they do chirp - sometimes insanely loud. Oh, and they also do little poops on things that drive Sergia crazy. Also Corta goes crazy when she sees any gecko, leaping 6' off the ground to try to get them.
ReplyDeleteThat is funny Ed. Yes, the green ones are beautiful. The little one that jumped onto me was almost black, but pretty darn cute.thankls for reading.
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