California Dreaming

Hi all,

just back from an amazing holiday in California and one we'll not forget in a hurry. Although having said that we went to so many places Simone is already struggling to remember them all.  Back to work today so not time to write loads I'll do that later, but in the mean time here are some photos.

Photos from California

Later

B & S

Time flies!

Well the months have rolled on by and our blogging... well hasn't. We only have seven teaching weeks of this school year left and will be another school year complete. Well since Belize in November we spent the Xmas hols in Honduras, which was great but a little damper than we had expected from the Caribe. Still, we decided to embrace it and spent a few days by a beautiful river and did some rafting which was amazing. Made our way back home a little sooner than had planned but cats were pleased. This term though long seems to have flown by and working weeks have been broken up by various visitors so lots of nice weekends at the beach, in Guate, at the lake etc and evenings hanging out with family and friends.

Ben's "extra curricular programme" continues with a new activity too: Irish dancing (unfortunately it clashed with my Spanish class so I wasn't able to partake!) watch out Riverdance. He also played against and saved two (?) goals from "Magico" Gonzalez, Salvadoran football legend, which has been one of his highlights of the year. I continue to have a less demanding after school programme involving books, hammock and TV. Pleased I have been able to now cross a few more books of the "to read" list.

We're off to California on Sat for our Easter hols and very exited about it.So will aim to do some more blogging about that though who can say when! By the time we're back it'll be rainy season again and time for us to visit Europe again. Aiming to arrive in Europe late June.

In the meantime you can enjoy some video footage from the Irish night in which Ben was literally all singing, and all dancing.

Band & Dance

hasta luego, love Sim and Ben xx

ps Anyone want to come and house and cat sit in the Tropics?/ know anyone who might want to ?!

pps Fidel,Rossi and Chamba are getting big and enjoy a bit of mayhem, recent antics have involved, picture frames on shelves, birds, insects, spaghetti, wine decanter, loaves of bread and their food jar.

Unbelizeable! Parte dos.

So we left Tikal and a couple of hours and rather bumpy roads later we got to the border. Getting into Belize is always a bit of a pain, more formal than the other borders, officers on a complete power trip, and having to take all your luggage out of the car and through in person make it more annoying. Maybe that's something to do with its British history?! Anyway finally got all that faff done and hit the road again through Belize. Driving through Belize is rather different, the roads and indeed the whole country in comparison to Salva seems empty and as I learnt on the journey Belize is only a little bit bigger than El Salvador yet its population is considerably less at just under a mere 300,00 compared to nearly 7 million here. So it seems like a quiet relaxed place and the speed bumps everywhere keep it that way! We travelled down to the south and on the way passed by orange and banana plantations and a lot of damage from Hurricane Richard that hit the week before, lots of enormous trees down. We had planned on visiting one of the National Parks but was closed due to damage. Anyway we arrived in Sunny Placencia (well just outside) and found Jasper and Caroline, (friends from UK) and promptly hit the hotel bar for Happy Hour or rather Happy Evening, Belikins (the local brew) and local rum all round. Think that evening was a bit blurred for everyone!

We spent the next day relaxing and once sun bathing was interrupted by rain headed into to "town" for some lunch, a stroll and sorting out the dive trips. Day after that we were up early for a boat trip up Monkey River which meets the sea a little further down the coast. Our guide Jason grew up around there and had an amazing knowledge of all the wildlife, local history, plants and medicinal jungle plants. The trip was brilliant. From the boat we saw, iguanas, various birds inc lots of herons, crocodiles and bats. Many of them were very well camouflaged but the guide was always able to spot them and then would take us a while to find them! Then we moored up for a little walk in the jungle and were greeted by a group of howler monkeys... this time we could actually see them above us. Amazing. In the jungle he showed us various plants and trees, I only wish I could remember everything he told us about them all. Then back down the river for a tasty lunch cooked by Miss Alice, and back to Placencia through the mangroves and estuary.

That evening we probably drank some more rum and/or Belikin and ate some fish as was the general pattern of most evenings.

Next day was another early start, this time to head out to Glover's Reef a coral atoll for some diving and snorkelling for me. The ride out was fine until we hit a lot of rain and got a soaking, still didn't matter too much as were going to get wet anyway, but once we got to the reef the sun was shining, crystal clear water was warm and the tropical sealife was out and waiting for us. Just snorkelling I saw loads of amazing brightly coloured fish, again wish I could remember all the names but I do remember the ray and turtle that swam just below us and the barracuda who seemed to be following us .The others had a good dive and saw a lot of similar sealife and a shark

We had lunch on the jetty in the sunshine and at this point Ben and I were also pleased to discover that you can get squash in Belize, yes as in the beverage. I didn't think I'd ever miss the funny taste of sugary fruity water but surprising how good and refreshing that familiar acidic taste is in 30 plus degrees when so used to drinking water the rest of the time. Also found Heinz Baked Beans, fig rolls, Rich Tea and Dairy Milk allegedly from Cadbury Brum in the local supermarket so stocked up. Guess this time was grateful for Belize's British influence!

After two busy days of adventures we spent our last couple of days hanging out with Jasp and Caz, reading, beach games , scrabble, uno and of course with our friends Belikin and Rum. The week went by too quickly and suddenly it was Saturday and we had to leave the lovely Caribbean blue skies and sunshine (which had been hiding the day before) and start our trip back. Again it all went pretty smoothly. We made it to Rio Dulce in Guatemala by night fall, spent the night there and had another early start so we were back home by midday and had some time to chill before Back to Skool. We were greeted by the kittens who were waiting for us at the door. We felt a bit bad about leaving them but they were fine and are thriving and getting bigger by the day... though I still can't believe they'll ever be as big as some of the cats we saw in Belize! So... another great roadtrip.

As I finish typing this Ben is strumming away on his guitar, his latest instrument (which doesn't seem to scare the cats as much as the drums and I don't have to move away either!) This week also saw The Maestros' ("The teachers" or maybe homage to that classic British car?) first gig at the school Guy Fawkes night. They were ace and wowed the crowed with some British classics. There's talk of them playing at some bar soon...watch this space. I still find Bonfire Night dressed in a T-shirt and flipflops kind of strange though I did see one kid in a wooly hat which seemed a bit more familiar!

Well think that's probably more than enough to read on a screen....

Hasta luego,

Sim and Ben xx

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjudge/sets/72157625374002356/

Unbelizeable! Part1

I've probably over used this Belize tourism pun already but there you go. Seeing as I'm pretty much weekly blogging for school, thought it was time I did some of my own life blogging. (and Mr Extra Curricular King has been rather busy this week!)

So half term finally arrived, not before time! The 11 week first "half term" at the beginning of the year is pretty full on so we were ready for the break. As tempting as it was to not get up at 5.30, the first day of the hols we were actually up at 4.30 to hit road for first big stint up to Tikal in Guatemala. Leaving so early meant we missed a lot of mayhem on the roads, got to see sun coming up over the volcanoes and were in Guatemala by 7 am. Journey was all pretty straightforward and calm and we made it up to Tikal by the afternoon.

Tikal is the site of a Mayan settlement that has gradually been restored since the 50s, well I say settlement but in its heyday was more of a city with a population of up to 90,000 (no-one is really sure exactly) hard to believe really, it seems such a calm quiet place in the middle of the jungle...until the bus loads of visitors arrive! Although it's such a big site that pretty quickly you wonder off into to jungle again and seems like no one else is there.

It's very impressive, you walk through the jungle and suddenly you come to these immense pyramid structures and amaze at how back in the day they managed to build them and so deep in the jungle. The first day we wondered around in late afternoon saw the sunset from one of the larger/largest temple (also featured in Star Wars Episode 4 ) over the jungle and strolled and stumbled back through the dark jungle and wondered why I decided not to bring the torch! Luckily the guards were leaving too so made it all a bit easier, who also told us that contrary to what people think it's not the jaguars that are the night time danger but rather the snakes that can cross your path!

We stayed in the jungle at a hotel not too far from the site entrance- the whole area around the site is a protected National park. Was nice not to have to go far and just be in the jungle for the night. After the long day, we conked out pretty early. At some point before dawn Ben was awoken by a rather strange loud animal noise which sounded like was coming from the trees right above our cabana. When Ben woke me up to hear it I was amazed I'd managed to sleep through it! We later found out it was howler monkey/s... my new favourite wild animal. (the kittens are domestic) We woke up again shortly after dawn and went for an early morning stroll around a different part of the site, eyes peeled for jaguars. We finally spotted some spider monkeys playing around and having some breakfast, such interesting animals to watch. I think the kittens have increased my animal appreciation!

We found temple V, known for being the steep one, and somehow despite the vertigo I managed to get to the top via the pretty much vertical ladder. Photos don't really capture the height but was a case of don't look behind or down. The view from the top was amazing, above the mass of jungle treetops even if I was a little wobbly and had visions of having to be rescued from the top. After the initial turning round, going down the ladder was a little easier than going up. By 9am it was getting pretty hot and we were ready for breakfast in the jungle and carrying on with our trip to Belize. We by no means saw all of Tikal- its huge place and wouldn't want to try and see it all at once, especially in the heat of the day and also means we can go back again sometime (with any of you?!)

Photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjudge/sets/72157625335521346/

Cat update

Really nothing going on at the moment. School has been really busy, we are now in our 4th weekend without the car while the head gaskets get replaced. What is taking them so long? So we haven't been anywhere interesting.

So I thought I'd post a little video of the kittens so you can see how they are growing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyn_aplqMc4

Enjoy

B & S

Weather

Howdy all,

A quick update as we haven't written anything for a couple of weeks. The kittens are growing fast as you might expect and have nearly doubled in weight in just over a week. The cricket season has started and my team the Chiefs won the first game of the season convincingly. My first game as captain so obvioously very pleased.

The biggest thing recently though, has been the weather. The last four days it has been raining almost non stop thanks to Tropical Storm Matthew. This looks set to continue for abolut another week as hot on the heels of Matthew is another area of low pressure that is stuck over the West Caribbean and Central America. People are saying this is the wettest wet season for many a year and we are currently at Orange Alert. No stories of any bad landslides yet and hopefully it'll stay that way, but if this rain continues it's hard to see that happening.

Roll on the dry seasopn and now only 4 and a bit weeks until holidays and road trip to Belize. Can't wait.

Laters

B & S

Kittens

Simmie and I have rescued 3 kittens from certain death. Very cute and very small.

This one is called #46 Valentino Rossi Juez Cleaver or Rossi for short.

On the left is Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz Juez Cleaver or Fidel for short. The one on the right is called Salvador Quebec Pablo Rodney Juez Cleaver or Salvador for short.