Time To Be Social

This past week was a busy week...for me. Some weeks not much is happening except lots of rain so we tend to stay put. Don is happy to do so;  he's writing two books. I enjoy the time to do some genealogy and have been writing up our family history so it will make sense to our children and grandchild(ren??). But, I often miss my social activities back home, so this week was a real treat for me.

Once a month, some of the gringas (ex-pat women) get together for lunch. They began doing this just after we left in the spring, so I had not had an opportunity to join them. A friend from church wanted to go, so I agreed to meet her there. I "knew" some of these women from the various Roatan forums but had never actually met them. There were about two dozen ladies there, many of them own or manage businesses around the island and one is a former Olympic swimmer.  Two of the women came from the very far eastern end of the island and it took them well over an hour to drive in. The calle principal, or main road, is a two lane blacktop to about mid-island, then it is unpaved to the eastern end of the island. Remember, this is rainy season, which makes the drive all the more challenging. Next month we are meeting at the most western part of the island. These ladies have said, jokingly, that they may have to camp out on the beach! It was fun to meet so many new people, and we had a great lunch at Blue Bahia. Kent is usually closed on Tuesdays but opened the restaurant just for our private party. He even served monkey-la-las...on the house!

Later in the week, I was invited to play bunco with a group of women. My friend, Debi, has been playing bunco with this group for several months, and they needed an extra person to fill in for someone.
What a hoot! I used to play with a group back home but had forgotten how much fun it can be. There were 16 other women there. We met at a very high-priced condo in West End that was furnished but unoccupied. Our hostess, a real estate agent, arranged for us to use the place. We all had to carefully pick our way around the potholes and mud of the beach road, walk along the beach a short way and then take a cobbled walkway down to the end of this ironshore lined spit of land. Not possible to drive right up to the place. I was thankful that I had brought a flashlight. Don't want to step on a tarantula!

I knew 4 or 5 of the women already, either from a current bible study or a former one, but the rest were new to me. One face looked familiar and was...Daphne, the owner of Besos where Don and I had lunch the other day and where the above photo was taken. I met a number of young teachers from the alternative school, a massage therapist (good to know!), a gardener/landscaper (also good to know), a French Canadian singer (who sounds a lot like Celine Dion),  and reconnected with a couple of women whom I had not seen in awhile. I really enjoyed the evening. Bunco is less about playing the game and more about the socializing...and eating! Typically, you are assigned something to bring: an appetizer, beverage, something sweet or salty for each table. We had so much food, it was ridiculous! Each person put 100 lemipiras (about $5.) into the pot and the two winners (most buncos, most wins) split the pot at the end of the evening. We didn't play late. The younger, single women wanted to go dancing! Debi and I went home.

This will be a busy week around the island. There are 5 cruise ships due in; 5 chances for our island friends to make some money. Here's the first ship of the week, sailing past our house on a beautiful pastel morning.

Continuing the Walk

Here are some of Don's photos.

 He spotted this long-time resident standing in front of Cannibal's (Mexican restaurant), holding court with some young tourists. Not sure if they were from the cruise ship or were here for a week of diving. At any rate, they were getting quite the education on life on the island.

                                                  Don't you love the nipple rings?

This photo shows the intricate wiring coming into West End. The phone and electric companies like to leave some extra wire rolled up, which is what the circle is on the pole. It really is no wonder that our power goes out so frequently.

A Walk in West End

 Don wanted to go for a walk in West End this morning and take some photos. These are some of my photos, I'll post his next. The dock above was damaged when Hurricane Rina passed by to the east of us.

 Lots of road and sanitation work going on in West End. Things are constantly torn up. The municipal is putting in a sanitation system, water treatment plant and improving the road. All much needed. They dug up the beach road and little side roads to put in the sewer pipes, then filled it all in. Now they're digging all up again to lay water lines above the sewer lines. They've got a system! Most people don't want to see the beach road paved except some of the local residents, but unfortunately, it is going to be paved. The road just won't have the same feel to it.

 Now, who would want to give up large potholes like this? Charming, huh? Seriously, the road is charming when it has been graded and it hasn't rained for awhile.

This is farther down the beach road where it is a muddy mess. The bulldozer is at the far end.

Vehicle traffic can't get past the area where the trenches are being dug (by hand). The tourist buses and taxis are dropping their passengers near the entrance to West End to pick their way through the potholes. Few tourists are venturing down very far, which I'm sure is hurting some of the businesses.  High season has begun. It will be interesting  to see what happens next week when 5 cruise ships will be in, or the following week when 7 ships are expected. 

A New Lake in the Neighborhood

 This newly created "lake" is directly across the road from our church. The recent heavy rains have filled this yard with water.

 Much more rain, and this water will spill over the road and into the missionary inn connected to our church and the pastor's apartment. He's already had mud flow in there once.

 That house is completely surrounded by water and mostly likely flooded inside as well. The "lake" site is for sale, in case you're interested.

The wall where that person is sitting is beside a creek that flows down from the colonia. It looks like a road, but isn't. It is mostly full of mud which also washed down, so the water had to find another outlet....and a lake was formed.

We saw all this as we drove up to French Harbor yesterday to see if the kitchen faucets had come in to Ace Hardware. No, and not only that, the few they had a week ago were gone. We had been assured by an employee 10 days ago that a boat would be in soon carrying all these out of stock faucets. We've learned that they will tell you anything, promise you that it will be in mañana, over and over again. We spoke to the manager yesterday who said a boat would not be in for another week and upon checking, that it would not be bringing the faucet we wanted, but he could special order it for us. He took our e-mail address and phone number to let us know when it does come in. Meanwhile, we're spontaneously blessed with hot water in the kitchen every now and then. We just never know when. Keeps life interesting anyway.

Feeling Soggy

We've been back on the island 3 weeks and 3 days. So far, we've had 19.6 inches of rain. Rainy season is definitely here.

 It's difficult to do laundry. My laundry closet is on this deck which was completely soaked. And those are my clothes lines running across the deck. I've been forced to use the dryer more often, and with electric rates being 7 times as high here compared to St. Louis, you can understand why I'm reluctant.

The view is still pretty, even during a rain. We have had some downpours where there was NO view beyond our deck railing.

Another frequent problem is power outages. We had the power go out five times yesterday and stay out for an hour or more each time. Sometimes it would just barely have come back on when it would go out again. Really hard on those appliances like refrigerators.

We learned that some of our church members who live up in the colonia have had problems. Pastor Chuck is most anxious for Larry and Susan to return from Canada so we can have a work crew to go make some repairs. Concepción's roof is leaking because the metal panels were not overlapped properly and were screwed down too tightly, allowing rain to run under them and into the house. Suyapa's new house that is being constructed of concrete blocks is being built too close to edge of a hill and is being badly eroded. A retaining wall needs to be built soon. I think Don, Chuck and Larry will be busy whenever they get a break in the weather.

I also learned that many of the women who come to church are complaining of the cold. They don't have sweaters or shawls to wrap around themselves. I don't know if they even have a light blanket to throw on their bed on cool nights. This is an easy problem for me to tackle. There are lots of second-hand shops in Coxen Hole where these items can be purchased.

 We love our sunsets here, and they seem extra special when the sun appears briefly at the end of rainy day.

Tales of Shopping

Shopping here is always an adventure, whether it's for food or household items. This week's adventure included both.

Meat. Never too sure about this one. The beef choices are limited, especially US beef (which is expensive), so we have been sampling the Honduran beef. It isn't as flavorful but is very lean, being from grass-fed cows and is reasonably priced. I found some stew meat, which looked good - nice color, and bought a package. We put the groceries in the car and started driving. I smelled something odd and wondered what that was. On the way home from French Harbor, we stopped at Coxen Hole. When we got back in the car there was a strong, unpleasant smell...like something dead. Now I was really wondering. As soon as we got home, I found the source - the stew meat. It looked good but smelled really, really bad. Now why didn't I notice that while still in the store. Not driving all the way back to return it, so I stuck it in the freezer until I decided what to do with it.

I've had better luck, usually, with hamburger. I can find Honduran ground beef for about $2.50/pound. I have gotten used to the taste and don't notice a difference when it's used in chili or spaghetti. This week I purchased 3 pounds of very nice looking (and smelling!) ground beef. (Sometimes the stores have none, so when you find it, you buy several.) Once home, we decided to have burgers for lunch, so I opened a package and tried pulling the meat out to make patties. Very strange stuff. Didn't want to release from the package, not sticky like glue, but more like clay or paté. It didn't want to form patties and stuck to the waxed paper. Extremely lean meat; absolutely no grease cooked out. One patty crumbled as I tried to flip it. The odd texture was apparent upon taking a bite, too. It tasted ok, but really didn't have much flavor and just had an odd feel in the mouth. I really wondered what we were eating. Thankfully, we felt just fine after eating it.

I considered taking the bad, frozen stew meat and the odd hamburger back to the store, but after reading an account of a boy who was shot by a guard while trying to exchange a stale loaf of bread, I decided to forget it. (That incident happened somewhere on the mainland, not on the island, so rest easy, Mother!)

Our other shopping tale concerns trying to buy a replacement kitchen faucet assembly. I had complained that I wasn't getting hot water and the water flow had really slowed down from the kitchen faucet. We have one of those small on-demand hot water heaters under our kitchen sink. Don said the water flow was insufficient to activate the water heater, so no hot water. He checked the water pressure coming into the house and it was really good, but something was limiting the flow from the faucet. He took the faucet apart, trying to increase the water flow, but without luck. Now it didn't want to shut off completely. He said we would just have to replace it.

Off to look for replacements. First stop, Serrano's Hardware in Coxen Hole. (This is the store that reminds us of Hood's - you never know what they will have. While in there, I found those foam squares that interlock to make exercise mats...perfect for my exercise ball and easier on the back than our tile floors!) They didn't have the right type faucets. The stores here don't carry big assortments like Lowe's or Home Depot; you have limited number to choose from. I have one of those sinks with four holes: one soap dispenser, one sprayer, two for water but operated by a single handle. Don wants me to replace it with one that has separate hot and cold water taps. We drove up to French Harbor to Ace Hardware. They were out of the reasonably priced ones that would work but expected a shipment within a week. We made another stop at another hardware store and they didn't have any that I liked that would work. None with sprayers. But, they were also expecting a shipment in soon. So, we'll be going back to French Harbor this week. In the meantime, we have to turn off the water just so, or it drips.

After Rina

We were very fortunate to have had little damage from Rina's winds and heavy rain. We lost  a lot of leaves and small branches from the Coral trees. We worked on cleaning those up and Don had to shovel some mud back up where it came from. We both noted, again, how bad the earth smells here after a rain. Wonder if that's because Roatan is a volcanic formation? Don also had to clean out some trenches at the base of our retaining wall. Yes, we could have hired someone to do that work, but after sitting around for a few days, Don was glad to have some physical labor to do.

The day after Rina passed by, we had beautiful blue skies and plenty of sunshine. We kept the breeze for another day before it died down to a dead calm. Yesterday was hot, humid and still until late in the day.  Thankfully, the winds returned, cooling us off again and bringing a little rain.

We do have beautiful sunsets here, especially after a storm.