DAY 8 and 7: Coins, Legal Moves, and More!
DAY 8: Monday
Our last "Guest" at our villa checked out on Monday, closing out almost two years of heavy use, and likely, with a bang!
San Pedro hosted the Belize International Music Festival this weekend, and our guest (1 on the reservation) had a revolving door of visitors in and out, courtesy of our Ring cameras. We routinely have a camera triggered by a cat or the many raccoons in the area. The guest left a trash bag on the front porch overnight Sunday, and we learned the island also hosts mice, what might be a possum-type critter, and cats and raccoons as mentioned earlier. They all gathered for a smorgasbord of epic proportions! I am extra grateful I asked our manager, Ambar, to have housekeeping do a deep clean before our arrival!
The buyer of our Phoenix home texted me to see who serviced the A/C system - I had left my number in case mail showed up at the old address. Our title agent had said the buyer, Jessica, is the nicest person ever, so I don't mind helping out, but also don't want to open Pandora's Box of having constant questions, we left pretty detailed information on the home and its components. I had left our Verizon Router in the home so our Ring cameras would continue to monitor the trailer before it was picked up, and had twice asked our agent to ask their agent to leave the router on the porch for pickup. It does not seem that message was relayed, so I asked her to do so. Otherwise, Verizon would charge us $200.
My Aunt Linda (dad's sister) worked in a bank when I was little, and had bought U.S. Proof Sets of coins each year for my sister and me; I had from 1976-1985, plus some random coins like WW2 nickels. I'm surprised I have lugged them around as long as I have, but clearly, they will serve no purpose on the island, so I headed to Scottsdale Coin Shop to see if they would buy my items.
Greg helped me go through what I had, and shockingly, (sarcastically) I didn't walk out with thousands of dollars. I did have a gold chain and ring that netted me far more than any of my coins. I may have been paid a little more if I took them to a jeweler, but it wasn't worth the effort - Scottsdale Coin Shop was a one-stop shop for me!
Our sofa from Living Spaces was delivered to Jhimel at Belize Freight on Monday, too - I presume safely, we didn't hear otherwise.
When Nathan finished work, we went to the UPS Store to have our Trust & Will notarized. We received the documents back in June, and as expected, have been procrastinating on wrapping it up. I am excellent at starting things, not so great at finishing them. As it turns out, some of the docs require 1 witness, and some require 2 witnesses, plus the notary. The witnesses can't be related to you nor listed as a beneficiary. Well, shit. We asked one of the employees to be a witness, and he claimed they were not allowed to do so. We were able to rope one guy doing an Amazon return into being our witness for two docs, but he was not interested in waiting around for us to con a second witness in for the other docs, which is understandable. Back to the drawing board on that one...
We also paid a deposit to Pro Solar Engineering Ltd. in Belize - they have been the most responsive and had a fair preliminary estimate to put solar on our Villa. We want to go live ASAP for a few reasons:
1. Vacation Renters tend not to be that thrifty with their electrical usage; we have had bills as high as $550 U.S. in a month; going solar will eliminate that bill and we can live comfortably while our beach house is being built;
2. Ambergris Caye has grown exponentially, yet BEL (Belize Electricity Ltd., the power company) has not kept up with the increase in demand. Power to the island comes via a submarine cable, which has a limited capacity. In the past few months, we routinely see Facebook posts from BEL urging people to reduce usage as the system was maxed out, and would force rolling blackouts until usage is reduced.
The deposit is for a rep from Pro Solar to do a site visit and audit, and design a custom system for us. The deposit is applied to our purchase price if we move forward. We currently plan to have a rooftop pergola built, and the panels mounted above. This will provide shade on the roof to make it more user-friendly - the views are dynamite! But the sun does scorch. 
We rounded out Day 8 in the hot tub of our AirBnB - once the sun sets here, it's tolerable, and Nathan re-routed the misting system (which was entirely clogged, he cleaned out the lines) to mist over us in the tub.
DAY 7
I continue to knock items off the "To Do" list, hitting up a Coinstar machine to convert jingle-money into paper money. U.S. coins aren't accepted in Belize, so no point in lugging them down. Coinstar charges outrageous fees, but we didn't have enough coins to justify rolling them into sleeves to go to the bank. I netted a cool $30.20 after fees, enough to pay for breakfast for the four of us at The Fryjack House, and have enough left over for an iced coconut rum cream coffee at Saul's.
From there, I headed up Central Ave in Phoenix - to pick up the Verizon router. It's such a tranquil drive, it doesn't feel like Phoenix at all! Lush green trees line the street, along with the Murphy Bridle Path. It's a microclimate, typically running 10-12 degrees cooler than the rest of Phoenix - goes to show what can happen when you don't bulldoze every last tree! One of many reasons we plan to retain as many large, healthy trees as we can on our beach lot.
Our U-Pack Trailer is currently in Dallas, headed 3.5 hours over to Houston. The projected delivery was July 29-31, so everything seems to be on track. Their system isn't super-detailed, but it does give you basic information.
I also severed my real estate license today - I put it into "inactive" status. I don't intend to do another transaction, so there is no need for me to pay monthly fees to have my license hung with a broker in Arizona.
I'm working on my base tan almost every day; when you are as pasty as I am, a gentle entry into sunlight is necessary before moving 18 degrees north of the equator! 20 minutes is about all I can stand, the sun feels so much stronger in AZ than in Belize. Maybe it's the heat, or all the pavement, or the lack of water.
As I do before every trip, I laid out which restaurants are closed on which days. I venture to guess about 60% of restaurants in San Pedro close 1 day a week, and there is nothing worse than having your heart set on a specific meal, rolling up to that restaurant, and finding it is closed that day. The boys have traveled with us most years since 2015, for stretches of 9-12 days - whatever was the max I could take off from work. This trip, due to their school and work schedules, they are only down for 7 days. We have the rest of our lives to choose where we eat in San Pedro, so we are going to let them call the food-shots while they are in town!
Later today, I have Happy Hour with Shauna, a former work partner and one of my closest friends - this will be another tough one.
Then tomorrow at 8 AM, I have to lug these three surly cats to the vet for their International Health Certificates. Good times..!