Mainland Trip, Cart Problems, Power and Water Outages, House Update, Timber!
Very, very hectic few weeks for us here!
I totally jinxed our "good luck" with the rental carts when we first broke down while my dad was visiting. I swapped out carts when headlights or parking breaks went out, but up until my dad's visit, we had not experienced a total breakdown. On one of his last days here, it died by the high school and we had to call to be rescued/have a new cart delivered.
On Thursday the 6th, I had a dermatologist appointment on the mainland for a second opinion on my chest-spot, which seemingly was not improving/healing. I was going to take the water taxi there and back to travel more economically. I headed to the cart that morning and....it would not start. Ten minutes later, Nathan came out to try to assist. Still no-go. Our neighbor-friends weren't home to drive me to the taxi. I called our cart company, and they were going to come out. After 30 minutes, I had to cut my losses and gave it one last try, and was able to get the cart started - I raced to the water taxi, in time to see the boat pull away. *^&%^! The next boat would not get me to my appointment in time. I had to fly out via Tropic Air to the Municipal Airport in Belize City. PRO TIP: If you are flying to the mainland and not leaving Belize, fly to Muni - it's about $40US less round-trip than going to BZE International!
After landing at Muni, I found a taxi within a few minutes, and was off to Dr. Bradley's office - a HUGE "thank you" to Rebecca Coutant/SanPedroScoop.com for detailing her visit there, and sharing Dr. Bradley's level of care - rather than repeat Rebecca's glowing review, I'll just say Dr. Bradley was as thorough and delightful as Rebecca said! $65BZ (Cash only - and no receipt, so I guess I'm not deducting that on 2025 taxes) and I left with an rx for a more aggressive sun-damage-corrector, plus an antihistamine/steroid cream for some crazy bug bites I gained when painting our fence.
I took a taxi from her office to Broadie's on Albert Street, where I bought both of my rxes plus 90 day's supply of Omeprazole for Nathan for $101BZ, or $50.50US. The Omeprazole alone would have been more than that in Arizona!
Albert St. in Belize City
"The City" reminds me so much of downtown Detroit when I was growing up - I had a flashback of riding the bus with my mom and her sisters, maybe their mom, when I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5, to go to the Hudson's Department store downtown. Lots of boarded-up windows and a bit of a time warp. Walk with a purpose and with your head up (Detroit rules) and no one will mess with you.
Then I returned on the water taxi...and half-way over, realized my cart was parked at the airport, but I was arriving at the water taxi terminal...and I had to pay for another taxi. UGH.
We met our frontrunner-builder on the 7th, and were given a vague, "$450BZ per square foot" price. Is that on livable square feet? Livable plus bodega? All that plus exterior patios...? I followed up with a message, but didn't get a reply on that. If it's livable, we're golden. If it's livable + bodega, we're over budget but by about 11%. If it's on everything, we're hosed. Also, what does that include as far as specs...? Builders here are definitely a LOT more casual than back in the States!
We were supposed to have some appointments after (haircut for Nathan, pedi and waxing for me) but once again, my lady canceled the day-of. She's nice and does a great job at a fair price, but we schedule these appointments for a reason - we need the services. I lucked into Alice at Polished By Capri having a cancellation herself, and she was able to see me that morning! Her studio is on Front Street and is incredibly clean, spacious, and cool! She's a few dollars more, but I'll be moving my appointments over to her - she's an original San Pedrana and a fantastic, honest person. Do go see her if you need any nail work or waxing!
Our architect sent us a "Cost to Complete" estimate that afternoon, and even with us being VERY SPECIFIC about our max budget, and that we needed to design with that number in mind, he returned a cost almost 50% above our budget. He offered to hop on a call and review and give ideas to cut the costs a bit. I was so mad, I ignored that message until today. He applied for the building permit already, so I presume that means we'll have to pay for any edits.
Friday afternoon, Zach (our 20-year-old) and his girlfriend, Sam, were due into BZE around 2:30, but their flight from HOU to BZE was delayed. Nathan ended up going to pick them up from Tropic Air on the island around 5:30. The "new" cart broke down by Maxi's, but Nathan was able to get it re-started. He claimed them, made it to the intersection where you turn left (Back Street) or right (Front Street), and the cart again died...and would not restart. With tourists and luggage on board, locals and ex-pats alike came out of the woodwork to assist! They helped push the cart out of the way to again get it swapped out by our rental company.
We had a great time having the kids here - they didn't want to do any tours (thank God! They are in college so we footed the bill for his flight and their meals already), so we DIY'ed snorkeling and acted like tourists for 10 days. Probably my favorite was driving waaaaaay up north, past Tranquility Bay, further than we had driven before - we were able to walk to the reef, which was incredible! (We swam to protect the coral, but it was less than 4' deep, just crazy!).
We saw a boatload of wildlife, too - I'm not sure if that's because it's "Mating Season" for many critters, or if they are enjoying our clear, sunny days, but so many on land and in the sea are out and about!
Our livers and wallets need to recover from that trip. And we did not realize how dark we have become living on an island! Zach on the left, Nathan (who works indoors M-F) on the right.
The builder we are speaking with did have his crew go to our lot and pin the corners, here is a video showing the layout: Secret Beach House Construction Update
In less-great news, our cart broke down two more times while the kids were here, and each day was a struggle to get it started, if at all. I don't know if because it is "high season" the monthly renters get the crappier carts, or if it's just dumb luck, but at $700US/mo to rent a cart, it's getting old really fast to not have a dependable ride!
Other less-great news saw a two-hour power outage one day, and then Saturday night, power cut out around 11:45 pm and didn't restore until almost 11 am Sunday morning! No notice from BEL. It never even showed up on their app as an outage. Everything in our fridge is lost after that duration of time and has to be tossed out; fortunately, frozen food is good for 24 hours.
Adding insult to injury, last night I heard our water pump going non-stop. We brought out flashlights and walked around outside I found a service-line leak under the guest bathroom that was pouring out water - we had to shut off water service or else it would flood and run up our bill. And then, hey! Another power outage at 9:30 pm! Electrical current had been reliable, up until recently. That outage only lasted an hour - the BEL app called it an "emergency outage" to repair service to our subdivision.
We also lost a yard palm tree - it collapsed out of nowhere. It had struggled since the last tropical storm, and recently, I had been giving it about 1 minute of hose-water each morning. I guess that was too much, and it caved into itself.
Timber....!
This morning, Nathan went back to work and I dropped Zach and Sam at the airport; luckily our "new" cart started right up today!
Vandam, our yard helper was able to stop by and assess our plumbing issue - it looks like a cap of the PVC came off and maybe a small section of PVC has to be replaced - he's going to do it after work today for $150BZ. DEAL. Neither of us is willing to crawl under the villa to do this! With any luck, I'll have both power and water tonight, because I have an avalanche of laundry to do after going out every day, and we had Zach wear Nathan's clothes so he could pack mule stuff down for us. ;)
Back to reality - we've been ignoring the swirls of chaos (business opportunity we're looking at, the architect call, filing US taxes, coordinating importation of a container for the build, a legal issue we've been trudging through, ordering cat food, I have some videos to shoot for work) plus Dr. Bradley gave me a list of tests for a physical, she's going to get me back on-track for yearly tests to make sure everything still works.