A Perfectico Storm

Before the Pan-American highway was put in, the road past our house in Quizarrá was apparently the main way to get to the south. This is laughable when you know this bumpy, untarmacked "road" (we'd call it a track back home I think), but understandable when you think that when Skutch first came to that area in the 40s, the only way to get in was by plane or by taking a horse over the mountains and through  the rivers. You'd either ride the horse through or wade through yourself and lead the horse over - the former was usually safer as obviously horses are bigger and stronger, and alright at swimming it turns out. (In fact-checking this I came across this very sweet article " Can Horses Swim ?"). I suppose equally it is unimaginable to me that there were ever no motorways in the UK, but they are a relatively new invention and certainly many didn't exist when my folks were young.  Lis & Warren, the owners of that house-sit, told us that for the whole t...

Earlier today I was talking to Cousin Ruth (my dad’s cousin). She is self-admittedly not the most computer friendly of people, and even she has made it online to look at our poorly updated blog and I *promised* I would write an update...so here I am. Well. A lot has happened since last I wrote on April 11th - 3 and a half months ago. This post is mostly just about my Mum so feel free to skip out at this point if you wish. More posts about nature and beaches really will follow. I promise that too! . So yes, Mum died. She went into hospital just around the time I last wrote, which is in part why we haven’t written. It already felt a bit wrong to be saying “hey look at all this cool stuff” when everyone was on lockdown mostly having a pretty miserable time, but that was compounded by Mum being ill and not knowing what was going on. She went in with a kidney infection and was severely dehydrated, having been holed up at home in the north on her own (though supported by my brother who brou...

Hey there! And thank you to everyone who has been in touch checking in on us. Covid-19 has changed everything so much over the past couple of months for just about everyone... no longer are we alone in our family isolation, you all have joined us, though for a better reason than "the car is still at the mechanic and the only bus out of "town" is at 5.30am!". We are absolutely fine, in the scheme of things, and hope that all you guys are as well. On Friday 6th March at 8.40pm we were all laying on our big bed at Finca Fruition - the place we stayed for 6 weeks. Iris was asleep and all of a sudden everything began to shake, the ground moved and it felt like a great big giant was rattling the house. It stopped, and then it started again. I was scared because I didn't know what to do. We were living in a clapboard house halfway down a very steep hill. I had a deadweight child on me and it was pitch black outside in the jungle. Then it was over. Tom thought it was ...