nice weather for frogs

The view we had to tolerate on Saturday when we had fried fish, peas and rice and plantain for lunch....



A visiting frog



Two of the many eagle rays we saw on the reef.

We have no radio here (on account of not having a short wave radio and the local radio stations don't really do news) so no news from that source and the computer is in a container outside the house and not a suitable place for Osh to be so I grab moments on the computer when I can - so little time to spend browsing the newspaper on line. So despite not having an idea of what is going on in the rest of the world (and I have to say, life is none the poorer for not knowing), I'm finding it very difficult to figure out what day it is and thus to remember what I've done all week, but I'll have a go.

We had to go and collect a trailer full of trees from the dock at one point and this meant borrowing a truck from a friend. The truck had a wooden cage built around the outside of the flat bed bit so Osh and I rode down to the dock in the back of the truck. Osh has been itching to ride in the back like all the workers and hitchhikers do for weeks now and he finally got the chance. Pretty bumpy, dirty and windy in the back but he enjoyed it...I was grateful to climb back into the cab for the return journey!

The day after that (which I think was Friday) we had a terrific downpour....huge quantities of rain bucketed down (just after I'd done a pile of washing!)which made the trip to collected Nicky from the boat (he'd been on West Caicos all day) very interesting. Many of the roads are tarmaced....but most of these are in a sorry state of repair and many of the roads (the one to Nicky's house being an example) are dirt tracks. When it rains the water forms huge puddles very quickly. The road to where the boat comes in is in a very bad way and this then gives onto a road that it a dirt track. I was driving a 4wheel drive truck and had a heap of fun negotiating the pot holes (now lakes) and the two vast lakes of water near the boat. I was rather nervous, not having driven through thigh deep water before, but put my foot down and ploughed on. And did it. Osh, bless him, missed the HUGE waves of water the truck created because he was fast asleep on the back seat.

Other excitement this week was a day sailing today - with a lovely Norweigan friend of Nicky's (photos of osh the young sailor coming up soon); yesterday we took a trip on a submersible boat...the underwater bit of the boat has windows so you can see all the fish on the reef. Osh's attention level was pretty short but he did see lots of eagle rays (pictures above). Talking of animals we saw a lizard catch and munch a grasshopper at some point this week....the grasshopper was almost as big as the lizard. Osh enjoyed watching this carnage!

Today we also took a trip to the dump which is horrifying....no controls, fly tipping all the way along the road to the dump where everything is taken - no recycling going on here at all. The place was infested with flies and not somewhere I'll make a habit of visiting (I hope). We were paid a visit by a frog the other night. I very nearly trod on him as I was going to the outside fridge to get something - and managed to get right up close to him without him moving at all. He and his pals are now happy and croaking in the water left over from the rain.

Sailing photos coming tomorrow.