Floods Are Changing Animal Behavior Here

I went out walking between rain storms yesterday and feel like I finally have arrived back..  It just isn't the same without getting "tabano" bites...mangrove grown yellowish flies BITE and leave welts. No mosquitoes, though. Too much rain I guess. But I now have 4 "tabano: bites. Yes, I've "arrived."


Jim just left with two other men to go to the Rio Indio cut off with shovels, a McLeod tool, crow bar etc.  They plan to make culverts and drain some water on the road so cars can pass.  (It has rained inches since we've been here.) Pedro living down that road to the left as you turn right to Rio Indio has water up 15 " in his house, and many caimans were swimming around the house, got his cat and his 20 chickens drowned, too. He left temporarily for Mahahual.  The local government doesn't seem to have much money for road maintence out here.   Men along the road just get together and do some individual projects. A concept dating back to much earlier times in the U.S.

Caiman,  a Caiman crocodilus. Colloquially known as the spectacled caiman, after the bony ridges that encircle its eyes. Caimans belong to the same family as the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis); they're more distantly related to crocodiles, which belong to a separate family under the order Crocodylia.


The spectacled caiman is found throughout Central and South America, while the American alligator is confined to the southeastern portion of the United States. Crocodiles tend to have V-shaped noses, while those of caimans and alligators are more rounded and resemble U's. The other most noticeable difference is size, as male caimans rarely exceed 7 feet in length; alligators, by contrast, regularly grow to double that size.

 Snakes, , too are coming out of the mangroves which have the tannic acid water (brown) overflowing onto the road.  Even raccoons, usually nocturnal , are coming around the houses during the day for food. A park ranger next door saw a TAYRA.  I had never heard of it before. (check out the tail)




 A Rare white Tayra.
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Along the roads the garzas (white egrets) are FISHING in the road, and lots of people have seen caiman along the road.  Last week some Mexicans were also fishing in the road, but what I saw were just ones fishing in the gullies at the side of the road.

Well, remember this photo from the last post?

It was just a come-on to get you back to read another post.  We have rented for 6 years now from the same local, small rental car company just outside the airport at Cancun.  They know us pretty well so I ask for "deals."  We were able to rent a larger car for the same low negociated price and thought, why not.  At the very least, we should have less trouble with getting robbed, because they certainly won't think we are tourists. And yes, we did take lots of pictures of it before we left the rental office...:)

We're Back to the Yucatan Amid Road Flooding and Storms

Hurrah!! We're back in the Yucatan, 21 km north of Mahahual, on the Caribbean, one hour of driving north from Belize.

Yesterday my husband Jim and I rented a car in Cancun, went to Costco and each began piling food into two separate carts with two separate lists. Hurry, hurry. Then off to Mega (huge grocery store to the west of Costco) and once again piling food and supplies into two separate carts. I do the vegetables, fruit, cereals, etc. and Jim does the new juicer, tequila, rum, coffee, cream etc.

We finished at 12:45 PM and started south on Highway 307, with food in the front seat to eat along the way. No time to stop for lunch. A quick stop for gas and again in Limones for a 70 lb. Bag of sweet oranges and off again. We had now driven four hours south of Cancun, and 51 km yet to go to Mahahual. We arrived to our cutoff at 4:45 PM. Not dark yet, not bad.

Why the rush? We simply had to get to our rental house before nightfall. We had been warned of extreme flooding on the dirt roads. We had a choice of two roads and friends along each road had warned us to go the other road. We had to choose one so...it was the Rio Indio road.

Now a stroke of luck.   See the red truck?

 It just appeared ahead of us so Jim could watch to see how deep the truck wheels were sinking and decided we could get through the first huge “pond,” then the next and then the next, sometimes choosing a different side of the road. At least the mud wasn't that slimy, sticky kind. The truck turned to the right at Rio Indio and we had to go to the left.

Well, that's ok, we thought. The worst was behind us. Not so.

Huge “ponds” continued. Sometimes we drove left, some we went right. Then there were those”ponds" that extended completely across the road.

 No decision there. But oops....the road changed from mud to drifted wet sand...you know the kind that tires like to relax in, all the time not revealing the depth of water on top the sand. Darkness was approaching, getting a bit harder to see. Then the tropical rain pour storm hit. Really, really hard to see. Windshield wipers were only a little help.

And then like a beautiful yellow apparition, we arrived to Casa Amarilla, our home for the next month, But Chaac was not so easily appeased. 

 We sat outside Casa Amarilla in the car for 15 minutes waiting for the heavy rainstorm to abate. To go outside the car would have been like swimming in the Caribbean which was just 75 feet east of us.

We have decided to just stay “put” the next several days, but what a delightful place to be partially marooned in.

Oh...look at this below.....but that's another story.