Chris and I have been promising ourselves a visit to Red Bank to see the scarlet macaws for some time now. there are only around 150 macaws in Belize, and during the winter around 100 of them move from Cayo district down to Red Bank, a Mayan village in Stann Creek, to feed on the Pole Wood fruits they find there.

Guests Keith Bourne and Shelia Lamb and the Sharman family, Paul, Pang and Aranya, were all keen to go on this trip, so very early one morning last week we all bundled into Patience and went round to the Monkey River car park to rendezvous with our friend Basillio Mes of Exotic Belize Tours.

We were soon on our way up the Monkey River road which is an adventure in itself, especially as Basillio is the Mayan Michael Schumacher, and also talks nineteen to the dozen as he drives. Fortunately he is an excellent driver, and our roads, though rough, are empty.

Red Bank is a delightful Maya village with mainly traditional houses, very peaceful and pretty and a thriving community, with 270 children attending the local school. Basillio grew up here, and our first stop was at his aunt’s house. In the front of her house there is a small shop, and next to it is a magnificent diesel powered corn grinding machine, where she grinds the local corn for tortillas, the staple of the Maya diet.

In fact, Mayans believe that the first humans grew from corn, so it has great significance for them as the symbol of life as well as practical value as a principle food. There are maize field all aroundthe village.

Basillio ordered lunch for us which we were to eat later, then we drove on to the start of our walk. We parked in a leafy lane, and walked through to a large tree filled glade, very lovely, which is a camping ground for tourists, though there was no-one to be seen there. We saw a red vented woodpecker who very obligingly posed for us, as well as a troop of toucans in the tree canopy above.

“It’s quite a walk,” declared Basillio. “We’ll take it steady.” My heart sank. Why is it that whenever I go anywhere with Basillio I end up watching him spring up a vertical path like a goat in front of me while I labour along behind feeling as if I am going to have a stroke at any minute? This time was no different. Chatting soon became more difficult as the path grew steeper and steeper. This is saying something as Basillio and I can chat for Belize! Well, it was me having the difficulty. At one point, Basillio seemed to have hunched over and be examining his hands. Then I realized, “Basillio, you’re not texting are you?!” Talk about one foot in the modern world, the other in the Mundo Maya – Basillio was messaging his brother whilst half way up what felt like the highest mountain in Belize.

“How about a snack?” asked Basillio, bending over and picking up a small twig. “Oh, no,” said I, “you’re not going to make us eat…” But oh yes – it was termites! Basillio scraped away the outside of a termite nest and stuck the twig in. Out it came with a few crunchy protein morsels attached. “Tastes like carrots,” said Basillio, seriously. Well, must be some kind of Mayan carrots. Actually, they taste a bit smoky, and not at all unpleasant. if I’m ever lost in the jungle, I’ll eat them to survive, though lord knows how many make a meal! Our gallant crew (most of them anyway) all had their termite snack, which must have fortified us, as eventually, and for some of us, surprisingly, we made it to the top, where there is a look out point.

A few birders were already there, and one had a monocular set up trained on the macaws across the valley. “Just look through that” invited the friendly owner of this superb piece of kit. I did, and WOW! – two beautiful macaws sitting on a tree 300 yards away, snacking on pole wood fruits, and looking as if you could reach out and touch them. Aranya was next up and got a look, but then the birds flew away, so the rest of the party missed this view.

We settled down quietly, and Paul, who is a pro photographer and was official photographer on the day, set up his camera with zoom lenses. The view down the valley was spectacular, with the Swazey branch of the Monkey River lying like a discarded silver ribbon on a green velvet cloak in the valley bottom.

Our patience was rewarded. The raucous cries of macaws rang up the hillside. “They’re flying!” said Basillio in a hushed, excited voice. Sure enough, through the valley came a small flight of macaws, scarlet, blue and gold, and looking larger than I had imagined. The blue was the very colour of the tropical sky, the gold is like the evening sun, and the scarlet is that of the deepest scarlet hibiscus. Truly the epitome of the tropics, and for me, a peak experience that I will never forget.

We sat and chatted quietly with the other bird watchers, saw macaws coming and going though always on the far side of the valley. Sometimes if you are lucky you see them close up – but we had to work for our sighting.

On the way down, which was much easier than going up, we had leisure to look at the trees, plants and other small birds and creatures around us. We all felt very pleased with ourselves, and the shade of the jungle made it a pretty pleasant descent.

Once back in Red Bank, we enjoyed watching Basilio’s aunt and cousins making tortillas on the open fire hearth in traditional style – not put on for the tourists, just what they do every day. The lady guests were entranced by the beautiful happy children, and many photos were taken. The chicken lovers amongst us (me, Keith and Shelia) were entranced by the lovely chickens, and a deal was made for me to go and buy some of auntie’s chickens in the near future to add to the diversity of our flock. Keith was green with envy!

We sat down to a nice lunch of caldo (spicy chicken stew) and tortillas, washed down with water, and finally returned home at around 2pm after a quick shopping stop in Independence.

Later that night we all had a barbecue on the beach, there was a great feeling in the air, we had had such a wonderful day together and seen something that very few people in the world have seen.

The photos here are from Paul and Shelia.

Hi, this is Chris with the latest from Steppingstones, here in Southern Belize. Sue is promising to write up a blog very soon – she claims to be busy!

When guests Keith and Sheila left our dock bright and early the other morning aboard George's boat, Vagabund (Creole for vagabond), a perfect dawn was breaking and weather reports and fishing reports were all favourable. As I watched the boat easing its way through the coral heads on its way out to the reef, I told Sue that I would be firing up the barbeque in advance of their return, so confident was I that a box full of fish would be coming ashore later in the day.

And so it proved. About 10 miles off shore there is an exploratory oil rig which has been there about 2 months now. This rig is becoming a magnet for all the fish in the area, and in short order Keith and Sheila had barracuda, Spanish mackerel, and kingfish coming in at regular intervals, plus Sheila's now customary needlefish. How DOES she do it? Later, they ran the rest of the way out to the reef, where George spotted a huge shoal of yellowfin tuna ripping the surface of the sea to a foam. Keith estimated the shoal was over 100 yards long. Needless to say this yielded the kind of mayhem that only hungry tuna can provide. However even this level of catching eventually becomes wearing, so they moved on to new challenges, picking up some nice snappers along the way.

It was there, right out of the blue (literally), that a group of whale sharks made an unseasonable appearance. So fishing was suspended while Keith and Sheila took time to watch these magnificent, huge, gentle creatures, which came so close that they could have reached out and touched them.

So when Keith and Sheila finally came in, the barbeque was ready and we dined on snapper fillets, tuna steaks and kingfish steaks. As Keith remarked, life does not get much better than that day had been. However I reminded him that the next day (their last day) was still to come, and that he had an early morning date with the grouper on the rough ground a few miles offshore.

Keith had proved himself to be a bit of a grouper magnet, so I was not surprised when he came in with a nice grouper as well as some good sized snappers all caught bottom fishing. Unfortunately it was one of those days when the several big fish he hooked all broke off. Any one of those would have turned a memorable day into a red letter day, but as we all know, fishing is like that sometimes. But there is always next time….

We are still experimenting with the grouper here. There are certainly much bigger fish around than the ones we and our guests have managed to land whether offshore, a hundred yards in front of Steppingstones, or even from the beach itself. Rambo has had four big fish break off recently whilst out in one of our pedallos with a handline. The last of these left him with a nasty cut on his thumb as he tried to play the fish. We suspect grouper are responsible but tackle needs to be beefed up to cope with these heavyweights.

We are coming up to peak grouper season, as the fish come to spawn around Glovers reef in April, May and June. Some 25 species collect there, and the whale shark follow them to feast on the resulting plankton. We are going to suggest that grouper caught in this area at this time by our visitors are strictly catch and release – but we should get some big beasts this year all going well, if we have to go and catch them ourselves!

We have noticed a much higher density of baitfish around our dock over the past few months and we have concluded that our new dock lights installed just before Christmas are responsible. This is having the very welcome knock on effect of drawing other predators closer in. We are getting many more blue runners from the dock than we did last year, and barracuda too.

The February issue of Sport Fisherman has a five page feature on the fishing at and around Steppingstones, featuring Chris Woodward, Editor of the magazine and her husband Spud who had a memorable stay with us last August, and also of course featuring our friend and head guide, Ian Cuevas. Chris did a great job for us, the pictures are super. Those of you not in the US will be able to catch up with the article on the Sport Fishing magazine web site when it goes on in a few week’s time.

The photos here are of a typical jack and a nice 45lb tarpon caught by the two Steves at Xmas time. We should have more fishing pics for you soon when Paul and Keith get theirs sorted out.

Hi. This is Chris with news of our recent activities.

Over the past couple of weeks fishing has been pretty good, with all sorts of surprises from unexpected places.

Pride of place goes to Paul Sharman, who on his first day out managed a fly- caught permit of 12lb and a tarpon of 35lbs in quick succession, but his chance of a grand slam disappeared when the bonefish mysteriously went missing. Unfortunately, the area he was fishing whilst excellent for permit, can be unpredictable for bonefish, but I guess that's fishing. The tarpon seem to be a bit hit and miss right now, but over the past week Paul has managed to jump several on lures and flies.

Out at the cayes, Paul also had a day with the bonefish, and besides catching his share, his wife Pang and daughter Aranya both had their first fly caught bonefish. The bonefish are on fire right now in the lower cayes, with excellent fishing conditions. Paul also took his first snook, a fine fish of 12lbs. He went on to jump more tarpon and snook on fly and lure in the mangroves and in our secret lagoon, fishing from one of our kayaks. He also almost literally bumped into a manatee busy grazing in the shallows.

From the beach, another guest Keith Bourne took an unusual grouper on a shallow running lure right in close, and followed this up by a nice blue runner. We have a ton of baitfish close in right now, and this is attracting in some unusual visitors, besides the huge dolphin which cruised gently past a few days back. Aranya Sharman probably raised the most eyebrows with a lookdown caught on a strip of fish from our dock with almost her first cast.
The lookdown is a strange-looking fish more often seen offshore.

Keith's wife, Sheila spent an entire afternoon trying to hook one of the needlefish which patrol our dock. These long beaked fish will attack bait and small lures readily but are very difficult to hook, and up until now no one has managed to get one in. Eventually however, Sheila's persistence paid off, and we were treated to a display of aerobatics and short dazzling runs before she finally got the needlefish in. Keith however was not to be bested, and an hour later caught an even bigger needlefish casting further down the beach. This kind of fun fishing can be great for the family and provides a change of pace from the serious business of stalking permit and bone fish or tugs of war with barracuda, kingfish and the like out on the cayes.

Our guests all went on our Night Croc Watch a couple of nights back with our nature guide Babe (Winsley Garbutt), accompanied by Sue. This involves a four hour slow creep up Monkey River by boat, spotting crocodiles, birds, iguanas, bats and other creatures. The guides spot the crocs by the torch's reflection from their eyes. These can range from little baby snappers to fourteen foot giants who are definitely not to be messed with. Babe even managed to gently lift a 24 inch croc dazzled by the torch beam into the boat. Needless to say Babe was very careful how the croc was handled, holding it behind its head so it could not bite anyone. This however did not stop the croc growling with indignation like a puppy at having his evening disturbed.

The Croc Watch is not confined to crocs, as many species of birds roost along the river bank at night, and with care you can approach very close and get a good look , without them flying off,. Other animals seen besides loads of crocs of different sizes, were frogs, iguanas, possum and bats and a solitary mouse. It was a beautiful dark starry night, ideal for getting close up and personal with the inhabitants of Monkey River.

Yesterday Sue took a party by boat into one of our nearby villages to pick up some supplies and do a little shopping. On the way there, they passed an osprey flying with a live fish wriggling in its claws, and a little later, a turtle busily swimming along. A bit further on a manatee came into view with its calf in attendance. On the way back a dolphin swam slowly passed, so they stopped for a while and got some good photos. I suppose it is not often you get to see such sights on your way to shopping!

Finally as part of our work with the Belize Humane Society, we have helped to rehome a six month old abandoned puppy called Jazzee, who for the second time in her short life has found herself homeless. Jazzee will be coming to live down the beach from us, with Richard and Joy who look after a new house being built for some American friends of ours, Dennis Okane and Wilma Lingle. So a sad little story ends well.

Today Keith and Sheila have been taken out to the cayes for a days fishing, so we await their return, barbeque at the ready!

Sue will be reporting on our trip to see the red macaws of Red Bank. More later, and more pictures when we get them from Paul Sharman, who has been photographer in chief lately as he is a journalist and wildlife photographer by profession..