This morning, we woke up to no rain. Hurray! Yes, it was cloudy, but cloudy is good for photographs, especially when you are going to visit an organic cacao farm.

“Stop,” we all cried to Antonio, our wonderful guide from last year, as we saw a group of small school children gathered along the road. Antonio asked if we could photograph them. They were adorable, and as soon as we showed them the photos, they crowded around, all wanting to see at once. One has to be careful of one’s camera, because they all want to press buttons.

As we piled into The Jungle Bus, a young man came by carrying a load of wood on his very muddy bike.

We jounced along on the dirt roads, enjoying good conversation, telling jokes, and generally having a good time. After heading up a narrow track, we arrived at our host Eladio’s Agouti Cacao Farm. Eladio is one of those amazing people knows so much about the symbiotic relationship of creatures and plants. He is considered a local legend for the way he does …

After breakfast, we all piled into The Jungle Bus. It is a splendidly painted vehicle. Perfect for its territory! Here, it is parked in the yard outside of Mr. and Mrs. Bo’s house.

Mrs. Bo showed everyone how to make corn tortillas the traditional Mayan way, from drying and husking the corn to rubbing the kernels off the cob. To save time, she had already heated and soaked the corn overnight, so another batch would be ready to put through the hand mill.

It’s tough grinding those kernels down. Most people took a hand at forming the tortillas that Mrs. Bo then cooked over the comal, a traditional metal plate that goes over the fire. Think of it as a griddle.

As the last were cooking, Mrs. Bo’s daughter peeled some hard-boiled eggs and put them on the table with a wonderful tomato mixture that we had with the warm tortillas. Yummm!

We then headed just down the road to the cooperative mill, and while others were photographing the ladies grinding their corn by a simple belt-powered machine, I found some tools over on

A couple of our group has come in, and we thought they would enjoy going to the National Park. It’s a ways away, so not something that we generally do with the workshop, but still, it’s fun and a beautiful feature of this part of Belize. In fact, one of the people had it on her “to do” list.

We piled into what we affectionately call The Jungle Bus, recently freshened up for our workshop. You’ll meet it in a later blog. We stopped at a main junction called, of all things, The Dump. It is actually very clean, so I’m not sure of the origin of the name. I couldn’t resist doing a photo of the gas station building. If you look carefully, you’ll see the thatched roof of a traditionally-built house out behind.

After lunch at the park headquarters, we walked the path down to Rio Blanco.