July 30, 2025

Bre
Aug 7
3 min read

Updated: Sep 22

This morning, I saw another big lizard. It may be the same one, but it is really cool to see the large lizards! We tried to deal with the ants and such, and we sprayed this citrus spray with some added soap. Sophie said that would help, and it did! It seems to keep them outside now.

Later, Sophie did some yoga with her mom. I caught up on my blogging and did some other logistical stuff on the computer.

Now we are going out to go explore the jungle a bit.

Later:

We just got back from exploring the jungle. First, we went into our backyard and went down the hill into the jungle. The foliage was very dense, and the ground was often soft and mushy. It helped that I had a walking stick that I had found a few days ago on one of my walks. It was steep and slippery in parts, but we made it to the bottom, and found this very large tree. It was covered in moss, and vines draped down from the branches. Sophie mentioned it would be a good place to have swing, and it probably would, but we'd likely need to make a path to it, and I'd be concerned about it getting taken over by the wildlife.

Later on, we walked on the main roads and saw a fenced area off to the side. It had rows of plants growing, so we knew this was an extension of the farm area across the way. We continued on into a new area, and found ourselves in an area of many plants and trees arranged in rows. There were coconut palms, pineapples, flowing plants, and all manner of edible plants. We think this is the food forest area. We looked at all the different plants and walked around, until we found trail heading off into the forest. We walked along the path, and saw that it was a hiking trail. There were countless rocks all around covered in moss and tiny plants, as well as numerous trees and shrubs covered in more moss. We continued along the path for a while, until we came to another road, and we discovered that this was a small hiking path in the middle of the community here and we had reach the other side of the community. They had some trees growing here, as well as a stone ping pong table! It was very interesting, and we took some time to look around. We then headed back the way we came, through the beautiful forest path. One interesting note was the lack of mushrooms, as I would have thought that they would be present. But perhaps the conditions were not quite right for them along the path. We'll keep our eyes out for them in the future.

We continued on along the road and went down a road where we had not been before, until we heard the sound of rushing water. We saw that there was a stream down there, so we made our way down to it. The way down was again very steep and slippery. Moss covered the rocks and the ground gave way with ease. However, with care, we made it to the bottom and gazed upon the stream. There were several small waterfalls throughout the stream, and towering above, there were moss covered jungle trees, blocking out much of the sun. We stood admiring the scene and Sophie mentioned that she had been here once before on her and her family's initial trip here.

After a while, we made our way back up the hill and onto the road, and headed back home.

In the afternoon, we went to an emergency preparedness planning meeting. This was the first meeting for this, so it was a lot of planning about what needs are and prioritizing first things to tackle.

I provided some input and joined the fire safety team.

I helped get a WhatsApp group started and also recommended getting a collaborative share drive going.