Invasion of the crabs.....

Tuesday
Up super early for the mobile clinic today to San Jose as it's a monster trip....but oh no, the Ministry Nurses are all late in town so we get going late as well. Thats the final insult as not all of us could go either, poor Heather stayed behind and did home visits with the nurses. So we all eventually get going and pile in...MAN it's squashed as three of the nurses are rather wide in the rear ! We stop at San Antonio to pick up Sophia and drop off one of the nurses - but then they all disappear for ages again (Grrrrr - Belize time) FINALLY we get going again and 90 minutes later we get there (2 hours later than planned).

San Jose is a lovely village, but its a heiniously busy clinic. The nurses are running a vaccination and postnatal clinic next door, and we get most of those patients with the obligatory cough and colds that they've all got at the moment, but there are other with far more serious complaints. One chap has a terrible shoulder abcess with needs surgical intervention so he will have to go to Belize city, another old chap has a huge upper abdominal mass - probably a gastric tumour. Off to Belize city for him too. I can't get over in words how busy this place is. We are all cramed into one room, there are screams and crying from the clinic next door, the ambient noise is deafening and we have to share one bench as an examination couch! As we're late and didn't bring lunch it's just cake and peanuts for us, and we eventually leave at 4pm exhausted and hungrey. I have 1 photo of San Jose which shows how busy it was !

Home eventually and excitement as we've booked Gomier for dinner - but we have a problem, Andy won't give us a lift in (and we've never asked him before despite them owing us 4 now) and the taxi we booked never turns up. Heather sensibly has been relexing at the Coral Inn all afternoon and just ambles round. Andy eventually takes pity on us 40 minutes later and ferries us in...guilt is great. Veggie lasagne and soya icecream 'fruit' flavour. Nice, but Miss Janices soup was better !

So the crabs......every full moon this time of the year signals a mating frenzy and all the crabs leave their holes onland and make a dash for the sea. Now this doesen't sound so spectaular except there are thousands of them and they're BIG. So big that if you run one over in your car the tyre will burst as the claws dig in and that is the end of the tyre and the crab. Dangerous. They're fast too, but not so tasty.