Bazza

First shot is papaya not Mango Bazza.. though well spotted.

stand corrected sagar , thank you

Interesting post Bazza, I've not seen a Papaya fruit tree before.

Fascinating shots. It always amazes me that a banana *tree* is actually not a tree but the largest herbaceous flowering plant in the world (can you tell I'm a gardener?) And it is called *Musa x Paradisiaca* because it was believed to be the plant that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Makes *my* herb shot, a twig of Basil, hardly worth bothering about

So when my 1 year old is nagging me for his 4th banana of the afternoon - I can now actually look him in the eye when I tell him they don't grown on trees !

Thanks for sharing Bazza. I think it would be mind blowing living somewhere like that - food growing on trees in the wild!

Gaz can you come do my garden please? It's a mess

see new post

Yes Azz it is, they even switch off the traffic lights at midnight so you don't have to stop and run the risk of being shot at through the car window. TRUE. we saw on our first day out 2 being put in body bags on the side of the road and the second day a car in the central reservation ditch crushed to nothing with the engine on the other side of the road. Turns out it was a BMW doing around 150mph and couldn't make the bend. Life is worth nothing out there, we stayed in a gated community with armed guards at the entrance with machine guns to protect the residents.

Not saying it was a posh area but some neighbours had their own helicopters pads and helicopters. All we had was a gardener and pool attendant who visited every day. Yes hands up we lived like lords compared to the extremely poor people out there. Definately not a tourist country for individuals, corruption is rife from the top down.

The country, at least he parts we saw, were stunning no question,

its the inhabitants that ruin it and the country is too vast to sort the problems out. That and not everyone speaks English but the number of schools teaching English are springing up everywhere, even my son owns one. He has the advantage of being English whereas most of the others are Brazilian teaching other Brazilians our language and not always getting it right

AS a bye the bye they can't build roofs so many leak its unbelievable, Ben ,my son, recons that a good roofer out there would be a millionaire within a year. Also there are 20 different types of electrical sockets/plugs in the country as well ,but they are trying to standardise them. Even the place we stayed had 110 and 240 volt systems with 3 different types of sockets in it. It had been partially rewired but it is impossible to buy loose plugs to put on equipment for the new sockets.
Another thing is there is NO hot water anywhere or central heating. For hot water they have small heaters on top of the taps with the electrical connections (sockets) right above/behind the sink/handbasin. In the master bedroom there were 8 gate valves for the water, don't laugh. What they do if they want to extend water pipes they just add on to the exisiting gate valve not remove it and put in a joint.

The country isn't as advanced as they would like to make out believe me, it has a long way to go to get anywhere what we are used to. Just one other thing the BBC DON'T provide a TV world wide service its all USA stuff on it in English
Bazza

Very scary Bazza!

I think I'd stick with our cold, than their hot and guns