The new stove

     The stove, made in Bluefields, sits in a breezeway most of the time but is moveable.  It's divided into two sections:  one for wood burning and one for charcoal.  Charcoal is really cheap, lasts a long time in the storage room, and is great when rain wets all the available wood.  
     Closed, coals in the stove last between meals so you can start a lunch fire from coals left from breakfast.  Also, when closed, the stove can be used to smoke fish and meat.

     Cooking lunch on the new stove

   A small shelf at the front provides usable work space.

Lemon grass tea brewing in a covered pot just before cooking scrambled eggs

Grilled chicken and vegetables 

About kitchens

     Some delicious meals have come out of our outdoor kitchen which is fairly typical of kitchens in remote and/or isolated areas.  These are usually small buildings with a thatch roof and sides of plastic-sheeting.  
     For cooking in these kitchens, sand is piled in a box-like platform that is built to a comfortable level. On top of the sand are cinder blocks, two or four or more depending on how large a cooking surface you want. On top of the block, pieces of metal are laid to form a kind of grill on which the pot(s) sits...usually just one pot at a time. On the sand and between the cinder blocks and under the 'grill' is an open fire.  Voila...a stove.  Some of the best bread I've tasted was cooked on a stove just like this.  
     In the old kitchen the view was great but the cooking and cleaning were time consuming and at an awkward distance from living quarters - for hauling wood and water - especially when it rained.    
     In the new kitchen the open fire is contained in a charcoal/woodburning 'cooker' that was made to order in Bluefields.  This new stove sits in a breezeway in the house right near the kitchen and the kitchen sink: all under roof.  Cooking on this stove is simpler...and it holds multiple pots!  
     Later we'll have a propane stove but for now keeping a full tank is not on the to-do list.

     Here is the original kitchen, built on the site of an early camping trip where we hung hammocks in the trees.

Outside...

and inside

     Here is the new kitchen.  Opening on a breezeway of the new house, it has a large window to the south.  

Installing dog-proof doors 

Making the most of space

A bright work surface

Termite fishing

     Since the trip to Cayman Roca yielded not even one fish, a trip into Smokey Lane Lagoon for termite fishing was next.
     Yeah, I wondered about that too when I first heard the term...no, you don't fish for termites; you fish with termites.  Finally something useful to do with termites (aside from burning their nests to keep the bugs away).
   The rain forest is full of termites and their huge nests are easy to see in lots of trees as the boat heads down the creek toward the lagoon.   An active nest of the right size is removed from a tree and broken into chunks...'right size' and 'chunks' seems to be determined by some previous experience with this sort of fishing.   
     Where the creek exits the forest into the lagoon, the boat traveled in a circle and chunks of the nest, loaded with crawling termites, are tossed into the water.   Sticks are cut and used to mark where the pieces went under; and if the pieces float then the stick is driven through the chunk and the stick's used to anchor the chunk to the bottom.   When the boat gets back to where the first chunk went in or under, it's time to fish.
     The inevitable result is that the termites, tossed into an unfamiliar environment, are frantic in their efforts to escape...and boy, do the fish go after those little suckers. 
        A net, thrown with the grace of a ballet dancer, scoops up the feeding fish as the boat makes the second trip around the circle stopping where each chunk had been tossed overboard.  
     The experience is not a good one for the termites, but we sure enjoyed the results of their sacrifice.

Cayman Roca, the trip

     The day alternated between sunny and cloudy with wind and the fish weren't biting...but what the hell.  It was a good day to be on the water.
     These are the first close up pictures of Cayman Roca I've ever seen.

Getting ready to fish at Cayman Roca

     We used to get to False Bluff by going from Bluefields out around El Bluff into the Caribbean and up the coast, offloading people and supplies onto the beach.   Once the creek was opened (see earlier posts) we traveled from Bluefields the back way: through bays and lagoons and up the creek to the pier.
     So the first order of business in preparation for a fishing trip to Cayman Roca was to move a boat from the pier, overland, and into the Caribbean...knowing the process would be reversed at the end of the fishing trip.

Moving the boat overland from the pier.

 

Heading to Cayman Roca...

and coming back to False Bluff.

Cayman Rock, Roca Caiman, Cayman Roca

    Word is that fishing's really good around Cayman Rock/Roca Caiman/Cayman Roca which is about 2.5 miles off shore from False Bluff.   After scrutiny of Cayman Roca from ashore, two visitors decided to see just how good the fishing really was...more later on that.
     Whether sunny or overcast there always seems to be a bit of wind and chop.  The very small island is home to birds, a little green stuff, and not much else.

A tiny destination offshore

The dolphin

     I found this treasure on a beach walk more than a year ago.  She spent most of the intervening time - between the finding and when the house was finished - wrapped in an old towel.  Right after I folded my tent I polyurethaned and hung her at the entrance to the house.  (She may be a male dolphin...I couldn't tell.)

The house (8): moved in

     The roof is on and the house is in use. I've moved out of my tent and the first guests are here.   It's all very comfortable even without electricity or running water, both of which will come in time. 

The house (7)

     Below are floor plans for the house, first floor first and then the second floor.  The bottommost edge of each sketch faces east, toward the Caribbean.  Bad weather, when it comes, usually rolls in from the Caribbean.  For this reason there are smaller or no windows on the east side of the house except in the living quarters of full-time employees...and when a storm hits that makes them shut both their east-facing door and window, they have a large west-facing window that opens onto a protected breezeway.  

     A thatch roof covers the entire house:  rooms,  breezeways, and stairs.  The covered spaces that are not named comprise open living areas...for simplicity's sake I call them breezeways because the breezes sure do flow through them.  When heavy rains or winds do hit, the north-south breezeways provide protection while allowing life to go on (cooking, eating, reading, hanging-out, whatever).  The windows in the kitchen (floor one) and bedrooms (floor two) on the south side can remain wide open even during a heavy rain from the east; and the thatch roof overhangs the east-facing bedroom window on the second floor enough that little or no rain gets in. 

     There is a walkway, also covered by the roof, that is shown at the front edge of the first floor sketch which is not duplicated on the second floor.  It is concrete like the floors throughout all the first floor of the house:  cool and easy to clean.  Although the 'laundry room' is under roof, the roof being the second floor, it is open on three sides, having only the single wall which it shares with the first floor bedroom.  The storage room is as secure as we could get it, with no windows and two doors that are sandwiched back-to-back, one wood that opens right up to a second interior door of metal bars.  The kitchen opening is about 6' wide and when the kitchen window shutters are open there's a lot of light.  The kitchen opening has a double door of bars which can be secured when nobody's in the house.

     Stairs are stairs, but the treads on these are nice and wide and when we've got visitors they've served as seats.  

     All the floors upstairs, except the bathroom floor, are wood...breezeways and bedrooms alike.

The house (6)

     The second floor goes up, the 'sticks' define the roof, and Plycem continues to define the interior spaces.   A new window here and there.   Shutters, doors, railings, and pink paint....