Sunrises or Sunsets?

     Which is better, watching a sunrise or a sunset?  The left siders get the sunsets but we right siders get the sun rises.  It's always nice to start a day with a good sunrise when the Caribbean is flat and glassy.  It's a good way to mark the start of each day.  Hopefully good starts make for good days.

Seasonal - White Flowers

     Yep, not the most informative title.  Not sure what this ground cover is called but when in bloom it makes quite an attractive lawn.

Seasonal - Butterfly Swarm

     One of the strangest seasonal migrations out on the bluff are the butterflies.  For about a week there is a steady trickle of black butterflies heading south.  Seem to be higher numbers in the morning and evening hours but all day long they are flying by.  They follow along the beach or close to it.  Didn't see any over on the lagoon side of the bluff.  For a few days its just a stream of butterflies.

Cutting the Line In

     It was quite an effort to get the power line cut in, especially considering it was done by hand tools.  Everyday the crew would have to walk all the way back to where they stopped cutting the day before.  A lot of the cutting was done in standing water.  Not even sure how they got over the estuaries.   Even from the air you can only see a couple miles of the whole 30 mile project.

Farm Friends

     Its always nice to make new friends.  This little chick was quite spoiled and preferred to spend the days begging food from people instead of foraging with the other chickens.  In the evenings it would roost on someone's shoulder.  Once it fell asleep we would put it up on a high shelf so it was safe.

How can you say no to that face?

Farm Food

     Do we really need electricity?  Figured it would be decades before power lines were out on the Bluff so everyone had just gotten along without it.  Who knew running a line through some very tough jungle would be the easiest way to connect BLU to the rest of the country.  Is it worth hooking up to now?  Maybe a post on that one day.

     So one of the most frequently asked questions is how do we store and cook food?  A lot of the fruits and vegetables are fresh off the farm.  Since we front on the Caribbean and back up to a lagoon seafood is easy enough to gather.   Before leaving town we usually stock up with some canned goods and dry goods.  These supplies are usually more than enough to make some nice meals in between boat trips.  A nice glass of ice water does hit the spot though.

Bug Power - Leaf Cutter Ants

     Like a massive interstate highway these leaf cutter ants are non-stop carrying vegetation snippets back to their colony.  For a couple years we have had to step over this ant highway so I finally snapped some pictures.  Not sure how long they have been there but with this constant level of labor the colony is probably quite large.  Its worth a couple minutes to just stop and watch the flow.

Noni Fruit

     The Noni Fruit, scientifically known as Morinda Citrifolia but more aptly nicknamed the Pig Apple.  The juice from this green brainy looking fruit sells for a pretty steep price in the USA.  Out of all the "Superfoods" it's always near the top of the lists.  Based on a quick scan of the internet this fruit does everything and hardly nothing, which seems to be the case with all "Superfoods".

   One thing this fruit does do is stink.  The more it ripens the stinkier it gets.  Supposedly to make medicine from Noni Fruits you pick ripe ones off the ground, put them in a glass jar, let them liquefy for a week in the sunshine, and then drink the juice.  Noni seems to grow pretty much anywhere, including the beach within 20 paces of the hi-tide line.

Bug Power - Termites

     Seems like in the jungle there is a termite nest every hundred steps.  With vegetation growing all year long these colonies have the important task of keeping the cycle of life up to speed by devouring dead wood.  They will also eat up any untreated wooden construction that stays in contact with the ground so plan accordingly.  Termites and their nests have all sorts of uses, including fishing (previous post).

Old Boats

     There are two ways to get to Bluefields, by plane or by boat.  There aren't many planes but there are a lot of boats.  As the old saying goes, the two best days when you own a boat is the day you buy it and the day you sell it.  Luckily getting back and forth from BLU to False Bluff doesn't require a huge boat or the problems that come with them.

     The below boat used to be a catamaran.  Seems that Cayman Rocca isn't the only sea mount along the bluff.

The South End

     It's quite nice to walk out your front door and have miles of empty beach.  But how long of a beach stroll would it take to reach civilization from False Bluff?  Heading north would be quite a hike, 18 miles to reach the entrance to Pearl Lagoon.  Heading south is a bit easier with an 8 mile walk to the town of El Bluff at the head of Bluefields Bay.

     At the very end you reach the reason why El Bluff got its name.  A huge chunk of beautiful red clay sitting on black volcanic rock.  Could even be called a cliff, but who would name a town El Cliff?

Tree Decorations

     Nature abounds in tropical climates and some trees develop more decoration than just fruit and flowers.   

     Wiki says, "The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot flowering plants of around 3,170 species native mainly to the tropical Americas, with a few species found in the American subtropics and one in tropical west Africa."  Also good to know, Pineapples are blomeliads.

     This tree has several types of bromeliads growing on it.  Bromeliads grow in a special way to capture and store rain.  Not sure what variety they all are but the large ones are shrub sized and provide lots of water to the creatures living in the tree.

A gate or two

     In a previous post I wrote how, since we had dug and opened our canal, lots of people had begun to use it.  Most of the people who travel our canal are people who own property along the beach or people who visit people who own property.  
     But we do get the occasional 'visitor' who ends up hunting on land they don't own or stealing coconuts or whatever.
     So we built a gate...actually we built two.  The one pictured here goes across the main canal (the other one just closes off access to the 'house' dock).  The folks pictured here had come from Bluefields to visit our neighbor Allen over a long weekend.  Their boat, left at our dock when they arrived, was tucked safely away on the house side of the gate, which we usually keep down and locked from sundown to sunup.

     After loading the boat to head back to Bluefields, everybody got a chance to see just how the gate works....which is pretty well!

     Before we added the extension to the bottom of the pole a small boat came right under the pole when the tide was out and water in the canal was low....and they arrived at night!  The dogs notified us and when we informed these 'visitors' that when the gate's down they can't come in.  They got quite upset; and said that well, if we were going to be that way, they weren't ever going to come out to False Bluff again!  And sure enough, they haven't come out to False Bluff again.  
     We dismantled the gate and took it to Bluefields that day to have the extension added to the bottom.

Coconut trees...more

     The coconut trees we've planted  - nearly five hundred of them by now, or maybe more - have grown really really fast.  Some of our sprouted coconut seedlings have been planted in the yards of friends in Bluefields and I've noticed those trees haven't shot up quite as fast as the ones we have at False Bluff.
     One thing to which I attribute the growth of our trees is that I prune them. Coconut trees brown, or begin to die, from the bottom up.  Usually these older and very unsightly fronds are left on the tree.  I can't stand looking at those things; and so some years ago I began pruning them off...and the end result seems to have been that our coconut trees shoot up.
     Although visitors who've been involved in the project from before we began planting trees have commented on how fast the trees are growing....I may be imagining this.

A child is born

     We've worked pretty hard to post here weekly...but there's not been a post in nearly a month.
    Instead, there's been a birth:  to H and H, a son; to G, a nephew; to me, a grandson.   

1894 Map of Nicaragua's "Mosquito Coast"

     This great piece of history was sent by Herman Downs. Mr. Downs, born in Bluefields, lives in Miami and seems to have a library in his head. He comes up with some really interesting historical items about Bluefields and its surrounding areas...like this 1894 map that was published in the early 1900s. 
    Lots of the names on this map are still known in the area although there are some spelling and other changes, like it appears that False Bluff used to be called False Bluefields. (The name Bluefields is attributed to a founding pirate Abraham Blauvelt in the 1600s).
     The ads to either side of the map are great. One can only imagine what dining would be like in the "Cactus Saloon" which seemed to be well know for its Canadian Whiskey.

Night Time Visitor

     During the day you can occasionally see smaller Caimans, such as the tiny one shown below, in the water of the canal. 

     It's not until nighttime that the larger ones come out.  This fella was caught about five minutes after a request from a visitor, about 30 meters from the house.  The dogs are safe for another night. 

La policia

     Actually, her dad's the cop but the life vest fit her just fine!  They had come to spend the weekend, fishing and swimming and just enjoying the beach.  Now she's overseeing loading the boat for the trip back to Bluefields.