False Bluff, Facebook, friend......

The False Bluff blog is almost totally devoted to just telling the story of what we’re doing out here. Granted, some early posts carried information about Bluefields, but when we started a False Bluff facebook page we put anything and everything that didn’t deal directly with False Bluff onto the facebook page.

Most of the information on the facebook page relates in some way to Bluefields or to RAAS or to things happening in Nicaragua along the Caribbean coast….not all posts, though. 
So, when you become a False Bluff facebook friend you get a wider catch of information about the area...not just stuff specific to False Bluff...information or links about Nicaragua's canal project, birds of Nicaragua, bamboo farms (and bamboo houses and bamboo beer), and projects by local university students, and more.…

https://www.facebook.com/pages/False-Bluff/142899219245180

ENEL 11

     Getting ready to head up the right-of-way to prepare the poles for wire.

          The guy on the ground supplies the guy on the pole; and in the distance, other crew members head north to other poles and another crew member already at work on a pole.

     The pole behind the house gets outfitted.

ENEL 10

     I heard that a missing bolt kept this baby in a garage in El Bluff, which is about eight miles south of us as the fishes swim. But one morning it showed up in our front yard full of men and equipment - after traveling up the beach, or in the water, or both, depending...farting all the while
Captain Jimmy’s boat had been pulling up every morning for weeks and weeks, loaded with men and supplies, and sometimes hauling even more supplies behind. The boat always came from Kukra Hill to the north, winding its way through rivers and lagoons and up the creek to our dock.  This thing carried men sitting or standing in the bed as well as reclining on the cab roof.
I have a hard time describing the truck so the picture will have to do that for me.

When you are accustomed to ‘remote’ and ‘pristine’ having a combustion engine like this one showing up in your front yard is a bit of a shocker.

And its spoor remained even after it went back to El Bluff.

To plant or not to plant

     I keep telling myself I've planted enough coconut trees. We've put in between 400 and 500. But how can I not give these babies places to put down roots?

IT'S A MIRACLE

I read.  

I garden and walk the dog and cut grass and shop and cook and paint trim and do all the other stuff a day might throw at any one of us. But I haven’t watched television in about twenty years unless I happen to be in a waiting room somewhere.

Instead, I read...for pleasure and to learn new stuff and to escape. I read for most of the same reasons people watch TV, and though I have a growing collection of paperbacks at False Bluff, there aren’t enough books there to last a visit. Besides, I've read them all, some more than once.
My Kindle is one of the most important survival tools I have and I am appalled when I remember how, several years ago, I fought hard against owning one.
So near panic set in when my Kindle died last night, with only a week until a trip to False Bluff. 

A new Kindle was ordered about midnight.  

I took it from the delivery man’s hands at 930 the next morning.

If that ain't a miracle, nothing is.

Another 'bird of paradise'

     Most bird of paradise - both plant and flower - are large and showy. My favorite is this tiny variety which over time establishes large clumps. 
   The clumps at False Bluff so far are still small but when I consider the progress we've made planting stuff - of all sorts - where no stuff had been before, the clumps are increasing pretty quickly and are a joy to see.

A recent visitor

     This beauty showed up one day on his or her way somewhere else....

ENEL 9

The changing scenery at False Bluff

Looking North...

...and South

ENEL 8

     Finally...the hole is dug and the 'house' pole is moved into place.

     The ground end is positioned near the hole and the guy with the X-shaped tool stands ready to hold the pole when the men start to lift it.

     Up goes the pole.....

     ...as the guys with the barbed sticks move into position.

     Done!

The house gets painted

     The first paint on the house at False Bluff was flat latex:  a creamy white and 'flamingo' on the wood work.
     Though we stayed with the same general color scheme, the change is startling. We've gone from the flat cream to high gloss white; and there's never been a flamingo born that's the shade of pink that now graces the wood work.
     The change to oil based high gloss works well in this Caribbean environment and it sure cleans easily!

          It didn't take any time at all to get used to.

ENEL 7

     Poles are up all along the visible sections of the right-of-way, which dramatically changes our scenery north and south; and finally it's time to put up the pole right behind the house. I'd watched from a distance as poles went up but this time I was going to get as close as ENEL would let me.  The pole close to the house will go next to the leaning man - where the stick is - right between the yellow and the red cashew trees.  And getting this pole up and in the ground would be accomplished by hand and just a few 'tools.'

     A major piece of the puzzle entitled "How the hell will these guys get that pole in the ground?" is a 'tool' the likes of which I'd certainly never seen before. Here it's being used as a cutting board to slice watermelon.

          And here it's being used as it is intended to be used.

     The yellow and red sticks you can see lying on the ground in the first picture turned out to be really important in the installation too. Made of metal, they have barbs on one end. As a pole is lifted into the air, each man with one of these sticks, stabs his stick's barb into the pole, helping to hold the pole in place as it's lifted and soil is tamped around the base to set it.

Patagonia and the cashew flower

     We've got both yellow and red cashews growing right behind the house - the yellow just outside the kitchen. There was so much fruit on the yellow cashew tree this season, we had to prop up a couple of the larger limbs to keep them from breaking.

     As tasty as the yellow cashew 'apple' is, I much prefer the flavor of the red.

     But my favorite part of the cashew tree is its tiny, sweet-smelling flower...the tree is loaded with these little gems to the point of scenting the whole area.

   

Breakfast delivery

      Some distances at False Bluff are easier with a bike.  I think the bicycle was his idea- and a good idea it was.  Here are four calala being delivered in time for breakfast! They're a favorite with nearly everybody.

ENEL 6

     These pictures tell, step-by-step, how the Caribbean helped move the poles from our front yard at False Bluff up the beach, one pole per man as the weather deteriorated (Cayman Roca visible in the distance in the fourth picture).  First thing the guys did when they arrived that morning was strip to shorts...I should have anticipated what came next, but a lot about this entire project has been surprising to me.

Rough limes

     One of the things I treat myself to daily at False Bluff is fresh limeade made with 'rough limes.'
     No one can tell me just where that name came from or what the 'real' name might be.  I surmise the 'rough' comes from the bumpy rind. So far our rough limes come from a neighbor or the market in Bluefields; but we've got at least five trees that should begin producing next year.  Can't be too soon for me.
     Green, green on the outside and bright orange inside, this lime is extraordinarily tart.  Makes an excellent drink.

ENEL 5

     The poles were in our front yard at False Bluff and now each one of them had to be moved to a specific location.  The right-of-way, which runs parallel to the beach, had been cleared; but it's hundreds of yards west of, or away from, the beach; and having men carry the poles for miles up the right-of-way was not an option...although having men carry the poles was the only way the poles were going to get anywhere.

     Anticipating having to put each pole in a specific place, engineers had simply marked the future site of each pole with a stick, something cut from whatever was close at hand.  Then between the beach and the 'marking stick' a narrow pathway was cleared that would allow each pole to be moved to its final resting place somewhere along the right-of=way.  These narrow pathways would be the shortest distances that men would have to carry the poles...if the men could get the poles to where the pathways opened at intervals along the beach.

     There aren't roads anywhere on this stretch of coast; and the 'bush' or undergrowth is so thick along most of it, that short of clearing everything, there's no way for any kind of vehicle - even a tractor - to carry a pole from the beach to the right-of-way. (One day, walking north along the right-of-way, a nice cool breeze hit me from out of nowhere, with no sign of leaves or brush moving...took me a couple of seconds to realize that what I was feeling was the breeze off the Caribbean, moving through one of the cleared pathways.)
     This ENEL project, however, required that the poles must move, one by one, from our front yard to the location at which each would be set in the ground....and I was going to learn that the Caribbean itself was going to help make this happen.

RAAS

     What the hell is a RAAS?  
     RAAS is the "Region Autonoma del Atlantico Sur," or the Autonomous Region of the Southern Atlantic.  And RAAS has a northern twin, in name and political make-up if nothing else:  RAAN, the "Region Autonomo del Atlantico Norte" - no translation needed for that one.      
     Nicaragua's government is that of a unitary state, as are most of the world's governments...like the United Kingdom or Spain.  The United States government, on the other hand, is a federation. 
     There are fifteen departments in Nicaragua, what are called states in the United States; and then there are the two autonomous regions of RAAS and RAAN.  Nicaragua's constitution established the Charter of Autonomy which provides for limited self-government for these two autonomous regions (which are not departments) that make up the entire eastern part of the nation. Geographically RAAS and RAAN make up a bit more than half the country's total land mass.
     False Bluff is in RAAS, about 8 miles by water from the RAAS capital city of Bluefields.     

EDIT TO "CAUTION: NOT FOR SALE"

     I just located this online.  Although there are other properties pictured by "Discover Real Estate," this picture shows my property at False Bluff which is not for sale.
    Edit:  I am pleased to report that within an hour of my contacting the realty company, they had deleted this picture from their site and apologized.  Nice actions!

ENEL 4

     The process of moving the electric poles from Kukra Hill to our front yard at False Bluff was repeated day after day after day, until all the poles that were needed in this section of ENEL's huge undertaking were waiting to be set in place somewhere in the clearing that stretched more than twenty five miles along the coast.

Money, money, money

      Nicaragua's money is the "cordoba," with the accent on the "cor."  At least that's how cordoba's pronounced in much of Nicaragua.
     But in Bluefields most everybody pronounces cordoba like the word is spelled "car-d'ba."
     The United States has nicknames for some of its coins. For instance the word "quarter" is used for the coin that equals one-quarter of a dollar. Nicaragua just tells it like it is. A five-cordoba coin is known as "five cordobas," and a twenty-cordoba coin is known as "twenty cordobas" and so on...nary a nickname.
     Nicaragua's bills are different colors, according to each bill's face value.  For instance, the five-hundred-cordoba bill is red.  But my favorite is the fifty-cordoba bill: it's a really pretty shade of violet!
     I only had the green bill and a few coins for this shot (and yes, there's a little window on a lot of the bills).