Buoy oh buoy

This thing is big and heavy and at one time floated around in the Caribbean.  
Made entirely of metal, it’s like a huge beach ball with an open shaft running right through its center. At one time, a wooden pole or spike sat in the shaft and held some sort of light. When I googled 'old metal buoy' I came up with a picture that looks very much like what we're finding in the woods, labeled as an anti-submarine buoy. 
Somehow these things washed ashore...and pretty far ashore, like hundreds of yards into the forest. How the hell that happened I don't know, but now that people are once more doing things along this section of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, these old buoys are being rescued.

ENEL 12

In an earlier post i mentioned that different crews did different jobs in this huge ENEL undertaking of running power lines up and down a remote section of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast - like the crew that chopped the right of way didn’t deliver the poles to the sites where they’d be put in the ground. And in keeping with this separation of duties, the crew that traveled up the beach in the truck from El Bluff was going to climb the poles and attach all the stuff that would make the poles ready to carry wire.  
All the usual complement of crew members plus a load of supplies was disgorged in our front yard where the supplies were set under the very clump of sea grapes where I used to live in a tent...shady and close to the house. The supplies would be left there and used as needed. The process of installing all this stuff on the poles would take several days.

     The truck does not have a front tire in a hole...it's parked on level ground.....

     The equipment brought consisted of the wooden four-by-four cross pieces that go near the top of all electric poles throughout the world; and the hardware, both metal and porcelain, that keep the cross pieces in place and carry the wire.  And yes, even with a full load of stuff, a crew of about twenty-five men were in and on the truck...all the men and all the equipment in these pictures.

     The first day the truck showed up all that happened was that the equipment was unloaded in our front yard under the same clump of sea grapes where I lived in a tent before the house was built. The spot was shady and close to the house; and would stay there for several days and used as needed.

     The crew chief took an inventory and some of the men immediately began to put together the pieces that could be put together ahead of time. Each pole would get two men plus supplies.

     (And in case you're wondering, these guys are dressed as we might for a day in autumn...but it was in the mid-80's when these pictures were taken.)

Papaya

We have two kinds of papaya producing at False Bluff: the big kind and the little kind; or the oblong kind and the round kind.
Whatever! They’re both delicious.

The papayas are ready to pick when the skin turns golden:

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.