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.

Beach finds

     You never know what you're going to find on the beach.

     And sometimes even after you find something, it takes a closer look to figure out just what it is you've found.... This turned out to be a sort of shovel or scraper.

False Bluff....

 

Food - but what is it?

     We've planted a lot of food-producing plants at False Bluff.  To name some, we've put in coconut, papaya, mango, sugar cane, quince, soursop, banana, peppers, passion fruit, oranges, lemons...you get the idea. 
     And now we've planted seedlings of this small tree but I at least have no idea what it's called.  I first saw the fruit hanging from a tree in the yard of a Bluefields' friend.  Of course at the time I didn't know that what I was looking at was fruit, or more specifically, a huge seed pod.  The tree shown here's about four years old.

No, those aren't snakes hanging from the tree.

     They are long pods with a very tough corrugated skin.

     When the pods are opened, they're filled with puffy things. 

     The seeds themselves aren't edible.....

but the sweet, puffy covering is...kind of like cotton candy. Very sweet!

     This is a really bad picture, but the seeds above were at False Bluff less than a week and they had already sprouted and ready to pot, in anticipation of going into the ground and adding to our collection...

House lots and termites

      In 2014 we had seven house lots surveyed.  We then marked each corner of each lot with a wooden stake.  Each stake was completely painted with oil paint - twice - before the appropriate lot number was painted on the stakes, one numbered stake for each lot's corner. For being done under fairly primitive conditions the stakes looked nice and the sky blue color showed up really well.

     In 2015 we replaced all those stakes because the termites ate right through both layers of oil paint and much of the wood.  We replaced those nice wooden stakes with nice PVC stakes - again, one stake for each of the four corners of each of the seven lots - with numbers.

     Let's see what the termites do with these babies!

Internationales

     A few years ago I was walking in Bluefields with a friend and pointed out a couple on the other side of the street.
    'Gringos'  I said.
    She corrected me with a smile.  'No.  Now we call them internationales.'
    On Big and Little Corn Islands prices are high and available land is disappearing, especially land on the water.  So, more and more internationales are looking in and around Bluefields.  I mean, who wants to live in a gated community on the other side when the right side's the up and coming place to be?
     A couple of internationales were guests at False Bluff just before Christmas.  She's from Argentina, he's Dutch, and they've added Nicaragua to the list of places they call home: they bought property about a kilometer north of us before they returned to London where they live...just in time for the birth of their baby in early January.

     And their new son has a Miskito name...true internationales.

(I thank the photographers of these photos.)

Why the hell...

...am I in Virginia right now?

     It's 3 degrees in Richmond!

Watching the grass grow

     Years ago when I first began learning about Nicaragua, there was a guy from the U.S. who lived in RAAN (the opposite of RAAS) who frequently posted on a Nicaraguan blog (that didn't survive) about his hobby of 'watching the zinc rust.'  This was a joking reference to how fast metal roofs were eaten by the salt in the constant Caribbean breeze.
     Since we don't have metal roofing at False Bluff, what we do instead is watch the grass grow.
     An earlier blog post here tells of my determination early in the project to get a particular type of grass to grow here: http://falsebluff.blogspot.com/2013/05/bermuda-grassmaybe.html.
     It's a particular grass that grows all over Big and Little Corn Islands and in a very few places in Bluefields....which is where our grass at False Bluff got its start. The effort began with tiny pieces I pulled from a crack in the sidewalk along Bluefields' main street - about as much of the grass as could be stuffed into a shoe box.  
     Planted at the base of a few coconut trees, which is where it seems to thrive, our small start took hold and spread; and we then stole hand-sized pieces from these locations to plant elsewhere.
     And here it is, growing strong and spreading, unfazed by the salty breeze...

How to grow sugar cane

     As part of our ongoing gardening/learning experience, we planted two rows of banana trees between the Caribbean and the garden in an effort to reduce the damage of the ever cool but salt-laden breezes. The banana trees are producing but their leaves suffer from salt damage and that'll eventually reduce their ability to produce.
     So, between the banana trees and the Caribbean we've planted two rows of sugar cane. The thin leaves of the cane don't seem to suffer as much from the salty breeze and when fully mature the plants are almost as tall as the banana trees so we're hoping for protection for the banana trees as well as for the garden.
       Cut some stalks of sugar cane. Strip the leaves off and slice the stalks into pieces about eighteen inches long. Drop these pieces into a shallow trench, or in our case two shallow trenches. 

Here's trench one being filled with the pieces of cane...

  

     

     Then cover the pieces of cane (Lillian is supervising).

     And wait a couple of weeks...