False Bluff Views

     In any direction, at any time, beautiful False Bluff...

South

North

East

West

Storage

     The storage room gets an extra door, an added measure of security. 

Ho, hum.....

     Yeah, right!  A typical and utterly splendid sunrise at False Bluff.

POGO

     Pogo, a 'stumpy' manx, was my companion for more than twenty years.  She died at home beside me on May 31, 2012.   Pogo grew so weak, so quickly, that it was clear her death was close and right.  Independent even for a cat, Pogo enjoyed affection on her own terms, but always wanted to be nearby.  She shared the dog door with her chum, Emma, and came and went as suited her fancy.  
    No more.  
    Pogo is buried in the wildflower garden where she used to nap near a clump of coral bells.  Dr. Nan Jack of Church Hill Animal Hospital attended Pogo at her end.

Two of the bedrooms

     Two of the three upstairs bedrooms.  These open onto the east-west breezeway, each with a window that opens to the south.  Painting's not finished but that'll come in time.

Furnishing the house

      There are four bedrooms and a kitchen in the new house that had to be stocked with usable stuff.  Thrift stores in Bluefields provided most of the what was needed to stock the bedrooms and some of kitchen supplies: sheets, towels, pillowcases, bedspreads, blankets (yes, it gets cold at night), knives, a colander. The thrift store finds were washed and, in the case of the linens, dried in the tropical sunshine.   

     No, none of it matches but I've got a tent I don't need anymore for anybody who cares about matching sheets.   

     New stuff -  mosquito nets, mattresses, pillows, and the beds to put them on; and the rest of what I wanted for the kitchen - I purchased at other stores in Bluefields or directly from the craftsmen who made them.  

     The list of what went into the house seemed endless and at one time I felt as though I'd bought at least one of everything in town and carried it out to False Bluff.

Clean linens, waiting to go

Supplies for the kitchen

Pillows

Laundry

   Throughout much of RAAS (the southern autonomous region on Nicaragua's east coast) laundry is done in concrete 'sinks' that have both a built-in washboard and one or two reservoirs for water.   In many houses where there is also a washer and dryer, laundry is still done in a sink like this.   

   All the laundry at my favorite hotel in downtown Bluefields is done using this type of sink: towels, sheets, tablecloths, etc.  In fact someone at that hotel taught my sister, years ago, how to do laundry in the hotel sink after laughing at her first efforts - and she taught me.  We've gotten pretty good at it.  

   When the original small house was built at False Bluff, the northernmost open end of the structure was intended for laundry.  With the new house up, it was time to make good on that intention and get rid of the wooden washboard, nailed to a couple of 2 x 4's under a tree, that had been used for laundry for more than a year.

     So we went shopping in Bluefields.  One of my sons bought the sink as a gift to the project.  We'd like to have gotten a sink with two water reservoirs in addition to the washboard, but considering how much of a job we knew it was going to be to get this heavy sucker out of the hardware store, into a truck, onto and then off of a boat, and then from the dock to its final resting place...I cannot imagine how we'd have managed with the extra weight of that second reservoir.  We didn't buy one of the fancy tiled sinks either like the one shown in the second picture below.

   Though right now water is hauled to the 'laundry room' in buckets, pipes are in place for the next phase of the project which will bring water right to the sink.  Then we won't need our 'second reservoir' which is a bright blue plastic barrel, cut down so nobody falls in and drowns.  Greywater plumbing recycles the laundry wastewater and irrigates landscape plants that will eventually screen the laundry area...in this case hibiscus and hydrangea.

The hardware store where the sink was purchased

Tiled or plain?

The 'to-be' laundry room

The green bar is excellent laundry soap

Sink, in place and in use

A neighbor bearing gifts

     Allen is a frequent visitor who has a farm a lovely walk up the beach from False Bluff.  He stopped for tea one morning bringing gifts of homemade palm oil and sour-orange syrup.  Allen hopes that as the mainland Caribbean coast gets more visitors he can host some on his farm and teach them what he knows about making these and other things.  

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.