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).

   

ENEL 3

     After long months of clearing the right of way, the utility poles that will carry electricity were moved to False Bluff, ready to be put in place. So boat captain Jimmy Anderson began to bring not only a full crew of men each morning, but as many as ten treated utility poles as well.  Pulled along behind his loaded boat, crew and poles came from Kukra Hill through the lagoon and up our creek. Captain Anderson stayed on site with the boat during the day and he was needed from time to time for emergencies.

     The creek is only about ten-feet wide and twisty as you can see in the pictures in the December 22, 2011 blog post.  It makes for a beautiful transition from lagoon to Caribbean. But it is not navigable by a nearly forty-foot long boat trailing ten utility poles behind like a dog's tail.  So just inside the opening to the creek from the lagoon, crew members jumped out of the boat and pulled each pole, one by one, for the half-mile long slogging trip up the canal to our dock.

     Then the crew got the poles, one at a time, out of the water, onto the dock, up the walkway and into to our front yard, ready and waiting for placement.

ENEL 2

     What Nicaragua's national electric company, ENEL, is doing along our section of Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast is a huge undertaking.  The inland areas in which the work is being done is accessible only on foot. A boat can get men near where the work must be done, but only their feet can get them to the exact locations. We at False Bluff gave ENEL access to the beach via our canal, and the use of all of our facilities:  docks, land, wells, and building.
     Except for chainsaws, all the work is done by hand: clearing, getting the poles on site, installing the poles and running wire....
     Various crews from various localities do various jobs.  The first job was to hack open space for installing electric poles.  To do this along the coast near False Bluff, nearly thirty men with machetes came south from Kukra Hill by boat through Smokey Lane Lagoon and up our canal every morning.  Using our place as a staging area got them close to where a big chunk of their work had to be done.  The men in the crew carried water and food in addition to their machetes and their machete sharpening equipment; and a few men brought chain saws to cut what the machetes wouldn't, which wasn't much.
     And bit by bit the miles of 'bush' got chopped away, leaving an opening about eighty-feet wide like a ribbon through the jungle.

     This picture doesn't give a good perspective of the boat that ferried men and equipment to False Bluff. The boat's between thirty and forty feet long.

     Once again, here's the crew for the day heading from their boat/taxi across our front yard on their way to work.

     A bit difficult to envision a negative, but this newly opened space disappearing into a curve to the north is where electricity will travel.. and it's a very small part of the twenty-six miles that's being cleared. The stick at the foreground is where an electric pole will be planted.

     Chain saws at rest at the house.

Fresh fish for dinner

     Cayman Roca is just that:  rock.
     About 2.5 miles out into the Caribbean, in front of False Bluff, is a small rock island inhabited by birds and some grass (see the 10 April, 2011 post for pictures).  Fishing trips are no big deal!

Rinsed and set to dry at the end of a successful trip.

Proud of his part of the catch.

The fish is onto a plate with rice, beans, cassava, and rough lime.

Lizard eggs

     ....put into perspective.  I have no idea what kind of lizard laid these tiny things.

Culantro

     Tasting much like cilantro, 'Eryngium foetidum' has lots of names, including 'blessed thistle' from the French 'chardon beni,'  and 'spiny coriander.'  This biennial herb is indigenous to continental tropical America and the West Indies.  I've grown it in Richmond where it's only an annual.
     Used throughout the Caribbean as well as the Far East (check it out in some of Richmond's Vietnamese restaurants), it's rich in calcium, iron, carotene, and riboflavin; and is widely used in herbal medicines. The leaves are a bit tougher and the flavor stronger than that of the cilantro most of us are accustomed to.  It dries well, retaining its color. 
     We grow a lot of it at False Bluff and use it raw in salads or cooked with many different foods. Good stuff!

    
 Here's a small patch between pineapple and sugar cane.

This picture shows the spiny leaves.

Garbage

     In the 11 July 2013 blog post I called this stuff  'Beach trash.'
     An article on Earth Day in Huff Post Green calls it garbage.  The headline reads  'The Tragedy of Ocean Trash.'
     The United States (surprise, surprise) is cited as the largest contributor.  Here's a link to the article that outlines the life cycle of this crap and tragedy it is.
     Happy Earth Day!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/22/plastic-ocean-garbage_n_5191294.html

ENEL

     The Nicaraguan Electricity Company (Empresa Nicaraguense de Electricidad) has been an almost daily presence at False Bluff for months. Various crews have been working on a project which has a side benefit of bringing electricity to about twenty-six miles along the Caribbean coast...something no one thought would happen for decades...or at all.
     There will be several posts with pictures of various phases and changes this is making for us.

A 'clearing' crew on the way to work.

A favorite beach find

     I enjoy walking the beach and the always changing collection of stuff that washes up.  A previous post dealt with trash, the cleaning of which is an ongoing task; but there are treasures to be found as well.  This seed is sort of like snow flakes (without the cold that comes with snow): no two are alike.

     Usually I only find the individual seeds and if they're not found soon after they wash ashore further 'washing' and exposure to the constant salty breezes dulls them.  But every now and then I find a pod.  Tough as dried leather, they're worth the effort to break open.

Getting to the useful part

     Opening a coconut takes practice.

Surprise!

     Expect the unexpected because there's something beautiful/interesting/unusual everywhere you look.