Monthly Archives: April 2014

Becoming One with Random

One thing we have noticed about Puerto Rico is that it just isn’t nearly as homogenized and standardized as most of the rest of the U.S. that we have visited. The randomness of life is still strongly present and we love it! You never know what you will run into and often times we turn our head and say, “Wow! Did you see that?” Or “Well, that was random!”

Just the other day we saw an ice cream truck towing a car. We often see horses in the back of small pickups.  The fishing supply store, La Estación, is also a favorite bar in town. Or how about the giant rock painted to look like a face?

Cabezudo(small) 1El Cabezudo

Recently, and quite often lately, we have had to go to Rincón Rental which is both a party rental store and landscaping supply store. You can get your chainsaw and mower blades and they can sharpen everything for you as well. At the most recent trip they offered us up some local produce called guamá which is a sweet, slimy pod.

Guama fruitGuamá – a nice treat when you need a break from landscaping

We got to talking about our finca (farm) and the reason for the various trips to the store such as a chainsaw stuck in a tree and another bent lawnmower blade. One of the guys told me that we must plant based on the “fases de la luna” or moon phases. When I asked him what he meant by that he said we should plant things that we want to grow tall when the moon is waning (menguante, a new Spanish word for me) and when we want root vegetables to grow we should plant the seeds on a full moon because the pull of the tides will bring them more deeply into the earth. I thought his ideas were pretty interesting!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t often get biodynamic gardening advice from the folks at lawnmower shops! If you listen more than you talk, you can learn a lot from people even in the most random of places.

And when you embrace the randomness of life, you tend to find yourself in ever more interesting adventures with cool characters, strange flavors and odd tales. But the really funny thing  is that we are starting to become those random, odd and eccentric people ourselves!  Things are starting to become less and less weird to us every day and just seem a normal part of the fabric of life here. We are finding that what we call random almost always has some sort of story or reasoning behind it.

Even in our own life, we have strange things all around. But they make sense to us. Why do we have a pile of rocks on the porch of the chicken coop? Let me tell you a story of a humongous hawk. Why do we walk around with these funny wide brimmed hats and no shirts? Let me tell you about the intensity of the sun here. Why is there a box of baby turkeys in our bathroom? Let me tell you about our food plans for this land.

Smurf and grinch
Why are these chickens half green and blue and half brown? There is a reason

I guess that is what we call adjusting. We are one with the randomness of life. We are not so standard anymore. From an outside perspective without the backstory and reasons (and maybe even still), we probably seem random and odd. But in our own way we fit in perfectly here with all the other fun randomness and characters! Well, I suppose it’s like they say in Spanish: Dime con quién andas, y yo te diré quién eres. Tell me with whom you walk (go about), and I will tell you who you are.

If that means random and a little eccentric, so be it. I own it and love it and am so thankful to live in a place where my weirdness somehow becomes “normal”.

In Colorado, we were odd to have something as simple as chickens. Here, that is just normal. In Colorado, we were weird to not spend a lot of money and to fix things ourselves; here that is normal. In Colorado we were strange having tropical plants everywhere (that we could), here that is normal.

Weird is relative. I don’t mind pushing the boundaries every now and again. It’s how we stay young and have fun. So go on, try something new and weird. Go your own way. It feels pretty darn good, if not a little random.

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The Tree That Bleeds

I was working in the yard the other day sawing down more trees (surprise!).  I came across a huge turpentine tree that we have been jokingly referring to as the “tumor tree” due to a huge break in the base of the tree where termites had setup shop.  The huge black nest and resulting area where the tree tried to grow around them was pretty ugly.

Due to the size of the tree I had decided to hold off on cutting it down until one day I got the motivation to do the deed.  So I started sawing into it with the chainsaw.  I was sawing away and all of a sudden I saw a huge gush of what looked like tobacco spit coming out from the cut.  When I say gush, I mean GUSH.  There was literally many gallons of this nasty liquid pouring out.  It really caught me off guard.  My first thought was something along the lines of “Wow…That is a lot of…sap?  No no…That can’t be sap…can it?  Maybe it is really porous honey?  I don’t see any bees….hmm..This is really gross. It’s still pouring out……wow.”

Once the tree was down on the ground I inspected it a bit and it actually appears to be water mixed in with the termite nest.  The termites had done a good job of hollowing out the dead parts of the tree and rain water had filled the cavity.  It was pretty disgusting to see especially since I wasn’t expecting it.

Tumor tree
Tumor Tree Down

We also noticed the other day that the avocado that we cut down when we first started clearing the property has shot up a few new sprouts just as some of you had predicted!  I think it may turn out that we did the avocado tree a huge favor by getting rid of all the termites and vines that had plagued it and given it a new lease on life.

Avacado Regrowing
Avocado Sprouting Back to Life

We also received our shipment of turkey poults today!  We will have more updates on them soon.

Turkey Poults
Day old Royal Palm Turkey Poults

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Adventure at Río Tanamá in a VW Bus

Our friend and neighbor Anthony invited us to join him in an adventure trip up to the Tanama River near Utuado in the middle of the island. He is a student at the Universidad de Puerto Rico en Mayaguez and he had off the week for spring break/Semana Santa (Holy Week) and thought this Friday would be a good day to head up there. He had the perfect vehicle for such an adventure: an old 70’s VW Bus decked out in all sorts of stickers and paintings including Taino and Puerto Rico symbols. When we saw it, we knew we were in for an adventure, but we had no idea how adventurous it would later become!

VW
Load up! 🙂

It was Good Friday (Viernes Santo) and there was very little traffic on the road. We wanted to pick up some supplies on our way up there, but many stores were closed. We stopped in Walgreens which was open, but they restricted the purchase of roughly half the items in the store. It was sort of bizarre which items could be purchased and which couldn’t. I tried to decipher the pattern, but it seemed pretty arbitrary. The whole laundry detergent aisle was off-limts, but not the makeup. While we were hoping for a 12 pack of beer (yes, they normally sell beer, wine and even hard liquor at Walgreens -quite different from Colorado!), we managed to at least get 3 small tubes for floating in the river.

Ley de Cierre Britton in Walgreens

We stopped off at a local panaderia for a sandwich and at a grocery store for beer and ice (they apparently didn’t get the same memo as Walgreens) and were on our way! The drive was beautiful and the air became a little more cool as we headed higher and higher into the island’s jungly mountains.

Tall Mtns
Lush vegetation

 Anthony and Britton and the VW busAnthony and Britton

We were planning on meeting up with some of Anthony’s friends, but decided to start on the trek and meet them a little later. We found our way down to the river after having to cross from someone’s private property. At first a guy wanted to charge each of us $2 to cross his land to the river area and then he changed his mind and just let us pass.

Tanama River

It was absolutely gorgeous and was at one point in history a sacred place for the Taino Indians that lived on the island long before the Spaniards came. While we didn’t go to church or watch the processions of Good Friday I felt that we were in one of the most beautiful cathedrals of the world!

Cave Light
The river cuts a path into cave formations

cassie looking up
Wow!

We floated as best we could with the little tubes, but we found the water was so low that we could just walk through most of the river. The tubes were used more as resting devices and fashion statements!

BK Tube Top
Britton’s sexy tube

We hung out by the river for some time and enjoyed the fresh air and sounds of the river. We also found some really cool fruit laying all around the ground that looked almost like lotus flowers.

Strange Fruit
Any ideas what this could be?

Anthony C and B
Having fun down by the river

We hiked some pretty steep trails and found another cave that overlooked the river cave.

Cave

IMG_5870

It was starting to get a little dark and we thought we had better head back. We saw Anthony’s friends and they were going to be camping there, but we had planned only on a day trip.

By the time we got back to the bus, it was completely dark and we could see the stars shining over the mountain tops. We got all loaded up and started the VW back up the steep mountain side. We were putting a lot of strain on the poor VW’s low-horse power engine but it was doing pretty good. Then…we approached a long hill that had a probably 60 degree angle. We were climbing and climbing and climb…and stopped. Halfway up the road. The VW was hurting and we were practically vertical. All the loose items in the bus rolled or fell backwards. Anthony began to panic a little because if we slipped, we would be tumbling off the side of the mountain.

Mtn roadThis is part of the mountain we were trying to climb (earlier that day)

Britton and I got out of the bus and tried to calm Anthony down. Britton didn’t think we would be able to go backwards as it was so steep  the tires could start slipping on the concrete and slide down uncontrollably. And we would have to go around a huge curve. Anthony didn’t think he could ride the clutch and get it up. So we chocked the tires with rocks for a few minutes and Anthony made the call that he wanted to try going back down the hill in order to give him a running start up it.

We slowly helped him back down the road with Britton on one side and me on the other guiding him so that he would avoid the railing over the cliff. Carefully and slowly we made it to a semi-flat area in the road and Anthony got out of the bus visibly shaken and stretched out his foot that had been pressing so strongly on the brake.

We made a plan that both Britton and I would get out of the bus in order to lighten the load and then Anthony would gun it up that hill as fast at the bus would let him. I would wait at the top and Britton at the bottom in case he had to come back down. We crossed our fingers and Anthony sped up the incline and made it! We were all so relieved, but I think no one moreso than Anthony. Whew!

VW Bus in jungle
This old bus made it!

The bus was pretty quiet there for a while reflecting on the whole day. We got into the Lares area and had another sandwich break around 9pm and were thankful to have lived through another day and another adventure.

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Best of the Rincón Film Fest

This weekend we went to our first film festival! It was the 7th Annual Rincón Internationa Film Festival and took place at various locations throughout Rincón for about a week. We decided to go to the Best of the Fest night because it would showcase the award winning short films and we also wanted to check out the Casa Hines Mansion which we had heard about but never actually visited before.

Cassie and Casa Hines
Me at Casa Hines

We loved looking at the property and landscaping as well as the architecture. It is a beautiful place beach front and we enjoyed a nice sunset before the movies began.

mansion

Bill and BrittonBritton and our friend Bill overlooking the courtyard

Inside HinesUpstairs balcony area

We enjoyed the films from each of the categories: Fright Night, Comedy, Puerto Rican Film, Action, Date Night as well as the music videos.

Me and B at sunset

One of our new friends here even made one of the music videos called Johnny, that was featured and it was filmed almost entirely in Rincón and the music is by a local band called The Disfunction. We also watched two other great movies that were filmed in Puerto Rico: Chula and Mi CorazónMi Corazón was interesting as it had a sort of not-so-hidden message about the United States’ impact on Puerto Rico.

Overall, we had a great evening of film and fun even with a little rain thrown in.

Screen at Film

 

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