We love this rural tropical life. Here are a few fun photos from this past week or so.
Rainstorms and rainbows falling into the sea
Kitty on the catwalk
Siding on the cabin is looking really good! (And who is that handsome turkey on the deck?)
Iguana in a red banana tree
Wild fern
This loose cow has been just hanging out on the property
Laser cow and cat stare-down
The siding for the cabin has been an ongoing project for quite a few months. The first issue with it was simply deciding what type of siding to use. We really didn’t want to use T-111 as siding if we could avoid it at all. It is just sort of a cheesy, cheap material (that’s still sort of expensive) and to me it is just not the style aesthetically that I would prefer. So we looked into ordering various types of siding online, but the cost to ship something like ipe siding was more than the siding itself!
This cabin needs some siding!
So we were back to trying to find materials on the island. We have seen a few of the older style Puerto Rican houses with horizontal lap siding and we liked how this looked. A rustic sort of style that would go good on a cabin hidden in the jungle. So then the question was where to buy it, and indeed if it could be found anymore. It was not at Home Depot, National or any of the closeby hardware stores. We found one place listed in San Juan, but to save our sanity we would really prefer not to have drive there (but if need be we were trying to steel ourselves for it).
You have arrived at Comerical Toro! Woohoo
After a treasure hunt of sorts with clues from one hardware store and friends to try this or that, we finally ended up at Comercial Toro in Cabo Rojo. This is probably where we should have started for anything wood related. In fact, all the wood from the old wood house was marked from 1990/Comercial Toro. They mill some stuff and also pressure treat the wood themselves. It’s a huge facility!
With the chanfles in Cabo Rojo
We found out that in Spanish they call these boards chanfles or in English drop siding. We ordered up a bunch (hopefully enough) and they delivered them in a few days. Then the prep work came. Before we could put up the siding we needed to put in all the windows and also the trim and paint everything.
Piles to be painted
Trim and siding
Britton installing trim while a turkey inspector pecks around
Finally this week we began putting on the first few boards of actual siding! Exciting! It’s looking pretty good too! There’s a learning curve to all of this, so Britton is starting from the back and working his way to the front. The really challenging part will be the “tall side” of the house where there is no deck and it is about 20 feet off the ground. We may need Waldemar-the-Fearless’s help on that part!
First few rows of siding on the back
And then a few more!
Otherwise things are going well. When we’re not working on the cabin we’ve been playing music and hanging out with friends. Life’s good.
Went to see our friend’s band, Superluna, debut at Pool’s Bar
And stopped by Step’s Beach for a bit
Well we can now officially say we’ve had the true country Puerto Rican Christmas lechón experience! We had pig on the beach in Rincón last year, but this was quite a bit different.
Rotating Lechón
Papo invited us up to his finca for a Puerto Rican country Christmas party complete with lechón, pasteles, cockfighting, topos betting, horses and lots of beer drinking. It was an all-day event that started around 11am and would go on until it stopped. It was an interesting experience but we felt a little awkward since we stuck out like a sore thumb. We just sort of milled around because we don’t know how to play dice or bet on the roosters.
Guys betting dice (topos)
Roosters awaiting their turn to fight
When the lechón was ready to be chopped up, everyone came by to check it out.
As the special guests of Papo’s we got first tastes straight off the pig!
It was an interesting sort of dynamic because Papo hosted the party and the lechón and pitorro were free, but he sold beer from a sort of make-shift caged cantina.
A bit of a cocky customer!
People were getting pretty drunk and so Britton and I took a short hike about the property just to get a breather and away from all the drunk dudes.
Nothing like a hike in the jungle to recenter!
Country cockfighting
Later that evening I learned a little more about cockfighting as I talked with some of the guys cutting off the natural spurs and putting on plastic ones. One guy working with his teenage son putting on the spurs told me he learned the sport from his dad, and his dad from his before and back many, many generations.
Then the beer sold out. There was a sort of scramble for anything else to drink. Papo had asked us to bring two bottles of wine, and so we did. However, there was no wine opener. And so we had a “completo fracaso” as Papo called it trying to open these darn bottles. Apparently Papo had wanted some cheap screw top thing called Ponte something. It was pretty clear that wine is not a very popular thing to drink in the countryside of Puerto Rico.
Ever try to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew? Trust me, just don’t!
And so without beer to fuel the party it ended at the fairly early hour of around 8pm and we were able to drive home. We had anticipated staying the night up there just in case but it worked out just fine. It was quite the experience to be the only ones that spoke English and only knowing one or two people there. We felt very honored to have been included in the festivities.
Ice skating outside…in the tropics. When we first heard about this we thought it was a joke…but nope, the municipality of Mayaguez in warm and tropical Puerto Rico decided to create an ice skating rink right in the middle of the town plaza. You never know what you might find in Puerto Rico and this was one of those crazy things that we just had to check it out.
Set amidst palm trees and ferns: an ice skating rink
We met up with our good friends Missy and Ben and their great kiddos and headed to downtown Mayaguez. It was a little chaotic and hectic getting through all the paperwork waivers and getting all set up, but it worked out in the end. It was completely free including the ice skates and we could skate for a 20 minute session at a time. They will be doing this through Christmas I believe.
Britton and me and two of our favorite little people -getting our skates on
We had to wear pants which would be understandable in normal ice skating situations, but here, we were just sweating from the heat of the mid-day sun. The refrigeration units were working hard to keep all that ice frozen, but it was still a little watery and super slick.
The beast behind the whole operation
Britton skating on the slick wet side
The sunny parts that weren’t covered with the tents were even slicker!
What a beautiful place to ice skate!
Although not very practical it was super fun! I haven’t been ice skating in a very long time. There is actually a large indoor ice skating rink in Aguadilla, but we haven’t checked it out yet. It’s so funny…if you can think it, it can and probably has been done regardless of feasibility or budget crises!
After our skate session we walked around the plaza for a little while and admired all the Christmas decorations.
Mayaguez Plaza and Alcaldia
Checking out the alcaldia Christmas display
No pretense of separation of church and state here! Nativity scene right inside of Town Hall
Afterward we ran some errands around Mayaguez on the busy Sunday afternoon. It was starting to get late and so we decided we would go back and check out the lights in the plaza. Mayaguez has one of the better displays. There may not be any snow on the ground, but Puerto Rico knows how to light up with the Christmas spirit…including this patinaje sobre hielo. It was a gorgeous end to a winter wonderland day.
Lights of Mayaguez
