This year we rang in the new year in a small agricultural town in Puerto Rico called Maricao. Maricao is mostly known for its coffee production, cooler temperatures (about 10-15 degrees cooler than lowlands) and slower pace of life.
View from the mountains of Maricao where we stayed
However, while it is considered a very rural community, they are well-known for their New Year’s Eve celebration. The mayor’s office hires a live band, has a fireworks show and used to even have a pig roast in years past. Rincón doesn’t even do this and it is about 2-3 times the population (about 15,000 people) as Maricao (around 6,000). We thought it sounded like a great time when our new friends invited us to come to the fiesta and then stay the night at their 100-acre finca. And indeed it was.
We had a lot of fun dancing to the merengue and salsa music, eating a great meal and ringing in the New Year 3 hours earlier than we did last year.
Our gracious hosts then showed us around the farm in the morning and we admired all the beautiful tropical plants. We also noticed that while Maricao is only about 20 miles away as the crow flies from Rincón, it is actually quite a bit different when it comes to vegetation because of the climate differences. It really was quite a bit colder than in Rincón. Britton and I both had to snuggle under two quilts to stay warm! Maybe we are just getting acclimated, but it was the first time in Puerto Rico that we were a bit chilled.
Beautiful plants like this heliconia
It was also our first night away from our property in Rincón and it was fun to get away for a night. Seeing what a mature finca with 10+ year’s worth of growth looks like also reinvigorated all our efforts around the property. Plus thanks to our hosts, We went home with more starts to plant. What a great start to 2014. We hope you all have a Prospero Año Nuevo con mucha felicidad.
With four acres of untamed land we knew we would have our work cut out for us. When we first arrived we had to at least clear enough of the front driveway/courtyard to be able to drive our vehicle in. Then Britton worked on the lower fenced back yard and slowly we have moved our way out of the chain link fence area into the real jungle where we are slowly planting our orchard of tropical fruit trees.
Plants in waiting
Clearing the jungle is hard work. Even though it is December we still have some pretty intensely hot days which makes it even harder. It is ok to go out for a few minutes and water the trees and plants in waiting under the house but when it is a bright sunny day like yesterday, it only takes about 10 minutes in the sun before we are sweating and our energy starts to drain.
When it gets that hot we will usually go and hang out in the cabana. Because it is located under a huge mango tree it stays cool and shady most of the day.
After we mistakenly took down the avocado tree because it was covered in vines, we decided we would do our best to clear out all the small trees and vines around the big ones before we took them down. But that is quite the undertaking.
Probably the hardest part of clearing the jungle are all the vines! Some of these vines are the size of tree trunks! They criss-cross and tangle themselves making it just about impossible to tear them off the tops of the trees. Then you add in the fact that these vines have flowers that attract the bees and you can see the challenge we face.
Our tools of choice working in the jungle area are pruners/loppers, a hand saw and a machete. We swing around the machete to try to make an indentation in all the growth and I go in under it and snip at the small 1 inch or less diameter trees, plants and vines that are growing around and over the bigger trees. Once I clear the area around the bigger trees, Britton takes the handsaw to them and we then drag them to piles scattered all over the back.
When we have some space cleared and we know we won’t be dropping a huge tree on top, we plant our fruit trees. Because it is so green, we have had to try various methods of marking them. Our current method is to put a stick painted in the orange-red paint of the cabana next to each tree we plant.
Orange tipped sticks mark our recent transplants
We are not exactly sure what to do with all this material we have piled up but we will need to do something or the vines will take over and we will have big tangled messes once more. We have started a compost pile with some and we are thinking of maybe having a campfire/bonfire and inviting some friends over to roast marshmallows on the remainder.
Piles of sticks, branches and tree trunks
We still have a long way to go. We have probably cleared a good acre and planted about 30 plants (including ornamentals) by now, but have 3 more acres and 15-20 more plants (in the current load)! We have not decided how far we want to clear because the more we clear, the more we will have to maintain or the jungle will claim it once again.
It is very physically hard work and we’ve been waking up sore. Our feet hit the hard tiles in the morning and we can feel our bones moan. Our hands are blistered and our bodies stiff. But it is gratifying in a way. There is something about using your body for work that is underappreciated in the modern world.
Most modern people (us included) walk around with our heads detached from our bodies. So when we get out there and get dirty and sweaty and messy it awakens in us that mind-body connection. We directly and immediately can see the progress (and mistakes). And we can look towards the future as well: the thoughts of tasting juicy tropical exotic fruits in a few months or years keeps us going.
Baby starfruit on our new tree
Plus we have perspective. There is no way we could be doing yard work or planting trees in the depths of the arctic weather that Colorado is having right now and that is a sweet feeling in itself.
In Colorado, from about October 1 through May 1 or roughly for about six months out of the year, we hermetically seal ourselves away from the harsh winters and nature. And even in the summers we take great pains to keep ourselves comfortable if we are inside. Generally speaking, we Coloradoans love to play in the outdoors, but we live indoors. There is a very clear line between indoors and outdoors. When sealing ourselves away we literally look for leaks of air and try to close them up using various methods. And this is smart. It is expensive to heat and cool a house. There is only a brief time in spring and fall when you could just keep your doors open and feel as comfortable inside as out, but most people don’t. It is set up to be either indoor or outdoor and so that’s just how it is.
So living here in Puerto Rico now where most days it is around the ideal temperature that we try to replicate in Colorado in our cars, offices and homes, it is very tempting to just leave the windows and doors wide open. Indoors and outdoors are basically the same. The lines here are much more blurred. Sure, you can get air conditioning and attempt to seal yourself in, but there is just much less of a point to it. It is mild summer weather nearly all the time.
The weather starts out cooler in the early morning, around 75, and progresses to a peak temperature of about 90 by about 3pm. That’s when we have been heading to the beach and swimming to cool down a bit. But even the sea water is about the same nice warm temperature as outside. In or out of the water, both feel great.
Then the storms have been rolling in and everything cools down again. At dusk, the jungle comes alive and you can hear all the bugs and frogs, birds and bats beginning their “day”. We have screens on our windows now to keep the mosquitoes or random bee out and we usually close the doors to the cabana at dusk. But last night it was so cool listening to the rain and all the jungle awakening that we just left the doors wide open. When the rains stopped, Britton went to sit on the top of the cabana and I laid in bed reading with the doors still open.
Kitty heard a rustling noise outside and jumped under the covers like he does. I went to pull him out and pet him when I saw this!
It was a huge crab looking spider on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t moving much, but it freaked me out so much that I called Britton in to help me clear off the bed and look for anything else that may just be lying in wait for us. As we were shaking everything out, we found a cockroach!…in our bed! Yuck! We tried to get Kitty to get it but he was scared of the broom.
I know there is a lot of rotting fruit around especially from the huge mango tree above the cabana and so there are probably a lot of cockroaches around. But they just have to be the creepiest creature. I can deal with most spiders (but that crab spider was really ugly) and even snakes, but the cockroaches, man they are huge here and some of them even fly! I don’t know if I will ever get used to them. I had never seen one in Colorado, ever. Talk about being “sheltered”, literally. Thankfully we don’t see them very often in the cabana but the few times we have is too many.
Creepiest creature contest winner
So after that experience I was still squirming with chills running down my back as we removed the cucaracha and started to put the bed back together when Britton says, “Whoa, what’s that?!” and I was not looking forward to what could possibly be worse than what I had already seen. When we see a little tiny frog jumping. Britton caught it with a glass and we looked at it.
A coquí! They are rarely seen because they are so small and quick, but apparently last night was the night that every creature of the jungle decided to form a welcoming committee and visit our little cabin. Coquís are the source of the whistling “Co-Key” sound at night and an emblem of Puerto Rico. Yes, Puerto Rico was welcoming us! A good omen. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. It seemed to remind us.
I was so happy to see this little guy that it ALMOST made up for the other visitors of the evening. Life in la jungla. I guess we need to remember to shut our doors at dusk or be prepared for all sorts of interesting visitors. So while the weather feels the same indoor and out, I am not quite prepared for all the creepy crawly wildlife just yet. And maybe we just need to get screen doors, too.
This is another common question we get from people when we tell them that we are moving to the Caribbean.
This seems a strange question coming from people in Colorado. Right this instant we are experiencing massive rains and flooding that is causing severe devastation especially to areas near the rivers. Roads are closed down, some people are stranded and some areas are shutting down municipal water service due to possible contamination. Some of our friends and former next door neighbors live(d) in one of the trailers in Riverside Park in Evans shown in this video. Their home and car have been completely damaged and are probably unsalvageable. They had to swim inside their home in shoulder deep water to just scrape together a few of their floating belongings.
This is a river about 1 mile north of our house. Thankfully we are still high and dry
While this is definitely one of the wildest weather rides we’ve had in a while, it is not isolated. Colorado has some of the most extreme climates ever. In just the last 6 months alone we have had raging wildfires, huge hail storms that demolished whole cars, sides of houses and rooves (one of which was a rental of ours), extreme heat that caused schools to close, tornados touching down with winds in excess of 50 MPH and snow blizzards with temperatures 20 to 30 degrees below 0 F! And again this is just in the last 6 months mind you!
This is the baseball field in Evans near Riverside
So it seems sort of bizarre when people from Colorado ask us if we are afraid of hurricanes in Puerto Rico. I’d say coming from Colorado we are probably more prepared for extreme, bipolar weather than most. When people ask this it is interesting that they do not see where they live as being an extreme climate sort of place. We (humans) tend to exaggerate risk when it is outside of our control, and minimize it when we are more familiar.
I am sure a hurricane would be a crazy intense thing to go through, but just like these crazy and intense things in Colorado, we would get through it. It will be tough to clean up and deal with the aftermath of these and future disasters, but life WILL go on. People will pull through as we always seem to do. We need to help each other out in times like these. We need to show our very best side. If there is any silver lining in these huge natural disasters it is at the very least, this.
This photo was taken by an aerial news reporter and shows the trailer homes floating in the flooded river
There is no sense in being afraid of future possible calamities. They are bound to happen whether you are afraid or not, so you might as well face them head on. We will continue to do our best to be prepared and avoid high risks, but life is full of disasters of one kind or another around every bend. We must be flexible and adaptable. We must be compassionate and community-oriented. We must be calm and not panic or exaggerate. We are from Colorado after all, right?! We can get through anything. So if you ask, I might remind you of this and say, no, we are definitely not afraid of hurricanes.
Orange tipped sticks mark our recent transplants
Baby starfruit on our new tree
