Saturday Trip to Placencia

Last Saturday Dennis and I made a little trip to Placencia to meet our friend, Dena, and her friend, Peggy, for a visit and lunch.  We made a brief stop in Monkey River Village before driving to Placencia.  On the short boat ride to the village, we noticed waterspouts out at sea and I managed to get some photos while we were in the village.

Dramatic sky with sun beaming through dark clouds and a waterspout in the distance.  I took processing liberties using a function called "HDR-ish" in Picasa to highlight the drama.

We saw as many as seven waterspouts at a time.  They usually don't last too long, maybe 20 minutes, and their winds max out at about 100MPH - nowhere near as destructive as their tornado cousins.  Still, you don't want to be near them when you are in or on the water.

They were fairly far away, but you can make out the water spray at the sea's surface under the leftmost spout. 

Soon we were on our way up the Monkey River Road in the Subaru.  We had plenty of time and stopped to take a few other photos.  Like the gorgeous blossoms of the Provision Tree below.  The blossoms on these large trees are as big as your head.  The very phallic buds peel open like a banana and the long red-tipped stamens fan out. The fruit is roughly the size and shape of a football (American football, that is.  Not soccer) and contains edible nuts.  I haven't tried them yet, but will if I get the chance.

Pachira aquatica, Provision Tree.

We also saw what I at first thought was a bird-of-paradise flowering at the edge of the jungle.  But I am not so sure now.

Bird-of-Paradise?  Probably not - it looks different than most that I see growing in the wild round here. Maybe it is a Canna flower.  They are in the same order (Zingiberales) as the bird-of-paradise and the gingers. Another mystery to solve!

After having a delightful lunch with Dena and Peggy at Dragonfly Moon Restaurant in Placencia (which we highly recommend, also see more about them here), we had coffee at Above Grounds Coffee House (also highly recommend).  Drinking our coffee (or, in my case, a caramel macchiato) on the deck, we were approached by a Maya woman selling wooden bowls.  I bought a bowl to use as a bread bowl. It is a lovely thing, made of tamarind wood.  As you can see in the photo below, I soon put it to good use, making French-style baguettes and southern biscuits (aka "scones" or "johnny cakes", depending on what part of the world you are in).  Tamarind, which is called tambran around here, is a very hard wood and takes a nice natural polish to its surface.

The tamarind wood bowl is the perfect size for mixing biscuit or bread dough.

From waterspouts to wooden bowls, you can never tell where the road in Belize will take you.

The BIG POUR, Day One

At first glance, the 6:30 a.m. scene is chaotic.  Today is the start of the “big pour” of concrete beams for the addition to our cabana.  The important issues to bear in mind that are imposed by our remote location:

• No such thing as cement mixer trucks in this part of Belize.
• No road to our place in Englishtown even if there were cement mixer trucks!
• All sand (loose), gravel (loose), and cement (bagged) was delivered by truck to the Monkey River dock area, then transferred by boat to our place where it was off-loaded in wheelbarrows.
• We have a small, gasoline-powered cement mixer.  Other than that, all work is manual.

Lots of action for 6:30A.M.

Organization transcends chaos - the production work is done by four teams working simultaneously. 

Team one feeding the mixer while team two waits for the next batch of concrete.  The water is in the black vat and is fed from our supply of captured rainwater.

Team one, the Mixer Team, feeds sand, gravel, cement, and water to the mixer and dumps the resulting concrete into the shovel box. 

Team two, the Shovel Team, shovels the concrete into 5 gallon buckets sitting in wheelbarrows.

Team two shoveling concrete into the buckets for team three as yet another batch of concrete is dumped into the box.

Team three, the Barrow Team, transports the filled buckets to the pour site and the empty buckets back to the Shovel Team. 

Team four, the Pour Team, lifts the buckets and pours the concrete into the beam forms.

Richard positioned on the scaffold to pass the buckets up to another team four member to pour the concrete.

The action is so fast, buckets (emptied!) were flying through the air.

Today is a perfect day for a large-scale pour like this.  It is cloudy and relatively cool.  This will keep the concrete from setting so quickly that it cracks and is also more comfortable for the teams.  The beams amount to a total 450 linear feet and are 10x10 inches in cross section.  The beam forms are made from 12x1 inch emery wood boards fashioned into a contiguous 3D matrix.  The beam forms are supported by sticks (the local terminology for saplings cut for single use) with a top brace.  The supports look careless and casual, but they are custom constructed on site and measured and shimmed so the resulting beam will be level.

The beam forms with the rebar skeleton and supported by "sticks".

Great care was taken in constructing and supporting the forms to have them level and matching the height of the beams of the original cabana that the addition ties into. 

Fishing line is used to monitor the height of the strap hangers and forms.

Inside the beam form is a structured quadruple rebar skeleton (also created manually) tied into a single unit for strength.  Hanging down into the beam forms at 3 foot intervals are steel “straps” that will be used to bolt the wood 4x4 inch beams to the concrete beams.

Straps positioned on hangers spaced at ~3 ft. intervals.  4x4 wooden beams will be bolted onto the straps.

At intervals, a fifth team, the Finish Team, comes along to make sure concrete completely fills the corners and that no voids exist around the steel straps hanging down into the concrete.  The Finish Team also smooths, flattens, and levels the surface so that the 4x4 wood beams will be supported at the correct height and orientation.

The rebar skeleton is tied together at each junction.

On this first day of the BIG POUR, about 60% of the work was completed.  Forty-two bags of cement were used.  The first part of the pour has 5 concrete “ends” where seams will be.  The ends are positioned over cement columns that were poured about 3 weeks ago and were left with rebar quads sticking up.  The horizontal rebar skeleton for the beams was tied into the exposed vertical rebar quads.  The 5 concrete “ends” were kept with an irregular surface going across the intersection of vertical and horizontal rebar skeletons so that the resulting seam is reinforced with lots of rebar.  The ends were kept wet overnight by packing them with used cement bags soaked in water.

The crew consists of Francisco and his 2 helpers from the village of Independence.  Francisco is the contractor we hired to mastermind the foundation of the addition.  Richard is our caretaker/righthand man.  He and his wife, Joy, live here on site in a cottage; they came over from Monkey River Village about 8 years ago.  Lloydie and Pasqual are caretakers from our 2 neighbors here in Englishtown and also hale originally from Monkey River Village.  In addition, we have some strapping young lads from Monkey River Village who worked tirelessly doing the heaviest work.  Dennis even joined in, rotating through the teams so the fellows could take a breather now and then.  By heritage, there is a mix of Central American Latinos, Belizean Creoles, Belizean Mayas, with Dennis as the token minority American gringo.  I heard Spanish, Creole, English, and maybe a little Kekchi Mayan spoken during the course of the day.

All this heavy work generates big appetites for the crew of 10.  Joy cooked a hearty lunch for them and I baked 3 ½ dozen southern biscuits (similar to scones), half with cheese and half with guava jam, for their afternoon break. 

First batch of southern biscuits for the hungry crew.

And so ends Day One of the BIG POUR.