Visit to Cueva Monte Grande and Cueva Tuna

With the pending Tropical Storm/Hurricane due to breeze by on early Sunday am we opted to do a gentle and close-by pair of caves rather than go where we may get stuck in landslides, downed trees, sinkholes or the like hours from home. We took some infrequent cavers to Cueva Monte Grande and Cueva Tuna which are both kind of in San German/Cabo Rojo. They are small caves but hey, they are 1/2 hour away! With my sore elbow I wasn't about to do any climbing or rope work or anything anyway. Jeff had scouted these out with coordinates from Tom a while back and it was my first time in Tuna. Like I said, nothing super exciting but a good little excursion that wasn't very taxing. We parked and did a quick 15 minute walk in around 30 minutes as we blabbed our way to the top. We passed by avocado trees,  cool King Palms (?) and other homestead-type trees.

At the top we got to this little outcrop which gives me all kinds of cool garden inspiration. I love all the roots and rock and ferns. We scrambled down into the cave entrance which is really big walked toward the steamy bat room. On the way we saw many guava. This one appears to be munching on a Maria Tree nut.

We encountered many many cockroaches as we plowed through deep guano. They sounded like the hiss of running water or a steamy pipe or something - faint and weird and interesting all at the same time. They were carpeting the floor, but by the time the others arrived they had dispersed and covered the walls instead. There were a couple bats, half alive, on the ground. One appeared to have a broken arm and another seemed to be part of a conjoined twin or something. This one was twitching a little but it could have been the cockroaches moving it as they nibbled it. The stuff of nightmares.

There were a few nice formations but this was probably the best. A nice, clean sparkly flowstone cubby hole. Inside was a little room with the beginnings of sorbetos (straws) and possibly helictites.

Another nice spot must have been a spectacular sight when the dams were full of water and everything was clean. All in all a pleasant and short day with friends. There was even time to go home, clean up, and then meet back up for dinner (at Faccio's Pizza) a few hours later.

A Transitional Time of Year

Here in the tropics there are seasons. They aren't like the ones you get in colder parts of the country but they are none-the-less noticeable seasons. Right now we are transitioning into moist, thunderstorm, tropical depressionish more humid and hot kind of times. This makes a difference when it comes to gardening and the general routine. Most days still start with sun but usually get the cloud buildup with huge thunder in the later afternoon. Sometimes we'll get a refreshing rain shower around 5pm and sometimes it may be a little earlier and disrupt the hang-the-clothes-out routine. The cats are in sleep-only mode due to the heat and tend to ramble more at night once it cools down. When it is raining they know they have a good thing and settle in inside. Blanco and Pollo are having a moment during one of these hotter afternoons.

This is kind of a transitional time for fruit as well. All year we wait for mangoes and aguacate. First the lower elevations get the "teaser" mangoes - the wild ones with lots of fibers in them. These are good for chicken mango curry, preserves, etc. but the big fiber less mangoes are the ones you wait for! About the time the local small ones start dropping and rotting (there is no way to eat 5 million mangoes) the good ones start to color up and the harvest begins. About now they too are finished - down to the last handful of ones we can reach on the ladder with the long picker. Gone is the smell of smashed mango on the driveway from all that have fallen and we are savoring the final few. The freezer is packed with mango slices for smoothies, purees for on cheesecake etc. Although this time is kind of sad, it means the avocados are in full swing and it is avocados every day at least a couple times a day. These are not your little black Hass avocados either - these puppies weigh in at 2 to 2 1/2 pounds each! The last harvest was 21 pounds!

So what can a person do with all these avocados? Guacamole of course - with culantro (from the yard), onions, vinegar, cumin, salt, pepper, and tomato. Avocado sandwiches. Sliced on salads...and my favorite way to use a bunch at once - chocolate pudding! Sounds disgusting but it isn't green and it tastes great. It is a raw food thing that is packed with nutrients not demolished by heat (cooking). So you chuck a few things into the food processor and whir away- an avocado, sweetener (agave, honey, or dissolved white if you have to), unsweetened cocoa powder (or carob if you like that - I'm not a fan), and that is it! Sometimes I will add a decadent 40% less fat coconut milk or unsweetened soy milk (I like West Soy). You could add dairy if you wanted. You could add vanilla or almond extract or a touch of salt as well. The "good" fat from the avocado whirs up into a creamy pudding that is delicious! Here are a few of our remaining good mangoes - they, like most stuff here, are huge!

So as we transition out of mangoes and into avocados the days get these wonderful thunderstorms that most of the time just stop right behind our house. We get the huge booms for hours but generally don't get the rain from them - that stays in Mayaguez!

This is a cool flower that is a succulent/desert thing. Here in San German we are dry enough to be able to grow about everything. This flower starts out like a little package and then kind of "pops" to open into this big, flat kind of flower that is only open for a day or so. It attracts flys (I rarely see flys except around this thing).

I am kind of hoping the new place doesn't have chickens. We end up with everything on our property here because we don't have dogs. We have had up to 40 chickens roaming around (I wasn't feeding them),a turkey, guinea fowl, the big green iguana that whipped me, ducks and of course cats. I have been picking up all fallen avocados since they seem to be kitten attractors and we can not have any more cats! If I drive up the driveway and see little faces munching on avocados I have to step in, so hopefully with no avocados there will be no more cats. Our last arrival was a year ago (Rip) and despite having 3 cats who want to join in we have stabilized at 11. We suspect some will take off once we try to move them but that is how it'll go and we can only do what we can do. I don't want chickens around because their crap pretty much dissolves paint, they circle the house and are quite demanding (I have been known to give the babies food), and they scratch around all the plants. On the flip side they are like dogs and follow me around the yard, Tuca loves Big Red, the chicks are really cute and I am sure they are eating a bazillion bugs. It might be nice for them not to be around though, although in Puerto Rico you are never free of roosters! Big Red's "bitches" like to peer into the porch when I am there. They sit on the doorstep, and if I leave the screen door open they will come in. Even I am not that much of a crazy animal lover. I have seen them eying the pulled out screen the cats us as a cat door. I have limits.

So being in the tropics you would think vegetable gardening would be easy. It isn't. What ever you can't grow, no one else can either so it is always the same things you can find (unless you go to Sams Club - hurray for Sams). Guineos (bananas), platanos, mangoes, avocados, quenepas and calabaza (a kind of pumpkin) are the things you find now.

I haven't seen parcha (passion fruit) in the stores before and I don't understand why not. It is awesome as juice and it makes a nice tangy glaze, curd,salad dressing or marinade. You can freeze the juice and the vines are prolific! We are actually out of parcha right now. In an effort to make moving easier (if it ever happens) I have been using things up and not replacing them. The last of the frozen parcha is gone and it'll be a few weeks for green fruit to ripen on the vine. The vines are a couple years old and need replacing (we won't be here) so we are out of parcha until I get my parcha starts started at the new place. Even quenepas are just about over. So what fruit it next? The carambola is blooming again so those are a few months away. Oranges (chinas), chinojas (orange/grapefruit mix), lemons, coffee. It'll be slim pickins for awhile. Fortunately it'll be time to plant vegetables in another month or so. If  you plant cucumbers or tomatoes right now if they fruit and you get a big rainstorm you end up with balloon animals - cucumbers that are skinny, then fat, then skinny again....and tomatoes that crack. I've got plans for vegetables but we have to move first and at this rate it will never happen. So here is the latest harvest in this transitional time. The final parcha, some of the last quenepas, mid-season avocados and a few not-quite-ready but ready-enough lemons. Where else can you live where you can live like this?

Good Day for a Blog Post - Finally Got a Break from the Rain

This morning greeted us with a little patch of blue and the hope (although not fully realized) that things would return to the regular warm, clear and wonderful weather we are so spoiled to have! I took the time to wander the yard and took photos for possibly one of the final times (yeah it seems like I've been saying that for forever). We've got a lot of fruit to harvest and process and I have to tour the yard or it drops off and goes to waste. I don't like waste. We've got guineos - manzanas (my fav) and possibly little ninos? The tiny bananas are perfect snack size. There are so many kinds of bananas I wonder why they don't have more selection in the states? I want to try and grow the red ones once we move. I may have to dry or freeze some of these.

In Puerto Rico they don't distinguish between lemons and limes, they are all limones. This tree is one I planted called limon de pais (country lemon) that is a small, juicy one that usually turns yellow. I freeze the juice in ice trays (thank you Amparo for the idea) to add to water or defrost for juice.

Here's our house from the upper part of the property. We put the solar panels down since Irene looked like she was coming directly towards us! The house is a unique design and we'll miss that about it (and the view).

The upper yard where I planted my little fruit arboretum is filling in nicely. In just 3 1/2 years a blank slate is now a producing fruit factory with shade and trails. The next stop was understory flowers but that will be left to the next owners if they keep up with the plan.

I remember when this Ceiba was 5 inches tall! Now it it probably 8 feet. 2 years worth of growing. Amazing!

The Ylang ylang is just bursting with blooms due to the rain and the high humidity really sends the scent wafting around the yard and house. I started the understory stuff around this tree - mani, which is peanut (not the legume). It makes a brilliant ground cover that you leave alone, can walk on and when it gets going can use the trimmer on. Holds the soil (prevents erosion) and in the end reduces yard work. A good plan I will continue with elsewhere.

Look at the little row of blooms! When they burst open it will be overpowering! In a good way!

The wind shook loose some of the meat coconuts. These few still have water in them so they will be tasty.

With the palm this tall the only way we get the seeds (coconuts) is when the wind or their own weight knocks them down.

The rain has been plumping up all the fruit in the yard. The quenepas taste sweet and wonderful and the avocados are getting bigger. We have been eating a bunch and making my favorite (this is for real) chocolate pudding out of them. In a food processor just whirl an avocado, water (or coconut milk or water if you have it or dairy if you want it), honey or agave (sweetener) and add cocoa powder to taste! It isn't green, it isn't bizarre except that it is because it is such a normal chocolate pudding!

Who knows, maybe we will still be here to harvest some oranges? Puerto Rico isn't working much - any excuse to shut down the government is taken. This of course holds up everything for house selling and buying.

The carambola are done, thankfully. It is a beautiful tree, has bizarre fruit and although it can be used it is hard to use a lot of it. I have made carambola pickles, pureed it and used it in baked goods (banana bread) instead of oil, and cut it up with almonds and chicken and baked it. Eating it off the tree is ok but it produces pounds and pounds of fruit at least 4 times a year. There is still fruit on it and already it has flowers again.

This was this mornings view of the grey but bright morning! The sun is still up there somewhere!

Carambola...

There have been bands of crazy-rain coming and going for the last 2 or 3 days and the cats have all decided to be smart and hang out inside. I took furniture out of the porch since rain was blowing all the way in and brought in the plastic cat chairs for their enjoyment. With 11 there have been some tussles as boredom sets in so I made tunnels out of some boxes so they would be amused. Mainly they are just trying to sleep and get irritated when someone else tries to join them in their nest to keep warm!

Two panels down - Then Jeff lowered the last one.

Sharing a cushy couch.

Cats in nests.

So on the home front everything is stalled because of the weather. The appraisal is sitting in San Juan somewhere and who knows what other paper things need doing. We can't do anything until we close on this house so we are in the holding zone that is called Puerto Rico - far worse than the Bermuda Triangle in terms of getting things done! We keep looking at houses - why not? We just looked at a peach of a property that was just wonderful and a total surprise. The house is a little one (2 bedrooms,1 bath) that needs some opening up and some tile work done but it is on the most amazing why-we-moved-here property! Unfortunately it is probably 45 minutes from Jeff's work (better than 1 hour 20 so it is still a consideration) but with its price that may make it worth it. It is on an acre of shear jungle kind of near Anasco, Aguada, though technically Moca. We saw pie-tailed Whaduh birds there and there were 20 foot tree ferns and a pine forest and jungle all around. Had an easement going past the house to an abandoned long building of what looked like a few rooms (potential problem? looked abandoned) but for $120,000 list price could be had for less I am sure. We still have a number 1 pick which we made an offer on just to start the negotiations. They don't seem to want to negotiate much though. When we have a check-in hand all that may change. So once again I am playing the waiting game. Waiting to close on the house. Waiting for the weather to change. Waiting for my elbow to feel better. Waiting waiting waiting. I'm not good at it at all.



So What's Going On? I'll Tell You What's Goin' on...

Selling the house. What that means is lots of cleaning (dirt blows around and the cats and I track it all over), more cleaning, keeping the yard looking great (we are slackers sometimes but can't be right now) and being ready to respond to strange Spanish phone calls and emails. No one expects a gringo to answer the phone number so there is always hesitation. Some people want to look at it RIGHT NOW, as in they already in San German. Yesterday someone called and they were already in Guama! I had to hide the cat beds, put away a couple fly strips...you get the idea. Exciting times. It is great that people want to see it but I really hope the current offer goes through. So some of my time has been waiting for appraisers and surveyors to come...giving directions in my mangled Spanish (why don't they use tax records and a GPS?) and the whole situation has me exhausted, anxious, and full of dread and excitement all at once. It is Puerto Rico so one never knows what to expect. Lots of things can go wrong but I have started to put some stuff into boxes, which means finding boxes etc.

The other part of this is the horrible house hunting mission. We can't really make an offer on anything until we have ours sold, but if we wait until it closes we are homeless with 11 cats, so I have started looking and it is interesting, kind of fun and kind of disappointing and kind of lets you open yourself up to different ideas. We moved here to do all our adventure stuff and to be in the jungle. But being in the jungle means jungle mentality in regards to animals, garbage and noise (the dark side of Puerto Rico). Our current house is an unusual design (high ceilings, totally open, all solar powered with a couple acres) that is only 6 minutes off highway 2 but seems like the middle of the jungle! Unfortunately it is 1 hour 20 minutes each way to work for Jeff. He's sick of it. Then we drive 2 hours or more, cave for 10 hours, and drive home another 2 on the weekends.  If only we could take our house and property and plop it in Moca, Isabella or Aquadilla! We haven't been able to find anything near as nice for near the price. Or at all. It is either a crappy house that needs a lot of work with a spectacular view, a nice house on no land, nice neighborhood with a crappy house or nice house/nice neighborhood but priced too high. We aren't going to live here forever so we don't want to "buy up" and get stuck with something when we are ready to leave. In 5 years I don't think things will be better here. We don't want something we have to put time and $ into to make it livable. If we buy something in Aguadilla prices are higher, things will resell easier (lot of professional work up there) but it is not "jungle." So we look at houses and are waiting as things chug along. So I clean, box a few things, talk to people when I show the house and wander around picking and processing fruit. The Mano de Buddah is something I may want to plant again since it is just plain bizarre and great to "zest."

Lemons I would say are on the "must have" list since they are great for everything including drinks, marinades, and dressings.

I was hoping the figs would grow faster than they did but maybe at the next place they will. Kind of a stunted little bush but hey, I like figs!

I think I'll plant a Santol again because it is such a nice looking tree. I don't what the fruit tastes like, but the tree is very nice.

The Longan is kind of an ok fruit but not worth planting again. Not great looking either.

Here's Rip's creepy stare-down. He was watching as I was potting up cuttings and starts of some of my favorite flowers from the yard. I'm just digging up little starts to bring with us of things I don't recall seeing in nurseries or things that are pricey (like agave).

Rip is kind  of a teenager and is starting to assert himself...but when he is sleeping he is adorable!

This flower/shrub is kinda cool and I think I like it a lot. It was only a dollar so I am sure I can find another one. The flowers are kind of fiber-optic looking.

I've been doing a lot of laundry, too. Whenever everything starts to happen Jeff ends up getting sent somewhere for work or goes on vacation. After Mona Island we thought we were going to close on the house so he requested NOT to be sent on travel. He kind of likes going on travel because he gets to eat great food and only drive 5 minutes to work! He also is scoping out places we may want to or not want to move to. After Mona Island he was sent to Clearwater Florida (we may want to be swamp people for a while) and I was going to go but all the house stuff started up again. Sigh, I'm tired just thinking about it! Lots of wash keeping cat beds clean, towels looking good etc etc. Stuff from our Mona trip, stuff from Jeff's two weeks away...At least I get comic relief from the kitties. Tuca investigated the washer first and then Chicken decided to take a peek. Why now after 4 years of having the washer I will never know, but Rip was interested too!

Something I will definitely plant again is Mirto- it makes a thick hedge and has flowers that really really smell! This hedge was only 4 inch plants a couple years ago and now it is a wall about 6 feet tall! You can shape it or not - looks nice either way but gives more blooms and stays fuller if you whack it!

Tuca's big investigation!

I don't know what this plant is but I am taking a start - Big coral flower. Other "must have" fruit will be covered in the next post I think... so that's what's happening!