Barra beach and the Raya plant

Mostly just a bunch of pictures of the Barra de Navidad beach project but we also stumbled across the multipurpose plant they are using to hold down the beach sand. The guys working the nursery called the plant Raya and it's the same used as medicine for sting ray stings.   Boil to make a broth for soaking and a poultice to apply.

The other most obvious use is to stop beach erosion. "Ipomoea pes-caprae, also known as Beach Morning Glory or Goat's Foot, is a common pantropical creeping vine belonging to the family Convolvulaceae. It grows on the upper parts of beaches and endures salted air."

From near hotel Alondra

In front of Hotel Alondra

Sign says Ipomoea pescaprae - Raya

Stabilizer of sand

Waves over the reef

Raya plant nursery

Lagoon side beach

Lagoon side beach

Under water tour of the reef

Spay and Neuter clinic in Jaluco

Pro Animal Melaque does it again this time with a Spay and Neuter clinic in Jaluco.  One of our neighbors dogs on Saturday and this one was way overdue by the size of her tits .... and not that old either.  Lorena's cat on Sunday along with a small sick puppy the neighbors wanted checked for free.

Sadly the vets said nothing they could do and needed a real Vet. Took the dog and girls to Mi Mascota in Barra who was open until 2 on Sunday.   The dog had been loosing liquid from both ends and needed to be re-hydrated but it was too much a shock for his system.  We got a call a few hours later the dog had died so we let the Vet dispose of the body.

Municipal office near the highway

Christine seated running the show with people waiting

The Score

Busy, crazy, sad weekend

A Spay and Neuter weekend and more.  All operations went well

Saturday a young pretty dog that looked like she had had 20 liters

Sunday a cat but also a sick puppy for Vets opinion.  Opinion was take to working Vet in Barra at 'Mi Mascota' and he said very, very sick and wanted 500 pesos to try to save him. One hour later we got a call that the puppy had died.  The 2 young girls that owned the puppy, plus Yari and Nahima were there and only Nahima cried. We think the puppy was sick it's whole life and only two weeks with the family.  We decided to let the Vet bury it in a "Pet Cemetery" in Cihuatlan.

I talked to the Vet today and took some fotos of the new beach and Malecon in Barra.  A few more notes and fotos soon.

Running Dry

I never leave the cistern to tinaco pump on automatic for fear the pump freezes and needs a kick, pump looses it's prime or the cistern just runs dry. For some reason it was on Auto yesterday, I heard it, and realizing we hadn't had street water in awhile I checked the cistern and tinaco. 1/4 tank in tinaco and cistern basically empty. That is the driest I've been in almost 3 years.

We used a lot of water during construction and street water supply was even flakier back then so we sunk a well.  A submersible pump worked best here but after construction it just sat there unused while my neighbors kept running out.  They had a well but no pump so the pump has been theirs for the last 2 1/2 years.

I've been close to bringing the pump back before but this time it was necessary. Changing wells didn't make the pump real happy so it was stuck at first.  Finally moving it around and starting it in a bucket of water it fired up. Running into the yard for 20 minutes was all it needed to be super clear.  Filled the pool which is about the size of a tinaco (1100 liters), the cistern (11,000 liters) and ran the secondary pump to top off the tinacos (2). Packed up 12 meters of support rope and electrical cable and 20 meters of hose in the wheelbarrow and took them back to my neighbor.

Filling the pool

Opening to cistern

The hose, electrical, support rope and pump

Non Proactive CFE

It took me 3 weeks and mutiple tries to get CFE out to cut a mango tree that was growing around my power lines to the house. Has to be done twice a year because they won't cut the whole tree down that is almost growing in the street.

Ok so they miss my house or a few others because they are less important than the main power lines .... but they are ignoring the main lines as well.  After the Monday morning storm there were close to 30 CFE guys out with chain saws and machetes cleaning up the mess and making a mess. CFE never cleans up after.

So power went out about 5AM and it took them 'till after 10 to fix the problem.  Power back on for a 1/2 hour and out again until after 4PM while they cut many, many trees down to a safe level. Just for good measure they cut the power again about 6PM for 10 minutes. I went outside and bellowed my feelings at CFE and they may have actually heard me.

Main road mess - partly storm and partly CFE

Huge tree near my house

All machete work