Paving the Highway

The big news here is that they are going to pave most of the road that goes through our town, and the roads that go down to the school.  The town is stretched out along a ridge.  The first half mile or so was paved four years ago when they paved the road all the way up from the nearest bigger town – about fifteen miles.  Now they are going to do another mile, which will reach almost the end of town.   We are looking forward to this, as the road is always dusty or muddy.  However, in the meantime it is going to be messy.  On Tuesday they worked on the road in front of our house with a grader.  They ended up with three or four inches of fresh dirt over the old gravel, then it rained all night.  By the time we went to school in the morning it was the kind of mud that sticks to your boots in globs that just get bigger with each step.  Fortunately we only had a hundred yards or so of that!  Notice the water running down the side of the road.

Following Ormelis to school

The mud on the road was so slick that one of the pickup trucks full of school kids couldn’t make it up a hill and had to detour around it.

By the afternoon the sun came out and the ruts dried up somewhat, but it was still pretty sticky.



A day or two later we got gravel on the road and now it is better, but we are still hoping they pave it soon!

On Saturday we decided to take a hike up a mountain trail which gets very little traffic and is pretty overgrown in spots.  We wanted to take a machete to trim some of the brush.  First, though, we had to decide which machete to take.  Our host dad Aristides actually has ten machetes, nine of which are shown below.  It turns out that you can’t make do with just a machete or two.  It’s sort of like trying to exist with only one or two screwdrivers.  The big machetes are for big jobs like cutting down trees.  They actually cut down trees up to a foot in diameter with machetes!  They also use machetes to harvest root veggies like yucca, and they use the blunt edge to pound small nails or just to whack stuff.  It’s a lot more versatile tool than we had imagined.  We ended up taking a smaller one, which we regretted later, as it didn’t cut some of the bigger vegetation.

Which machete to use?

Here is Steve hacking away at some of the brush.













































At one point we got a nice view of the mountains with the sea in the background:



More fruit is coming into season.  Heather is holding a guanavana, which you can see is pretty big!  You can eat it as is, or you can make chicha with it.  All you have to do is put it in the blender for a few seconds to loosen the seeds, and then separate them out.  Add water and sugar and maybe some condensed milk, and you have a delicious drink!

On Monday there was no school. A day of mourning was declared because of the death of one of the ex-presidents of Panama.  His name is Jorge Illueca, and he was only president for eight months in 1984.  He was one of Manuel Noriega’s friends.  Noriega put him in for a while, and then replaced him with another buddy.  I’m not sure how he rated an official day of mourning, but we took advantage of the opportunity and decided to go for another hike, this time down the road in the direction of the sea in Veraguas.  We didn’t get to the ocean, but we did have a number of great views:

Another example of a "living fence"

The tiny dot in the middle of the photo is the house of another PC Volunteer

Along the way we were passed by a group of cows and three guys on horseback.  This breed of cows was originally imported from Africa because they can stand the heat of Panama.

Move 'em out!

Returning home, we found another of those little frogs, this time in the hallway of the house.  Luckily this guy is harmless!  He’s less than an inch long.


That’s it for this week!