Wednesday 6/12- You may recall from the last blog that Ramie is working on getting a quote to replace and/or repair Katie and Adams roof because of some leak problems. Ivan, the contractor, came out to look at what was happening and came up with a solution about a week ago, and just yesterday he requested to come look at the roof again, but this time he wanted to bring the guys that do the canoas (gutters) and flashing to get their input. Ivan’s crew doesn't do that part of the work since it's all custom bent sheet metal. It took almost two hours and a lot more discussion about the plan and brainstorming, once again, if what we thought was the right plan was actually the best way to fix it. After further discussion, the group of guys basically came up with a whole new roof design that should fix the problem but still keep the cost as low as possible. Ivan and the canoa guys will work up their prices and get them back to Ramie as soon as they can so he can pass them on to Katie & Adam for their final decision/approval.
Thursday 6/13- After all of the discussions with Ivan about the roof and the further input from the canoa guys yesterday, it really did seem like pooling water was a large part of the leak issue. This got Ramie to think of possible temporary solutions until they could actually get the work quoted, approved, scheduled, and finished. Ramie reached out to Adam and Katie and got permission to buy some thick plastic sheeting and some long wooden boards to lay down over the entire roof. If the roof was leaking, the plastic covering should stop the water from coming in. It clearly wouldn’t be a permanent solution, but it would hopefully keep the next few guests from complaining about a dripping ceiling. Adam and Katie approved of the plan, so Ramie headed to town for 15 meters of plastic and some boards to lay down over it to keep it in place. He started to lay it out, but it was not going very well. Trying to get it laid out nicely, by himself, even with only the slightest of a breeze just wasn’t working! Ramie called Geoff to see if he was available to help and fortunately he wasn’t doing anything at the moment, so he came right over. Between the two of them, they were able to get the plastic laid nicely on the roof and tucked under the existing flashing, with the long wooden boards laid out as weight to keep it all from blowing around.
With it laid out like this, the spots where it was pooling should no longer seep through the overlap in the metal roof sheets. The plastic would either hold the water in the puddle or direct the water to the gutters. Will it stop all of the leaks? No, probably not, but it will stop the majority of them.
Friday 6/14- It's turtle season!! Before I get into this, Ramie wanted to share this picture.
What you are looking at is the hot-spot map from the 2023 turtle season. Nesting season on the Southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica typically goes from June to December. The red line is the northern most border of the beach and the blue line is a river. Ramie and his team walk from the red line to the blue line and back, which is a total of 5.2 miles, twice a week. The colored spots are where the nests were found. Yes, the majority of them are all the way at the end by the river. It will be interesting to see how the 2024 season compares.
Nests are starting to be found on some beaches in the area so Oscar, the guy in charge of the Reserva Playa Tortuga made the call that beach walks should start right away. Ramie and his team would be the first ones to kick off the walks for the Reserve. Since my schedule is a little bit more flexible with this new job than it used to be with my old job, I decided that this year, if the timing of the walks was right, I would join Ramie, Val, Marshall & David on their walks. The time of the walks are all based on the tides, so it changes every time they walk. I will be picky about the times that I go with though, since I don’t want to have to get up TOO early and then work all day afterwards, but I also wouldn’t be able to go on any that started too late, because then I would have to start working late and, in turn, work later in the day (and I’d rather have my afternoons off when I can). This morning, for their first walk, the tides were just right that they would be starting at 5am. This was just about perfect for my schedule, so I went with them. We made it to the far end of the beach in about an hour, which was more or less on par with the beach walks we were doing with Val & Marshall the last few weeks. As with this team’s annual tradition, the first walk of the season called for a bottle of champagne to be shared at the far end of the beach, at the river turn-around point. David only just started this tradition last year, but they have the same team again this year so I guess now, and going forward, it's going to be expected. Standing on the beach at 6am, waves crashing, and birds chirping and flying overhead, David popped the cork and passed around plastic cups. We stood around talking and laughing while finishing the bottle. We hung out longer than either Ramie or I expected before making our way back. I guess I would be running a little bit extra late for work this morning, but by the time I got back the slightly tingly feeling from the champagne should wear off. We didn’t make it back to the cars until after 7:00, and unfortunately no nests were found.
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| I miss my dad! |
That evening I didn't feel like cooking, but I didn’t particularly feel like going out to a regular restaurant either, so we reached out to Geoff and Tracy to ask if they wanted to go to Jolly Roger, which is super casual so it doesn’t REALLY feel like a restaurant, for some wings and fries. Unfortunately, Tracy couldn’t make it, but Geoff decided to join us. It was raining and there was no one in the restaurant except for the 3 of us and the 3 employees. We enjoyed our wings and fries even though there was no view of the ocean tonight. It wasn’t until we were just getting ready to leave a couple of hours later, that a small group of tourists showed up. At least the restaurant had other guests to serve after we left.
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| Skye was fascinated by the bar's cat that was hanging out. |
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| It was too rainy and cloudy for their signature ocean view tonight. Oh well, the food and drinks are still good! |
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| Molly, in motion |
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| Skye, in motion. It just never stops! |
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| Here Molly, take this toy. |
Sunday 6/16- Happy Fathers Day!
Luna was finally coming around now, and this morning actually played with Skye for a while. Maybe she just needed time to adjust to her new surroundings. She sure is a sweet dog and makes me miss Breeze a little bit extra this weekend!
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| Luna was very tolerant and was such a trooper. I think she really enjoyed playing once she was more comfortable at the house. |
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| Yep, I can smell it. If only I was a little taller. |
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| What is that little dog doing with my food? |
It was still kind of gloomy this morning, so we just bummed around the house and didn't do much, laundry and doggy time, but not too much else. The day did eventually clear up later in the afternoon, but we still didn’t do anything exciting. Having 3 dogs at the house made it tough to go anywhere, anyway. Randall picked up Luna and Molly late in the afternoon, and once they were gone and the house was quiet again, I’d say that Skye seemed relieved; she pretty much just laid down and slept the rest of the evening. She really wore herself out this weekend! I guess maybe she needs more of that!
Monday 6/17- Ramie had a small project on his to-do list for today since the sun was out, power wash the driveway. Now that the rains are here and the concrete doesn't get to dry out completely between rain showers, it's getting a layer of algae buildup on it. Normally this wouldn’t be a big concern but the driveway does have a decent slope to it and we use our walk-through door often so we really don't want another slip and fall story like the super infected knee incident. It only took Ramie a couple of hours and the driveway looked like new again. We still need to seal the concrete, which we think will help with the algae and discoloring, but that's going to have to wait until the dry season. There is just not enough time to apply the sealer, which will probably take a whole day, maybe two, plus time for it to completely dry out, which will probably take a couple more days, between getting rained on. We will just add that to the future list of things to do. Well, that is, if we can even find the right sealer that we want to use for our concrete!
Wednesday 6/19- Ramie had his 2nd turtle walk of the season this morning. It is still early in the season, so once again, they didn't have any luck. When Ramie got home it was time for him to set up a new toy that we recently had shipped down here, and the first step was to figure out how to mount it. What is this new toy? It's a precision rain gauge. It is much larger and holds a lot more rain than our current hardware store rain gauge. The new gauge will hold up to 10 inches vs. the old one’s 5 inches, and measures out to the hundredth of an inch, vs. a tenth. Ramie has talked about getting one of these for a while, and we finally had one sent down. The main intent wasn’t so much to get the precision measurements at the hundredth of an inch, it was more because of the much larger capacity. There have been many times during heavy rains when he has to run out in the storm to check the old gauge and empty it so we can keep adding up how much rain we’re getting. It’s definitely not ideal, especially since we often get our heavy rains overnight! There are a few other people in the area that have these professional gauges too, and it's always interesting to compare readings with them. The amount of rain can vary a lot from one area to the next, as it literally may be raining on our side of town but not the other, or perhaps up the mountain but not at our house. The little gauge that we have had mounted at our house since we moved in is also getting a little bit old and the markings are wearing off, making it hard to read, which was just another justification or reason to replace it.
As I mentioned, the new one is much larger so the simple setup we had to
mount the old one won’t work any more and Ramie has to come up with a
new plan for this one. The instructions state to screw it to your fence
or mount it on a 4x4 post. Since our fence is 8’ high, he would have to
get a ladder out every day to check it. He could get a 4x4 piece of
wood, but that will rot quickly in this environment, even if it is
painted. He opted instead to use a piece of 4x4 metal tube. Loren
actually had a piece that he was willing to let Ramie have, so this made
the decision even easier. The issue now is that he wants to make it so
that it’s moveable, not permanent in the place that he’s putting it,
just in case the palm trees that are somewhat nearby grow too large and
the branches start to block the rain. Ramie got his welder out, along
with some other scraps of metal that he had on hand, and got to work
fabricating something to hold his new rain gauge securely. He created a
moveable post just like he wanted by welding a piece of metal to the
inside of the tube which he drilled a hole in, and then welded a piece
of rebar into that. He then painted it all so it would look nice, and
finally mounted the actual rain gauge to it. He placed it next to old
one, which is a pretty good spot for now, and we’ll wait for it to rain
to test it out. It will be interesting to compare the measurements of
the two.
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| We got a good rain to test them for comparison. Old on the left and new, much larger, on the right. |
Thursday 6/20- I don't know what number Tropical Wave we are currently in, but it's been a rainy, cold week. The sun has only peeked out for probably an hour each day and it’s even been chilly enough in the mornings that I put on a long sleeve cotton shirt, which is something I would typically overheat in down here. I will admit, it felt really nice to wear and in a small way I miss needing that comfortable layer of warmth. For those of you that are wondering what “cold” is for me down here, I would say it was probably around 73*, with no sun, on one of those rainy gloomy days. I know, that sounds absolutely nuts! Before moving here, I would have never thought I would be cold at that temperature either, but we are definitely not used to this anymore.
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| Why does she look like she's cold!? |
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| On Top: outside temp followed by outside humidity %, then inside temp. Inside humidity % on the right. This is a comfortable reading for us these days! |
Friday 6/21- This morning’s scheduled turtle walk was at 5am, and while I would have loved to go with the team for a morning walk, today just wasn’t going to work because I had a 7am meeting and didn't want to risk being late to it if a nest or turtle was found. It was a good thing, too, because Ramie messaged me at about 8:30 to let me know that they had just finished up and that that he had to drive down to Ojochal to drop off the eggs that they had found. He mentioned that this morning took quite a while as they had found a turtle, and promised to tell me more about it all when he got home. It was around 9 when he came walking in the door, very excited to tell me all about what I missed this morning.
They found the first nest about halfway down the beach. This nest belonged to a Hawksbill turtle and it contained 153 eggs. This was super exciting because, as Ramie learned later, Hawksbill turtle nests are very rare here.
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| Hawksbill, lay there eggs in the jungle or heavy vegetation. You can see the how many tress are around the area that this nest was found |
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| This is a sea turtle tagging kit. It consists of the tags, the pliers, and iodine to clean the piercing area. |
Ramie poked where Oscar instructed him to and didn’t find anything different than he had found in all of the previous poking. At this point Ramie resorted to just digging the entire body pit out one more time. He started digging until he hit harder packed sand, and then started poking some more. If it was still hard, he would fill it in and move over. Another hint that the eggs may be close is if the sand is warm, or at least warmer than the sand around it. The heat from the eggs warms the sand, so Ramie was also trying to feel for a temperature change. Eventually, after digging a hole, refilling it, moving over, and doing it all again, Ramie was about 3 feet from where he originally started. He dug down about 2 feet into the sand and poked the stick just like he had in every other hole, but this time it gave way. He dug just a little bit further and he found 119 freshly laid Green turtle eggs about 3.5 feet under the surface of the sandy beach. As I mentioned, the Green turtle is a master at hiding her eggs!
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| Success! |
Pura Vida!
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