Well we made it back to the old homestead in the Jungle after a two week visit to the states. We saw a lot more friends and family than we expected and got to spend some good quality time with the grand kids which made for a great visit.

Of course you know we couldn’t go with out putting a couple pictures of the grand kids in here. In case you are wondering (yes they are growing fast) Luke is now 4 years old and Tyler is 8 months old. It was nice for us to get away from the construction for a little while, but now here we are back at it working and ordering more materials. It seems like a never ending  cycle but we know it will all be done soon enough.

Since we were gone they have finished up the garage, complete with windows, doors, lights, fans, etc. Now it’s ready for us to paint, build work benches and most importantly start emptying out the container.

Now that the garage is done it was time for them to get started on the house. Before they got started there was another load of gravel brought in to put around the foundation of the new house so that when it rains it wouldn’t be so muddy. Ruben also took care of cleaning up and removing a few of the big Cohune palms around where the house is going. A couple of years ago when we initially cleared the area where the house is going everything looked great, but in the meantime, everything grew and got bigger, including the house plans. Now that the gravel was down and the palms were cleared ,it was time to start the build on the main house, and that they did. When we showed up they already had the subfloor and the framing for the walls up. At the rate they are going the plan is to have it done by December.

Since the house is started and most of the materials have been ordered our focus has changed from ordering cement, rebar and wood to finding a cabinet maker for the kitchen, getting someone to make the front door, finding the right tile for the shower, rounding up all the appliances and all that other stuff we will need to finish up the house. The good thing is that now we have a garage to store stuff in, so when we see something that we like or need we can just buy it and store it until the house is ready for it. Considering that this all was just a road into the jungle seven months ago, it is amazing how quickly this project is coming along.

Next week the crew is going to take a week break, which is well deserved since they have been working straight since March. This will give us a chance to work on getting the garage in shape and unloading the container, plus it doesn’t hurt to let the main beams for the house dry for a little extra time.

The other day Ruben brought over some wild grapes that are growing on our road. Now granted these are small grapes not what most people are used to seeing, they are about the size of peas and have a good size seed inside. They are a little tart and sweet all at the same time and I guess people around here will gather a bunch of them and squeeze them to make juice. I imagine wild grape juice with rum would be pretty good, then again what fruit really doesn’t go with rum. We have eaten a lot of things that were found growing on our property such as, mushrooms, wild grapes, passion fruit, Cohune nuts and more. It sometimes surprises me that on the TV show Naked and Afraid that they can’t find anything to eat when they are out in the jungle.

Little bits and pieces

Last time I had mentioned how our Firestick for our TV worked great, but it ate up too much of our data. Well, we figured out a way around that so we can now have some TV shows to watch in the evenings. When we were up in the states we just started downloading shows like crazy to the computer and storing them on 128G flash drives. So now we just hook up the laptop to the TV, plug in the flash drive and select a show and we are in business, besides that we now have enough shows and series to keep us busy for a good year.

The frog who likes to come out in the evening and sit by the blue tooth speaker seems to have spent a couple of weeks inside our house. When we left we put the patio chairs and the washing machine inside the house so that they could refinish the porch. When we got back there was Mr. Froggy inside the house just sitting on the lawn chair. We assume he was either in the cushions or up in the washing machine when we brought them in, but now he is back out where he belongs. The good thing is that we didn’t see any bugs in the house when we got back, just a couple of froggy turds.

The other night when we were in town having dinner we passed this guy selling some of his paintings. Of course, there was a toucan that caught our eye so we had to stop and talk to him. This guy is a very talented artist and showed us a bunch of paintings he had done and some big murals from around town that he had done. We got his contact info and will definitely be talking to him in the future to do a tree frog painting for our little Froggy Cottage. Yes, we did end up getting the toucan painting, it is only 10”x 12” so it should be able to fit in anywhere.

And speaking of toucans, the second big toucan has landed at the Toucan Hideaway. Currently, they are taking up nest at the small casita until they are ready to fly south 80’ to their permanent home in front of the main house. They seem happy at the moment facing each other, but if I ever see them turned away from each other then we will know something is up.

Sorry, there is no creature feature of the week this time as we have been gone for a couple weeks and we also need to move the cameras farther away from all the construction. So this week we will just call the toucan the creature feature of the week.

Just when I said there were no creatures this week here walks a beautiful gray fox about 20 feet from me next to the house. He didn’t really seem to care too much about me and even waited around long enough for me to call Kelley with the camera. Every day there is something new and amazing to see here, whether it be a frog who likes music, wild foods growing around us or just the pure beauty of this place.