May 16th Update

Not a ton of stuff to report, but excellent progress this week. You'll see from the two pics Rob sent me, we have the mesh in place for the concrete parking area/patio-entry. We're looking forward to our June 11th trip to meet with Gerardo and Rob.

In this first picture, you'll see guys wheelbarrowing in what I presume is concrete. They mix it further uphill, then cart it by hand to the location to pour, work out air, smooth, etc.

In this second picture, you'll see mesh going in looking uphill towards Rob and Kent's casa. To the right is the uphill retaining wall. On the left is the downhill retaining wall.

I need to discuss a bit with Rob as I had expected the downhill retaining wall to wrap around the foreground tree to the left, and terminate right about where the barrel is by the background tree.


This third picture is Mario working on the finish cement of what will be the lower back entry to the casita. That back wall came out a bit taller than I assumed, but of course one's sense of level can be challenging, and looking with true level reveals the slope much better. Thanks Rob for taking this photo!

I should note here that in Costa Rica, power is supplied differently than in the states. Land owners are responsible to hire a contractor to put in power poles, and wire them, place transformers, etc; after ICE (eee-say), the public electric supplier, maps out locations and requirements.

Our experience has been that given this, ICE is still very capable of waxing and waning on the details. So Rob and Kent have had to replace poles to a different spec from ICE (even though ICE did the original spec).

Rob's report this week:
We had an inspection of our electrical system from the engineers of ICE on Thursday. The inspection went well; however, they found that we need to remove two large branches from a balsa tree on lot #4 and remove two teak trees from Lot #1. We will be using the services of the Monkey Man - hombre mono - to remove the limbs. We expect to have the last issues cleared up by early next week. What an UNBELIEVABLE process!

Thanks Rob, please know that your work and struggle is appreciated.

So that's all we have this week. Buenos dias!

Ricardo y Jeeeem

ps - since starting this blog, Jim started a new companion blog giving history behind the building of Casita Torrente de Agua. If you want to know the back story, go here: http://jimdicktdacasainthebeginning.blogspot.com/