View Clearing

During our January 2010 trip we spent a good amount of time working on clearing some of our view scapes.

One of the challenges of carving out a home site in the jungle is that the trees are filled with bajuca vines - the sort Tarzan used to swing from tree to tree in the jungle movies of old.

In previous trips we spent time clearing, and this was no exception. this top photo is of a helper we hired who was good at climbing trees. We had cut the vines off at the ground during our October 2009 trip, and had thought they would die off and fall. But in this case, they had twisted around the branches, and showed no signs of dropping. So we sent our hired helper up on our extension ladder and climbing gear to cut and untwist all the vines to clear the tree.


This second photo is the before shot.

This third photo is the after shot. As is often the case, we clear one only to find more to clear. But; our goal is to open up, not to have no folliage at all. After all, our monkey friends need this as well!

The whole clearing event took about 3 hours, and while the tree was being cleared, Dick was hard at work electric chain saw at hand trimming down below.

Meanwhile, I watched one of our other Tico workers sharpen a machete using an electric hand grinder. Pretty slick result so I got out our grinder, put the right wheel on it and did all three of our machete's. They've never been sharper. Ah, yes, better living with electricity!!! So we both took turns chopping and clearing vines further left of our viewscape, that should afford better views on our next visit.

Thanks for reading!

Jim and Dick