Pantrepant

As of Tuesday we will be going to Oracabessa, a nearby city where Golden Eye (http://www.goldeneye.com/site/) is located. We will be going to GE for about a week, working with the landscaping crew and Charlie to help out in last minute preprations before the hotels re-inauguration. Hoping we can find a place to sleep near the ocean or the mangroves and go swimming and kayaking every day after work, if we are lucky and hurracane Tomas Thomas Tommy doesnt hit us.

We are not yet done with PTP, but lets have a quick summary recapitulation of our 9 or 10 weeks here. 


People
We have met an incredible variety of people in pantrepant. People like we have never met or known of in our lives and different lifestyles. These are a couple of important and or outstanding people we have met. 


Mrs. Mary Mcfarlane

Mrs. Mac and Fabio

She is the hardworking farm manager who has led us in our internship at PTP and has made sure we have been alright over the past weeks. She is known as Mrs. Mac by most workers and sometimes, indirrectly, reffered to as Macco. She is constantly battling with all the workers in order to keep things running on the farm and making sure everything gets done the right way. Mrs. Mac has a lot of experience in agriculture, having started several projects herself with vegetables and diary and meat cattle. She is very knowledgable in the cattle sector and has imparted. shared. a lot of that knowledge. Thank you Mrs. Mac for the time here so far. 

Mr. Gareth

Gareth White
Known as Garret is a very good worker in charge of the horses and the stables. He takes good care of all the horses as his first priority, then also works with the sheep and a couple of times a week as a "cowboy", assisting the herd maintenance. He is very welcoming and has treated us like close friends these past weeks, making sure we have everything we need and looking out for us. More people like Garret in PTP would make this place run like it deserves, with good vibes and peace. 


Tanisha

Tanisha (left) and Mamma J (right)
making butter with Luis

Tanisha.. Tanisha... MAKE YOUR BEDS! WASH YOUR DISHES! Make sure Mr. B doesnt see this room like this! These are some of the most common lines when Tanisha is reprimanding us. Tanisha has taken very good care of us, working in the house and looking out for all its inhabitants. Tanisha is the local farms "shoppe" selling fresh drinks and phone credit and some snacks to its workers and mainly us. Tanisha has shared several adventures with us two and has been a great person to have arround. Thank you Tanisha for all your love and not letting us forget how to make our beds. 




Lion

Yes.. this picture has already been
used... but. Good picture. Mr. Lion

El Leon has been on recent mood swings. These rarely affect us dirrectly, but are pretty fun yet scary to watch. Some outbursts can be heard farm wide with many different variations of the word "bombo" and "clat" being expelled at full force. Lion is Pantrepants Lion. End of Story. 


Ira Nelson

Mr. Nelson. 

Respect #1. This man is increidble. amazing. 88 years old. Biking every day uphill to work about half an hour. Getting here before any other worker 1/4 his age. Riding with the cowboys every day. Controlling angry cattle. Carrying supplies. Working all day. 88. We hope this information isnt confidential. FOUR girlfriends. 88 years old. FOUR girlfriends. Mars Ira Nelson is the man. He also knows more about cellphones than we do. He has the ability to get his phone to say the time of day outloud. I am jealous. 

Louie

Louie´s name we dont really know yet. It sounds like Kwami, or Kuami. Anyway. This is one of the youngest farm workers and works with Garret in the horse stables. He has shown interest in working with us a couple of times in composting and helps us out. He keeps the stables clean and makes sure all the horses are healthy. Kwami Louie used to be a tailor, so he knows how to make clothes, bags, backpacks etc. and will shortly create a rasta bag for Luis. Louie is a hard worker, working from Sunday to Sunday, even when sick. Him and Garret are good working together and keep everything in order. No picture? Lost.

Tony

Tony and Luis

Tony is the leader of the vegetable farm gang. He has been nice to us and has shown us how to cook a couple of times, teaching us Jamaican Chicken skills and shrimp cooking. Tony is organizing the garden and trying to produce for the hotels, mainly Golden Eye once it opens. I personaly have had a hard time working with Tony, but oh well. Maybe im doing somethign right, just dont really see or notice it. 


Joseph
Madman Joseph. Joseph has been a true companion in PTP. He switches off between day work and night work every week. When he takes night shifts we are usualy the only inhabitants of PTP after 4 p.m. so his company is well apreaciated. Joseph is one of the hardest working Pantrepantiants we have encountered. Working more hours and putting more effort into those hours than anyone else. He is a nice person. helping out. looking out. good vibes. 

Joseph

Joseph is a good cook and has helped us a couple of times getting some nice meals. Latest one was amazing crayfish or crawfish. big. big. lobster like. tasty. happy. Joseph is one of the people up here who we most definetly consider a friend. a good friend.Thank you Sr. Joseph. His kids also help us out at school sometimes. Brian and Kevin. 






Animals
Cattle

Driving cattle through Jah's
Jungle. 

F1 Production in process. Red Poll Bull vs Brahman. 

The farm has a very interesting herd. Prize winning Red Poll with valuable genes and a well adapted to the local climate F1 between Jamaican Red Poll and Brahman. This F1 is much more agressive and harder to manage. The cattle section here is run efficiently with Mrs. Mac supervision by Tony, Mr. Burk, Gareth, and Ira. Luis has been very important help here, sometimes causing fights-arguments between Tony and Gareth about who can use his help for the given day. 


Sheep

Mmmm.. Sheep.

The sheep of PTP are doing pretty well. Many during these rainy times have gotten infections but this past dry week these have already visibly improved. With good constant care the sheep will be well managed on the farm, allowing ocassional (2-3 a month?) to get used for canteen (on farm) and restaurant meat? Would be a nice use for them. Also the project of organizing them and registering them is still on going, with ear tatoos and an organized-written reproduction.

Chickens

This picture was taken day #1 at
PTP. Those ducklings are
delicious looking teenagers now.

The chickens of PTP are free. I dont think they realize they belong to HUMANS. Evil egg stealing humans. Im sure they know of our prescence, but they just run the other way upon our aproach. Chickens are all over the farm living freely, sometimes laying eggs in trees, sometimes in Mrs. Mac car and sometimes.. somewhere else. No one knows for sure. These must be very happy chickens. The ducks have also recently been given a gift of happiness, getting many more lakes to chose from due to the flooding. We have seen ducks all over the farm, living the good life. I want to eat a duck. 

Donkeys

There is a donkey conservation going on in PTP, with some Donkey Conservation Association for the West Indies. Many of these donkeys are here to live a happy and good life and to keep their species well spread and fed. Right now they are all in the stables being Paired. Taken care of. Im sure they are happy. They live a stress free life, feeding in the beautiful pastures surrounded by the cockpit mountains. Im jealous. once again. 

Horses

Horse gets head stuck in tree.

The horses of PTP are cared for perfectly. Living a good life into very old age. Many are over 20, with one I rode last week being 27. I am sorry to say, he is limping now. Im not a good rider, I must have done something wrong. Poor Chippy. 

The horses are used for all the cattle managing and taking care of the pastures and moving arround, they are also used for the house guests who want an in depth exploration of the perfect surroundings, Nature. 

Nature

Pantrepant and Nature are one. Im sure more than half of the farm is forested, with the pastures being tucked in between the magical cockpits, horse paths flowing through the valleys in between.  

Nature here is truly diverse, Jamaica being the only place in the Caribbean and I think America which wasnt part of PANGEA. It is a completely unique piece of land, coming out of the ocean itself, meaning it has a very different diversity than other wanna-be Jamaica islands. 

Much of this diversity is seen in medicinal plants, having one of the largest collections of plants here in the Cockpits, a large percentage (about 30%) which are endemic to this Island and mostly these mountains.

Bamboo could be used efficiently for construction for several farm structures, a chicken coop? New windtunnels, some covered structures for the tractors and other machinery which should be protected from NATURE. Lets protect her too though. 

Our time in PTP has been a time of nature. Living with the animals, with the sun and the rain and the wind. and the mosquitoes. infinite. 

There is a wealth of knowledge hidden up there, being lost to ignorance and modern medicine, logging and overharvesting. 

Time

Pantime pant tree time pant tree pant time. Anyway. Time here is still magical. Sometimes being eternal and sometimes dissapearing. Sometimes a week dissapears but a day is a month. Our time here has been arround 9 weeks, being about two thirds of our internship. So far what we want to focus on more for the next weeks is the school and the medicinal plants, neither of which we have had much access the past weeks due to flooding and weather conditions. Hopefuly the coming TOMAS Hurracane comes and goes quickly, letting us explore the town and their knowledge for medicinal treasures and working some afternoons at the school. 

When Time meets the Divine Proportion or Golden Number

Rivers
Pantrepant is blessed to have the Martha Brae running through its lands. Sharing with us its pristine cold waters for drink, shower, cleaning and swimming. Thank you Martha.Thank you Brae. Recently it has been terribly flooded, so we havnt been able to go swimming. We want you back Martha. 


Eat
Food in PTP has been great. I havent been able to have my own garden since I was about 10 when my grandmother had a house garden. It changes the way one eats. It changes the way one wants to eat. Having a large ammount of greens and tomatoes and eggplants right next to the house makes eating much more enjoyable. This experience here with food will make me want to have a garden for the rest of my life, being even in a small scale, self sustainable. I dont want to depend on supermarkets and on New Zealand Kiwis or North African tomatoes flown across the world to eat well. to eat healthy.




Looks like we are going to Golden Eye. A truck just pulled in and I think I should go help load.


Plants, Answers New and Thought might have to wait a while.
Plants
Answers
New
Thought


Enjoy

SLPCLIFE

Today started out in the morning tending the sheep. We took care of several injured sheep and brought in the new borns this week, about 5 or 6 to cure and cut their tails off. The sheep seem to be in better conditions now that the sun has been shining for two days and the following. After Sheep we planted 8 trays of lettuce, jumping up the biweekly production a bit. This should keep constant for a while, until we can analize if the estimated  25-30 pounds of mixed lettuce are enough every two weeks. We also harvested most of the sweet peppers, using them as payment in order to get them sold. After LP came C, but I forgot what it was. C....Cherries? We dont have any. Hmm oohh yeah Compost. We also worked on compost (yesterday..this post was started last night but lost computer priviledges) and this time got help from Louie from the stables. Our first batch of compost is almost all used up in the wind tunnels and the house garden now has its own supply. After C comes LIFE... again, what was I thinking last night.
L..
Love probably, right?

Peace, Love and Guacamole.

Mas

Storms keep hitting up PTP. We just got another internet loss for abou 3-4 days. this time, we cant blame a storm.
Some workers where trimming a tree near the farms office and with their infinitely sharp machetes cut through a wire. This wire had to be ordered from Kingston and took 2 days to instal. Now. Internet is back for a while. but anyway, who needs internet these days? Living up here in the mountains in the forests in the trees in the storms, we need nice covers, books and maybe some garden tomatoes and eggplants. Thank you.

I dont think the camera has taken many trips these past few days, she doesnt like getting wet.
We had an unexpected harvest (lunch) the other day. The farms horses have a nice tank, a cement cube, where they drink out of, and every couple of months this gets drained and washed out, we happened to be helping with this work when we got a nice ammount of fresh fish living the good life on horse feed. Our cooking skills werent up to the fresh fish yet, and it turned more into an oily fish soup instead of fried fish, but still good.

Our work on the farm has been influenced by various factors, such as weather, workers, ducks, rats. Much of the work which was energeticaly started the first 6-7 weeks of our internship has slowed down a bit but we hope this week we can get back into the same motivation, gear, drive etc.

Planting in the green houses has kept going, lots of rows of tomatoes have been transplanted, hoping we can see some of them before leaving in December. Stop that train im leeeaaavin. Other than tomatoes we have over 2000 lettuce (units) lettuces? which will bring in about 30 pounds per week. The cattle is getting ordered and modernized (computer!) which will make its management and supervision easier.

Enjoy

New

New Room

We have moved rooms. Now we live on the first floor, have a restaurant grade kitchen (bigger than the last, gas stove among other upgrades). To the right is our new set up. we stole the living rooms sofa. Remulos, or Romolus or Rominos, not sure what his name is but yet I call him. is unhappy, this couch was his home. his bed. Last night he came in and joined us in our sleep. Our new room has one disadvantage, curtains. Curtains keep light out. Light makes entering  a new day a more joyful experience. Darkness makes warmth. covers. pillows. seem much more appealing.                       

New Lake

The next picture is of our wind tunnels or green houses. This shows the extent of the flooding the farm is feeling in its lower sections. This lake was at one point planted with summer crops, so I hear. It is about 1 meter from the lowest green house and might reach it if rain continues. Not much would get lost if just a side of the greenhouse gets hit, but it would delay planting. In this picture you can also see the power of hidric erosion. This "canal" is still going strong after a couple of hours of rain, pulling dirt down into our ducks new lake. This ruins the hills soil, but at least it acumulates in the lake bottom (which will soon be able to plant) and doesnt get carried away in rivers like most erosion. 

New Injury

Two new sheep where born today. The mother gets special care. Other new things? New books. New cooking knowledge, we made dumplings, jamaican potatoes and garden tomatoe sauce with pasta for dinner. New mouse scurrying arround our kithchen, I might get a picture some day. New.. oh well.

New Sheep

Enjoy.

The Eternal Storm

Tuesday, as we were eating our Mr. Goldteeth meal with a slight variation (We got pork instead of chicken), during an intense downpour, flooding our eating area. thank you boots. A LIGHTning BOLT. Struck about 20 meters from us. It was a pretty exciting shock. All lunchers gave a little cry-yelp-exclamation with no one admitting to it. This electric arrow hit our internet antenna. Burned out two wireless routers and some other cables which disrupted internet availability all week. A nice computerless week in lake Pantrepant.

It´s not actually that bad, conditions are good, workers have access and roads are still open. One major FEAR is the Wind Tunnels. These green houses are usually surrounded by peaceful rolling pastures. Now are an island, fearing inundation. Tomorrow I will post a picture of the waters aproach to the lower green house, less than a meter away. If rain keeps falling at this rate we will have lost everything by the end of the week. We might build a vegetable ark. 

Tractor working at the school. Note the enemy in the
background rebuilding its forces.

On Wednesday we realized nature always wins. Much of our work at Unity Primary School was elimanted after two weeks of no access. Our enemy, King Grass, grew back and we decided to bring in our friend, Alba and the tractor, to try and beat it once and for all. 

Monday was Jamaican Heroes Day, a national holiday. I dont know much about Jamaican Heroes, only Marcus Garvey. 

"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."

Tuesday, usually known as Tuday, was spent working in the wind tunnels, transplating arugula, tomatoes and picking peppers, tomatoes and pak choi. Canals where dug for drainage, diminishing the flooding in the upper green houses. At about 10 a.m. the rains started, trapping me in the green houses until lunch, which was delayed an hour because fire is at war with rain, but cooked pork likes fire.

Yes, we like donkeys.

Treating ticks in Brahman

The work with the cattle was heavy today. Starting with Tony "Wi got plenty work fo today". The rain didnt stop it. Gathering far away herds. Curing some. Bringing them into the pens. Today the cows seemed more worked up, stressed, than usual. War with Humans. Luis had several near cow-ramming-into-him experiences and Fabio ended up being the gate master, which was consistently slammed into by angry bulls. Good days. After all that work one young bull was sold to a nearby farm and a couple of them weighed for inspection. 

Heroes Day and a Friday Payday turned into a nice time. F&L had different weekends. One being harrassed by U.S. immigration, nearly deported, eagles, hamburgers, Dali´s genius insanity, jazz, infinite train rides and highway rescues. The other (Luis) visits Golden Eye, ex-home of Ian Flemming, author of James Bond. Visit to local Bunker´s Hill Heroes Day football match. Being Filmed. 

Coming up! A life interview with Mr. Luis Rojas about his weekend! 

Saturday 8:30 am. Lovely Mrs. Cathy Sniper hurrying me to leave to Golden Eye, the film crew gave me a ride in their Van to Oracabessa. Arriving the place, knew some persons who work on the project and started to explore the place. Walking through, Golden Eye´s life guard invite me to a kayak ride around the lake and part of the reef. The ride ends up with a race and the "black man" couldn´t believe a "whitey" beat him. During the evening swimming around the lake/sea felt just like heaven and refill myself of some energy for the rest of the weekend. 

On sunday morning a horse back riding with Gareth and Paul was done around some of the pastures and forested hills of Pantrepant, ending this journey with a freedom fast gallop around the green areas near the houses of the farm. I am sure Paul will remember this. Greetings! 

Monday, Heroe's Day. Went with my bredrins of Pantrepant to the district and tried some goat testicles, liver and brain. Don´t think would take this a my diet, still prefer callaloo.....After this, Exidos (Bunker's Hill soccer team) played a match having a positive score. The evening take me at the community center, hearing some reggae, mostly dance hall.

Tuesday. Storm.

A view of Goldeneye villas

Mr. Lifeguard

The Island of relax

Swimming in the pristine waters of Gold.

Rasta Moske (Dave) cooking up goat. 

Grilled Goat "parts".

Bunkers hill soccer team.

School bredrins

One Love.

Male
.

Today, Monday, Lunes, our compost got respected. The compost was used in the wind tunnels (one of our piles) to improve the soil in the red and yellow beet beds, the salads and to fertilize some recently sprouted yellow string beans. Tomorrow, due to our new found economic and social success in the composting business, will be dedicated to rebuilding the house garden circular compost and starting a new one, after the morning activities of bringing in cattle and picking and packing produce. Luis, in his morning cattle run, encountered a death by natural cause of a bull calf. This is not uncommon and is not due to bad practices. Following this discovery, upon returning to the stables, a bet was made on the dead calfs sex, male or female?. Luis R. ended up winning upon returning to the site. Apart from fertilizing, cucumbers got planted in the house garden and lettuce in the windtunnels. Our first 6 pounds of Pak choi planted our first week here got sold. Another 200 or so pounds left. Lets hope GE opens up soon.

Luis completing our first delivery of our valuable product.

None of us like being considered pirates. Thieves, robbers, criminals. Pirates we are. We are pirates, pirates in big ships, pirates in small boats, pirates on planes, pirates on tractors, in offices, on fishing boats, in machines, factories, pirates taking. taking. taking. taking.  and we are the pirates of the earth. quick personal, personal gain with no respect for our earth. Our small planet. Home. Agriculture needs to change, in scale, ownership, marketing, methods, people involved, knowledge. farming needs to come back, farming in its true sense, a man (human) working his field. working his crops. knowing his life. living a life. being alive. knowing the world. Farming needs to get rid of pirates. So does everything else really. Our world needs to retrain, reset, our perspectives on importance. What gets done on PTP needs to be reproduced on a serious scale worldwide, reconnecting the youth, the elderly, the middle aged, the everything, the office workers, the city scramblers, everyone, with nature, with what feeds them, lets them survive, connecting in a direct form. A real form. 

Left row: Non fertilized red and yellow beets.
Right row: Very happy super fertilized bed. 

I would like to make an important (To me, and all people who knew him) intermission in our super serious blog. In the year 2000 REX, a pretty common name for an uncommon entity, was born in Cuba. He lived under Fidel Castro in terrible conditions, eating potatoes, but decided to escape communism, fleeing to Costa Rica. In the Year 2010, after being with me since I was 14, he has left. Thank you Rex. Thank you for joy and companionship. Thank you for being crazy and being part of all my adventures. 

REXXXXYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

The day of Travel

Morning tractoration

Although distances covered in Jamaica are short, its a pretty tiny island (80km wide and 240km long), travel is long. Today we woke up early, not really, at around 7. to get out of PTP on a mission to RASTA VILLAGE, a sort of tourist-y group of rastas, or trying to be. In RASTAV we planned to visit their local medicinal garden, said to be the largest on the island, by them.

Fabio and Bongo Steve river crossing

Getting out of PTP is never easy, many taxi drivers dont like coming up the eroded and flooded road, but we got lucky in the morning and got dropped off by the farms tractor about halfway down the hill, near Friendship.                                                   Two people got in a knife fight in friendship last night. They were not friends. Well.. hmm.. oh in Friendship we encountered our Friend Bongo Steve, mentioned in an earlier post, who knew about RASTAV and helped found it a couple of years ago. With him we quickly got a car to drop us off in Wakefield, where we now found a quicker "shortcut" road towards MoBay. Somewhere in between MoBay and RV we got off, in the middle of nowhere, and had to cross an angry river and walk up a small mountain. RV was well organized, run by about 6 or 7 rastas with ITAL food, good music, crafts, childrens school, medicinal garden, a bamboo maze for meditation while walking among other things. We were lucky enough to get a free tour for being Bongos friends and where treated to great food and invited to play the drums. They asked us to come back and JAMMM some other time and bring our own instrument.

ITAL food kitchen

A new word learned today is something like IANI (pronounced something like eye-an-eye. It means WE. EYE is me. EYE is you. I is the universe. I is nature. I is jah.god. I is peace. I is our world.

The medicine garden we found had a pretty good collection. We only got one endemic herb (Search me heart) and might have a very hard time getting it to survive. Search me heart (Rytidophyllum tomentosum) is used for general colds and as a drink when mixed with coconut oil. Its rare in Jamaica, so them Rastas and Mr. Bongo say. They werent too happy about sharing their herbs and we didnt get many. Most of the herbs they had are common in our mountains, so they gave us leaves and told us to bring them back and get locals to identify them for us.

Rasta making herbal tea

Rasta smashing up medicine herbs

Our return journey was met with rain. We ended up having to go to MoBay, walk around downtown to find a bus that takes us back to Wakefield. In Wake we waited a while for a car to take us up to Friendship where our foot journey began again. Just got back from a nice walk.

Anyway. what else. Gonna go try and get our herbs to survive in a potting and compost mix and keep it in a cool shady place for a while. Tomorrow is Sunday.

Enjoy.

Don't worry, we still happy......

The day started with bad new for us. Fabio wake up in the morning and when arriving the garden he realized that a callaloo murder was about to happen. Some planting beds having callaloo on it were going to be cleaned for a later carrot and brocoli sowing. Now, with other consumers arrival on sunday, callaloo demand is going to increase and we are very concerned about wether it will be enough plants to supply our future vegetarian dinners. Nevertheless to prepare against this, more tasks were developed during the day, consisting mostly on preparing this ex-callaloo bed's soil again to be planted by carrots and broccoli, and others. In some of the beds a cover for rainfall was putted on it.

RIP callaloo

Carrot beds

Also the seedlings development of different crops is going excellent giving us our final hope to forget about our callaloo based diet.

On the animal part, two of the red poll herds were sprayed to control ticks on them and other herds were changed to another pasture, to make sure that the pasture plots are getting enough days off to have an efficient pasture regrowth for e better animal feeding.

Several experiences has happened during these weeks at Pantrepant, the last update:

• Fabio's back is better due to his new purchase.

Fabio's new purchase

• Luis has dizziness, diarrea, etc, he probably though at any time himself as a local and started drinking pipe water with the worker's. Now he is getting better..."in every life we have some trouble,when you worry you make it double, don´t worry", we still happyyyyyyyyyyy. Bob Marley.

pipe water consequences

endless summer

I wish. It´s more of an endless night.

LR on his road to school. 

First time in Jamaica that insomnia gets me. I´m not sure whats happening but at least the cocks are already crowing. If thats what they do, sunrise coming soon, and a long tired day ahead.

Today.Yesterday.We went to work in the morning at Unity School. We hadnt been in a while, due to weekend adventures and intense storm rain wind flooding. The flooding has subsided a little, but crossing One Tic is still not possible. To get to school we had to cross various flooded streets while it started raining again. Since we havent been to the school in about 10 days and the rain has been incesantly feeding the KING GRASS, our arch enemy, it seems like our work is starting over. Quickly resprouting. Quickly showing us that nature is king. Evidently Japanese farmer scientist Masanobu Fukuoka, founder of natural or "do-nothing" farming had no king grass in his rice paddies. Oh. So we got the layout of the whole garden set up, which will make work more organized from now. Hopefully Saturday, if the weather permits, we can go work and beat KG once and for all. We have a pretty nice group of workers willing to come help so I think this will be our final battle, before being able to get to the nice aspects of the garden and being able to work with the students. 

Today we had the company of a recent High School graduate visiting his primary school. He told us about the farm they used to have and how much him and his classmates enjoyed agri. He blames its dissapearance on lazy youth. He was forced to work hard back in 2000. 

Fish Hut on our fist nice afternoon in a while.

After school we walked down to Bunker´s Hill and decided we needed to go to Falmouth, nearest town with a bank, and stock up on food again. We got our groceries and asked arround where we could get some fresh fish. Jamaica is a fishless island. Most Jamaicans dont like fish, unless it is in Ackee and Saltfish or other national dishes. It is not common. We took a road towards MoBay and ended up enjoying a coastal Fish Hut, kind of like Pizza Hut without pizza. 

We learnt a new and very important lesson today. Dont buy your taxi driver any beer. In Costa Rica, once you get going in a party mood we say "Montado en la Carreta". Our taxi driver, Bunka, was most definetly Montado en la Carreta, meaning on the bandwagon. Ready to party. On our way back he kept stopping to visit all his friends and several bars-shops on the way and inviting us to several servings of white rum. Maybe that is why im not sleeping. The drive back was pretty intense. In two hours we will wake up, Luis will probably go out on his horse and check up on the cattle with other cowboys in the morning and I will go work with the garden crew. After a nice Mr. Goldteeth lunch im sure I will need a 12 to 1:30 p.m. nap to make up for this sleepless night, and then in the afternoon we where planning on visiting Mr. Macdonald and try to get the 20 or so medicinal plants we have identified so far in his surroundings. 

Enjoy your morning.