Neighborhood Picnic

To bring in the new year properly, Palmero Point Beach Club had a neighborhood picnic with 3 of our 4 houses represented. 

There was plenty of delicious food

and a very appropriate cake

 great kid entertainment

and a good time was had by all.

Happy New Year everyone!

Enough rain already!

Remember that road trip we took to town in March of 2011?  We showed you pictures like this of the road:

Typically, rainy season starts near the end of May.  This year it got a two week head start and six weeks later we've had over 24 inches of nice fresh water to fill our cisterns.  But, we won't be taking any trip by road to town for a while.  This is what the road looks like now:

Backstroke?



Tree Removal

Some hungry bug has been eating and destroying our coconut palms.  This tree was right behind our house and required some help in removing it.  A call to Caliz Tree Removal made quick work of this large tree. 

This is what the tree looked like before removal.  Pretty ugly!

The Caliz men are starting a cut.  Unfortunately, there were nails in the tree to deal with first.

The picture doesn't show the tractor, but David pulled back as his dad continued to cut through the tree.

And now there is a big sunny hole where the tree used to be.  We have our fingers crossed that no more trees will die.  That was the third one we lost all in the back yard.





What happened to our pretty beach?

We have been hit with a seaweed invasion of gigantic proportions!

It's called sargassum and comes from the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic.  We usually get some of this stuff during the year, but this year starting mostly in mid January, it has been more than we bargained for. 

From Wikipedia:
The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ocean currents. It is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream; on the north, by the North Atlantic Current; on the east, by the Canary Current; and on the south, by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current. This system of currents forms the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. All the currents deposit the marine plants and garbage they carry into this sea.
Owing to surface currents, the Sargasso accumulates a high concentration of non-biodegradable plastic waste.^[7] The huge North Atlantic Garbage Patch is similar to another ocean phenomenon, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

We have filled this trailer hundreds of times.  To give you an idea of the volume, we have loaded it 138 times just in the past two weeks.  If we leave it, the smell of rotting plant material is most unpleasant.

This critter and her friends love this stuff.  It's full of baby crabs and shrimp and other tasty morsels.

If you'd like to learn more about this phenomenon, click below.  And if you'd like to come and help us clean it up, we'd love to have you.  It's really, really fun!  Really...fun.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/caribbean-hit-hard-by-sargassum-seaweed-invasion

Merry Christmas

We at Casa Pokey wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  We also want to welcome the Ritchie family to Palmero Point.

Santa gave us a visit today. 

We saw him sneak in the house. 

Ere he walked out of sight...





We're freezing here!

We typically complain about the cold weather in December and January, but we're already tired of winter and ready for spring.  It's dipping into the sixties at night and only mid seventies during the day.  With a brisk north wind, that's freezing!  Just look at the clothes on these brave fishermen.

I forgot to mention that it was 75 degrees when I took this picture.  Brutal!



Hurricane Rina

Hurricane Rina just brushed past us on her way to Mexico.  We had big, noisy waves for a few days and 1/2 an inch of rain.  It actually inproved our beach in places, but took away sand in other places.  It was our cleanest storm with very little seaweed (except next door) and very little wood.

Not much work here.

An abundance of turtle grass here.

A little sweeping needed here.

Our neighbors were not so fortunate.

Sunny and calm today.