I had plans to post a wide variety of information on our progress refurbishing Casita Chuparosa, with before and after pictures, and photos of the iguanas who live in our yard, and all the interesting plants and so on and so forth — but today I think I’ll just talk about the beach a little. We spent much of the day on the beach yesterday, so the impressions are fresh in my mind. I’ll have to get all retrospective another time.
We drove down to Boca de Apisa, about four or five kilometers from here. I wanted to collect some driftwood to use as fuel for my new biochar kiln. We took along some woven-plastic bags like they use for farm grains and such, and Isabel had her little hand-cart to help her wheel the bags when they are full of driftwood. I use the large sized bags (about a meter high) and just carry or drag them back to the car. Her bags are about 3/4 as large, but still hold a good deal of wood — probably 20 to 25 kilos.
Here is a view of the beach where erosion has cut into the mangrove forest a bit, leaving skeletal trees on the beach:
Skeletons of mangrove trees on the beach
The sand of the beach rises to a sharp crest, beyond which it slopes gradually down to a lagoon, fringed with mangrove forest. The driftwood gets carried up to the edge of that crest at high tide each day, or thrown over it when there is a serious storm. We mostly collect the older stuff on the high side, as it is drier.
After collecting six bags of wood (all the car will hold) we set up our picnic under a little palapa someone has built for shade, eat our sandwiches, and relax. Isabel drinks some strange apple-flavored soy milk stuff, but I stick to good old Mexican beer. We take a dip in the ocean as it begins to get hot, but the relentless sun drives back under our palapa for a bit of a snooze. Rough work this collecting firewood.