Rain, rain, rain

We all love the green that rainy season brings, but this is crazy, even for Nicaragua. After a relatively dry 2006, this year looks to be one of the rainiest on record. October is usually the wettest month, but this September was as wet as most Octobers, and it has already rained nearly every day this month.

Much of Nicaragua is flooded, and thousands of people are being evacuated from areas in Chinandega. Thankfully, Gigante is not that bad, but as you can see from these photos, there is still an amazing amount of water.

This is the main road to the beach at Gigante, where the creek crosses it, just past the entrance to Arenas Bay. Our workers are on the other side of the creek, wondering how they can cross it to get back to work after their lunch break. When it rains this hard, the creek can rise very rapidly. Fortunately, there was no flooding at Selva Del Mar.

The good news is that Lake Apanas is now full and hydroelectric generation there should help to solve the electrical blackout problem we saw for much of the past year. Nicaragua's power infrastrucutere is simply insufficient unless nature cooperates. That's why our plans for Selva Del Mar include alternative energy sources like wind and solar to supplement what we receive from the power grid.

If you haven't already checked it out, you might enjoy our slide show of lots.

http://www.sdmnica.com/images/slideshow/index.html

It's one thing to look at our lot map and check out the boundaries and topology. But it's more fun to see what the lots actually look like and what kind of views they have. Please note that the road to the top has been improved since many of these pictures were taken. Progress continues at Selva Del Mar, despite the rainy season. Once things dry up we expect to start work on our bamboo project. We are finalizing the terms of our investment program for the bamboo project, so let us know if you are interested in participating, and we will give you more details. We already have a few interested parties and we intend to restrict participation to a limited number of investors.

Let's all keep our heads above water and hope that mother nature is about ready to give it a rest.

Paris Hilton and Selva Del Mar

What does Paris Hilton have in common with Selva Del Mar?

Why, Kinkajous, over course!

I think ours is prettier though. In Nicaragua, they call them by different names, including honeybear (for their fur color and because they love to eat honey), mountain cat, and cuyosa (the latter being the term used by our caretaker, Vidal).

I didn't know much about them, so I posted an inquiry on Nica Living and somebody said it was a kinkajou. So I googled that and found all kinds of info. I like this website.

http://blue-n-gold.com/halfdan/osito.htm

It's cute and informative.

What we know from observing our Cuyosa (I like Vidal's word better...fewer weird connotations and associations) is that it has a prehensile tail and likes to hang upside down in our Noni trees, eating Noni fruit. Noni is believed to have many health benefits for humans, so I imagine it's pretty good for Cuyosas too . The Cuyosa moves pretty slowly, like a sloth and when it's not eating Noni, it tends to stay high up in the big tree next to the old gate.

I wonder how it gets along with the Howler monkeys that hang out in the trees between our casita and Angel's place....

More bamboo concepts

Here are some more renderings of entrance concepts. These are ok, but none of them seem great. What do you think?













































Here are some more plan pov's. Again, the Casitas will be further apart than this, but it gives you the general idea.
































The idea here is to have folding doors, so you can close off all or part of the veranda, depending on the weather. This is a bit small for the eating area, but the look is about right.














Here are some more casitas. The roof is designed to allow warm air to escape. It's a passive cooling system that uses the prevailing breeze to pull warm air out of the house and keep an air current going.