Welcome to the Jungle...

When we bought our house it hadn't been lived in for quite awhile and the grasses, shrubs and vines were threatening to overtake the entire property and they did, at least the hill below the house anyway. The landscaping wasn't a priority for the first few weeks we were in Rincon, but soon after Cyndi got bored with the work she was doing in the house and wanted to tackle the jungle that was our yard. The first thing we did was to hire a machete man.

We see these guys all over Rincon, walking with their machetes, so through a friend we contracted to have Sergio, a blade for hire, come by for a full day's machete work for $45. Our friend told us this guy could clear our whole property in one day, so when Sergio got to our house I explained how far our property went and to cut down everything that wasn't a fruit tree. For the next few hours I heard chopping and chopping and still more chopping, but I couldn't see Sergio. Finally after about 3 hours I saw him taking a break near a tree. I put on my work shoes and carefully slid down the hill, through the vines and trash and leaves to see what he had done. Of course Sergio spoke no English so most of what he said I couldn't understand, but I did get that he saw Papaya trees, Mango trees, Coconut palms, banana palms and two other types of fruit on our property.

He gave me a small green fruit picked from one of our trees that looked like a lime and said it was a quenepa. He seemed very impressed with this fruit and when I obviously looked like I didn't understand he took one and bit the skin in half and then sucked on the core. I did the same. It had a large seed suurounded by fleshy fruit that stuck to the seed and tasted a little sweet, a little sour, but not unpleasant. They aren't really eaten so much as sucked upon. Since then someone has told me that quenepas have the same amino acid, triptophan, found in turkey that makes you sleepy.

He also gave me another green fruit that had a yellow glow and said this was parcha, (passion fruit) and this grew on a vine down on our hill. We then made our way further down the hill to where he had been working. He had cleared about half a football field where the hill leveled out and turned into a ravine, but was mostly level. There were giant palms and flamboyan trees covered with vines that formed a canopy shading the sun. It was beautiful, but so hard to get to. I asked him if maybe he could spend the rest of the day working closer to the house.

And he did, but about an hour later came up to say he was done and that tomorrow he would bring a helper and they would get everything cut back in 3 more days work for $100/day. We told him we could pay for one more day and that he would need to work close to the house, but we couldn't afford any more. So the next day Sergio and his friend cut back most everything closer to the house and they even cut a termite nest out of our beloved flamboyan tree, but there was still a lot of work to do.

So we bought a machete, some clippers, a hand saw, a rake, a shovel and a couple pair of work gloves. After the plants were cut back so much trash was exposed that had made its way down the hill we needed to clear the trash before we cut anything else back. There were all sorts of left over construction items, aluminum cans, plastic water bottles, toys, a sink, even a refrigerator. Then Cyndi took to clearing all the cuttings further down the hill into the ravine. Occasionally I would help, but Cyndi really did most of that work and the we actually felt like we were getting the upper hand on the jungle that surrounded us.

We made our way to the side of our house where the banana palms were and harvested the first fruits of our labor, a giant bunch of bananas that were still green, but big and ready to be ripened by the sun. It was nice to be able to offer our neighbors something in return for all they had given us. We've since harvested quite a few bunches of bananas and made shakes, pancakes, fried bananas and even frozen chocolate covered bananas. It's been about 1 month since we had Sergio machete our jungle and its starting to creep back up on us. We actually love the trees and shrubs, but the vines end up taking over and killing everything so its back down the hill, machete and rake in hand. I don't think we'll ever have a manicured landscape, I guess we're not hoping to control the jungle, just contain it.