New Photos

Check out the progress

We have been told to expect a snails pace when building a house in Latin America. Not so much. The combonation of a better than average weather and the building slowdown has awarded us with discounted materials and more than normal available man-power. Things are moving along at a healthy pace.

July 22nd Video

Here is one more video that was taken the last time I was on the lot

Back in the USA...pics & videos

I made it back to the states.

No issues, just a long 18 hour travel day. I left San Juan del Sur at around 7:30am, and got picked up at the airport at midnight. It was a good last day in Nicaragua. On the way to the Managua airport, we drove threw Masaya to get some hammocks.. It's a cool older city. Very colonial. Then it was onto Houston, and home to SLC.

It's good to be back, but I already miss the place.

I've spent the afternoon at the coffee shop putting most of the pics that I took on camera into a web gallery. I tend to take a lot of pics, and probably put too many into the gallery, but I figured... better more than less.

http://gallery.me.com/dan.keeley#100130&bgcolor=black&view=grid

When I get more time tomorrow... I will add construction pics onto the blog specific.

Here are 3 videos that were taken on July 17th, probably 3 or 4 days after groundbreaking.

Digging Down..(above)

Chipping away...it's hard work (above)

Describing the layout of the lot (above)

I have one more long video that I will add later...when I add more pics directly onto this blog page. It's a video that I took on July 22nd, and is similar to the last one...with just a little more progress done. I'll try to do it tomorrow.

Cheers,

Keeley

Goodbye from Nicaragua

Hello all...

I´ve been forced back into the Internet cafe by an afternoon rainstorm. We just got back from meeting with Chuck. It was one of the most informative conversations that I´ve had down here... regarding the development that we are building in.

Right now there are 6 houses that are completed in our immediate area. We are going the be the 7th. Most of the houses have been there for a couple of years, but only half of them have year round residents. A few of them are owned by Nicaraguans, that use them as vacation homes. The others are like Chuck & Felix...where it´s their permanent residence.

Currently...there are 5 or 6 other homes that are being built within a half mile of our house.

The conversation with Chuck revolved mostly about water. It took a while to get a reliable well in our neighborhood, but it seems like we have one now. Our house is also going to have a rain collection system, with a cistern (water holding tank) built into the house. It will be below one of the decks, and hidden from view. This just gives us another place to store water for our pool, showers...etc.

Building a house in Nicaragua, is not even close to building one in the states. However, I feel really good that we have a contractor that has been down this road a few times...and has encountered the obstacles that go with building down here. He has build close to 20 homes in the area, and I know he´s learned a few lessons from each one.

I think it´s cool as hell that we are building down here, and it is going to be a great experience to go threw. Will is planning on taking pictures as we go along, to see the progress...but I feel it will be good to come down here every couple of months during the construction. It´s going to be important to see with our own eyes how things are going. I will be more than happy to volunteer for a few of these trips...

All in all... this has been a great trip down here. Adam and I spent a considerable amount of time working with Will, and his surveyors, engineers, foreman, and many other people that are going to be involved in the building of our surf casa. We messed with the floor plan a little bit to make sure it was optimal for the lot. We made some changes to the garage, and the captain´s perch. We staked out where the house is going to be placed on the lot, and got to watch the groundbreaking...which was awesome.

While I´ve been down here we have also purchased most of the materials for the initial phase. This includes the retaining wall blocks, rebar, concrete, and wood for the concrete columns. I´ve also had a great opportunity to meet a lot of people in SJDS, and Maderas. I´ve learned alot about the Nicaraguan culture, and seen a few of the towns, and a good amount of the country. Everyone needs to experience this place in the wet season, because it is so beautiful and green.

I hope that everyone has enjoyed this blog, as I have really enjoyed writing it. There is so much that I saw and did that I didn´t have time to put into the blog...but those stories will come when I get home. My plan is to put more pictures, and especially videos onto this blog when I get home. Especially videos of our lot.

I have my last evening planned out, as I am going to go back to Iguana´s for a sunset rum & ginger...have a burger at El Pozo, and then go to open mic at Coquito´s. Just as I´m really settling in......it´s time to go home.

That´s OK though...I´m ready to get back to the states and see everyone again.

Hope all is well up north, and adios from San Jan del Sur, Nicaragua.

Keeley

More lot pictures

I downloaded a few more pictures from our lot. They are in the same gallery as before... at the bottom. I used numbers in front of the pictures to distinguish them from the rest. You can see how deep they have dug into the ridge. It didn´t feel like they were going to have to go down that far, but it looks good. We are probably going to need a bit more fill on the beach side of the house to make it level, but that will make the house feel like it is suspended above the steep hill.

I´m heading out with Will right now to meet Chuck. Chuck is one of our neighbors, and is also the one in charge of water.

I don´t have a lot of time to write, I just wanted to let everyone know there are some more pics. This is my last day down here, and hopefully tonight I will get a chance to sum up my trip with one last blog while I´m here.

Adios,
Keeley

A Nicaragua History Lesson

Hola from San Juan del Sur,

I´m back in the Internet cafe, after spending another beautiful day here in SJDS. Today was a relaxation day, after a full day of sailing yesterday. A lazy morning hanging out at my favorite coffee shop, a quick walk around town, surfing, a siesta, and then another great dinner. It´s a dog´s life.

I wanted to try to give everyone some sort of an idea of what this place looks like, so when I was walking around town, I took some pictures. I posted them in the same place that the previous pics are at. I also included some of the pictures that I took while on the sailboat trip yesterday.

http://gallery.me.com/dan.keeley#gallery ....and they are in iPhone photos. (They are kind of out of order...I have no idea why. The sailing pictures are at the end, followed by a few more new pics of SJDS, Most of the other new pics are at the top of the gallery.)

By the way... the sailing was so much fun. We sailed out of SJDS bay, and headed south to a secluded surf break. When we first got out into the ocean, the weather was not that friendly. It was raining, and the winds were coming off the coast at close to 30 knots. We actually motored most of the way to keep it a little smoother. It gave me good taste of what poor weather is like on the ocean.

Once we got to the surf break...a couple of good surfers from California threw their boards overboard, jumped on them, and paddled in-land to catch some waves. I was a little to inexperienced to try something like that...mostly the winds and the very strong current also helped me make that decision...but it was one hell of a cool thing to witness. They call it skurfing, when you sail to a surf break. I could retire, and skurf for the rest of my life.

The couple spent an hour or so, and when they got back...they said it was unbelievable. Since you have to take a boat to get there, they were completely alone on the break. That´s a rarity in that sport to have a break all to yourselves.

After the surfing...we turned the boat north, and headed to a Playa Blanco. This is another beach that can only be reached by boat, and was a mile or two north of our lot. We passed right by SJDS, Maderas, Marsella, Morgans Rock, and everything in between. By this time the weather was much better, so we did some true sailing.

I´m a huge fan of sailing, and this was the first time that I have ever sailed on the ocean...so I was in hog heaven. I took a few pictures of our lot, but they were out a little bit, so I hope you can kind of make out where our house is going to be. It´s such a sick spot.

The only thing at Playa Blanco was a vacation home of one of the richest families in Nicaragua. It´s the family that own the Nicaraguan rum Flor de Coña, and both of the countries beers...Toña & Victoria. On a side note, this family has so much money...and are good people...that they built an amazing, state of the art hospital in Managua. The hospital would rival any top notch hospital in the states, and is where Will & Vanessa had their baby Max.

Anyway... this place was insane. It was like a cover shot on Sailing World magazine. We dove off the boat, swam to shore, and just took the whole place in. After hanging there for a little bit, we sailed back to port, and called it a day. One of the better days of my life.

After that we had dinner, a couple of beers at the Irish bar, and I went and got a good nights rest.

I woke up today, and just had the relaxing day that I was talking about. After walking the town, I went surfing for a couple of hours on the beach here in town. At high tide, there are some really nice breaks. It´s nice to at least have the option of surfing in town. It´s no Maderas, but still fun for me.

The House...

I really don´t have much to report regarding our house. We just got done with a long holiday weekend, so the only progress that would of been made was Friday & today. I am going out there tomorrow, and will take some more pics, and post them tomorrow night.

Since I´m going to finish off this relaxing day with a relaxing night...I thought I might share with you a little bit of the history of Nicaragua. I have been fortunate enough to be here during the Nicaraguan holiday that they call ¨19 de Julio - Dia de la Revolucin¨ (July 19th - The Day of the Revolution) This day of revolution happened in 1979, so it is still fairly fresh on everyone´s mind, and unlike our 4th of July holiday...they are still people alive when it happened.

The people of Nicaragua don´t just celebrate this holiday on July 19th. They crowd as many days into the celebration as they can. They started parting on Friday the 16th, and by this morning...I thing they were finally done. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my trip to Managua on Saturday really exposed to me the love that they have for their country. Every town that we went threw, was holding some sort of celebration.

Their favorite way to do this is by having a parade. This is kind of like the parades we have in the states (Like Macy´s Thanksgiving) except their aren´t any spectators....there all in it. It´s a huge crowd of people walking really, really slow down the street, highway, dirt road...where ever they may be. On the way back we passed a couple that were on the Pan-American Highway (the main highway that connects Mexico with Panama) We would be cruising along and then we would come to a complete stop, and then slowly make our way around. Cool to see.

They also love fireworks... Not the kind that we shoot off at night, and make pretty colors. No...they like the ones that are just loud. They shoot them off all day...and night, and they sound exactly like shotgun´s going off. So all weekend...all hours of the day...were these fireworks. By Monday it was old, and we were all very glad to be on the boat.

I´ve been reading up on Nicaraguan history, and although I don´t have enough time or energy to give you complete story...here are the nuts and bolts.

I´ll start in 1936...since that is really where this part of the story started.

1936 was an interesting time in world history, and it was really the beginning of the cold war. The United States had a lot of influence in Central America, mostly stemming from controlling the Panama Canal. To make a long story short the U.S. wanted to try to keep communism out of Nicaragua, so they used what ever power they had... to get a man named Anastasio Somoza Garcia into the leadership role in Nicaragua.

This was the beginning the ¨Somozo¨ dynasty. Together with the National Guard (the Nicaraguan army), Somozo managed to create a sort of dictatorship. He placed his family & friends into critical positions with in the government and military, and therefore had control over the legislature and judicial system. He wrote and enforced the law, therefore creating near absolute power.

The National Guard took care of any serious threats to his power. They took over the national radio, the telegraph system, postal, immigration, health, and the national railroads. After 2 years in office he announced that he would stay in power beyond his presidential term, and ended up in power until he was killed in 1956.

Somoza had two sons, and after his assination, his son Luis Somoza took control of the country. Luis controlled Nicaragua until 1967, when he died of a heart attack. After that his brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president. During this time there was a rebellion brewing within the Nicaraguan people...that were none to happy about being treated the way that they were.

The Cuban revolution gave the Nicaraguan insurgents optimism and arms funding. They formed the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional - ¨The Sandinistas¨ The Sandinistas were starting to grow...when in 1972 Nicaragua was struck with a catastrophic earthquake. The earthquake killed 10,000 people, and basically destroyed Managua, and a majority of the cities in Nicaragua. It left 500,000 homeless.

International relief flowed into Nicaragua, but Somozo Debayle and his national guards were not distributing the relief. They were keeping most of it for themselves. A newspaperman named Pedro Chamorro wrote an article stating this, and the Nicaraguan people had had enough.

At the time the U.S. was still backing Nicaragua, for the same reason they were in 1936...fear of communism. But they were even starting to distance themselves from the regime. The National Guard, and Somoza were starting to become nervous, so they began to raze villages in the jungles where the suspected rebels were at.

These actions were condemned by the world and the U.S., but the current president (Gerald Ford) still did not terminate their alliance with Somoza. The straw that broke the camel´s back was when Pedro Chamorro (the reporter, and also leader of the opposition alliance..see above) was murdered. Full scale civil war followed.

The Sandinista forces that were holed up in Honduras & Costa Rica began seizing isolated communites, and attacking National Guard units. Somoza responded by ordering bombings on towns, and using his power to murder innocent people. The United States had always supported Somoza against their perceived threat of communism in Central America, but even they had enough.

President Jimmy Carter refused any further U.S. aid, and the Somoza government quickly collapsed. Somoza escaped to Miami, and the Sandinistas rode into the capital city of Managua on July 19th, 1979. 35 year old Daniel Ortega (the current president of Nicaragua) proclaimed a new provisional government, and Nicaragua was born again.

Now Ortega isn´t really a sweet-heart either, but he is nothing close to the Somoza regime. He isn´t very popular with the Nicaraguan people...but that is another story. I think he is a good guy, he just not a good leader. I really don´t know enough about the current politics to make any opinions though.

Well....my eyes are going blurry from staring at this computer screen, so it´s probably time to call it a night. Hope all is well in the states, and I should have more pictures of the lot tomorrow.

Cheers,
Keeley