Not Moving at the Speed of Crazy

I'm back from Brazil - or Brasil as they spell it.

We're moving along, slowly, on the homestead at El Rancho Cuca Mongrel.  We've (by we've, I mean Dave's) put tile onto the floor in the camper.  We got a phone hooked up at the ped, so while I was gone, Dave would walk up to the phone box with a chair and the dogs, plug in the phone and wait for me to call via Skype.  My wifi in the hotel was spotty, so our conversations were intermittent  but it's still amazing that I could talk with him from 5000 miles away.  He also repaired some of the plumbing in the trailer.  The cold water is done, but the hot water still needs to be completed.  Everything here can take awhile. Trips to the hardware store become at least a 1/2 day project, so we try to combine them with other errands.

The composting toilet has arrived.  We're in the process of putting that in.  I think we're going to move the camper first.  More on that another day.  We ran a phone extension line from the box to the camper.  Dave dug a trench in the road so we could bury the line.  When we finally get power, then the phone company will run a real line, but for now, at least we have a phone handy.  We had to run 250 feet of line. It's amazing we still have a dial tone after all that way!

Dave digging the trench for the phone line

We also ordered an office/solar closet.  A few miles from us there's a pre-built building dealer - Derksen Portable Buildings.  We're getting a small - 10' x 16' building that will house a small office for me, some storage and the solar electronics.  It should arrive in 3 weeks.  The company will place and level it for us.  Then we need to finish it - insulating, running power, wall sheathing and a floor treatment.  I'm excited for it.  It will be nice to have a place to work.  All I need now is internet.

Blogging, at least until we get internet, will probably be a weekly thing for me.  If I could easily blog from the ipad, I think I would do it more often, but there is not yet an Ipad app.  Go figure.  

We had rain for the past 36 hours or so.  Really, for almost all of those hours.  My rain gauge was listing, so I know it's not accurate, but it read 1.5"  I think we probably got more.  The night it started, Thursday, we'd come to the lodge area to shower and do laundry.  The rain started while we were here.  The drive home was through several areas of flooding on the road.  The deepest was only a foot, but many small boulders were washed onto the road.  It took me a few tries to get the Xterra lined up so that I ran the least chance of damaging my brand new tires or scraping something on the undercarriage if a rock spit out as I drove over it.  

Morning after the rain