Seasons Greetings

 Happy holidays and merry Christmas to family, friends and past volunteers from Lourdes and I here in the northern Amazon jungle of Peru!

 2020 has been a difficult year in which we had to completely shut down our educational outreach progams here in the small community of Sauce.  We did provide the service of delivery of essential food supplies during the pandemic to some of the more vulnerable families in our programs.  In addition we continued to support the Khuyay Waldorf school in the city of Tarapoto which remained in operation, but only on an online basis.

The lockdown situation did have some positive aspects:  Lourdes had plenty of time to learn Peruvian Sign Language to better communicate with some of our deaf children and adults and I got to mostly finish up our house on which I have been working for almost 10 years.  Also it was lovely having our lake very quiet with virtually no boat traffic for all those months.

We are optimistic that 2021 will be a better year.  This is still a beautiful world despite many challenges and we will continue forward inspired by love which remains at the heart of everything.

A different Christmas

In past years we have had three pre-Christmas celebrations with the young children, the older children and our group of grandmothers but this year because of Covid restrictions we have not been able to host our usual gatherings at Estrella del Sauce.  Instead this year we are delivering gifts to all the children and grandmothers who partipate in our programs.  We have permission to hold our summer camp called 'vacacciones utiles' which will start January 11 and our grandmothers group has been given the go-ahead to begin again on Jan 15.

Sauce is changing fast

 Lourdes and I moved to this small lakeside town almost a decade ago and over the years we have seen many changes especially in the hotel construction sector.  Now the main drag is getting lots of drain pipes put in in antipation of paving the entire length.  It has been a dirt road up until now - muddy during rain and dusty in dry, sunny conditions.

                                                          This is a new park being constructed a block away from our house.

Jetski boat smash

 We were sailing along yesterday minding our own business when a Jetski driven by a young inexperienced operator suddenly appeared right on our bow.  I thought he was going to veer away but he kept coming and smashed right into our bow.  He had lost control of the wetbike.

We picked him up quickly as fortunately the 'man overboard' drills I learned years ago were still there in my memory banks and fortunately we had a doctor on board who checked him for injuries and prounounced him uninjured, which seems quite a miracle as the impact was fairly hard.  We took the Jetski under tow and went back to where it had been rented.  There was splintered wood on our bow from the impact which will take me a few days to fix.

I know they are fast and fun but I don't think Jetskis belong on a small 3 mile long lake. Unfortunately every year there are more of them.  We regularly hear of various accidents with them but this is the first time we have been directly involved.

Lourdes con gatitios

 Here's Lourdes with Nikki and Gringo.

Welcome to the world Maria

 

Lourdes and I are thrilled and amazed to find ourselves great-grandparents following the the arrival of baby Maria born to our grand-daughter Kiara and partner Yared in Dornach, Switzerland on December 18.  We look forward to meeting her in person when travel restrictions ease up.

'But trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home.'

                                                          - William Wordsworth

Finish details at our house in Sauce

 This  entrance-way aquarium is finally filled and in operation after several years of standing empty.  We have 6 baby goldfish from our outdoor patio fishtank and just recently added some other colorful varieties of fish as well.  There is even a bubble-blowing diver carrying treasure which neighborhood children find fascinating.

The shells came from a trip we did down the Florida Keys some years back.

And here's the bar that I finally finished during lockdown with some turned bowls displayed.

On the right can be seen the pass-through from the garage that we use for unloading groceries during rainy weather.  Very useful.

Woodturning revisited

 I've done very little woodturning over the last decade despite having a lathe in my workshop.  Recently we had to take down a caoba tree which was growing too close to La Casita del Lago and bashing the roof during high winds.  It is lovely wood and lately I have been making some bowls as Christmas presents.

La canoa rancha and other nautical adventures

 La Canoa Rancha means something like 'the moldy canoe' and is a famous cumbia song by Grupo Niche from Colombia.  We have an actual moldy and slightly rotten 18 foot dugout canoe that was recovered from being sunk and filled with rocks several weeks after it was stolen.  Our friend and volunteer Josue who is back in Peru after being sponsored by us for a residency in Germany at a Camp Hill facility where he learned German and cared for developmentally disabled adults fortunately found the canoe while diving.

Now I am repairing the canoe, which was in a rather beat-up condition, with wood and some modern materials including fiberglass so it will have a new lease on life.  I'm adding one inch of freeboard, meaning the height above the water, to strengthen it and make it safer in choppy conditions.

I have also repaired and painted this 17 foot rowing and sailing skiff made of ana, a local water-resistant wood with properties similar to teak. I go out rowing often at sundown when the heat is diminishing and the sunset lights up the sky.  Sometimes Lourdes and dog Bondo come along as well.

The rowboat now has a boathouse with a new swim ladder that doubles for rowboat access.  When the dugout canoe is finally repaired and painted it will be docked to the right of the rowing skiff.

During the months of lockdown I worked on our 33 foot (10 meter) sailing trimaran Estrella del Lago improving the roofs so we now do not bang our heads when entering under the canopies, re-epoxying and painting the main mast and various hull repairs.  Lately we have had strong winds which have been fun and I tested out a new boom which managed to resist some 25 knot gusts without mishap.

              Old boom made from bamboo, picturesque but with tendency to break in high winds.

                                          New boom made from ana, much stronger. The challenge was to find a piece of wood 6 meters long.

Goodbye Tara and Johanna

Yesterday we said goodbye to our volunteers from Germany sent to us by die Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners (Friends of the art of Rudolf Steiner education) last September 1919.  They were to have continued for a year until September 2020 helping Lourdes in our small Waldorf community outreach program here in the remote jungle town of Sauce, San Martin, Peru, but due to the COVID-19 outbreak they were recalled back to Germany five months early.

We traveled by car out of Sauce for the first time since the onset of the corona virus scare to take Johanna and Tara to the airport in the city of Tarapoto and for me it was a rather surreal experience driving wearing a mask and disposable gloves. We had to stop and produce our police permission to travel at several checkpoints manned by military troops. Overall it felt a bit like being in a dystopian sci-fi movie.

Thanks Tara and Johanna for your months in Sauce and all good wishes for your journey back to Germany!

Tara, Lourdes and Johanna by the entrance of Estrella de Sauce at 6 am yesterday before our car ride to Tarapoto

A model railroad in the Amazon jungle?

Here's something a bit more lighthearted than quarantine and contagion:  At long last we have our in-house model railway up and running around 90 feet (30 meters) of track in our living room that may one day be a cafe.

When we lived near Cusco we would sometimes go to Paddy's Irish Pub (at around 10,000 feet above sea level it is billed as the highest Irish pub in the world) which had a model train running around just under the ceiling.  I always liked it so upon building my own house in Sauce I planned to put one in in similar fashion.  We bought the Hornby brand track and trains last time we were in the UK in 2014 at a model shop in Salisbury but it took until recently to get the whole thing installed and in operational mode.

The photo above taken from our stairs shows our 'Flying Scot' steam engine from the 1950's pushing a yellow track maintenance car backwards.  This is a real track-cleaning wagon that I send around every few days to keep the rails clean. It is a way better method than cleaning the rails by hand. The other train has Thomas and Percy pulling some wagons with gnomes in them as well as a pullman dining car all suspended by chains about 8 ft (2.5 meters) above the floor.

Martial law comes to Sauce.

As of yesterday we are under martial law here in Sauce with troops on pátrol in the streets, all tourism stopped and only food, medicine and patients allowed to be transported in and out.  All businesses are closed except food stores and pharmacies. Meanwhile the closest coronavirus case is hundreds of kilometers away in Iquitos.

It felt slightly edgy taking this clandestine photo this morning.  The armed soldier with facemask was the only living soul on the plaza de armas.

The population has been ordered to stay in their houses with only one family member allowed out to go food shopping or buy from the pharmacy.

The good side is that the lake is totally quiet with no boat traffic so our resident mermaid is getting a nice break from the incessant boat motor noise.

Our 2 volunteers from Germany, Tara and Johanna have been ordered to go back to their home country but as there are no flights they are staying at our house for the present.  Estrella de Sauce is obviously closed.

Escuelita repairs

Many thanks to the Waldorf worldwide outreach organization Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners (Friends of the art of Rudolf Steiner education) out of Berlin and Karlsruhe in Germany who have underwritten needed repairs on our Waldorf after school enrichment program called Estrella de Sauce based here in the small lakeside jungle community of Sauce near the city of Tarapoto in northern Peru.  Some of the repairs were necessitated by the 8.0 earthquake that hit us last May and others just from wear and tear.  We have a football court right behind the facility and over time the roof back there had become quite damaged and leaky from all the footballs landing on it.

Walls were cracked in various places but we were quite lucky as other older structures made of earth collapsed completely during the earthquake.

In front we had to put on a new palm-frond ridge cap as the old one had disintegrated due to sun and rain.  The white plastic skylight had sustained a 2 inch (5cm) hole.  What made that I wonder, could it have been a falling meteorite?  Perhaps more likely a kid with a slingshot. The photo above shows me fixing it with our volunteer Johanna holding the ladder.

The white notice-board on the wall was infested with termites so we have put up a new one that is quite nicely color coordinated with the flowers and plants.  It is made of metal this time so should be termite-proof.

 Wall repairs following earthquake

Football-damaged roof repaired, new palm-frond roof cap can be seen behind

Book published in Spanish

'Largo Camino a Chavin' is now available worldwide from Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle versions.

Many thanks to Jorge Andrés Ayllón for doing the translation and to Alejandro Morón Escobedo for editing the spanish text.

I wrote the book in response to the often repeated questions: Why did you move to Peru?  How did you meet Lourdes? And many others...
One frequent one here in Peru has been, when are you going to put it out in Spanish?  It took 2 years but here it is.
If you want the English version it is called 'Long Road to Chavin' published 2018 on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions.

Mast back up

Our trimaran 'Estrella del Lago' now has its mast back in the vertical posicion after needing some repairs with epoxy and fiberglass cloth.  Also new cross-trees, the horizontal pieces up the top that hold the support wires known as stays or shrouds away from the mast.  It's a slow laborious job raising the mast with a couple of chain hoists, but reasonably safe.

As you can see I have put a new roof on the starboard (right) side.  The port side roof still remains to be changed as does the small roof in the center over the steering station.  I modified the starboard side roof so we will not bang our heads when entering from the aft deck.  I plan to do the same on the port side as well.
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