The Great Escape

Here is inside the jungle room (enclosed porch area and cat habitat - best room in the house). The doors on the right go into the house and when we leave we come out of the house, lock them, then go out the rejas (on the left not seen here), lock it with a padlock and off we go. The rejas is great because on hot nights we leave the door and the slats (to the left and right of the doors) open and get airflow all the way through and a nice jungle view. The rejas is locked so it is perfectly safe (not that we feel unsafe ever). The slats are mostly closed here, but the top is open about a hand wide for ventilation.


The rejas is locked. I am inside the jungle room looking out.



This is the inside of the double doors. It has a deadbolt that works from the inside, or opens and closes with a key from inside the jungle room.



Thank god I left the slats a little open! I put my hand through, cranked them as open as they would go and could see that the keys were where they should be, hanging on the key rack!

See? Both sets hanging there INSIDE the house while I am locked inside the jungle room with no way out! Yes, I was trying to keep Tuca the kitty inside for the night so I closed and locked the double doors and closed the slats mostly. I went out the kitchen through the metal door that can only be locked from inside. I went around the outside in the nightly search for our fat Washington cat Dakota so I could get him in. I was also trying to keep Chicken the cat inside since he may have gotten bitten in a cat fight yesterday and I want to watch the area to make sure he doesn't abcess. I came into the jungle room, locked the padlock, and then realized the double doors were deadbolted!!!! Panic! Shit!

It is 9:30 at night. I can see though the slat that the kitchen door is open and the keys are in there. I'll just yell for Amparo the neighbor and she can go inside and get me the keys. After 25 minutes of yelling "ayudar Amparo" "help" etc etc and howling like a caged monkey I realized she probably took drugs and went to sleep. I flicked the lights on and off and on and off since our other neighbor at the bottom uses that as a signal when UPS or something arrives but she was already watching tv and headed for bed. Didn't have a key, didn't have a phone, couldn't yell any more so I figure maybe I could pull the doors open. Nope.

I had a broom in the room so I used it to sweep the other broom from outside over to where I could grab it. I untied one end of the hammock and used the rope to tie the brooms together. The broom head was heavy to I took one of them off. My shoes were in there so I also used a shoe lace to strap them together. They were wobbly without that and if I lost a broom I'd never get out!

Hammock tieup and shoelace gadget.

This is a reenactment now that I am free. When I stuck the two broomsticks through the slat it didn't reach the key rack so I needed something else.

That's when I saw it! The cat toy! A thin lightweight stick with feathers on it, just what I need. I strapped that sucker on the end with a shoelace and the string holding the feathers off it and now had barely enough to reach. The first attempt knocked one set of keys onto the table where I couldn't get them. I decided they could not fall or I'd never get out. I snaked the second set of keys onto the cat toy and slowly pulled the whole contraption in. I got the key and let myself out, took a sleeping pill and tried to forget the whole ordeal - even though it was under an hour. I guess I could have just slept in the jungle room on the cat couch and yelled for Amparo in the daytime - she would have come. I really felt I guess like the cats do when they are closed up - I WANTED OUT!

So this morning I was refreshed and about to go search for Dakota the missing cat. Turns out he had an ordeal as well and spent the night locked inside the cement shed with the compressor and scary critters of the night! So all is well in the Kruse household now except for Bepo who is probably dead. I kept that cat in for 2 weeks and cleaned her wounds, gave her love and she slept on the bed and purred and rolled and was becoming a nice cat. I let her out and we haven't see her since. I think she's dead or REALLY pissed off. But now I understand what it is like to be trapped! So where was Jeff? Watching TV in Wisconsin with his family oblivious to the whole shebang.

Cueva Mucara

Sorry no photos, Jeff had the little camera and he is in the states on vacation.

I went up to Mucara hoping to be rappelling down 60 feet, climbing up ropes, getting muddy and wet and really exercising. It turned out that the group didn't have any rope experience so I left the harness and rope in the car and we headed into a different area of the cave I hadn't seen before to finish up mapping it. The Aquas Buenas and Mucara caves connect but until yesterday were not mapped.

The walk to the entrance is around a half hour of a semi real trail. It is always a fun part of the adventure just getting to the cave. Once there we went into a tunnel different than the one I'd been in before and began the crawling, squeezing, slipping, walking, climbing fun things. If there is a hole, I'll go in! We explored many nice rooms with different formations and rock types. This cave isn't all limestone...the rock types are really interesting where they join.

My favorite parts were seeing a bat with it's little group of still nursing babies (very talkative group) and a small room after a tight squeeze that I will call the "wet" room. This little room has all kinds of neat formations that are kind of like melted wax looking. Small formations but packed into a small room you can barely sit up in. The room was maybe 4x5x4? Maybe not that big. It was a slide-on-your-back-to-get-out cave. Just my kind of thing! We also saw a scorpion eating a cricket, lots of snails, crickets, spiders and albino Maria Tree Seedlings. As always, a thank you to Ron for leading and a thank you to the interesting people who joined the trip!

Food and a surprise (big one) in the yard at night!

One day's harvest - cherry tomatoes, aji dulce peppers (freeze well), orange flower seeds, carambola and 4 cucumbers (not shown).


I had tried a carambola before it was really ripe and didn't like it. For plain eating I still don't like them, but have found some really really good ways to use them that make them a favorite fruit now. The first thing I made was a chutney out of carambola and walnuts, onions and all the normal chutney spices. This fruit holds up without getting mushy when cooked.



This is prior to cooking - I marinated small sanitized (all bongy bits removed) chicken pieces, cebollo, garlic, culantro, almonds, aji dulce and carambola chunks in fresh lime juice and olive oil (a lemon and lime trees are a must). Then I baked the thing and it was flavorful and the carambola held up really well and was a nice slightly sweet taste with slight citrus flavor. It looked pretty much the same cooked. Very nice. Next time I will add some cucumber and lemon grass. Lemon grass is awesome. Just slicing it up and marinating small meat pieces in it makes a delicious meal.




I had a hankering for chocolate lava cakes and I found heavy cream to whip. Carambola was a nice addition.

One of our cats was just sitting and staring at night at this pot. No hand waving or poking, no forward/backward moving or pouncing. What's up? At first I didn't see it.

Then it was "holy shit."

Touching it got it on the move.

Definitely a Tuca (kitten) eater - hide all the babies! Beautiful and really cool thing to find.

Flower Show plants

Very hot purple peppers - who can resist?


When this pitcher plant is full it will be a weird/wonderful looking thing.



Cleaned up pineapple tops ready to plant.




Close up of the little roots once they are cleaned up. We planted a few with the cut off tops attached and never saw the little roots before. Some rotted and a couple are nice plants without pineapples. We want these to fruit!

Blackberries - but why are they in a canasta? I'll put them in the ground but want to make sure they will have room to take over without messing up anything else!

Dancing Lady ginger...

look at the flower! Very exciting.