Just when you think that everything is running smoothly or as smoothly as things can run down here in the tropics, another glitch seems to crop up or reoccur as the case may be.
Yesterday was the final day of our garage project. A week ago it was dubious if the project would be finished within a reasonable time frame but Gus pulled out all the stops and put all his crew into full motion. There must have been 15 people bustling about the place pouring a concrete floor, parging, painting, pouring the sidewalk, installing roof drains, installing doors and window et al. Quite a production and voila, it was complete! (Photos to follow)...
We had just said 'Adios' to Gus when the power went out. Power outages are not an infrequent occurrence here but after a couple of hours then a few phone calls to neighbours, Meg determined that we seemed to be the only casa on the street with a problem. Our ever helpful and fluent Spanish-speaking neighbour, Aline, called CFE (the local power company) to report our problem and a few hours later (just as Gus arrived to check out the electrical system) the CFE truck pulled into our driveway.
I watched as he tapped our meter with a hammer then hit a protruding knob beside it which caused the dial to start to rotate. The problem was with the meter. Next he was cutting and chiseling away the freshly painted concrete surrounding the meter then popped off the meter to reveal disintegrated electrical contacts leading to our main breaker box. And what, by chance, could have caused all this disintegration??? Termites!!!
Last year we first encountered termites in and around the casa. We believe that they had migrated from a neighbouring casa, tunnelled under our wall, through the concrete (yes, these subterranean termites burrow through concrete) taking out many of my large cacti as they chewed their way onto our property. We called the exterminators, had the placed doused with 'termite-cide' and gradually eliminated as many wooden structures and pieces of furniture as we could. The support posts to our wooden gate turned out to be infested with termites, riddled with termite tracks. The posts had been coated in a supposed insecticide (Penta Prisa) plus many coats of motor oil...another 'so called' termite barrier but, nonetheless, looked like Swiss cheese. At that time we also noticed that the breaker box was full of termite dust so we soaked it in insecticide and asked our electrician to construct us a new breaker box housing. Within a few days our electrician was back with what he called a 'termite-proof' box. To our surprise, within 2 weeks there was only a paper thin layer of wood left of the new box...the termites loved that wood! Needless to say, we started a regimen of termite dust watch and insecticide sprays. Many termites were destroyed in the process but, obviously, not near enough!
So I suppose the termites chewed their way through the box and into the connectors which, basically, fell out into the dirt...
With our power restored, we thanked our CFE guy and retired to the terrace, libation in hand, to contemplate the trials and tribulations of tropical bliss (0:
