Gate Breaker

Well, work continues here in gate-land. As you can see from the pictures, the damage was quite substantial, especially to our landlord's gate. They took it all in stride however, and as bad as we felt, they never let on that it bothered them tremendously, even giving Valerie her new nickname....the Gate Breaker. Sounds catchy...hopefully not for Valerie's sake however.

The gate you can see (at right) took quite the brute force (go Defender! unscathed in this incident) of the truck, and lifted both of the columns on either side of the gate.

This meant they had to be rebuilt from the bottom up, with some wood rigging on either side to hold up what is left of the gate (the damaged parts being sent off for repair...all approved by the Honduran equivalent of OSHA, with its saying "if it is broke, then fix it...however you can). They took the columns apart, took out the mortar, and re-used the rocks with new mortar to make the new columns. Facinating I am sure. What is rather interesting is knowing that these columns were put in place 45 years ago, give or take a year, and have lasted quite nicely...especially considering that by modenr day standards they are not up to snuff....no rebar was included, and the mortar was not cement, but rather lye mixed with sand. Cool eh?

After this week, we are hoping to then fix the other gate (our entrance) that was also busted up (go Defender again!...this time however showing a bit of battle scars), and be back to normal.

All of this happening on the one week a year most people are on vacation, and thus leave Teguc for the beach in droves, not to mention when the most house thieves are out, has not escaped our attention. Irony being what it is, I will make no further comment at this time.