Rocking It Out In Ranchito

Boy, has our lane taken a beating. Granted, it was never in the greatest of shape in the almost 18 months we've lived here. But, after all the rain we had last month -- I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 - 20 inches -- plus the weekly appearance of the water delivery truck and occasional trash truck bouncing down the lane, we ended up with some major ruts.

A smooth driving surface it was not. Of course, pretty much all the unpaved roads in the area are facing the same problems, often much worse than what we had. For instance, Dave Rider over at Casa Winjama documented the situation on their road which leads to the ferry, and our local online news source carried stories about the road leading to Consejo.

Needless to say, the road department -- such as it is -- has quite a mess on their hands. And it's not like they have a ton of road repair equipment at their disposal. We knew we were so far off their radar to have our lane issues taken care of that we decided to take action on our own.

Working with our Ace Number One Groundskeeper, Fernando, we arranged to have a few dump truck loads of rock and marl delivered to various parts of the lane.

Fernando enlisted the help of his brother, Raphino, and the two of them went about the process of repairing the damaged areas. How? With a sledgehammer. Yup, they beat the crap out of those rocks until they were of a smaller size, and carted them to the various potholes and ruts along the lane. 

Now bear in mind, it was beastly hot...it was humid...it was not the kind of weather that any sane person would want to wield a sledgehammer for eight hours a day. But they did. They were maniacs.

Fernando (left) and Raphino working on one of the marl piles

After the rocks were in place, the guys then used the marl to cover them and make a smoother surface. That meant shoveling the dirt into the wheelbarrow multitudinous times and carting it to the broken up rocks.

All told, it took them about 10 days to finish the job. Is it the prettiest surface you might see? Nope. But, it's so much better than it was, and at least we can now navigate ourselves out to the highway without too much fear of getting caught up to our hubcaps in mud.