The week started with our trip back from Canela to the land. When we got close we started to see a lot of fallen trees, and then a few houses with their roofs torn off, some completely destroyed! Some trees were torn out of the ground and snapped in half – some so thick you couldn’t reach around them! When we were in the cafe the night before there had been very heavy rain and wind, but out in the land it seems it had been much more violent. We were very anxious on the way back expecting to see our tent completely ripped up and all our belongings scattered for hundreds of meters around the valley, but to our surprise everything was just how we’d left it apart from some minor damage to one tent – and everything inside was dry! it’s very lucky that we’d decided to move from our temporary location though because there was a lot of damage there. It seems that our little island is well protected by the surrounding hills and bushland – whew!
The next day we started our first project on the land which was to build a fence so that we can start planting fruit and vegetables without the cattle eating it. There’s a lot of fallen trees in our bush area so we got the axe and started cutting some lengths suitable for fence posts and support braces, and then stretched some wire around it that we had bought in Canela along with some tightening ratchets.
The next project was to try and get a temporary “office” for doing some internet work each day, but unfortunately our rural Internet connection is not as good as expected and we’ll need to keep coming in to Canela each week. I have to get more work done than I’m able to in the current situation, so we’re looking in to renting a cheap place that we can stay so we can spend half the time here and half the time there until we can figure something better out for the land’s connection.
The road that we travel to get to Canela is like a huge spiral going about four times more distance than displacement, but when we talked to some neighbours they told us there’s a shorter road but that it’s very difficult. We figured it couldn’t be that much worse than some parts of the long one, so today (Saturday, November 3rd) we decided to try the shorter road. Well, we made it, but the three of us unanimously voted never to do that again! we were lucky and if the road had been a little wetter we would certainly not have made it, there were many huge holes and chasms in the road that are a meter or more deep and lots of areas that are little more than enormous piles of rocks. Some of the neighbours in houses we passed towards the end looked shocked to see a vehicle coming from that direction!