Pruning

Since I nearly destroyed my MacBook by spilling wine on it and having to get it repaired; I still had a problem. It’s the new generation with only two USB-C ports and one of them had stopped working. I couldn’t charge and transfer data at the same time. I took it to the repair place in Canada and they told me it was too dangerous to try and fix it. I decided to try down here.

I took it to the PC Doctor and he said it would take two days. I called when the two days were up and he said he didn’t fix it exactly but had a workaround. I was a bit apprehensive when I went to pick it up until he explained what he had done. He had repaired half of the port so all I had to do was to make sure I had the USB-C in the right way up and it worked just great.

I, as always, was concerned about the cost but should have known better. He charged me $400 pesos, about $28. So now I’m happy to have my baby back.

While I was sitting enjoying my Macbook a guy came to the front gate. He only spoke Spanish so Rosalie had to deal with him. He was pointing at our coconut palm and asking for 150 pesos. I didn’t know what he wanted so we decided to go ahead and see what happened. I suspected that he was going to prune the palm tree.

First, he gets a coil of rope and tied a machete to one end. Next, he takes off his shoes, dusts his hands and climbs the tree barefoot. Then a whole bunch of dead palm leaves come cascading down. After about 15 minutes, he comes down and askes for some water. Rosalie filled a jug and gave him a glass.

He climbed back up and the real work began. He cut and hacked for about half an hour and the coconuts and dead branches came hustling down. He was doing a very thorough job. The problem was, what to do with the cocos? They would go to waste if we kept them so we decided to tell him to take them. He would either turn them into ‘coco locos’ or sell them.

He was asking $150 pesos but we decided to give him $200 as it was hot dusty work. The only problem I had was that after it was all done, he wanted another $200 pesos to haul the garbage away. If he’d said that in the beginning it may have changed things. I refused and he took it all, to a vacant lot next door and dumped it there. I suspect he was going to do that anyway. Besides, he got the cocos. When we told Blanca , she said that she would have taken them. We did try to contact her but with no luck.