All Hands and Hearts

We are now in San Juan once again, enjoying our final week in Puerto Rico, before we head off on Sunday. We have spent the last week working hard on yabucoa, a small town on the south east  coast.  This is where Maria, the category 5 hurricane first made landfall just over a year ago. We were volunteering with the U.S. charity 'All hands and hearts' which does reconstruction work on the many houses and community centres that still remain damaged. We put on full protective gear to treat houses for mould, went on roofs to seal and paint them, as well as other repair and light construction work. We also had time to go out on the neighbourhood and collect litter. It was tiring but useful work and the enthusiasm and energy from the other volunteers was great to see. There were about 80 volunteers and staff, varying from day volunteers to those who have been here for months. You can check out the organisation at www.allhandsandhearts.org if you're interested.

Trees we love

We've moved down from the mountains to the small town of Yabucoa, in the south east of Puerto Rico, where we are helping repair the hurricane damaged houses of local people. We'll blog more about that next time. In the meantime, we wanted to share some photos of some of the tropical trees that we encounter here. Quite a difference to the trees back home in Leicester! Almost all trees here are evergreen broadleaf. Last time we blogged a photo of a pea bush. This variety of pea is called 'pigeon pea' and grows in tropical areas. The first photo here is of a 'primordial' fern tree which have been on earth since the time of the dinosaurs. Second is a tree covered in bromeliads. These, and other epiphytes, are very common. The local frog species, called a coqui, loves to live in them.  Some epiphytes don't have roots and can even be found living on overhead wires. Finally, many of the trees here have beautiful flowers like the one below which looks like a firework.

Farming

We now have less than a week in this placement in the mountains of central Puerto Rico. We have been working hard each day. Steve has mostly been clearing land that has grown over since the hurricane and above is a photo of him in his fetching 'strimming outfit'. Mel has mostly been helping Kuka, who is an employee here. They have been sifting soil and planting out seeds and seedlings. We also  have helped in other places. For example, Steve helped at the nursery of La Para Naturaleza, which is a conservation group. We both helped out in the community garden of a  group in the nearby city of Caguas. They are called 'Urbe Apie' and above is a photo of us harvesting peas.