So last week I engaged in what might possibly be the manliest activity of my life. I helped my friend cut down five pine trees in his coffee finca with just a machete. This basically consists of hitting the tree repeatedly on one side, near the base, until you have knocked off enough small notches of wood to be able to push it over from the undamaged side. This is generally possible once you have cut through slightly more than half of the trunk (which takes roughly 40 mins of aggravated chopping). Even though the Takoma Park hippy in me felt kinda bad about chopping down trees, this was a pretty awesome activity. You get to go to town on a piece of wood with a sharp object and then push a tree over resulting in an awesome thump, its kinda every little boys dream. And I was even able to justify the destruction of local flora by the fact that the trees where old and dying anyway and by strategically knocking them down we were able to prevent them falling on his coffee plants and seriously damaging his livelihood.
ps. I'm going to try something new, and post new short entries more often rather than one huge one every few months
