Ocean vs. Ramada

The big 'ol ugly ocean does what it wants. These past few weeks it's decided it wants the ramadas and restaurants along the beachfront heading towards La Boca from San Jacinto. It's sad, as these are people's livelihood, Our neighbors and friends.

The sand gets washed away from under the support beams, and next thing you know the roof has collapsed.

Here is an example of a ramada that didn't collapse, but you can see the sand has been washed away.

This techo (roof) was standing this day, but a couple days later when we walked...

This was all that was left standing. It could be they took it down after the first picture was taken, so it wasn't dangerous, we noticed all the beams are inside the ramada structure.

A little further down towards La Boca is our friend Manuel the Maestro carpenter's techo, see how many times he's reinforced it. (strengthened the top and added to the posts) But the thing that got me, was look at how high the bench seat is (directly in the middle of photo) now that all the sand is gone...

Many of these free standing techo are built and maintained by people who live nearby, for instance, Manuel lives on the road, but this is his oceanfront family area. If his family isn't using it, someone else is able to use it. Some of them used to have signs saying they were available thru the ministry of tourism, and big tour buses would bring people in for a day at the beach, and any of the techo with that sign were free to use.

Others were restaurants that were open every weekend, and holiday. Also renting hammocks for the day to beach goers who needed a bit of shade.

Or were used by the fishermen to work their nets, or store the boats at high tide. This next one, is even housing a turtle nest...(stay tuned for another post)

We had some "big wigs" come thru yesterday and see the damage, not sure what they can do about the Ocean, but maybe they can help with something. As we were walking the tide was getting high, and we got to see things differently. Usually we only walk at low tide, so the "ruins" were very interesting to see! Yikes!!

No wonder that sea wall didn't last!

Here are some concrete footings of some sort that have been unearthed from the sand washing away. There are at least 6 of these, I can't imagine what they were for, and how long they've been buried by many feet of sand.

 

The ramadas and restaurants will be rebuilt, maybe closer to the road, or maybe they'll just wait for the ocean to bring the sand back. But I do believe they'll be selling empanadas and ceviche again, and for that we wait. So...Stay tuned, the adventure continues!