Life is not always easy

Last week we have had a few disappointments. After months of telephone calls, meeting and waiting the drilling machine finally came to our farm to drill a bore hole. Beforehand we were (naturally) told that there is water just about anywhere in Panama, so it doesn{t really matter where you locate the bore hole. The most important limiting factor was supposed to be access to the site. The drilling machine weighs 25 tonnes and the accompanying lorry did not have four wheel drive. So we selected a site with good access

On 26 July the driling got started.
(for photo´s see:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanagertourism/sets/72157601522605894/

Around 20 m depth all was groovy, the signs were good. Around 35 m brows started to contract slightly and at about 40 m the furrows on the brows were about as deep as the borehole. And at about 56 m people had to admit that we had found one of the few sites in Panama where ground water is scarce. Not enough to properly clean the borehole. The borehole was declared dry, which means we pay 50% of the price, but that is not much of a consolation when there is no water. On 27 July we tested ourselves and found that water was rising in the borehole, but the yield was around 50 to 100 l per hour, not enough for a motor pump. People claim that the borehole may start to yield more when it has cleaned itself, but we have to see that before we believe it.

So we went back to Santiago somewhat downcast. Only to encounter another set back. Someone had broken into our house via the side door. Both lap top computers and the portable hard drive with back-up were gone, disappeared, no more there. That the machines were gone is expensive, but that loss will be (partly) covered by insurance. But the monetary loss is almost insignificant in comparison to the time we had spent on gathering and analyzing the information on tropical ecosystems, trees, birds, mammals etc as well as all the digital photographs we had stored.

Thank whoever invented it, for the internet. Quite a few documents and photographs were sent to friends and family around the world, so we can download that information from the attachments we sent. And the person designing our website is very particular when it comes to photographs, so she has the majority (and certainly the best) photographs we have taken over the last year or do. Still we lost a lot as well. Like 30 Gbyte of music from all over the world and the playlists we had selected...
We will, off course, get over this. And you can help us. We ask everybody to send ur there favorite three songs in MP3 to keesgroenendijk@yahoo.com. In this way we hope to rebuild a music collection that is just as varied, beautiful and entertaining as the one we lost. Man thanks in advance.