Building the UNS

Last night, Luis picked me up from my hotel in Zacapa, and brought me to his house in Estanzuela.  I met his wife Aura and two daughters Diana and Ariana who are 8 and 11 years old.  The entire family speaks English very well, and they have been extremely hospitable hosts, generously offering me food, medicine, transportation, and anything else that I am going to need for the project the next few days.  Their house is extremely nice with internet and a phone that can call unlimited minutes to the US, and probably has more advanced technology than my home in Wilmington, NC.  Also, their house is only a block away from the town center of Estanzuela where I have been working with Carlos and Robert the past few days, so everything is incredibly convenient.  Right now, I am super grateful to Luis and his family for all of their support, because they are really doing their best to make my stay in Estanzuela as nice as possible.

Pouring concrete mixture into UNS molds

Today, we got the metal parts for the UNS back from the welder shop in Estanzuela, where they had replicated them to build machines in the future.  I stayed in the town center of Estanzuela assembling the mold for the peanut sheller with Juan and Junior, who are going to be helping me out with the aflatoxin tests and experiments for the next week that I am here.  Since we completed the mold after lunch, we brought it home to Luis' house so that we would have time to work on it later.  At the house, Danilo, who is one of Luis' employees, helped me pour the concrete mixture                   into the molds, and we let them harden for about 6 hours.

After we finished pouring the concrete, I went with Danilo to see some of the farms surrounding Estanzuela, where there are a lot of mango trees and cattle-raising.  We also got to see an exotic bird farm which was really cool, and I posted some pictures that you can see.  Overall, the countryside surrounding Estanzuela is really picturesque with an amazing view of the mountains in every direction, and it feels like a great atmosphere to live in.

Ostriches on Estanzuela farm 

When I got back to Luis' house, he took me out to a pork roast  with some of his friends, where there were about 8 guys hanging out drinking beers and cooking pork over an open fire, which is something they do every week.  I tried some spicy pork and tortillas which was excellent, and also some butter-filled grilled onions which were quite tasty as well.  Even though I couldn't understand all of the Spanish conversation the entire time, they made an effort to let me know what was going on so I felt welcome.  The atmosphere was really laid back and people were making jokes all the time, so it was a fun experience.


We left around 8 pm to come back to Luis' house to check on the UNS mold after 6 hours.  It had not hardened enough yet, so we waited until about 7 hours and then roughed up the concrete sides with a wire brush.  It is currently soaking overnight on Luis' back porch, and it will probably be strong enough for testing by next Monday afternoon.  


Tomorrow, I am planning to go with Luis to visit his farm, and maybe advise him about some solar technology that he might be interested in.  Since most places close for the weekend, I will probably not be able to do much aflatoxin testing before Monday, and then I will resume our experiments with the UNS and UV scanner.