Electrical Survey

Today we put on a few miles walking around the campus here to try and determine what might b a good plan of attack to clean up the electrical system. We discovered that the refrigeration compressors at the kitchen are not going to work on the 380-volt 3-phase power, so we are trying to come up with a plan to make them work, possibly using an inverter to make up the 220-volt 60-Hz power. We spent considerable time thinking how to do away with some of the eucalyptus poles entirely, since they are of limited life due to termite damage below ground. We visited the farm and discovered that we will need to run 3-phase power the entire distance to the farm to power one of the irrigation pumps there at the river. Now we are moving to the stage of writing down all of our notes onto drawings. We will be meeting with an engineer on Friday to present the main points of our proposal. So, we have tomorrow, Thursday, to finalize our plans here, as we will have to leave very early on Friday to make the 4-1.2 hour trip back to Santa Cruz in time for that meeting. We will be leaving here Saturday morning to head home. Time flies!

"Hymie" (Jimmy Cruz) is a pretty talented guy on staff here at Monte Blanco. The staff is very friendly and they have also fed us very well.

The name Monte Blanco means "White mountains". Any idea where it got its name?