Jungle clearing

In April '05 Susie and I bought a 1/4 acre lot in Perla Marina, one of the most popular oceanfront gated communities here. This area is so popular that lots rarely come on the open market, and if they do they get sold again very quickly. It happened that I was at the office when a sale of one of these lots fell through, I found out and made an offer on the spot. And it was accepted. Great!



Now we want to sell the lot, but as can be seen in the picture there is one problem. It is almost inpossible to actually see the lot without needing a machete and fearing for your life. The lot is so overgrown that you can't walk through it, and if you do brave the grasses and plants and try to work your way into the center of the lot, who knows what kind of creatures are lurking in the under- and overgrowth. It wouldn't surprize me if there were small snakes and huge spiders and all sorts of things crawling around in there. And if you do make it out again, it will certainly be with scrapes and scratches.

So as to not endanger peoples lives and make the viewing experience for perspective buyers a more pleasant one, we decided the lot needed a "chop job" - but how to go about arranging that?

Well, after some consulting with a fellow realtor it turned out to be very easy: Talk to the security guy at the gate and he probably knows 30 people who own a machete and would gladly do the job. And so it went yesterday. We talked to the guy at the gate, who happened to have the night watchman sitting next to him, and he owns a machete. So now, after showing him the lot, he and a friend will spend three days, braving the elements with machete in hand and chop away all that is legally allowed to be chopped (everything with a trunk smaller than a 4" diameter) on the plot. There will be a small fire made in the middle of the lot and all the material chopped with be burned. And I am told that after 3 days the lot will look presentable again. I am to meet Johnny at the gate again on Saturday evening, and if the plot is clean we will hand over the $40 that we negotiated as a price for doing this.