Sunday, August 10, 2008

God Bless the Grass

This picture is one from Tikal. One year ago, when I visited Palenque, I witnessed a crew of men with machetes like these, descend upon the terraces of the ballcourt and make quick work of "manicuring" the lawn (thanks again to Flickr for this photo).
However, this time I saw men with lawnmowers!!!
Although, not power driven...
As well as a man with a weedeater. Although more efficient, I wonder how many people lost their jobs due to these "upgrades".
From this map, you can see the generalized areas of garden and lawn maintenance for the park. I used the GIS to figure out the area measurements. There are approximately 2,450 sq. meters (8,038 sq.feet) of gardens to maintain and 85,878 sq. meters (281,751 sq. feet) of lawn and terraces to mow.
Not only do they mow the grass, but they rack and sweep the leaves off the tourist walkways. The leaf blower has not yet made its way this far south.




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