Hiking the Piriati Trail

Crossing one of many rivers enroute to the tanks

What a great morning to hike with the Water Gang up and out to the Piriati water tanks. The trail was wide open – no machetes required. We forded 6 streams and rivers, through the jungle canopy. 

The main goal was to walk the line – we found 2 sizable leaks – and inspect the tanks and sand filters. 

Tanks are at left. The spring is over that second hill

The tanks have about 4” of mud at the bottom, which is a big reason their water is a tad dirty. A cleaning party is scheduled for a week from Saturday.








The filters are another story. They have been out of service for 10 years. They got clogged with silt and no one knew how to back-flush them, so they just cut them out of the system.

Sand filters unused for 10 years, but in good shape

The new Water Committee is raring to get them cleaned and back on-line, so their town can enjoy crystal water again. Even getting into the building where the filters are located presented challenges.






First, there were several large nests of wasps. No problem – we wrapped some plastic around the end of a stick, covered it with PCV glue

burning out the wasps

and lit it up. All wasps were gone in minutes. Then the door lock was stuck, so we broke open one of the vents and sent the smallest guy in with a hammer. Open Sesame.

GPS map of the water line, with altitudes in meters

 I took GPS and altimeter reading all along the route, so we’ll have a nice map and profile of the line. The only other issue is that there are 4 points where the water line crosses rivers. At each point, the

some of the 6" of dried silt in the filters

tube is reduced from 4” to 2” on the cross-over.










The best part of the hike was that I can still keep up with the 20 year olds. The difference is, I pay a higher price the next morning.

Black Palm, with nuts

Porcupine Palms
Along the trail , we passed several of these bizarre palm trees, properly called Black palm. Spikes like crazy and an edible nut, which was hard and not very tasty.

close up of the spikes = YIKES !!