Bamboo Christmas Tree

With Christmas approaching, Villa Carmen has been in a decidedly festive mood.  Decorations have gone up, we had a secret Santa before people left for the holidays and we even have a Christmas tree.  As you can imagine, there aren't any Christmas trees in the Amazon so we were forced to make our own out of Bamboo.

Cutting and splitting the bamboo

Nicole, Javier and Daniel

 To start, we cut a long piece of bamboo into sections two or three feet long.  We then split these sections into sixteen strips using a hammer and machete to form branches.  We used a narrower piece of bamboo for our trunk and fastened the ‘branches’ to it using wire, bending them outwards to mimic the slope of a Christmas tree.  Once we added lights and other decorations you could hardly tell the difference between our bamboo tree and a real one… well almost.   

Adding the branches

Now for some finishing touches

The pictures don't provide any sound effects but our light string manages to produce some garbled tones that sound vaguely like Christmas songs.  

All done!