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I woke early
and met George at his house. We had breakfast and than
took a long walk to a saw mill on the outskirts of town.
We went to the mill to find scraps of wood that could
be used to refurbish the raft. The wood would be used
to build a platform on the raft and shelter. We found
a sawmill with a huge pile of long planks and slats.
I climbed the pile of wood and began to dig for appropriate
pieces. The day was hot and I sweated as I pulled pieces
from the pile. We finally had a large pile of good pieces
of wood. The next task was to figure out a way to get
the wood from the sawmill to George’s home. I talked
to man who was loading wood from the scrap pile for
firewood into a small, blue pickup. Unfortunately, he
did not want to help us. We decided it might help to
bring our pile of wood closer to the road so we carried
the slats and planks to the sawmill entrance. George
walked down the road looking for people to ask about
hauling the wood. We finally found a man in a white
pickup that would haul the wood.
Pali and George digging through the woodpile
We unloaded
the wood and carried it to the raft. George lived in
a house built over the river. We had to carry the wood
through George’s house, down a ladder and to a dock
that was alongside his house. George began to cut the
wood and I nailed it to the logs. We used the planks
to create a deck over the logs that would provide a
place to sleep and store goods. We used the slats to
create an A-Frame like structure that would be used
for shelter. The roof for the A-frame shelter was made
of coconut tree leaves. I cut the coconut leaves from
the trees growing in the patio of our hotel. The leaves
had to be dragged from the hotel, through the downtown
streets, to George’s house. It was bit embarrassing
and everybody starred at me. I’m sure people wondered
what the gringo was going to do with a bunch of coconut
leaves.
Framing the raft
The leaves
were nailed to the A-frame shelter. We bought 8 meters
of blue plastic to cover the leaves and make the shelter
waterproof. We finished the work in the evening. To
celebrate, we drank a few beers with George and his
family.
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