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.
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.
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.
