We have fourty children attending our classes which offer a mixture of help with academic subjects as well as arts and crafts offerings such as painting, sewing, macrame, knitting and weaving. This is a region where traditional handicrafts have all but died out so it feels good to be redressing that loss in a small way.
Please see our Estrella del Sur page on Facebook for more information and pictures. Link is at right >
The jungle catamaran project is on hold for a few months as I am working on building our house, cafe, classroom and workshop building. But in the interim I'm finishing a 16ft sailing/rowing skiff which will hopefully soon be launched. After some early holdups and obstacles the house building project is going forward quite well now and should have a roof completed in the next few weeks.
There's a great view of Laguna Sauce for me as I work up high installing rafters and roofing.
This is my first large construction project in Peru and it has been a challenge to find good suppliers of materials. You can't just go down to the local Home Depot here. I had one recommended supplier of wood swindle me out of a substantial sum of money but now I have found a reliable and honest guy who has so far got me everything I need. Then there has been trouble finding a good 'maestro', a building contractor to do brick and cement work. Again several unreliable ones but now I have one who shows up and is doing a great job. After over 35 years in the construction trades I've seen all this before in the US and Britain, the world of building contractors is just plain full of unreliable characters and it's always great to finally find good ones. The great thing here is; no building inspectors and no codes, I just build the way I feel and it's funky jungle-style here in the tropical mode.
