Construction

Howdy folks: The time has come for the temple to close for maintenance for 2 weeks. Tomorrow morning Debbie and I will get on a bus with 3 other couples and go to Cuenca. Four rivers converge in Cuenca. It is old and beautiful, and has a climate that is like our spring, year around. It is high in the Andes. After a week or so of Cuenca we will take a bus to Loho, then Vilcabamba and spend a day or so in each place. Will visit Inca ruins outside Cuenca.

Near the temple they were pouring the floor on an apartment building. No concrete trucks and pumper trucks. They mixed it all with a batch mixer. There were about a dozen men on the job. They use wooden boxes with handles to measure and carry the sand and crushed rock to the mixer. There is a pile of rock uphill and a pile of sand downhill. They fill two boxes with sand and three with rock. They shovel fast and carry two boxes at a time. After the sand and rock is in the mixer, in goes the water. The blue barrel is getting constantly filled, and a guy scoops it out with a five gallon pail and throws it in. The winch operator tears the top off a 100lb bag of cement and dumps it in.

It mixes briefly and is dumped into the big bucket. One batch fills it twice. It gets pulled up and dumped on a sloping platform that is set up to fill the wheelbarrows. Nobody stops moving. These guys run to fill the boxes. It is almost like a dance. The floor slab is about 8" thick. This operation went on for most of the day. If these fellows got $15 for the days work, they did well. More likely $10 or $12.

The last picture shows a more typical job site with a forest of bamboo poles to support the forms for the next floor. Ecuadorians know how to work with cement, and they can do some beautiful work. They aren't afraid of hard work. There were no power trowels on this job either.

Just thought ya might like to know. Pete