Boondocked

We had been docked in Quito for long enough. Barnacles grew on our ship. Our passenger was already beginning to crawl and she practiced standing with the usual biped zeal. Finally, the legal papers granting us a years passage in Ecuadorian waters were approved and duly appended to our books of travel. The luggage was hauled up the gangway and lashed on deck, the sails were raised and we turned from the port ready to navigate the harrowing narrows leading to the open sea. Narrows navigated, I settled in at the helm steering a course for the oasis of Chota.

Chota Valley - Back yard

Eight days of absence had left the house naked in incompletion, all illusions stripped from our minds. Oscar had departed and the responsibility for finishing the opus hung most terrifying, yet also most satisfyingly, on our shoulders. Naturally, we did the most practical thing and set to work.

Facing the unknown, we chose prudence and planning as the guides of our method. The first order of business was to split planning into two stages: before we move into the house and after we move into the house. The former involves preparing, sealing and cleaning – and in some cases constructing – indispensable areas of use, such as a bedroom, the larder and the composting toilet. For the moment, when nature calls we dig holes and fertilise the soil, however this leaves the most delicate and vulnerable parts of us open to the dozens of hovering midges waiting for a glimpse of soft flesh. They descend like piranhas at the scent of blood and perform their succulent work just as quickly.

Chota Valley - Applying Plaster.

Our new schedule of work covers many first-time tasks for me: mixing cement and plaster were the challenge of the early week. For the cement, two parts sand to one part cement, mixed together and wet until appearing correct, was a successful strategy mostly because I knew the dry measurements and I had seen cement before, which gave me an idea what the mix ought to resemble. I found the plaster mixing much more difficult, having no idea of what consistency the mix ought to be, and I tried four different mixes of gradually drier consistencies. I still don’t know if my mix was ideal, but most importantly I was satisfied with how it applied to the walls. By attempting to plaster between the edge of a wooden ceiling support beam and the wall I discovered a basic limitation of plaster, namely that if it is stretched too far between surfaces it will not float suspended and falls, by the most direct path possible, down. This discovery prompted a call to my father, who proposed wedging foam strips between wood and wall in order to give the plaster a support surface where otherwise there had been nothing. This solution did not result in the most attractive work, by fault mostly of my neophyte hand, but it completely suited our ‘quick & easy’ criteria. I hope we can finish the look in a more satisfying manner through further work.