The Rancho´s

During the last months we have been busy organising the construction of two rancho’s. Rancho’s are fairly simple buildings, consisting of four poles supporting a thatched roof. No walls, no windows. So building them should be simple and easy. At least that is what we thought, but the reality was somewhat more difficult.
The photos http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/loesroos/album?.dir=/f66fre2&.src=ph&.tok=ph7fv0GBxfLDF8DM ) illustrate the rather elaborate process...

We already wrote about organizing the wood in a previous blog (sampling, measuring and building). In the end, getting the wood took three weeks longer than we thought. Nispero is getting scarce in the area. And although we dutifully repeated the message from the carpenter that he needed either guayacan or nispero, the trader got stuck with the thought that we only wanted nispero. But guayacan is much easier to get, so next time we will just ask for guayacan.

The next cause of delay was due to the design. We wanted an elevated wooden floor in the rancho’s so that guests would be above the forest floor riff raff such as tarantulas. An elevated floor needs a bit more wood and longer poles. And then location caused further delay. We wanted the rancho’s on a hill side in order to provide our guests with a nice view. But then it is slightly more difficult to build everything level.

Then we found out that the guy whom we contracted was not a carpenter after all, but a mason. That is a handicap when one is working with wood, but we think it is not an excuse for poles that are not vertical or roofs that are 165 cm instead of 210 cm above the future floor level. After all, even masons should be able to use a measuring tape and a level. Having taken into account these flaws in the first building stage, we decided to say goodbye to the mason and find someone who knows how to use a level and a measuring tape.

We found another builder who took a good look and declared he could transform this into rancho’s. We jacked up the roof (literally) and put it on new poles placed perfectly perpendicular. Then the builder started to put in the floor. That gave us something to do as well. The wood for the floor was delivered straight from the saw mill, so it took Loes and me a good week to plane and sand the floor boards. But it looks pretty good, if we say so ourselves.

We are now waiting for the finishing touch: closing the thatched roof with specially woven palm fronds. The difficulty was finding someone who can do that. With the introduction of corrugated iron roofs, this craft became superfluous and within a decade or so, almost nobody knows how to do this anymore. Only people who are so poor they can not afford a corrugated iron roof know how to do this. We have now found a person who knows and he will be somewhat less poor by next week.