May 30th marked our halfway point of the trip. I’m looking forward to going home but each week I spend here in Santa Cruz makes me realize how hard it is going to be to leave in 3 weeks. Work has become monotonous at this point because everything takes so much longer than construction would back home because of our lack of power tools. We have been using small hand saws to cut loops of iron into small rods for rebarb. Then we used a hammer to straighten out the 200 rods that we sawed. We then had to bend each rod into a square. We put 20 squares around 4 longer pieces of iron and used a tool Emerson, our translator who works with us every day, made out of the left over iron to use to attach the pieces and make the 8 supports that we would later fill with cement. This was very meticulous work but the most important step of the process.
The only thing that has added variety to our days has been the other groups of people coming and leaving. On Monday when we were picked up from work, there were a few people we hadn’t met before onboard. There were two British medical students, a Peruvian dentist, and a Peruvian translator. They are taking a few weeks to travel up and down the river to offer the communities medical attention. They spent a few days in Santa Cruz and we talked with them often. On Wednesday, the group of biology undergrad students from Tennessee left and we once again had the field station all to ourselves.
Since we are half way through our trip we got our halfway break in Iquitos for the weekend. I was excited for the food and WiFi but after the first day I found myself wishing to be back at the station already. We did a little laundry at the local Laundromat and took a moto to the San Juan artisan market where we found lots of handmade crafts and great deals.
- Shelby Basham