Day 12: Camping Pullay

At first light a couple of us were in the water with glassy lefts and a team of French surfers shooting a movie. The team slowly emerged from tents at all hours and we settled into the slow camping routine. This revolved around poking the fire, eating bread rolls, reading, sleeping and surfing. If your name was lisa, it was sleeping face down on a board bag all day.

We purchased 6 big fresh fish for $20 and prepared them in foil for the fire. The day dragged on and was grey with the horizon blending ocean and sky. Our bodies dragged on as the week of building caught up with us. Nana naps all round. The highlight was definitely cooking and eating fresh fish with veges and hot coal cooked potatoes.

We had our daily "inspiration spot" bible study round the fire and Cole sang some great songs she wrote. The reflective atmosphere was disturbed by T-Dogg singing and additional disturbing sounds from his other orifice. It had been a great day and the stars declared the glory of God for us all.

Day 11: Happy Birthday Lisa

"Lisa it's your birthday! Happy birthday Lisa!" This became our theme song for Lisa's 21st today. At any time if anyone started this we all had to sing...and we did, numerous times. The bus cruised along the two lane highway easily and I could not work out how a 120km trip was supposed to take 6 hours? Then we hit the real road - a one and a half lane dirt track and the dust penetrated every part of the bus and ourselves.

We checked out a cool fish market at Iloca as boats beached themselves and oxen pulled them up the sand. Huge numbers of fish were plucked from nets by crew as young as 14yrs and ladies quickly cleaned them and started selling. It was full of sea smells, market sounds and bright colors.

We arrived at another fishing town of Curanipe where there is a famous wave winding off before beached fish fleets, very cool. But no camping ground since the tsunami wiped it out, so we headed further south.

After getting lost we finally arrived at Pullaye and excitement burst from the bus at the sight of head high left-handers spinning down the sandbank past two rocky outcrops. Tents were pitched and bags unloaded in record time and we hit the water till dark.

The open fire was sooooooooo needed as we were freezing and defrosted then peeled off wetsuits. Basic spaghetti and fruit never tasted so good!

We are quite an attention getting group of gringos in a open paddock camping ground with 8 other tents. Sore bodies collapsed onto board bags and no ground was hard enough to stop sleep...as dan and Taylor proved sleeping till 11, Jeff till lunchtime and Tim...well he slept all next day!?!

Day 10: Concrete Torture

We knew all along it was very ambitious to take on the concrete pour for the gymnasium. 100 linear meters in hard clay with our mostly amateur labor force. Tim and Lachie had done an awesome job setting up and Lisa surprised us all with her steel fixing skills, working non-stop.

It was hard work shoveling rock and sand and cement into mixers then wheelbarrow to trench. The morning was thankfully cold and foggy but the sun came out and we sweated and ached.

Everyone had a go but we kept losing power and time, so the end of the day saw only half done and just 80 bags of cement used of 240!!! It was a very tired team that went to bed.

We had delayed our camping trip to give a day to this and our tow "trailer" ended up being a 1.2m dog box that somehow 14 of us were to carry everything in!