The Lovely Town of Mechuque

On Sunday, we had a great, adventurous day.  After a delicious waffle breakfast, Daddy rowed us ashore to a rocky beach on the outskirts of the small town, Mechuque. Several little houses sat tidily along narrow, clean cobblestone roads. Five or six people tended the few gardens and yards as we walked by them. 

A bridge about fifty meters long crossed a little tidal river that, when the tide was high, stretched up to the very far edge of town. On the center of the bridge, there was a gazebo built on top of the bridge so when you walked across the bridge, it was above you.  At the top, I looked out over the town where we had just walked. A few houses were built on stilts near the edge of the river. Almost all had painted metal roofs with smoking chimneys. All the houses were in a neat, organized pattern. I got the impression that this was a nice friendly town.

This is the bridge

Here are the houses on stilts.This picture was taken from the gazebo on top of the bridge.

This is Big Jack and me standing in the gazebo. In the background, you can see where we first walked through town

At the other side of the bridge, the narrow cobblestone street split around a little square. Well-kempt trees, grass, and flowers had been planted around the town square. A little blue wooden church sat on the side of the square. The pretty sight made me smile.

Here you can see the other side of the bridge with the church and the little town square on the left

Walking along the road above another pebbled beach, we came to some townsfolk unloading a trailer full of long, wooden planks.  They were almost rough cut two-by-fours, except they were smaller and inconsistent sizes. The people carried the planks down the quay to be loaded into a John-boat. More people makes a job like this easier, so Porter, Big Jack and I helped carry the boards down the quay. Mama helped load one, two or three boards onto people's shoulders to be carried and Daddy helped load the john boat. Porter and I went back and forth carrying one plank between us each time until the trailer was unloaded onto the boat. The poor boat was heaping with planks. As I found out later, the planks were going across the small bay from Mechuque to build a house there. 

This is Mama helping unload the trailer

This is a picture of Porter and me carrying a plank down the quay

Here is the fully loaded, maybe even overloaded, john-boat

We made our way back to Sila. Just as we were about to push off the dinghy, I saw a baby lamb baaing. I went up to it and it licked my fist, searching for some food. It was cute. All in all, I like this town. Now I am excited to move Sila to the mouth of the stream to dry out! -JackRabbit

This is me playing in the river after we dried out Sila. You can see the bridge and the gazebo in the background. At high tide, this narrow stream is much larger and the water would go past the edges of this photograph.