Palapa – Major thatch day

Thursday was a holiday here so Julio was able to get a few more guys to help with the rest of the thatching. Putting it up went much more quickly with 6 guys up top tying and 3 of us down on the ground passing up the thatch up to them. The second side was done in a couple hours.

By lunch we had the 3rd side up and we broke for a wonderful lunch. Julio’s wife, Janet, came and made escabeche (chicken and onion soup) for all of us and Marge made banana pudding. Some of the guys were thinking more about getting into hammocks after lunch than back up on the roof!

We all worked hard all day and everything went very smoothly. Since the kids were off from school too, some of them came to help, and some were just plain great entertainment.

At the end of the day, we needed a little more thatch to complete the top of the last side and we needed to leaves for the cap as well.

Since we had a little more time at the end of the day, we decided to cut down a couple of the trees that were really close to the palapa, we don’t want any trees to fall on our new structure. Some of the trees are really soft, grow very quickly, and the large branches fall at unexpected times, we really need to play it safe.