15 September

Another quiet morning. The wind picked up throughout the morning and by afternoon was quite strong. The flies were terrible as well. I took a short nap after lunch and woke up to "thwack!", and then another "thwack!" Doug was on a swatting rampage. The seemed to multiply as the day went on and both us swatted away. Finally after dinner, we sprayed with the deadly flying insect spray available here and went for a walk. Now that it is after dark, the wind has died down and the flies seem to be under control.
We watched our friend Perico fish from his raft throughout the morning. When he came in about 10:30, Doug went down to help him beach his raft. Sanchez and one other local also met him as he came in. He gave each of them some fish, but Doug declined as Perico had given us so much the day before. Without knowing each other's language, Perico and Doug agreed that neither one of them could hear well.
Doug is studying his Spanish quite a bit and has made huge progress. He is developing a vocabulary for things and has learned how to ask what things are called. As you know, he is not at all shy about trying to communicate with others regardless of language barriers.
I spent a good portion of the day designing a tapestry. I want to incorporate three aspects of life; the sky, the land and the ocean. Here at the ocean these might be represented by the pelican, the lizard and fish. Elsewhere in Peru, those things are represented by the condor, the puma, and the serpent. I've alway been fascinated by Escher's tesselations so am trying to incorporate this as well. If nothing else, it occupied my mind for much of the afternoon.
The topographer never returned to place the stakes or give us the final map. Fortunately the architect can proceed without the topographer's final report.
The architect also asked to redesign things to fit with the land samples and existing elevations. Could be interesting, but we'll have to wait 4 or 5 days to see the plan.