From Dry to Drenched, Our Final Well in Bolivia

On Halloween, we finished a well near San Julian that we had begun a week earlier, the Monday before we left for Antofagasta. This is our last well, our eighth well, in Bolivia.

We drilled the well for free, for an outgoing farmer whose left arm is crippled and whose father passed away last year. According to a neighbor, he was crippled because someone accidentally shot him in the head. He lives alone as a quidante (a keeper or steward) of a property, but he also has his own field which he rents out to others to plant.

Since he lives near the previous well we did in San Julian, the cursed two-week well, we thought it might take a few days to finish. We finished that day, 150 feet in two days altogether.

The rig's quick descent surprised us all. It was like setting off on a roadtrip from LA to NYC, and after a few hours, seeing signs for Nashville.

Even after our pipe popped off and set us fishing it out for a couple of hours. We drilled well into the dark and finished the well.

Allan returned that day with Don Teofilo. The two of them had stayed in Antofagasta for a while, Don Teofilo to make sure the water club knew what they were doing, and Allan to test whether he was ready to be out on his own in the field. And McGee returned from Santa Cruz, where he had spent his day off. (We took off Tuesday, the day before Halloween). And Meghan was with us, so we finished with a complete team.

The next day, we went to develop the well, to flush out the mud and so forth to get water, but storms blew in and kept us from finishing. The storms continued the next day, and the next day, and the next. The dry season seems to have finished off as quickly as our last well.

The rains have continued till now (Sunday). So we spent the remainder of our week making pumps in the workshop here at San Julian. Our welding has improved, meaning that we can make the metal melt in more or less the right places, meaning that our workshop is not yet in flames.

Hopefully this coming week the weather will clear up enough for us to be able to install a pump at the farmer's well.

Field Day at Antofagasta

On Sunday afternoon, during our trip to Antofagasta, after having drilled two wells, Don David took us out for a field trip. Don David was the young'un of the water club, around 30 years old. Being the ablest and most outgoing, Don Teofilo picked him to be the well-drilling expert of the club, a sort of point man who could be responsible for knowing exactly what to do and who could teach other water clubs how to drill.

Don David took us to a nearby river, or what the dry season had left of it. It was not so much a river as it was a series of ponds. We loaded all of our drill pipe and casing for the next well onto his tractor and dropped it off at his place, at a nearby community. Then we drove to the river.

His son, his younger brother and his younger brother's friend went with us. And they fished the ponds with nets and caught about 12 fish in all. We grilled them for lunch and afterwards lounged about and climbed nearby trees. Dona Amalia climbed with us, and Sergio found a pearl in a river conch. Productive post-lunch activities all in all.

Don David's brother and the friend went to another pond down river (or it could have been up river; it wasn't flowing so I'm not sure) to fish. They had been gone for a long while, so Sergio, Jeremy, Don David's son and I set out to find them. We walked along the banks dodging vines and mud pits and such, and on the banks we spotted some baby aligators. I ran up around the bank to chase the alligators back down, and Don David, who came up behind us, caught the baby alligator. We played with it and took pictures of it and then released it to the nearest pond.

We finally found Don David's brother and his friend. They had caught about 30 more fish, two of them piranahs, one of which had bit the friend on the finger and left a chunk of flesh hanging. Yet he didn't say a word; he didn't even wince. Apparently that sort of thing happened to him quite often when fishing. He had a band-aid on from a fish bite he received the day before.

On Monday, we left for home, San Julian, all of us except for Allan and Don Teofilo. Don Teofilo wanted to stay for one more well to make sure that the club knew what it was doing, and Allan wanted see what it was like to be out on his own with a water club. They plan to return Wednesday.

We left on a micro, the public transport. There was barely even standing room before we got on, nevermind after. This bus also broke down. Fortunately, the driver stopped and repaired the leaking fuel line before the vehicle exploded into flames, and we made it to Montero, a large city in northern Bolivia. From there we hired taxis to take us to Santa Cruz, where we droppped off Matt McGee who wanted to take his day off, Tuesday, in the city with his friends from the International Mission Board's ESL classes.

The rest of us ate lunch in Santa Cruz at a Chinese chicken restaurant that had two large screens showing a martial arts action movie. The restaurant offered four types of fried chicken: economic chicken, a quarter chicken, a half chicken, and an entire chicken. We chose the economic chicken.

Now we're back in San Julian, with another well to drill, one we began last Monday, before we left for Antofagasta.