And on the water, by far the most common form of boat was the dugout canoe... And I just love these things :)))
They are so simple, and so old in design. But they are made with skill and care and they do their job wonderfully.
They can be as small as about 2m long, and as large as 50m long.
Most of the ones I saw on this trip were made of a single log for the base but the sides had been extended upwards by the addition of a couple of planks.
I saw several in the building process, and its not just a hollowed out log like you may think.
No, they get as much out of the log as they can, and that means cutting a slit in the length of the log and sort of peeling the log back and wedging the two edges of the split apart while the core of the log is hollowed out. The ends of the log are carved as you would think into the elegant points, but not as much of the log is cut away as you might have thought. Its all done slowly and carefully using hand tools, not power tools like chain-saws. Curved hand adzes are the name of the game. And the thickness of the canoe sides/floor is beautifully consistent and quite thin... The old ones I saw that had been cut up for use as seats etc had wall thicknesses of less than 5cm throughout... Lots of skill involved in making these :))
But, Ive seen plenty of others that were just a single well shaped log.
On this trip, I also saw lots of more modern larger boats too, but rather than adopting a "V" hull or "Cat" , or even flat bottomed shaped hulls as we are used to seeing in the West, these big boats were still in the form of a dogout... There were steel ones and aluminium ones, and fibreglass ones too, but even if they were 18m long, they were still only 1.5m wide...
That timeless form clearly is the most effective when it comes to working on fast flowing jungle rivers :)
... and here are lots of pictures :)))
