I thought we might continue traveling south to look at some interesting bridges that I photographed in Ecuador.
In September The Happy Pontist devoted several blogs to voluntary organizations that provide bridges to help the rural poor. Coincidentally, I had recently spent some time in Ecuador for Bridges to Prosperity studying inexpensive bridges constructed (from used oil-drilling pipe and cable) by Walter Yánez.
If a village wants a bridge, they can write to the provincial government. A vehicular bridge is preferred, but if that's not possible, Walter will come and perform a survey with an EDM and hand level to see if he can build a footbridge.
He gives the villagers instructions on where to dig the holes and returns in about a month to pour the foundations and anchorages for the bridge. Then he'll return with the pipe and cable and work with the village to construct a suspension bridge up to 100 meters in length.
We'll take a closer look at Walter's bridge tomorrow.
Puente Rio Baba by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
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