Balsa Industry of Ecuador

Resumen

some five hundred years ago for making rafts to transport armies and equipment on the Guayas River. By 1911 a few thousand logs annually were being exported, but not until 1936 did balsa become a significant item of trade. With the start of World War II, uses of balsa multiplied, and it became a strategic material of war in construction of 400-mile-per-hour British Mosquito bombers. Air freight service may open a new peacetime use for balsa, the featherweight wood, in the form of packing crates. Pizarro, sailing along the coast of Ecuador from Panama, saw natives sailing a gigantic raft of pale light wood lashed together with vines. A mast from the center carried a huge cotton lugsail. The craft was being steered in the same manner as balsas on the Rio