On Mactan, one street still builds guitars by hand. It started as repair work. The Spanish brought guitars across the Pacific, and when they wore out, there was no sending them back on the next galleon. So the island learned to fix them, then to make them. The families here have been doing it ever since.
Liz doesn’t buy one off the wall. At Alegre Guitars, she has one made for her. She picks the wood, gets her hands measured, and customizes it with the builder at the workbench, down to the inlay. Then she does the hard part: she leaves it with them.
For the next four to eight weeks, the guitar is in Alegre’s custody, not hers. It makes the trip home the way a traveler does, and the chapter ends in Los Angeles, when she opens the case.
