Ecuador´s Southern Coast and Peru

Hey everyone,

Sorry I have not been able to post in awhile. So much has happened in the last few weeks. Kyle, Nathan, and I continued on our travels down the coast of Ecuador. We finished our visit in the Puerto Lopez area with a hike through the coastal national park named Machalilla. The 3 hour hike through the dry coastal forest was awesome and offered some fantastic views of the coast and along with several secluded coastal beaches and rock coves to explore. The hike finished at the best and most secluded beach in all of Ecuador called Los Frailes, with prestine white sand and a perfect setting on the edge of the forest. Overall an awesome experience. We then caught a bus to another beach town named Montañita, a surfing town with a great atmosphere and fun crowd. We meet a lot of other american travelers on extended trips through most of South America. It was a really great experience to talk with them all about their travels. The backpacking crowd is awesome and you meet some really interesting people from all over the world. After enjoying the beach for a few days we then headed to Quayaquil, Ecuador´s largest city. Quayaquil had a really nice refurbished riverfront scene that we were able to check out. From Quayaquil, Kyle left us and caught his flight back to the US. It was kind of sad leaving him after all the three of us had been through all summer.

Nate and I then began our trek down to Peru. We ended up basically busing for three straight days ( sleeping on buses three nights in a row and swithcing buses in a number of towns) It really was not too bad and the scenery along many parts of the trip was spectacular. We had a little trouble on the boarder crossing into Peru tho. The bus was supposed to take us across the boarder into Peru to a town called Piura, Peru. We were supposed to get off at the boarder to get our passports stamped and then continue on our way...simple enough. At the border crossing, there were a number of offical buildings and checkpoints on the Peruvian and Ecuadorian sides. However the bus basically drove past all of them into Peru. So, Nate and I told the bus driver we needed to get off and go back to get our passports stamped while the bus waited for us. So, we walked back across the boarder into Ecuador and had to explain to the boarder guards that we needed to get stamped to ENTER Peru not leave. After we finally figured it all out about a half hour later the bus had already taken off (with our big bags) and left us! So we basically had no choice but to hire a shady boarder taxi driver (all Peruvian taxis are shady as their is really no gov. regulation on who can officially be a taxi) to take us to Piura and hopefully run down our bus and get our stuff. (all of which he assured us he could do in 30 min, but actually took more like 2 hours plus a bus ride from a bus terminal in the next town over where he dropped us off at. Not in Piura) Then of course in Piura there is no Central bus terminal, so we had to ask around until we finally found the small bus companies station where they luckily had our stuff and commented on how we never returned to the bus near the border. Overall a crazy few hours, but we made it to Peru in the end (with all of of stuff) We then bused to Puno and the Lake Titicacca area where we met Kim, Nate´s girlfriend who had been working with ETHOS in nearby La Paz, Bolivia. We did a tour of Lake Titicaca which was really cool. There are some indigenous people who live on a number of beautiful islands on the lake (some of which are man made floating islands made of reeds) A really strange sight. Lake Titicaca is really pretty (the largest and highest navigable lake in the world at over 12,500 ft) and it was a fun trip. We then all took a bus to Cusco which is a really cool city and from their made our way to Machu Picchu. We visited the ruins today and they were simply amazing. We were some of the first people in the park and hiked to the top of the nearby Wachya Picchu, the mountain that serves as the dramatic backdrop for the ruins. The views were literally breathtaking and it was an awesome experience. We spent the whole day, almost 11 hours in the park exploring the ruins of the Incan city. I already am planning my next trip back to see it all again.

Tomorrow, Nate and I are going to visit some other Incan runis in the Sacred Valley nearby around Cusco and Kim is travelling back to La, Paz to fly home to the US. NAte and I will then work our way back to Lima, Peru and fly home first thing Monday morning. It has been a crazy adventure so far and I am already planning what I want to see on my next trip to South America. Sorry this update was a bit long for those of you who made it this far. Again sorry for not being able to add any photos (I will have lots to add as soon as I get home) Hope all is well back in Ohio and I will see everyone soon.

Until then,

Mark

The Vivero, Northern Ecuador and the Coast

Well, hey again to everyone from Ecuador. My friends and I spent the better part of last week working in the Vivero (Spanish term for nursery center) in Union Toachi for Br. Giovanni and his Otonga Foundation. We mostly helped split young bamboo saplings and replant them in small bags of dirt. When the Bamboo matures enough, the plants are then replanted in the sourounding areas. There are several viveros in the region run by Giovanni and his group. Working in these viveros offer opportunities for locals in the area to get involved with the Otonga Foundation as well as working to reinstate native vegitation back into the surrounding areas. The people we worked with were very nice and it was an enjoyable few days. We then travelled back up into the mountains for a few days to try and visit the schools in Galapogos and Naranjito that we had missed the week before. We arrived in Galapogos on Thursday night, planning on visiting the school the next morning to take picutes for Giovanni and teach some english. But, as usual in Ecuador, our plans changed quickly. For the second Friday in a row, they did not have school (this time the teacher had taken off for Latacunga) Luckily, the town rallied together and we spent the evening taking pictures and gathering information. It was really neat how quicly word of mouth spread of our arrival and parents and neighbors rounded up all of the kids for us. We stayed the night with a very friendly man named Rodrigo Aski and his family. He works in the Vivero near Galapagos. He and his wife had 5 kids of their own and were pretty poor, yet they went out of their way to make us feel welcome in their home. It is amazing how kind and welcoming the people are here. The next day we travelled to the school in Naranjito ( a short hour walk by Ecuadorian standards) before returning to Toachi for one last night. We said good bye to our Friend Artoro (more or less the groundskeeper in the new educational visitors center Br. Giovanni built in Toachi). We then returned to Qutio and decided to visit Northern Ecuador for a few days.
The terrain in Northern Ecuador is much dryer and as a result the mountain vegitation is very different from what we had experienced in the Quito region. The area is known for the large Afro-Ecuadorian population in and around the towns of Chota, Amboqui, amd Juncal. We also visited the northern mountain town of EL Angel for the afternoon, a mere 20 miles from the Columbain border. Overall the region lacked much to see outside of the dry mountain landscape. We had a few fun conversations with some ladies we met in Juncal and Chota about the area and the Afro-Ecuadorian culture. Monday, we decided to bus back to Quito and regroup before heading to the coast.
Monday night, we ate our last meal in the mission and said goodbye to Givonni and friends. It was a little sad leaving them for the last time. I really appreciate all that he has done for us and hope to work with him again in the future. We then opted to take a direct night bus from Quito to Puerto Lopez and begin our final travels in the country along the coast. The 12 hour bus ride was not too terrible despite the blarring music played the entire time (we think to keep the bus driver awake through the night). Puerto Lopez is a small relaxed beach town on the central coast. We spent the day Tuesday relaxing on the beach and resting from the long bus ride. Today, we took a boat out to the Isla de la Plata (silver Island) part of the Machallia national park nearby. It is famous as being the ¨poor man´s Galapagos¨ as the real islands are much farther out at sea and as a result are rather expensive to travel to. We were lucky enough to see 5-6 whales upclose on our boat ride to the island. It was a really neat experience. We then arrived to the island and took a 2 hour walk around the islands path with our guide. Along the way we spotted blue footed boobies, black masked boobies, the endangered Albatross and a sea lion bathing on the beach. There were some really great views of the rocky island cliffs dropping into the ocean as well. We followed the hike with lunch and a short snorkling trip on the islands coral coast. Overall a pretty full and exciting day.
Tomorrow we plan to visit the mainland section of the park and hike to La Playa de Los Frailes, a secluded white sanded beach that is supposedly the best and most beautiful in all of Ecuador. Later this week we plan on busing further down the coast on our way to Guayquil, Ecuador´s most populated city, where Kyle will fly home and Nate and I will continue on into Peru. Should be a relaxing next week or so. I hope everything continues to go well back home. I can not wait to share my experiences with you all when I return August 11. Until then....

Paz y Amor de Ecuador.

Marco

P.S. Sorry I could not post any picutres with the post. The computer at the internet cafe is pretty slow!

The Schools and Otonga

Greetings again from Ecuador! My travels have brought me back to Quito yet again. We have spent the last week visiting a half dozen or so schools in the small villages between Quito and Santo Domnigo. We were Giovanni´s messengers with an officail letter and all sent to take photos of the kids and gather their information for him. He uses the information to try and find donors in the US and Europe to help pay for the children´s further education. It was a lot of fun. We generally arrived at the school around 8:30 or so and got the kids information and took their pictures. It was pretty hetice and sometimes unorganized with 30 really excited kids running around, but it was fun. We then spent an hour or two teaching the kids english. Most of the kids were actually really receptive and loved it! We had a blast and learned a little bit too along the way. We were then almost always offered the school lunch of rice and tuna before playing a little soccer with the kids before school ended around 12:30 or 1:00. We visited schools in Toachi, Santa Rosa, Las Damas, Malton, and La Pradera. In the end we did a lot of travelling and walking between towns. The people in every community were so kind and welcoming. It always amazes me how freindly everyone is. In La Pradera, nearly everyone we talked to offered us their home to sleep in and insisted we have dinner or at least a snack with them. On Friday we had planned to visit the final two schools in Galapagos and Naranjito but unfortunately when we arrived in the monring to the school in Galapagos the teacher told us that they did not have school because all of the students were in Las Pampas to receive government issued uniforms. As usual in Ecuador our plans changed on us rather quickly. We decided to visit the Otonga reserve nearby. The main focus and work of Br. Giovanni´s Otonga group is to purchase land to preserve the natural rainforest in the area. Over the nearly 30 years he has lived in Ecuador he has aquired a lot of land and it has become the Otonga Nature Reserve. We then tried to hunt down a friend of Giovanni´s named Ceaser Tapia who lives in the area. Giovanni recommended him as the best and most knowledgable guide for the reserve. Ceasar offered to show us around for the day. After about a 2 hour walk we entered the reserve. The rain forest is an amazing place. The forest really appeals to all of the senses. You can see and feel the thick fog of the cloud forest settle in the tress. We saw numerous exotic trees and flowers that Ceasar would stop and explain their uses to us. We saw all kinds of frogs, spiders and hummingbirds. Even what Ceasar assured us were puma tracks! We heard the calls of Tucans close by as well. The forest was amazing. It also made me realize how much land nearby has been cleared to grow sugar cane or use as cow pastures. I have attached some photos although it is immpossible to really capture it all in a picutre. In the end we were exhausted. By the time we reached a place to stay back in Las Pampas we had walked about 7 hours for the day and were pretty well covered in mud! Today we stopped in Toachi and had lunch with Giovanni before returning to the mission in Quito. He showed us our next project for the upcoming week. Through the Otonga group, he has people who work in nursery type centers to grow native plants that can be reinstated in the area. It sounds like we will be working with them next week in Union Toachi, just outside Alluriquin. As always, it should be interesting and an adventure. The following week the three of us plan on taking a trip down the coast of Ecuador before Kyle heads home from Gyuaquil and Nate and I head to Peru for 10 days. We are in the homestretch of our trip now and I am really excited for the next few weeks. As always I miss everyone back home and can not wait to share my experiences with you all. I hope all is well back in Dayton and the rest of Ohio. Hope to talk with you soon.... Until then

Adios

4th of July Update from Ecuador

Well my travels have brought me back to Quito once again and I wanted to take the opportunity to update everyone on our trip. I hope everyone is enjoying the summer back home or wherever your travels may bring you.

As for our project, we actually have changrd locations again. Our family in Las Damas has been nothing but kind and accomidating for us, but the opporotunity to run further experiements and work with the family to improve their process did not really work out. We´ve written out some recommendations on how to improve the process and even done an economic analysis to determine the most efficient possible use of time and resources, but right now the family does not really have the capacity to implement any of these changes. Hopefully in the future they can use these recommendations. It seems that anyone who makes alcohol either has the process down to a science (like in Malton), or does not have the ability or willingness to change their work significantly (like in Las Damas), so we may even be scrapping our hopes to work with fermentation and distillation and ethanol all together. The host family we had been staying with in Las Damas, near Alluriquin, for the last month or so was very nice and took very good care of us. But, we reached a point where we did not have any more work we could do.
We talked with Giovanni, our contact here in Ecuador, and he has found us another project to work on. His Ontonga Foundation does a lot of really good work throughout Ecuador, including finding donors from Europe and the US to ´´adopt´´ kids and help pay for their further education after the age of 12 when the government no longer funds most education. He also donates clothing and backpacks to the kids as well. In order to find donors he likes to send pictures of students to them with some information. He has contact with a large number of schools in the region and needs help gettting pictures and information from the kids at a number of schools in the area between Quito and Santo Domingo. So we are going to travel to a donzen or so schools in the area to take pictures, get information, and teach a little English to the kids! The kids are ages 7-11 and are a lot of fun. We already traveled to the most remote school in Piedra Colorado, which is way up in the mountains and a 1 hour bus ride from Las Pampas ( south of Alluriquin by a 2 and a half hour bus ride) followed by about a 3 hour walk to reach the school. It was a crazy couple of days to reach the school. We had to catch a bus at 3 in the morning from Las Pampas and walk by moonlight to reach a families house for breakfast before finishing our walk to the school. Two girls, Mayara and Sillvia, 15 and 17 years old were our guides. They live near Piedra Colorado and have been in Quito with Giovanni for a month or so starting schooling in Quito. We met with them when we left Alluriquin and they travelled with us to the school. The walk was amazing in the moonlight and we were able to watch the sunrise over the mountains. The view of the twin peak volcanos llinzias in the morning before the clouds came was breathtaking as well. We then spent the night in Sillvia and Mayra´s house and left at 1 AM the next morning to travel 2 hours (Kyle and the girls rode donkeys down by moonlight while Nate and I got rides on Motor bikes back down the unpaved dirt rode with the girls cousins) and caught a bus to Sigchos, a small little mountain village further south and way up in the mountains. Needless to say we were exhausted by the end of the 2 days. In Sigchos, Giovanni and his Italian artist friend, Paolo, who is visiting Ecuador to teach locals to paint leaves with native birds and animals found in the Otonga reserve, were presenting certificates to kids that had participated in the program and displaying the art work. It was a neat little program and ceremony. We met Goivanni there and decided to take our much needed vacation to travel for 5-6 days to Banos.
Banos is a busy (slightly trouristy town) south of Ambato and north of Riobamba. Our small vacation was very relaxing. We visited a really neat zoo with a variety of native birds, monkeys, and other animals. We even saw some wild squirel monkeys up close! (they literally just swung in from the local forest to say hi!) We Also got a chance to rent bikes and bike the road toward Puyo. There were some amazing views and spectacular water falls along the way. We enjoyed the natural thermal baths as well and met a variety of interesting people from all over the world. We then visited one of the nations best indegionous markets Thursday morning before heading back to Quito. The market was a really neat experience and a lot of fun.

NOw we are in Quito for the weekend (and of course celebrating my birthday and Independence day!) Sunday we plan on heading out to start our visits to the schools. It has been a crazy adventure so far. It has been frustrating at times when our orginal plans do not work out but I have learned a lot along the way. I have had some amazing experiences and met some great people as well. We learned a lot in Las Damas and made some recomendations for our host family on how they could improve their process. Although the rest of the work we do here will probably not be technical at all it will still be rewarding to help Giovanni with a good cause and should be a great experience. I am excited to see what the next few weeks will bring visiting the schools! I miss you all and can not wait to get back and hear about everyones summers. Keep me posted on anything exciting happening back home. I dont get to much news from the US down here. Althoug we have heard from a few American travelers that gas prices are still going up (In Ecuador gas has been 1.48 a gallon since we arrived!!) I hope everyone has a great 4th of July. Check out some fireworks for me!

Until my next update.....Adios

Marco

Update from Ecuador

Hey everyone! We are back in the capitol, Quito, waiting for a grad student and our student director, Mike Vehar to arrive. He is traveling to a few of the ETHOS sites this summer to do some filming as part of his thesis. In Ecuador, we are going to be filming some of the local school children near our village to get a better understanding of their daily lives both in school and around the home. I think there will be a segment with Br. Giovanni and his work with the Otonga Nature Reserve as well as some info on our work here this summer. So hopefully there will be a video online soon all about the projects that are going on this summer. Vehar will be here for about a week then move on to the next country. We will be here in Quito for the next couple days, then head back to our small village Las Damas when he arrives.
As for an update from me... things are going very well. Our family is very nice and giving, even though they are very poor. I can´t imagine how hard it is for them to adjust to living with three gringos, but they have made us feel at home and part of there family in the past few weeks. The work is going much slower though. First, there is the inevitable ¨tropical time¨ where there is no rush or need to get anything done. This coupled with a slew of other obstacles has prevented us from getting as much accomplished as we had hoped. We have spent a lot of time learning the language and culture as well as becoming more familiar with the distillation setup in the area. We also built a tank and pipe system from the other side of the valley, so that the family could get a steady water supply, as their past water would come and go with no regularity. Then we ran some distillations, but somehow the GLASS device used for measuring alcohol content broke and the family does not have the money to buy another one. We might end up buying one for them this weekend so we can measure our progress. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will make further progress with the distillation. The family sells all the alcohol they make in Alluriquin. The initial idea of using this alcohol for fuel in cooking stoves does not seem reasonable after all in Ecuador as the government subsidizes propane, so pretty much everyone uses that in conjunction with wood cooking. Instead we are working with one family to try and up their alcohol production so they have a more steady income. (They also make a sugary, taffy like candy called panella made from fermented sugar can juice, sell bannans and tagua nuts as well to make money.)
The family is pretty big. There is Piedad and Luis, who have four daughters. Their ages are 18, 23, 30´s, and another one that is older. The oldest two daughters are married and one has children. There are a couple others that come and go, but its already too confusing for me to think how to type out (it took us a while to figure out how everyone was related). Needless to say there are a lot of people coming in and out/eating and helping around the house. It has been interesting living in the area we are in. The roosters, chickens, dogs, mule, and any other animal in the general area start making their crys and yells at anytime between 4:30 to 5:30 am (we go to bed around 8:30-9 each night). The sun comes up and down the same time year round; sunrise and sunset are around 6:30 am/pm.
We have also made the hour and a half walk through a footpath to another village called Malton a couple of times. There we have stayed with the Yanez family who also produces alcohol. There process is very efficient and the family is fairly well off. We have made a few visits there to learn more about the fermentation/distillation process and also get a change of pace in the food department. We are still eating chicken and rice, then rice with chicken, then chicken and rice soup.... so we appreciate any slight changes in menu.
The area we live in is fairly remote, so we do not have a newspaper, tv, or telephone at our disposal. There are some faint radio stations though if you dont mind thick static. For internet and phones we have about an hour walk, North, down the mountain to Alluirquin (I believe you can google earth that city if you want to check out the area). Free time is spent playing volleyball, by far the most popular sport that we have seen and tossing the frisbee with some of the family members. We did get to watch the Ecuador vs. Argentina World Cup qualifying match today while we are in Quito. Argentina scored in the last minute to tie the game 1-1!!
The views are amazing here. It seems like we are always on a vista overlooking valleys and rich, green forest. We have seen so many colorful insects and flowers, it has taken up the majority of our pictures so far. They are all beautiful though. Ecuador is a very pretty country. The people are very hard working and hospitable as well. We definitely stick out as gringos but it is just curiosity. Not many foreigners ever are in our area so they always ask where we are from and where we are staying in the area.
As for future plans. We should continue to live in Las Damas for most of the time, but we havent done mutch traveling yet, so we plan to start that possibly next week. There is so many places I want to visit in the country still. Next week we are planning on visiting the town of Banos, south of Quito, where we can lay in some natural hot springs, check out some local, weekly indigenous markets, take a bike ride into the amazon, and tour through some of the Amazon rainforest. Also, just before Kyle heads back on July 31st, we hope to visit some cities on the coast of Ecuador. Even take a tour of a small island close to the Galapagos islands. To go to the actual Galapagos islands is very expensive and this is supposed to have the same type of wildlife (it is actually called "poor man`s Galapagos").

Thats about it from me. Things are going well and everyone is in good health and good spirits. I have learned so much already about the language, the people and the culture. I hope we can continue to make progress on our project in the coming weeks. I hope things are well in Ohio. I have not heard any updates from team Enigma yet, but I am sure things are going great. Miss you all and I will try to post again in the coming weeks.

Until then...

National Museum of Ecuador

So today I feel much better. Giovanni is going to take me back to the others in the area of Las Damas near Alluriquin tomorrow. I am excited to finally get to work on our project and hopefully make some progress in the next week. Today was probably the nicest day we have had here in Quito. The sun was out and it was great (May is the unofficial end of the rainy season). So, I got out and explored Quito a little more. I went to the National Museum of Ecuador, regarded as the finest in the country. They have a great archaeology room containing artifacts from the past peoples of Ecuador including the Incas. There is also an impressive ¨gold room¨ full of precolumbian metal works of gold, silver, and copper. On the second and third floors there is nice collection of Colonial and Contemporary religious and folk art. All for only 1 dollar!! It was nice to get out and explore the city a little more. Hope all is well back in Ohio. Look for another update soon. Until then...Adios.

La Pradera....Las Damas and Diaherrea

So we arrived at La Paradera and everyone was really nice to us. (The picture I took during our 45 minutes hike down to La Pradera) We each had a separate host family and quickly learned everyone´s names. After a few short days, we felt like part of the community. The was a center of town I guess you could call it where everyone gathered after 3 or so and played Vollyeball (wildly popular in Ecuador and know as Volly) and soccer. The kids loved the frisbee I brought for them and I managed to explian how to pancake a disc when catching it despite the language barrier. The food was good...chicken and rice...chicken and rice and then soup.....chicken and rice and then some fried plantans too. Despite our repeated efforts to exlpain that we did not need three plates of food at every meal everyone was eager to stuff us with food. The only problem was that there was no realy project for us to work on in La Pradera. The people there were very kind, but we had come under the impression that we would help perfect the distillation of ethanol from sugar cane. The people showed us how they ground up the sugar cane into a juice to eaither drink of use as feed for the pigs. So, after four or five days in La Pradera, Br. Giovanni arrived unexpectadely and gave us ten minutes to pack everything and said we were leaving for another area where they were working on distilling aclohol. He said the people of La Pradera had been promising him for months that they would have the distillation process ready for us and they never did. This is about the time that started getting sick. Lets just say diaherra is no fun. So, Giovanni took us to another area near Alluriquin and there we have a family to stay with and help with their distillation process. I was there for a little over a day and got more sick and Br. Giovanni came back to get me and bring me to Quito where I have been resting and getting better for a few days now. Near our new area there are a number of other families spread out along a really steep dirt road from Allurquin who we can work with as well. There is interenet access in Alluriquin so I hope to update the blog more regularly when I return. Untill then I am trying to get better....Hast Luego....Adios