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