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