Becky and Jen´s Amazing Adventures!

Jen had a whirlwind tour of Ecuador for sure. Most days we were on a bus for at least a few hours. Thankfully, the scenary is nice and varied on the bus routes. Jen left yesterday morning and my mom arrived at 7pm last night. It´s about time to start another round of bus trips, but before I accumulate more stories, a blog update is necessary. So, here it goes. Just the highlights from each day...

May 10th: Jen arrived!

May 11th: Still feeling ill from eating bad food (see previous entry), so Jen toured Old Town Quito with a hostal-mate, Stacy.

May 12th: Ready or not, the show had to go on...off to Baños. If you read the blog often, it seems like every chance I have, I go to Baños. Guess what, mom and I are heading there tomorrow as well. In the afternoon, we were pampered at a spa. Jen had a pedicure for $10 and I had a reflexology foot massage for $12. It is so easy to get addicted to this type of relaxation!

May 13th: We woke up with the sun and headed to the heated mineral baths. At that time of the day, the baths were mostly populated by elderly Ecuadorians. They believe bathing in the water from the volcano is cleansing and provides healing. I´m not so sure about that, but I do know waking up early to the sight of a waterfall and mountains somehow makes me feel more alive and free.

May 14th: Now in Puyo, Jen and I visited Parque Omaere. It was founded 15 years ago by Chris, an ornithologist from the United States and his wife, a Shuar from Ecuador. At the time the region was mainly cow farms, but today the park is lush and filled with ethnobotanical plants. We got to see the vanilla orchid, the cinnamon tree, plants used for dyes, hallucinigenic flowers, the palm used for Panama hats, the sangre de drago tree and many more. When you slice the trunk of the sangre de drago, a red sap trickles out. It looks exactly like blood. However, when you rub the sap between your fingers it turns to a white foam-like substance that can be used on bug bites, scars or cuts. It definitely stopped my itchy mosquito bite from bothering me.

May 15th: Rafting capital of Ecuador-Tena! The first hightlight I must mention is the hotel-Casa del Abuelo. For $12 a night we had super comfortable beds, cable tv, hot water, Internet and air conditioning. It was like heaven.

The second and more important highlight is the rafting trip we took with Rios Ecuador. Our guide, Gino, is part of Ecuador´s national rafting team, so we felt really safe. Plus, he was personable, funny and professional. We had two other women in our raft who were visiting from Washington state. The river is a 3+ on the rafting scale, perfect for my first rafting experience. Everyone fell out at least once in the rapids and we played silly games when the water only had a small current. The scenary was breathtaking too.

May 16th: In the morning, we went to Parque Amazonico, an island in Tena that has some small foot paths and animals. After seeing the poor conditions the animals live in at the park, I was so grateful for the hardwork we put forth to make the habitats entertaining for the animals at Santa Martha. I think Jen´s favorite part of the park was seeing a marmoset in the wild.

We also walked through Tena´s first ever chocolate festival. The aim of the festival was to educate the local people about the production and cultivation of quality chocolate. The sun was sooo hot that we didn´t stay long.

We took the bus 5 hours back to Quito that afternoon

May 17th: Another bus, this time from Quito to Otavalo. Time for shopping, and that´s all I´ll say about this day.

May 18th: Visited the colorful produce market, more shopping at the tourist market and then another bus ride to Laguna Cuicocha. The lake was formed by the Volcano Cotacachi, which last errupted 3,000 years ago. It has sparkling blue water and two islands that are separated by a small channel. It´s possible to walk around the lake in 5 hours going high over the surrounding mountains, but Jen and I opted instead to take a boat trip around the lake. Got to see the same scene by being lazy. Plus I love boat rides!


May 19th: Jen´s last day, which meant we were forced to head back to Quito. Walk-a-thon is the word of the day, and I stupidly wore flip flops. Don´t ask me why, but Jen had a craving for cheese (not queso fresco!) and McDonald´s french fries. This was coming from a girl who eats like me, meaning no fast food. Oh well, we walked to a mall to cure Jen´s craving, then about 45 minutes straight up hill to Capilla del Hombre (a Guayasamin art museum), back to the Mariscal district to our hostal, then to the tourist market and finally to dinner. The museum was obviously the best part of the day. I visited it in 2004 when I studied abroad, but I think I appreciated it more this time around. There´s a great quote in the museum that says: ¨ I cried because I didn´t have shoes until I saw a boy who didn´t have feet.¨ Upon first glance, Guayasamin´s art can seem morbid, but the majority of his work was designed to portray the plight of indigenous people in various areas of the world.

May 20th: Jen dragged herself from bed at 4am to catch her flight back home.

Alright, I suppose my mom is tired of waiting for me to finish with the computer. Off to tour some more of Quito.

Hasta Luego amigos!

Becky

The Good, the Ugly and the Bad

Wow, looking back at my journal, so much has happened this past week! It was a weekend for volunteer departures at Rio Muchacho. In total, seven volunteers, me included, left the farm. I can only imagine what life will be like on the farm come monday morning when just six people are left to do all the work! Still, I bet it won't be long until more people come. Sometimes even tourists would stay a few extra days to volunteer. Guess that's the sign of a good organization.

Last week, I had the best morning routine, kitchen duty. Basically this was the first time since volunteering at Santa Martha Animal Rescue Center that I was able to get my hands in the kitchen. For those of you who know me well, you must understand how much I miss cooking. Granted, I wasn't really cooking during the morning routine, but I still had lots of fun. Every morning at 6, I'd head over to the kitchen to cut up loads of fruit for the day's fruit salad. The contents varied daily, but just imagine any combination of banana, passion fruit, watermelon, pineapple, papaya, and mame' and your mouth should surely water. I'm definitely going to miss the tropical fruit breakfasts topped with homemade granola.


Probably the best day of the week was Wednesday. Following breakfast we had a minga/work party. The only other minga that occurred during my time at Rio involved carrying very heavy logs from a tree that had been cut from the garden. Since I'd been watching the local workers sawing at another tree in the garden, I suspected the worst again. While the minga did involve taking parts of the tree from the garden, the volunteers only had to carry off the branches. The locals, bless them, did all the heavy work. And, better yet, at 10.30 I was asked to go help prepare lunch. My tasks for lunch included preparing the huge bowl of limeade and the salad.

During lunch that day, my friend Kat mentioned that we wouldn't have to work in the afternoon. For a split second, I was totally confused and then I remembered it was cultural day! The volunteers who had been on the farm for a month or more went on a "secret" excursion. Dario, the farm's owner, took us to a hidden beach. I felt very lucky because one of the volunteers has been at the farm since November and was just going to the beach for the first time with us. The beach is about 50 minutes from Rio Muchacho by car. Once we arrived at the waterfront, we walked another 30 minutes on the sand to get to the good swimming spot. The beach is covered with plantlife and drift wood. It reminded me of walking along the waterfront in Monterey, CA. Even though the Canoa beach is nearby, there are no longer remnants of drift wood or plant life...probably because tourism has changed the lay of the land.


So, after spending Friday night and Saturday in Canoa, it was time to head back to Quito once more. I left on the overnight bus. The ugly part of this entry is that an hour into the bus ride I started to feel sick. The nausea had consequences, which to say the least made the trip extremely uncomfortable. Thank goodness there were two open seats in the front of the bus that I quickly took for myself. I arrived at a hostel at 5.30 in the morning and was basically an invalid for the whole day. I dragged myself from my room for about an hour to take my laundry to be serviced, wish my mom a Happy Mother's Day and buy some Gatorade and saltines. Thankfully, I'm feeling more like myself today, which is a good thing because...last night my friend Jen flew into Quito!

Jen has talked about visiting me in Ecuador since last year, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that she found an amazing plane ticket and decided to take the plunge. We have a rough idea of places we want to visit over the next ten days, but knowing us, the plans will change. Today we are going to chill in Quito so Jen can get acclimated and I can get my laundry back. Tomorrow, I'm guessing we'll take a bus to Tena, but then again, we could decide to go north to Ibarra or more south to Banos.

So, for the next month I'll be traveling exclusively. The day Jen leaves, my mom flies in to travel for a few weeks. It's kind of strange to think that my three months of volunteering have come to pass. It surely doesn't feel like I've been here for that long. Rio Muchacho was my favorite location to work, though each place was meaningful to me in different ways.

Oh, I forgot to mention the bad part of the entry. If I had to recall something that was bad about last week it was probably finding eight ticks on me in just over an hour. I was working in the Sai Baba meditation garden at Rio in an area that was obviously tick haven. From what I can tell, I got all the ticks off of me before they started to feast on my blood. Definitely a good thing since I have a tick phobia.

Hasta Luego...

Becky

A New Friend

Guess who?

We have a new friend at the farm. Last Sunday, Sam, Christina and I decided to take the 1 1/2 hour walk from the main road back to the farm. Seems kind of silly because it only costs $1 more to take the truck from Canoa to the farm, but I was excited about taking time to enjoy the scenary too. About 30 minutes into our journey, a dog decided to join our trek. She obviously came from someone´s property, but nonetheless, she is skin and bones. I actually didn´t want to look at her during the walk because her situation is so desperate physically. Despite the fact that we didn´t feed the dog, she gleefully bounded along beside us all the way back to Rio Muchacho. The dogs who live at Rio came running towards our new friend when we arrived. Since she literally had no chance of defending herself by physical means, she just rolled over and let the dogs sniff her.

To make a long story short, it seems our friend is here to stay. During dinner one night we actually named her, Luna. The owner of the farm, Dario, believes the lunar phases influence the growth, production and decomposition of plants and other natural matter. Since Luna is white, the name seemed like a good fit. Everyone loves her and she adores people. We all want her to stay, but we´ll just have to wait and see.

After only four sessions of work this week (three mornings and an afternoon), I just about died. Okay, not really. But I was beyond exhausted. There was an area located near the cuy (guinea pig) compost that wasn´t being utilized as of last week. Dario came up with the brillant idea of putting the land to use for humans and cuys alike by creating a mini huerta (vegetable garden). Rio has a cuy tractor, which basically means a movable cuy house that sits on the ground. Diaro decided we´d dig out one large bed to grow lettuces for the cuys. Once the crops are ready to eat, the cuy house can be moved on top of the veggies for easy access. The cuy excrements will in turn fertilize the ground. The other main part of the huerta will be composed of smaller beds for growing kitchen food-corn, beans, watermelon, squash etc. The area is already home to a citrus tree and two cashew trees, which will obviously stay. A few papaya trees will be planted as well.

Cuy tractor and bed for cuy food

I won´t bore you with all the details of each sweaty back-breaking day, but here´s a taste. By far the hardest part is forming the beds. It takes such a long time and is physically arduous. Here´s what´s required: Hoe the bed areas, add compost, hoe again to mix compost with soil, hoe out pathways and add soil to beds, break up clumps of soil/compost with shovel, form raised beds and rake to even out the surface. Despite the toiling work, I´m glad to be a part of this project because I am truly helping to create something that will have lasting impact. Plus, there are very positive aspects to it as well. I get to talk a lot with one of the local workers, Edgar, in Spanish. The cold showers feel so worthwhile after work. And I´m learning about new tools as well. On Tuesday, we cut young bamboo branches at a certain angle so they could be used as stakes for the mesh fence that surrounds the huerta.

Preparing beds for planting

In other news...this week I worked with the chickens before breakfast. This rotation is super easy compared to horses and pigs. The main duties are picking food from the garden for the day´s volunteer meals, feeding the chickens, and cleaning the chicken house. This week we deep- cleaned the chicken house, which meant shoveling out the clumps of poop that had accumulated over time (not sure how long). The house gets raked a few times each week, but every so often a shovel and some muscles are needed to renew the place. Honestly, the first time I walked into the house and saw Edgar working, I thought he was romoving rocks not poop.

Kat turning our compost

The course ended yesterday. I have so many handouts to keep me busy and lots of notes to help me this summer when, hopefully, my best intentions of gardening come to fruition. This coming week will be my first without the restful breaks of class. Cross my fingers I´ll have enough energy to sustain me through the week. Speaking of sustaining (or sustenance)...I´m going to sign off now, so I can grab some lunch and chocolate at the market.

Cheers!

Becky