Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Middle of the World?
We spent our time in Quito as tourists. One day we traveled a bit out of town to an old horse ranch and the kids did trailrides in the surrounding hills. Another day we rode the excellent Metrobus system, first trolley cars then a bus, through the heart of Quito, to one end of the city bus lines, up at Mitad del Mundo, the alleged Center of the Earth. (We decided along the way that mass transit would be much more popular in the USA if people sold little ice cream cones on the bus, like they do down here.)
With its little here-is-the-equator village and rather impressively large monument, this actually turned out to be fun stop for the team, with people checking out the very gnarly collection of tropical insects and shopping for all manner of gifts and ponchos and blankets and hats and so on.
Traveling back to town was a bit challenging, as we had to figure out the trolley car maps and stations, but we eventually prevailed, and climbed the hill with the crowds, back up to our last hotel, and a free last night before our free last day in Ecuador.
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| Equator monument, at latitude 0 |
With its little here-is-the-equator village and rather impressively large monument, this actually turned out to be fun stop for the team, with people checking out the very gnarly collection of tropical insects and shopping for all manner of gifts and ponchos and blankets and hats and so on.
Traveling back to town was a bit challenging, as we had to figure out the trolley car maps and stations, but we eventually prevailed, and climbed the hill with the crowds, back up to our last hotel, and a free last night before our free last day in Ecuador.
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| Old Quito, Santo Domingo |
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| Quito, old town |
Back in Quito, Old Town
Leaving Tena the day after rafting started off just fine. We packed up our gear and evacuated the Limon Cocha in good style, hoofing it down the hill and over into the bus depot. It was a cool gray morning, and it had rained all night, but we were lucky once again and it let up during our short walk, and resumed once we were absorbed by the big Banos bus.
So it was a 9:00 bus and we were on by 8:30 and only briefly harassed by a very creepy clown (clowns in Ecuador stick nails up their noses) and finally we were off by around 9:00 and we drifted in and out of sleep, rain dripping off the windows outside, until around 10:00 we looked outside and realized we were still in Tena...or more precisely we were back in Tena for some reason. Turns out the rains had brought down a major landslide over the road on our planned route, so we had to double-back and go another way. Two hours added to our travel, and a couple of more dollars apiece paid, we finally set out north and west at about 10:30.
Another beautiful and twisty busride, accompanied in the usual style by god-awful American kung-fu type movies from the 1980's. (Who knew they even made a "Best of the Best" part 2? Really, was there a demand for the sequel?) Back up the ridge of the Andes front range, and up into the highlands, air cooling out nicely along the way, we made our way back towards Quito. Another very decent busride, our last, bringing us back to the big city, towards the end of our monthlong adventure.
Quito is huge. It's long and skinny, confined by its valley, but the valley is really long and punctuated with big, deep fingers that stretch off in many directions. Buildings fill the valley floor and spill up the walls of the surrounding hills, cresting on the steeps, hilltops and ridgelines bursting with cellphone antenna towers. A busy, bustling, vibrant city, so very different from most of what we've seen here.
Jampacked busses and electric trolleys. Heavy foot traffic on the sidewalks. Women selling roasted maize and sweet empanadas and little skewers of chicken and sausages from open storefronts. People shopping for produce and bread for dinner. We spill into the big, modern bus terminal, find some taxis and head across town towards the old city, where we'll be staying for the next four nights.
We encamp at the Grand Hotel, which may or may not have been grand at some point in the past, and settle in. The roof offers some pretty stunning views of the old colonial city, and as we wander around we realize that we've found ourselves in a little piece of Europe, transplanted across the Atlantic by homesick Spaniards back in the 17th Century.
So like an old European city center, but a bit run down, a bit noticeably shabby and worn around the edges. Great character though, and hundreds of storefronts to explore, and a lively walking center surrounded by centuries-old churches.
So it was a 9:00 bus and we were on by 8:30 and only briefly harassed by a very creepy clown (clowns in Ecuador stick nails up their noses) and finally we were off by around 9:00 and we drifted in and out of sleep, rain dripping off the windows outside, until around 10:00 we looked outside and realized we were still in Tena...or more precisely we were back in Tena for some reason. Turns out the rains had brought down a major landslide over the road on our planned route, so we had to double-back and go another way. Two hours added to our travel, and a couple of more dollars apiece paid, we finally set out north and west at about 10:30.
Another beautiful and twisty busride, accompanied in the usual style by god-awful American kung-fu type movies from the 1980's. (Who knew they even made a "Best of the Best" part 2? Really, was there a demand for the sequel?) Back up the ridge of the Andes front range, and up into the highlands, air cooling out nicely along the way, we made our way back towards Quito. Another very decent busride, our last, bringing us back to the big city, towards the end of our monthlong adventure.
Quito is huge. It's long and skinny, confined by its valley, but the valley is really long and punctuated with big, deep fingers that stretch off in many directions. Buildings fill the valley floor and spill up the walls of the surrounding hills, cresting on the steeps, hilltops and ridgelines bursting with cellphone antenna towers. A busy, bustling, vibrant city, so very different from most of what we've seen here.
Jampacked busses and electric trolleys. Heavy foot traffic on the sidewalks. Women selling roasted maize and sweet empanadas and little skewers of chicken and sausages from open storefronts. People shopping for produce and bread for dinner. We spill into the big, modern bus terminal, find some taxis and head across town towards the old city, where we'll be staying for the next four nights.
We encamp at the Grand Hotel, which may or may not have been grand at some point in the past, and settle in. The roof offers some pretty stunning views of the old colonial city, and as we wander around we realize that we've found ourselves in a little piece of Europe, transplanted across the Atlantic by homesick Spaniards back in the 17th Century.
So like an old European city center, but a bit run down, a bit noticeably shabby and worn around the edges. Great character though, and hundreds of storefronts to explore, and a lively walking center surrounded by centuries-old churches.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Into the Jungle, part 2
So, our evening in Tena was spent provisioning for the jungle trek, meeting with the River People to discuss details of the same, and walking across town, across a big suspension footbridge across the Rio Napo, to a decidedly fancy restaurant for dinner.
It rained good and hard overnight, which was a precursor of things to come during the three day trek in the dense rainforest near Tena. I was forced to skip out on this trek due to my nagging and persistently annoying ankle injury, so I´ll blatantly steal some of the stuff posted on the Springfield group´s blog, located at:
www.renaissancegoestoecuador.blogspot.com
From Aurora, the SRHS teacher in our group:
Aurora is known for understatement--it may not have been terrible, but it rained on the second day in a major way. I was in Tena, comfortably back at the Hostel Limon Cocha, and it came down in sheets. A classic tropical deluge, rain hammering on the sheetmetal roof like someone was pouring out an infinite bucket of ball bearings, the racket so loud that it was literally impossible to carry on a conversation. So the team got more than a little bit wet, and of course muddy, but we´re pretty used to that by now, and everyone returned to Tena in good spirits, full of stories of the jungle and the rain and of Thomas falling into hip-deep mud, and Nikki swinging on a vine and slamming into a gigantic tree, and so on. The group spent sunday afternoon hosing off the tents and laying things out to dry all over the hostel´s driveway and generally having a good time.
It rained good and hard overnight, which was a precursor of things to come during the three day trek in the dense rainforest near Tena. I was forced to skip out on this trek due to my nagging and persistently annoying ankle injury, so I´ll blatantly steal some of the stuff posted on the Springfield group´s blog, located at:
www.renaissancegoestoecuador.blogspot.com
From Aurora, the SRHS teacher in our group:
We left for our jungle trek early friday morning. It was such an amazing experience. As a biology student, I learned so much about the diversity of plant defenses and adaptations that exist. What fun to see so much of what I had learned about. The kids were laughing at my exciting over the ´walking tree´and the leaf cutter ants (yay e.o. wilson!) and the trees with huge spikes and all the rest of the amazing diversity.
Tena is located on the edge of the Amazonian basin -- kind of the highlands if you will. So, it was humid and of course it rained, but it wasn´t terrible. We wore wellies for the mud and to protect against snake bites. Much to my happiness we did not see any snakes, no one got bit, but we did have lots of mud!!!! Including a thigh-high stream crossing!!!
Our guide Gregory, who now lives in Tena, but grew up in the jungle taught us about traditional uses of plants -- both for food and for medicine. It was really interesting to compare it to what we learned in San Clemente -- another indigenous area.
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| Amazon rainforest |
Some of the highlights were swinging on a vine across a ravine, eating sugar cane, the stream crossing, our bbq the last night, seeing the amazing diversity of the jungle and just how beautiful it is. Oh, and the amazing diversity of insects!!!!!!!!!! I loved it!!!!
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| Eddie doing the Tarzan thing |
Monday we started our actual ´´vacation´´ part of the trip, with a full day of white water rafting on the Rio Jutunyacu, which feeds into the Napo, which eventually feeds into the Amazon itself. This was a VERY fun day indeed, the group split into two rafts with very excellent guides, getting onto the water around 10 in the morning and rafting for hours. The river is rated class III, and it was good and strong and very rough in stretches, the water being pretty high from the recent rains, all of us getting tossed around and bounced all over the place, which is what rafting is all about.
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| Adrenaline Monkeys say hello to the river |
It was an absolute blast, our guides having people taking turns ´riding the bull´ by sitting on the nose of the raft as we did stretches of chaotic, churning rapids, having us do ridiculously fun maneuvers like spinning the raft around in circles as we ran rapids, or running the raft up onto giant, smooth rocks then sliding off..
Some kids took advantage of the chance to hop out of the boats and float down safe stretches of rapids with their lifejackets. Others took less intentional rides outside the boats. All of us had a fantastic time, breaking for a great lunch along the way, visiting with some locals who were panning for gold along the riverside, taking in the thickly forested banks of the river with orchids hanging off the tree branches, marveling in a huge variety of butterflies and bright white kingfishers and giant black vultures riding the thermals overhead.
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| no piranhas in sight |
Some kids took advantage of the chance to hop out of the boats and float down safe stretches of rapids with their lifejackets. Others took less intentional rides outside the boats. All of us had a fantastic time, breaking for a great lunch along the way, visiting with some locals who were panning for gold along the riverside, taking in the thickly forested banks of the river with orchids hanging off the tree branches, marveling in a huge variety of butterflies and bright white kingfishers and giant black vultures riding the thermals overhead.
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| Liam rides the bull |
So we rafted the Amazon. How cool is that?
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Into the Jungle
So we left San Clemente good and early, bussing it down the giant hill one last time, blundering around in Ibarra a bit until we found our bus, then heading out, south and east, towards Tena and the Amazon. This was a bit of a complex travel day, since we were trying to avoid Quito and its traffic and its widely separated giant bus terminals.
We took our first bus for about two and half hours to the midsized town of Pifo. This was a gorgeous ride at times, with awesome, with clear views of the giant, glaciated snowcone of the Cotapaxi volcano along the way. But the bus was very crowded, the aisles packed full of people (including some of our group who had to stand) and the consistent stopping and going to get and release passengers was a bit trying at times. Traveling down the spine of Ecuador´s central highlands, passing through innumerable towns and villages and small cities, it was easy to believe that this is South America´s most densely populated country. Finally we reached Pifo, walked a bit with all our gear to an adjoining roadway, and waited on the side of the road by a petrol station for a Tena-bound bus. After waiting less than an hour, a big, yellow Banos Express cruised on up, and we piled our bags underneath, piled ourselves into the interior, and set off for Tena.
This country´s transportation infrastructure is totally impressive. Good pavement everywhere you want it. It just works. It runs on schedule. You can count on it, which is much more than I can say for a lot of other places I´ve been in the past.
So we pointed southeast and began climbing the giant set of ridges that defines the central highlands, curvy and steep and green as always, then after a couple of hours began our descent. Vegetation getting more and more tropical, air getting more humid, road twisting down through deep green valleys, we plied our way out of the mountains and into the Amazon basin, accompanied, as always, by an awful American martial arts movie dubbed into Spanish on the bus´s TV.
About 4 hours out of Pifo we crossed a big bridge over a roiling brown river and rolled down a big hill into Tena. The heat and humidity and general shabbiness of Tena were a bit offputting at first, and we floundered around, walking in circles with all of our gear, in the heat of the late afternoon, until we finally got it together and figured out where we were going and found our hostel. This was decent place, with a great view of the town and the mountains in the distance and soon enough we were comfortably ensconced, the kids pretty excited about having beds for the first time in a long while, and we began to settle in and make plans for the jungle trek, which would begin the next morning.
More later...this internet cafe is about to close.
We took our first bus for about two and half hours to the midsized town of Pifo. This was a gorgeous ride at times, with awesome, with clear views of the giant, glaciated snowcone of the Cotapaxi volcano along the way. But the bus was very crowded, the aisles packed full of people (including some of our group who had to stand) and the consistent stopping and going to get and release passengers was a bit trying at times. Traveling down the spine of Ecuador´s central highlands, passing through innumerable towns and villages and small cities, it was easy to believe that this is South America´s most densely populated country. Finally we reached Pifo, walked a bit with all our gear to an adjoining roadway, and waited on the side of the road by a petrol station for a Tena-bound bus. After waiting less than an hour, a big, yellow Banos Express cruised on up, and we piled our bags underneath, piled ourselves into the interior, and set off for Tena.
This country´s transportation infrastructure is totally impressive. Good pavement everywhere you want it. It just works. It runs on schedule. You can count on it, which is much more than I can say for a lot of other places I´ve been in the past.
So we pointed southeast and began climbing the giant set of ridges that defines the central highlands, curvy and steep and green as always, then after a couple of hours began our descent. Vegetation getting more and more tropical, air getting more humid, road twisting down through deep green valleys, we plied our way out of the mountains and into the Amazon basin, accompanied, as always, by an awful American martial arts movie dubbed into Spanish on the bus´s TV.
About 4 hours out of Pifo we crossed a big bridge over a roiling brown river and rolled down a big hill into Tena. The heat and humidity and general shabbiness of Tena were a bit offputting at first, and we floundered around, walking in circles with all of our gear, in the heat of the late afternoon, until we finally got it together and figured out where we were going and found our hostel. This was decent place, with a great view of the town and the mountains in the distance and soon enough we were comfortably ensconced, the kids pretty excited about having beds for the first time in a long while, and we began to settle in and make plans for the jungle trek, which would begin the next morning.
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| Tena, seen from the Limon Cocha hostel |
More later...this internet cafe is about to close.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Community Service, part 3
We also spent two of our days at San Clemente away from our service project. One of these was spent engaged in a full-day attempt at the summit of the Imbabura volcano, up to an elevation of about 14,500 feet. I was forced to skip out on that climb, due to a nagging ankle injury I picked up in the Pinan lakes. I´ll try to get one of the kids to fill in that blank here on the blog, if and when time permits.
Another day was our ´cultural day´arranged by our local hosts. This was a fantastic day, from start to end. We were met at the house by Manuel´s son, Atik, and Atik´s inexplicably German wife (whose name escapes me at the moment) and together we traveled down to the big town of Ibarra. We walked part of the way, to the town of La Esparanza, and had a bit of a history lesson along the way, learning about how all of San Clemente had been part of a huge hacienda, owned by a single wealthy landlord, all the way up until the 1980´s. At that point the locals--who were basically serfs, working as tennant farmers since colonial times--organized themselves and, in effect, went on strike. They had help organizing loans through some of the church groups in Ibarra, and with some capital, and maybe a little bit of a threat of violent resistance, forced the landlord to sell out and let the people buy the land their families had been working for countless generations. This led to the self sustained community that San Clemente is today. Many of the local areas remain landlord-owned haciendas to this day, almost like medieval manors in their economic structure, with farmers paying their rent with crops, and having no property rights at all.
So we made our way by bus back down to Ibarra, and had breakfast in the huge, fantastic covered market there. I could never do justice to this place in words. In many ways it was very much like the big markets you find in the bigger towns all over the developing world. Hundreds of market stalls selling every kind of local produce imaginable, a very graphic section of meat stalls selling things most of us would prefer not to think about at all, all of this crowded in under sheet metal and corrugated plastic roofing, people loudly hawking their products in singsong voices. Just simply awesomely fantastic.
So we had breakfast in one of the countless restaurant stalls, enjoying wonderful cheese empanadas fresh out of the oil, and some tea and eggs and whatnot. Los catorce gringos were definitely an attraction unto themselves, but we´ve gotten kind of used to that. After breakfast we strolled the city a bit, which is apparently known for its sweets, and then we returned to the market where the kids were broken up into pairs and given little lists of items that they had to go procure in the sprwaling marketplace. Everything from dried oregano to baskets of potatos to quartered fresh chickens. This went pretty well, despite the language barrier that affects almost all of us here, and we eventually regrouped and bussed it back up the hill.
The rest of the day was spent preparing and enjoying a traditional meal. The ubiquitous potato-and-whatever-you-have-handy soup, roasted and boiled maize and potatos, chicken grilled over coals, dessert of small home-made tortillas with the local sweet fruit jelly and watermellon slices. We cooked outdoors, using the traditional stoves built into the ground outside our house--basically small, deep holes dug next to an embankment, so that you can fit a pot onto the top, and build a fire below--and had a great afternoon chopping, cleaning, and cooking together as the day wore on.
Later in the afternoon some of the women from town came by to demonstrate their embroidery, which is an important cottage industry, and some of the kids tried their hand at doing some of their own, and we were able to buy some really sweet items--shirts and placemats and table runners, etc.--as souveneirs (sp?)
Our already excellent day was capped off by a visit from some of the community members who form a traditional band. This was absolutely one of the highlights of the entire expedition. They set up in our house: six string guitar, fourteen string guitar, fiddle, two recorder-pipe players, a little boy on a simple bass drum, three women and a little girl to sing and dance. FANTASTIC rootsy andean pipe music, strings filling in with a stomping rhythm, pipes and high voices floating over the whole like the clouds over the valley below us. There´s no way, again, as always, that I can do this justice in words. We caught alot of this on video, which will help you picture the scene, but it was such a perfect moment, the kind of moment you can´t create on purpose, an emotional high, the kids up and dancing, the stars sparkling in the flawlessly black sky outside our little house on the hill, smoke from our cookfires flavoring everything eucalyptus.
Delicious in every possible way.
Unforgettable.
It´s moments like this that keep me coming back for more, and make me dream of expedition even when I´m surrounded by the clean, pilow-soft luxury, comfort and love of my own home.
Another day was our ´cultural day´arranged by our local hosts. This was a fantastic day, from start to end. We were met at the house by Manuel´s son, Atik, and Atik´s inexplicably German wife (whose name escapes me at the moment) and together we traveled down to the big town of Ibarra. We walked part of the way, to the town of La Esparanza, and had a bit of a history lesson along the way, learning about how all of San Clemente had been part of a huge hacienda, owned by a single wealthy landlord, all the way up until the 1980´s. At that point the locals--who were basically serfs, working as tennant farmers since colonial times--organized themselves and, in effect, went on strike. They had help organizing loans through some of the church groups in Ibarra, and with some capital, and maybe a little bit of a threat of violent resistance, forced the landlord to sell out and let the people buy the land their families had been working for countless generations. This led to the self sustained community that San Clemente is today. Many of the local areas remain landlord-owned haciendas to this day, almost like medieval manors in their economic structure, with farmers paying their rent with crops, and having no property rights at all.
So we made our way by bus back down to Ibarra, and had breakfast in the huge, fantastic covered market there. I could never do justice to this place in words. In many ways it was very much like the big markets you find in the bigger towns all over the developing world. Hundreds of market stalls selling every kind of local produce imaginable, a very graphic section of meat stalls selling things most of us would prefer not to think about at all, all of this crowded in under sheet metal and corrugated plastic roofing, people loudly hawking their products in singsong voices. Just simply awesomely fantastic.
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| taking breakfast in the Ibarra market |
So we had breakfast in one of the countless restaurant stalls, enjoying wonderful cheese empanadas fresh out of the oil, and some tea and eggs and whatnot. Los catorce gringos were definitely an attraction unto themselves, but we´ve gotten kind of used to that. After breakfast we strolled the city a bit, which is apparently known for its sweets, and then we returned to the market where the kids were broken up into pairs and given little lists of items that they had to go procure in the sprwaling marketplace. Everything from dried oregano to baskets of potatos to quartered fresh chickens. This went pretty well, despite the language barrier that affects almost all of us here, and we eventually regrouped and bussed it back up the hill.
The rest of the day was spent preparing and enjoying a traditional meal. The ubiquitous potato-and-whatever-you-have-handy soup, roasted and boiled maize and potatos, chicken grilled over coals, dessert of small home-made tortillas with the local sweet fruit jelly and watermellon slices. We cooked outdoors, using the traditional stoves built into the ground outside our house--basically small, deep holes dug next to an embankment, so that you can fit a pot onto the top, and build a fire below--and had a great afternoon chopping, cleaning, and cooking together as the day wore on.
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| stoking the fire & cooking on the traditional stove |
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| working on embroidery with women from San Clemente |
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| awesome local band jamming in the hills |
Delicious in every possible way.
Unforgettable.
It´s moments like this that keep me coming back for more, and make me dream of expedition even when I´m surrounded by the clean, pilow-soft luxury, comfort and love of my own home.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Community Service, part 2
OK that last post was a bit maudlin and emotional. Sorry. This stuff brings it out in me.
So, what was our project in San Clemente? Well, simply put, we moved about a million rocks, more or less, down a dried up ravine, as part of an effort to begin building a retaining wall for a road that is constantly threatened by the seasonal rains. This roadway is crucial to the town's budding cultural tourism business, as many of the homes where visitors can find lodging during homestays are located upon it. The road is split at one point by what can only be called a river, which is dry this time of year. This river is crossable even when it flows across the roadway, but the flowing water erodes and destroys the sides of the road as it climbs a steep hill beyond its banks. Our project was the begining of a much longer one, which will build a large stone retaining wall to protect the hillside and preserve the road in all seasons.
What this meant for us was we had to move a huge quantity of rocks, to fill these giant wire cages that, when filled and stacked against the wall of the ravine, would create an unerodable protective barrier against the rushing water. So move rocks we did, forming a long chain to pass them from person to person and form gigantic stone piles, then moving those piles in a similar fashion to get them down to where the cages were being assembled, wired together, and finally, painstakingly, filled. Our work usually begain around eight thirty or so in the morning and would continue until around one in the afternoon. Long hot mornings in the sun, working side by side with people from the community who were also recruited to help out.
This was frustrating work at times, seeming endless and pointless at first, but as the ditch was excavated along the hillside and the cages were fitted into it, it became more obvious what our goal was, and we could take satisfaction in seeing some slow progress towards an endpoint, some time off in the future. We actually got quite a lot done, and made an excellent start to the project, which will be continued by the community, and aided by two other WCE teams that will be in San Clemente in August.
Lunches during the project were provided by the community, and were a wonder in and of themselves. At the lunch break we'd walk up the hill just a little way to the house of Raul, Manuel's brother. This was a gorgeous, leafy hacienda with llamas in the yard, an incredible traditional outdoor kitchen, and the feel of a colonial era ranch house.
The women there would spread out large woven mats on the grass of the lawn, or in the shade of the covered courtyard one day, it being good and hot, and several dishes were laid out for the ultimate traditional, family style communal meal. Giant pots of quinwa and potato soup, boiled potatos, roasted maize kernels off the cob, several different kinds of thick, fantastically fresh juices, rice and greens and strips of meat marinated in lime juice. After lunch we´d ride out our food coma with a sweet communal siesta, then it was back to work.
So, what was our project in San Clemente? Well, simply put, we moved about a million rocks, more or less, down a dried up ravine, as part of an effort to begin building a retaining wall for a road that is constantly threatened by the seasonal rains. This roadway is crucial to the town's budding cultural tourism business, as many of the homes where visitors can find lodging during homestays are located upon it. The road is split at one point by what can only be called a river, which is dry this time of year. This river is crossable even when it flows across the roadway, but the flowing water erodes and destroys the sides of the road as it climbs a steep hill beyond its banks. Our project was the begining of a much longer one, which will build a large stone retaining wall to protect the hillside and preserve the road in all seasons.
 |
| hauling rocks at the work site |
What this meant for us was we had to move a huge quantity of rocks, to fill these giant wire cages that, when filled and stacked against the wall of the ravine, would create an unerodable protective barrier against the rushing water. So move rocks we did, forming a long chain to pass them from person to person and form gigantic stone piles, then moving those piles in a similar fashion to get them down to where the cages were being assembled, wired together, and finally, painstakingly, filled. Our work usually begain around eight thirty or so in the morning and would continue until around one in the afternoon. Long hot mornings in the sun, working side by side with people from the community who were also recruited to help out.
 |
| Liam and a local woman rock & roll at the work site |
This was frustrating work at times, seeming endless and pointless at first, but as the ditch was excavated along the hillside and the cages were fitted into it, it became more obvious what our goal was, and we could take satisfaction in seeing some slow progress towards an endpoint, some time off in the future. We actually got quite a lot done, and made an excellent start to the project, which will be continued by the community, and aided by two other WCE teams that will be in San Clemente in August.
Lunches during the project were provided by the community, and were a wonder in and of themselves. At the lunch break we'd walk up the hill just a little way to the house of Raul, Manuel's brother. This was a gorgeous, leafy hacienda with llamas in the yard, an incredible traditional outdoor kitchen, and the feel of a colonial era ranch house.
 |
| Imbabura, seen from Raul´s casa |
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