Hombres (y chicas) trabjando

The manual labor has pretty fun and fulfilling so far. I just jumped in to help the volunteers do their stuff the first few days to get to know what the role is like since part of my job is keep volunteers happy and make sure they have work to do.

I helped put in the posts for this sweet chicken coop. The pits are for compost.

Some of the yucca we planted last week has already started to sprout.

None of the Canadian construction workers speak a lick of Spanish, so I’ve been acting as master-translator so they can communicate with the Ecuadorian maestros. They keep saying “man, it’s a good thing you’re here!”

I don’t think we’ll get it all done by Friday, but we’ve made a great start. Hopefully it will be ready for the school year to start in April. I’ve been taking pictures, videos and interviewing some of the participants. When it’s all said in done I should be able to put together a pretty suave utube video.

This wednesday, as always, we knocked off early for some futbol. My team won a thrilling 5-4 come-from-behing golden-goal victory.

Next week there will be a group of 7-year-olds here. Apparently it’s my responsibility to make sure none of them die. I’m sure a good belting of “There was a great big moose” should keep them out of trouble.

Then after that I should begin sinking my teeth into a bit of biodiversity research. I’ll be visiting other Ecuadorian reserves, learning some methods, and bringing them back to La Hesperia. Also they want me to summarize every (!) research study that has ever been conducted here, which should be quite a tall task.

Don’t worry I’ll keep the blogposts coming.

Hasta luego

La vida silvestre

I’ve just completed day 5 at La Hesperia. It’s really a rather phenomenal place operated by some pretty admirable people. The philosophy behind it all is already up on the website, which I will be redesigning and rewriting at some point, so I won’t get into it here.

Instead I’m just going to show you some photos of some of the cool wildlife I’ve managed to capture with my new camera. I’m really digging this Panasonic Lumix.

Compared to Australia everything here in the cloud forest is rather benign. But I’m sure it wouldn’t be much fun to get stung by this scorpion we found on the bathroom floor last night.

A group of exchange students from Boston University came up with their ecology professor for the weekend and we managed to find a brain living in this sea shell.

And this mariposa crystal.

Of course I have to talk about some of the birds. They are spectacular and come in a kaleidoscope of different colors.

Not a great picture, but these aracari were right outside my room having some sort of jousting competition.

I expected to see all sorts of exotic colorful birds, but not this little plain thing. It’s a Swainson’ Thrush, which I see in my backyard in Durham every spring and fall migration. Small world.

So this post is a bit misleading as I’ve been doing quite a bit more than just hunt exotic wildlife. In a post coming soon to a computer screen near you there will be some pictures of the chicken pen I’ve been helping build and the yukka I’ve planted. I should also be getting around to introducing some of the cool people I’ve met. The BU students left today, but were replaced by a group of 15 from Toronto with whom I’ll be helping build a school this week. There are 7 longer-term volunteers here at the moment who collectively represent 5 countries. I’ll likely be spending a good whack of time trying to source more volunteer talent.

That’s all for now.

Post comments!

En vivo

So I’m just going to get straight to it. No point in trying to segue between Australia and Ecuador or cover the 7-month interim split between Durham, New York, Vermont, Scotland and the Outer Banks.

So I Made it. I did had to spend an extra day in Quito waiting for my bag to show up (it got left in Miami). I stayed at a pretty nice ‘hostal’ in the touristy section of town, ‘mariscal sucre.’ It cost a whopping $7 per night. The restaurant underneath was always packed at dinnertime with locals having romantic candle-lit dinners.

Mariscal Sucre (or ‘New Town’) is not really that special it just has all the flashiest bars, restaurants and hotels y entonces it is the best place to get robbed.

I spent my free day wandering through the city toward ‘Old Town’ which is the unique spectacular section, a relic of the colonial Spanish era.

On the way though while passing through one of the large city parks, I encountered a crowd of 100 or so spectators surrounding a cement court on which I assumed would be played some sort of soccer. To my surprise an intense game of 3-on-3 volleyball commenced. The players looked as if they had just finished a day at the office with their khaki pants and button-down shirts.

On my way back through some three hours later I found that the crowd had tripled in size and vendors were selling ice cream and chicken on a stick. Even la policia were among the audience gasping and groaning with the ebb and flow of the game play.

Here are some cool pictures of Old Town.

I’ll have plenty more chance to explore the city more properly, so I’m not going to bother really explaining what these buildings are for now.

Oh and I made it up to La Hesperia. The place is awesome and the trip here was quite the adventure. Next time I ride the bus I’ll try to get some pics of the hombres trabajando cutting steel rebar without gloves on the edge of a sheer 2,000 foot cliff face.

A pretty weak first entry, but I hate to post walls of text without at least a few pictures, and I have not been very good about taking them on my first day at the farm.

More to come soon…