One Down, Many More to go
It has been awhile since we last posted because we have been busy with work and fun. We finished up the first project and it was great to see the greenhouse with irrigation, weeded garden, wormery, and mural all complete. A bunch of supporters of the project from Conquito and the community came for a presentation of diplomas to all of us as well as all of the kids we worked with and the engineers. We received many thanks and so much appreciation. There is a great community behing this project that assure us they will keep it sustained. At the end of the ceremony was a guitar performance by a son of one of the teachers and Luchito, our favorite engineer. Then, we sat down to an awesome meal of salads and beans and corn and fresh juice with produce from the garden. After lunch we played futbol and then basketball. Ecuador dominated in futbol, but we came back to win 10-9 in our basketball game. The games were a fun goodbye, but it is sad to think that we may never see these people again.
With the first project finished we headed to the coast. When we arrived at the airport we were greeted by Alicia’s teacher from UNC, Jeff, and his family, including; Tanya (his wife); Claudia (his 6 year old daughter; and Rowen (his 3 year old son) From the airport, two rangers from the national park who we would be working with drove us two hours two Puerto Lopez.
Puerto Lopez is a small fishing town on the coast of Ecuador, southeast of Quito. As such, I think we were all expecting a tropical coastline, with a constant temperature of about 100 degrees. What we found was a bit different; the landscape was beautiful, but could hardly be called tropical. The climate was warm, but never reached more than 85 degrees, and the coast line was studded with cacti and very dry trees, with little to no moisture apart from the beautiful ocean.
Because our stomachs were yelling to us in Spanish and English for food, Tachi took us to a restaurant on the beach that is known throughout Ecuador for its seafood. We ordered and by the time the food reached our table over an hour later, we were more than ready to fully appreciate the display of delicious in front of us. Garlic shrimp, grilled fish, and patacones (a fried banana side). As I could not appreciate the shellfish due to my allergy, I opted for pulpo, octopus, in a spicy garlic sauce. Satisfied we all walked across the street to the sand and spashed around with Jeff’s kids, Rowen and Claudia, as the sun set a brillant pink over the water. We then made our way over to some beach chairs around a huge bonfire.
After waking up to the rooster next to the hostel at 5am, Marie and I ran bright and early as the masses of fisherman were coming to shore with their morning catch. Then we met up at the national park office to head to our worksite which turned out to be steps to a lookout point over a beautiful beach. We drove to the project site with a few of the park rangers that we would be working with. Our project was to build stairs on a half mile trail that led up from a beach to a look-out point at the end of a tall cliff. While most of the stairs were already in place, many were rotting or simply needed replacing. The work consisted of carrying about 75 boards down approximately a half mile of beach to the base of the trail, digging out the boards that made up the old stairs, and replacing them with the new boards. We secured all of the boards in place by hammering wooden stakes, cut from the surrounding trees, into the ground on the down-hill side of the board, and filling in the area behind the board with dirt. Even with the help of the park rangers, the work was some of the hardest that we’ve had in Ecuador so far, and the heat and humidity definitely took their toll. Jeff and Tanya traded off watching their children on the beach so that they could help out building steps too, and their younger daughter Claudia even lent a hand for a while. After getting our tools taken away from us by national park men multiple times, we realized that we were going to have to prove to these machisto men that women can work as well. By the end of the day they had realized that at least these gringo women can get the job done right.
Back in Puerto Lopez, Tachi took us to yet another awesome restaurant, a Colombian restaurant owned by a friend of hers. The restaurant specialized in patacones pisa’os. These giant plates of fried banana were filled with your choice of seafood, meat, race, beans, cheese. Others opted for arepas, a Colombian specialty that consists of a white corn patty with your toppings of choice. After another satisfying meal, followed by the beach, we all went to bed early to prepare for the next days work.
Our second and final day of work went by surprisingly quickly!! We had an extra set of hands because Charlie had made it out to the coast and we powered through the steps! We made a system of Chris and Marie knocking out the old, termite eaten steps and cleaning the step area of the rotten wood, then Jeff, Adrian and I coming in with the new steps and stakes and securing them in. Charlie and Tachi were making new stakes by cutting branches and chopping the ends with machettis to make a point. Our system was working wonderfully, and then the men from the state park showed up. It was frustrating to have our tools taken away and be “shown” again how to do everything when clearly we knew because we’d been doing it already for over an hour, but we sucked up our pride and went along with their ways. After a quick morning of strenuous labor, be finished the steps to the Mirador by lunchtime. Tuna sandwitches and banana in our bellies, we suited up and cooled off in the refreshing ocean waves. We body surfed and then crashed on the sand for a bit of a nap.
Back in Puerto Lopez we cleaned up and then hung on the beach for awhile before deciding to return to Colombian for dinner, then returned to the hostel and fell asleep under an interestingly red sky. I woke up to the room shaking at 3:30am, unsure whether I was still dreaming. A few seconds later I was fully awake and sure that it was an earthquake. I heard Tachi talking and went outside to meet up with Charlie and her. I think earthquakes make people a little frantic and nervous, because there was a man shouting that we all needed to run to the mountains because in 3 hours a tsunami was coming that would wipe us out. Luckily it never came but unluckily there was little hope for more sleep!
View from the Mirador, or lookout, that we re-built the steps up to.
Bri and Jeff hard at work replacing one of the many steps on our path
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