Jeeeeez... third post in a day... yikes!

OK, so I feel like a) sitting in Quito deserves time spent in an internet café and warrants updates so that I don´t have to do it when I get home, b) it´d be weird to update my blog about my travels from Ontario, c) I may as well spend the next 1/2 here waiting for Shane since I´ve already been here for 4 hours...

So beyond just working at the reserve over the last three weeks I also decided to stick around on weekends and explore as much as possible of the 814 hectares. The first weekend consisted of playing soccer everyday with the locals and my dear friends, Dave, Bea, Meggy, and Kate (Marina didn´t play)- the girls being 15/17 year olds from Lakefield, Ontario and SUPER fabulous. As well as the soccer the four volunteers that stuck around (Shane, Dave, Rob, and I) headed down the hill Saturday morning with donkey and while Shane and Rob headed into Tandapi to do a little grocery shopping, Dave and I ventured along a part of the cascade trail. It was beautiful, fun, and a little treacherous but totally worth it even though it was followed by the hiking back up the hill with donkey for lunch and then soccer in the afternoon. The boys did some garden work while I did some catch up on internet time and cleaning and then we had some good partying on the homemade moonshine aguardientes that Shane bought in town. This made Sunday morning a little rougher than I was hoping but I sweated out the alcohol on our 5 hour hike to the top of the mountain with Shane, Dave, and the Ontario girls... what a blast!

A blast until Jorgé insisted on more soccer once we got back down that is, lol...

The following weekend was another reserve weekend before my departure. Shane had to leave Thursday night to deal with some visa stuff Friday morning but we had a movie night and early bedtime... Friday was awesome. Those remaining people packed up our stuff and around lunchtime begain another trek to the top of the mountain, this time for a camping trip! So Rob, Simon, Dave, Escott, myself, Walter, and the 4 TVL Ontario girls (and Donkey) camped out, looked at birds, learned about low impact shitting in the forest, and played frisbee, cooked some dinner and chilled by the fire. It was a blast!
Saturday consisted of the frontier hike which was about 7 hours, treking through primary forest, heading down along the border of the reserve to the bottom of the mountain (yes that meant having to then walk back up the hill to the reserve). I don´t think that I have the skill to sufficiently describe how beautiful and surreal it is to walk through the jungle and I really don´t think that pictures are sufficiet either but I guess I´ll include some in hopes of inspiring people to see it for themselves. Saturday night was a quiet night as we were all wiped but I still had the pleasure of relaxing over a few beer with Dave and Scott for my final night. Sunday was also wonderful but bittersweet as I had to leave for Quito and then Papallacta (more hotsprings!)... hopefully people will appreciate why I love the reserve... and why I have to return :)

The RETURN... to La Hesperia

So Shane and I decided that we weren´t ready to leave La Hesperia and contacted Alexandra regarding a return trip. Upon hearing this she said that our project when we return would be to redo the vegetable garden as per our own suggestions when we left the first time.

This basically meant that we were going to tear up some weird fan shaped raised bed design that was extremely inefficient with space, difficult to care for, and unproductive, and convert the garden area to farm style rows... let the games begin!
What does this all mean, you might ask? Well, it means that we had to remove the wooden posts/walls of the raised beds, till the entire area, remove the grass and weeds that were inhabiting the area, rake the soil into raised rows, and plant some fooooood! That doesn´t sound so tough but let me say, when it´s all manual labour because things like rear-tine rototillers (spelling?) don´t exist here it´s a tough job, thankfully we had our fellow volunteers putting some serious sweat and elbow grease into it too (THANK YOU ALL!)

The result? It´s beautiful! Even though Shane and I ended up having to stay an extra week we were fortunate to have a wonderful man named Dave show up who is equally as passionate and hardworking and willing to take over the care of the garden for us while we´re gone... yay!

On top of the garden make-over, we were also given the responsibilities of creating a cow manure composter and a kitchen/greenwaste composter... easy peasy you say? Well let´s just say that these had to be large scale and low cost/ minimal material usual which resulted in us cutting each composter into two separate hillsides... it was actually quite a bit of fun and a bit of a bitch but they´re both mostly finished with the exception of their roofs (rooves?) which Dave had accepted responsibility for. Other than that we did some serious hiking which I will cover in mere moments in a separate post... imagine, no posts forever and then three in one day!

Baños... que linda!

So after Shane and I finally got back safe and sound from San Cristobal we spent two days in Quito where Shane could visit his woman (a drama in and of itself) and get some passport/visa stuff dealt with- or so we thought. On the Friday our friend Scott (aka Escott, Oskar, the Great Forest Escottie, etc) met us for breakie and joined us as we headed to the wee town of Baños in the Tungurahua region of Ecuador. One of the main reasons for the trip (besides the sheer joy of travelling) was to visit friends of ours that we met in Quito when we arrived in January, Chris and Conny, retired teachers from Guelph!

We had planned to visit Baños on two other occasions previously but things kept happening- such as landslides and volcanic eruptions- that got in the way but this time we were determined to meet up with them before they left the country. Emailing was difficult and we (somewhat reluctantly) trusted Shane´s communication and directional skills... let´s just say that there were a few snags, we didn´t actually know how to contact them or where in the town to find them beyond following some old place references from emails gone by. As we wandered the town, trying not to fight or kill each other, Escott offered efforts of tension breaking by saying that these people don´t actually exist and then complaining that we brought him to a place where there aren´t even any birds to look at...lol... sucker. So we grabbed lunch and wandered about some more... at this point I have to thank my mom and dad and ancestors for my height which turned out to be an advantage oddly enough.

So we were wandering the street that we suspected the school they were volunteering at was on and couldn´t figure out where it was until we walked past this big metal gate that had a little hole in it, just about at my eye level, for the lock... I looked to my left and low and behold I saw paintings and murals and toys and people! So we knocked and it turned out to be the art school that they worked at but they had not been there in several days, however, the lovely gentleman that we dealt with gave us directions to their place and a time to come back and check if they came by. Unfortunately, they weren´t at their place, nor were they there when we went back, but we did get a tour and some interesting info on the volunteer program that they were running there.

At a bit of a loss we headed to a nearby internet cafe and were checking to see if they´d sent word electronically when I turned to gaze out the door and saw them walking by!! So I turned to Shane and said ¨Chris and Conny just walked by¨, got up and bolted after them, stopping them in the street :) HAHA! So there Escott! They do exist! We chatted a bit, went back to get the boys, and headed to a nearby restaurant for beer and food... what a wonderful evening! We were all exhausted after though so it turned out to be an early bedtime for all with Scott wanting to get up early for bird watching and Shane wanting to get up early for hitting the local hotsprings (hence the name of the town, Baños means Baths), and me wanting to sleep in :) Shane succeeded in getting up early but got lost (as usual) and took a few hours to do his bathing and Scott failed at getting up with the birds but I got to sleep in and we all managed to meet for breakfast before deciding to head to the zoo (listed as the Animal Prison on the maps of the town). It seems that Shane´s directional issues rubbed off and we took a rather extended route to get to the zoo, however, we did get there, Scott got to see a bunch of caged birds, Shane and I ALMOST had a monkey throw shit at us but instead the little guy decided to eat his shit instead, and then we headed back to town to meet with Chris and Conny again for lunch... love those guys!

Other than the zoo and visiting with our Ontarian friends, we also got to see the venting of Vulcan Tungurahua, walk up the BAZILLION stairs and dirt path to the statue of the Virgin of whatever overlooking the town, and Scott and I got to see the beautiful paintings in the local church. Shane´s gf arrived Saturday which meant that Scott and I wandered about to give them some time alone, meeting up with them after dinner at a local pub boasting live local music... As for dinner, we had some delish pizza with a side of random band that walked in and set up in the middle of the tiny restaurant and played Andean music with a dancing chick! It was super cool... at least I thought so... funnily enough though, Scott and I ended up at a local bar after chilling with Shane and Geovanna that may as well have been somewhere in North America... but it was fun and had cold beer and a patio outside so I can´t complain...

Unfortunately, that pretty much sums up Baños since we didn´t do the bike into Puyo, any treks to the volcano, or dunebuggy-ing... but it was a good weekend and a nice trip to kick off the last leg of the big trip (before heading back to the reserve)...

Holy Crap a new post!!!!!

Yep, apologies, right from the get-go (or gecko if Kosta was reading this).

So... it´s been forever but I guess there´s probably quite a bit that I can breeze through so here´s a little overview and perhaps I´ll even be nice enough to break things into smaller pieces and add some photos, but that´ll have to be later since I am on the reserve computer which is a small step above dial-up.

Here GOES!!!...

So let´s go back a few weeks to Shane and I´s stay in the Galapagos. Lots of bugs, heat, humidity, and 18-20yr old volunteers and their ensuing drama which was more for entertainment I think than anything else. Now cut to the Monday before we were set to leave, we did our thing, worked, played/spectated music, hung out with our dear friends that we encountered at the reserve, and then decided that for our last night we were going to head to the ¨bar¨ which is in the middle of nowhere, frequented only by volunteers mainly, and completely open air... and a 10 minute walk from the reserve. Basically the bar sells Pilsener (the bigguns) for $2.50 (mainland is $1) and Rum only by the bottle for $14 including a 3L bottle of Coke or Sprite to mix. We started with the usual- beer- but were quickly convinced that the rum was a better deal by our friend Owen. This lead to the relatively small group of us (half dozen or so?) drinking 5 bottles of rum while chilling, dancing, chatting, and playing pool to the sound of someone´s iPod and hammering rain until the wee hours of the morning.
For me, the wee hours meant 4am ish at which point, despite Owen´s insistence that I´d get sick from the rain (um, helloooo, it´s HOT OUT) I trudged back on my own in a torrential downpour, later to be accepted as a monsoon. The trip back was quite exciting as my flashlight is terrible and I was drunk enough that my drunkenness lasted until dinner the following day... hence why I tend to stay away from RUM! Not only was the road super muddy but the two rivers that usually run under it by about 2m happened to be running OVER it by 2 feet... the second was a little nerve racking as I had to hold onto the bridge railing so as not to be swept away! (Yep, walking home alone was a GREAT idea) To keep things interesting there were also a few trees down across the road that I made note of as we were going to be needing to use that road to leave essentially later that same day. So I got back safe and sound... and very very wet... and waited for the guys in the kitchen for a bit. Coming to the conclusion that bed was a much better idea and the guys were not reliable in their departure time I ditched and had a little sleep.
7am came quite quickly and I woke up, as previously mentioned, still quite drunk. This was actually a blessing in disguise since it just so happens that between when I headed back from the bar at 4am and when the guys came back at 530am, there was a landslide that took down more trees and blocked the road. Why the heck would this be a blessing in disguise, you must be wondering... well, I had super (drunk) energy, patience, and optimism which was really useful when digging through literally TONNES of wet, heavy mud that we needed to move in order for the taxi to get through so we could get to Port.
With the help of pretty much everyone else, we managed to get enough of the road cleared only to find out that further down a large tree had fallen across it and the chainsaw needed to be employed to clear a path... THEN (yep, THEN!) when the guys went at lunch to cut the tree out of the way they realized that further down the road (duh duh duuuuhhhhhh... it´s a long road) THERE WAS NO ROAD! A sinkhole had developed and a rather sizeable portion of the road had disappeared... so what did we do? Well, we packed up our (super heavy) crap and prepared ourselves for the fact that we were going to have to carry it for about an hour´s hike to get to where the taxi could get to, HOWEVER, Erly... bestest taxi driver EVER... rebuilt the road on his way in and picked us up at the station! We quickly loaded the other departing volunteers, ourselves, and our crap, into the taxi (truck) and headed off before darkness fell with a couple of rough spots (such as having to get out of the taxi for the rebuilt sinkhole part and another fallen tree). Erly, being awesome, stopped the taxi when a new tree had fallen, hopped out, grabbed his machete, and cut the giant out of the way before getting us all safely to town.
Later we found out that the beach we were at a few days prior (nicest one on the island) was literally washed away, and landslides blocked the roads to other major beaches and surfing hangouts. Everyone seemed to be pretty good though and Shane and I were pretty happy to have a nice dinner and breakfast before heading back to the mainland.

We settled ourselves in our hostel and got some different things done Wednesday afternoon and had sushi dinner with Shane´s woman that night. Thursday was another errand day which included my getting my hair cut and coloured. The initial intention was a little trim and back to my regular dark brown but it seems that picking colours in a different language under red lights is not the best way of doing it so Í now blend a little better with the locals, sporting a nice raven black, rather than chocolate brown... ah well.. I can kinda pull it off I think! Friday we met Scott in the morning and grabbed breakfast before catching the bus to Baños which I think I´ll leave for another post that will come VERY soon... promise!

Hope life is good.. I´ll be back in the North soon and look forward to catching up oxoxx

The One and Only... full week in the Galapagos

Well, apologies that I can´t do daily updates like some sisters of mine who clearly spend ALL of their time in front of the computer! But we don´t have internet or phone (or even cell phone) connections/service at the reserve so we all enjoy our serenity (um... sort of) and distance from technology during the week, counting down to the weekend when we head into Port for a brief escape from bugs and work.

As my last post showed, Port is a beautiful little tropical town on the island of San Cristobal, the provincial capital of the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador. I could post more pictures of sunsets and sea lions but I think that that might be a bit redundant. This week we got back to the reserve Monday night in time to meet the new volunteers (10 of them!) that arrived Monday afternoon. They´re all quite cool and there are 3 canadians, one of whom actually does know a friend of mine! The other volunteers are of various ages, sex, and countries of origin, but I think my fav would have to be Owen, my new Aussie buddy who is on one of those ¨self discovery¨trips around some of South America before heading to the Mediterranean, Egypt, and some of Asia... don´t worry friends, he mentioned the girlfriend/¨other half¨ within about three minutes of chatting and we´ve been great friends ever since ;P Other than my new partner in crime (or rather ¨partner in psychological assessment of the rest of the crew¨) It´s been a good week for hiking, getting some pretty back breaking work done, and getting to know people. With 30 volunteers here now (3 more arrived on Wednesday) there are a LOT of diverse personalities and personal histories to get acquainted with, which I quite enjoy. Wednesday night was a rescehduled ¨bar night¨ (usually occurs Thursdays) because one of the staff members is leaving and moving back to the mainland so we gave him a good send off.

Thursday I was supposed to have the morning off because I had lunch duty but it turned out that I worked all morning, got pissed off at having to clean up after 20 of the 30 who did crap-all, and tag teamed the group with the help of Danny, the volunteer co-ordinator... and I must say, I got many apologies and things changed immediately which was GREAT!

The rest of Thursday went off without a hitch and Friday am we packed our stuff up for the weekend and headed off for our hike.

The hike took us to the Galapaguera which is the breeding and information facilities for the protection and rejuvenation of the land tortoise population. Here they take the eggs that are laid in the Northern part of the island where the tortoises live and bring them here to raise them until they´re big enough to survive in the wild again since introduced species´ of animals have taken to eating them when they´re small and soft. We walked around and hung out with the big guys and checked out the cute little babies in their holding cages (for their own protection from local wildlife), one of whom got flipped onto his back and had a heck of a time flipping back over... but he did it the little champ! From there we headed down to Puerto Chino... the beach where Shane and I did our surf lessons last weekend which is fairly secluded and so beautiful. I managed to stay in the water, chasing fish and body surfing, for about 3 hours... what a blast! The surf was a lot rougher with many big waves coming in a lot more often than last weekend unfortunately. Matt, our Kiwi friend, said that the waves break too close to shore at this beach but we don´t expect to be on the board for so long that it matters at this point when we surf there! Now, to be fair, after my 3 hours in the water I am quickly approaching my Mexican/Ecuadorian colouring so I am paying for it with burning salty skin... ah well. Well into our time at the beach the foreign exchange students from the local university campus joined us and filled up a lot of the water and beach area but they were pretty cool. I also appreciated the beckons to come closer to shore when two of the guys thought that they say a pretty big shark out along the outskirts of the cove... they´re supposed to be fairly docile with humans here but I´d rather not become the exception to the rule... but not to worry, a bunch of the girls from that group swam pretty far out so I figured they´d offer a better meal than I would anyway.

Once I finally got back onto dry land and sorted myself out (so much sand in my suit) we headed back to the road to catch taxis to see Laguna El Junco, the only fresh water lagoon on all of the islands which is in a small volcanic crater. When we got there is was a heck of a walk up (my ass hurts today so that´s good) and getting rather cloudy, however, after walking around the lake (which took 15 minutes max) the clouds had cleared and we got a great view of the lagoon and surrounding island areas... it was amazing and really put into perspective the size of the island. Once back down to the road we hopped into our taxis and heading to Port to grab our hostels and settle in a bit.

Last night the majority of the volunteers collected at one hostel, had a few drinks (some a few too many), and headed to the local club... it was a pretty good time but as with any scenario of lots of people (mostly women) and booze, the drama started to come out of the wood work... it is an unfortunate eventuality but it just makes me even more excited to get back to the mainland and to La Hesperia. As I sit here and write this Shane has been on the phone for over an hour to get his flights changed and I´m supposed to do the same. The plan is that we´ll both be staying in Ecuador for longer (4 more weeks for me, 5 or 6 for him) and then unfortunately we have to fly to Peru and then home from there because of cancellation crap, but in this time we´ll get to see places we missed before and get back to La Hesperia for a few more weeks. If anything interesting happens in the next day or so I¨ll update the blog but it´ll likely have to wait until we´re back on the mainland on Wednesday.

Hasta Luego! Love you and miss you all oxoxoxox

The Galapagos and Jatun Sacha Reserve

Well Shane and I actually made it to the airport, on and off the plane and were (eventually) allowed onto the island of San Cristobal in the Galapagos.

This new reserve is quite different from La Hesperia, not only in environment but also in the way things are run, the atmosphere, the bazillions of volunteers, etc. But not different in a bad way, just different!

Our first full day consisted of bright and early breakfast at 7am followed by the work allotment meeting at 8am. Shane and I were given the job of cutting the fungus infected leaves off of the banana trees around the reserve to be burned (controlling the fungus spread hopefully)and cutting down banana trunks for the Japanese compost that is being made in the nursery. The job itself wasn´t too hard as long as you´re not squeemish when you poke a leave with the sharpened shovel and spiders and cockroaches fall down... but the cleanup was a real bitch! Everything was wet and heavy and there was no real direct route between where we were working and the fire pit. Also, with all of the rain that has been falling lately the very hilly road was a slippery muddy mess!

After a tough morning of work we had lunch followed by free time until 2 as per usual... however, after 2 we still didn{t have to go back to work since we decided to have some celebrations for Carnivale which is this weekend. The celebrations, of course, meant water fights, mud fights, soap fights... sadly, not in that order... but it was pretty funny times!

Once we all dug the mud out of our ears and showered as best we could we had dinner and chilled some more until about 830 when a group of us headed to the ¨bar¨... a building the same size as our dining area except the kitchen is replaced by a bar and the pingpong table replaced by two pool tables. The patrons were: US... and two locals who actually also work the bar!

So needless to say, Shane and I decided to participate in drinking games with the other volunteers (all under the age of 21 lol) and we most certainly are paying for it today :( Ah well... it was fun and good for bonding with the group, right?

So this morning came unusually quickly, partially due to my turn at breakfast duty that started at 6am... but it´s ok since I was still drunk, lol, so I was FANTASTIC!... til later today. After breakfast we took some taxis and did the 40 min drive from the reserve to town for our ¨hike¨that consisted of a wander around the Interpretation centre before heading down to this little cove where we lunched... after a few sandwiches which helped with the sobering process, a few of us grabbed our snorkles and jumped into the water to hang out with the sea lions who happen to be everywhere, sweet, playful, and fearless...

I{m looking forward to playing with them more as we´ve been given leave from the reserve for a 5 days weekend to continue the Carnivale celebrations so we don´t technically have to work until Wednesday next week!

That said, I´m off to grab some food and a bevy (not beer!) and will post more as things happen with sincere effort to be more diligent, I swear!

oxox

Last week at La Hesperia and Otavalo

Well, the last week at my first biological reserve was bittersweet to say the least. The other volunteers really banded together to learn about milking the cows in order to take over for Shane and I upon our departure, and two new volunteers from the UK arrived and also quickly fell into our early morning routine. Sadly, we really didn´t want to leave and by mid week I was quickly succumbing to a nasty flu. We did a lot of important work on the new nursery as well as helping out with a group of school children that were staying at the reserve for 5 days (21 little niños!)... the group held one particularly important member (the president´s son) and thus also came with an entourage of several teachers AND body guards! The kids were great though, and the adults were pretty cool too.

The weekend plans initially included Shane and I heading to Baños to check out the sights and visit our favorite Guelphite-Retired-Teacher couple, Chris and Connie, but then we heard that there was a landslide that closed the highway, destroyed 7 houses and killed 8 people! So we double checked to make sure Chris and COnnie were ok and rescheduled before heading to Otavalo- the largest market (town) in Ecuador.
By about midnight Friday night we finally found ourselves in this quaint and beautiful little hostel in the core of OTavalo and I found myself absolutely destroyed by the stupid flu. I headed to bed only to emerge once from about 330-630 ion Saturday afternoon and then not again until 8am SUnday.

Fortunately, while I was battling fevers, chills, and a killer sore throat, Mike and Shane (serious bromance going on) headed to the ANimal market in the AM and then the regular market later in the AM and took many pictures for me! (ANd spent bazillions of dollars shopping... bunch of girls). I´m glad MIke was there for Shane´s entertainment but definitely didn´t need to hear the boys, drunk by 3PM, and their giggle fits.

Sunday allowed me to emerge from my cave for some food and a brief wonder around the regular market. The wares were stunning and bartering was pretty fun but tough on my diminished energy levels... thankfully said energy lows kept me from spending too much money which saved me later since I realize that I do have to carry everything I buy (Shane and Mike needed to buy more luggage! YIKES!!) The town itself is gorgeous and surrounded by lovely mountains and some crazy lakes... the locals were sweet and helpful, and really tiny! (I know... kind of a ¨tourist¨thing to say, but coming from me... so true!)
Sunday night we returned to the hostel and met some great people and had some really intriguing chats before an early dinner and bedtime for me. Monday morning we continued our chat with our new friends before packing up and heading to Tumbaco, hometown of Shane´s girlfriend and of the world´s highest bridge-bungee jump... I was going to go for it but was told that the adrenaline/shock actually acts as an immuno-suppressant and thought that now isn´t the time since I just today (Tuesday) have been able to swallow sort of properly.

I guess I´ll try to get a few more pics added to posts tonight before heading to the Galapagos tomorrow. NOt sure on my interweb capabilities when I get there so I´ll just have to let you all know when I know.

oxoxo