Blogs from East, Ecuador, South America - page 27

On Saturdays, there is a market in Cruz Chicta. We usually make the hour-long walk to the beach around 7am and catch a water-taxi downriver about 15 minutes. Our community members were excited to point out how much bigger Cruz Chicta was - they have a church and a colegio (high-school). We usually buy fresh fruits and vegetables as well as other foods (ketchup, salt, sugar, etc.) and sip on a warm Pepsi. In the market, you can also buy clothes, electronics and batteries, home and kitchen supplies and other misc. items. Later, we can stop off in one of the two bars for a cold beer while all of the locals drink ¨vente shinco.¨ - a very strong but suprisingly smooth sugar cane liquor, so named because you can buy a small cup for ... read more

Living in Watchimak South America » Ecuador » Tena By tonyandkerensaFebruary 15th 2007Tony Allison We first heard of Watchimak when we were in Quito and thought it might be a good community for Kerensa´s research. We decided to visit the community in a Community Volunteer capacity for a month to learn more before making any decisions. We left Tena on a three hour bus ride to Comuna Los Rios where we caught a river taxi a half-hour down river where we met members of the community at the beach. They helped us carry our things on the hour-long hike into Watchimak. We met three other volunteers: Jessica, Ken, and Susanne and learned a... read more

Ecuador’s Rainforests Through friends in Quito I had the opportunity to be an Expedition Leader for a British group of Gap year students, taking them into the Jungle where I would spend a week and half helping with conservation with all expenses covered not to mention pay as well. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity. The Tropical Rainforests of Ecuador are unique among the World as they contain so much variety of plants and animal species, not in great amounts but in great diversity. There are 300 different species of trees found in one hectare alone compared to North America which has 500 species in its entirety also there are around 25 000 species of plants present in the country, which represents approximately 10% of all plants in the world of these plants two ... read more

The 1st day of activity for the Kumuka Foomar gang. Foomar is the name of our truck, name is based on some story about being near cows and stepping in manure... Never sure if/when our driver is have one over us. The river was a class 4, we were originally scheduled for a class 3, but due to heavy rains, the road and two bridges were washed away closing access to the other river. The 1st part of the day was completed by going for a swim in a near by waterhole. Our leader Tim, led us up to a water fall, up a ladder to a ledge, overlooking the waterhole. Standing before us was an 9m drop below. Oh, we jump, shit, courage was gathered, and shaking legs were ignored as the majority of the ... read more

Hi everyone, and happy Thanksgiving... I’m back after a few weeks of traveling around Ecuador. It really is quite a country… so much variety in a pretty small place, and there is still more to see. I’ll post my most recent photos first, since I have a lot of them... These are from the Cuyabeno Reserve, from where I returned this morning. It's a stretch of jungle on a tributary of the Amazon near the Colombian border. It was everything I could have expected and more... We saw a baby caiman (something like an alligator), a piranha (which someone had fished), monkeys (but from a distance), a sloth, tarantulas, and the anaconda pictured here, which actually seemed pretty unfazed by the group of people gawking at it. We fished, swam, hiked, canoed (or, for the most ... read more