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Published: July 20th 2009
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20th June-20th July 2009
Our loooong bus journey (it was actually 33 hours) consisted of not many food stops but a bus load of very friendly, singing and slightly drunk Ecuadorians (Chileans and Columbians). We arrived in Quito (Ecuador's capital) at 7am and in our slightly tired state managed, for the first time in 9 months, to get ripped off by a very smiley taxi driver. We explored the old town and became more culturally aware of Ecuador before packing up our things to head northwards the next day to La Delicia, Nanegal, the closest town to the Santa Lucia Ecolodge.
At 6.45am on Monday morning we jumped in the jeep each with 70 eggs on our laps to be driven to the bottom of the hill to embark on our advance up to Santa Lucia. One and a half hours later we arrived at the top...puffing, panting and muchos calor (very hot) where thankfully we were met by a good breakfast.
Julio, our volunteer coordinator for the week, set us to work quickly and we began to earn our keep with our hard work (no, really we did!). Over the next three weeks we worked with Julio,
Edison, Cesar and Marisio and a new arrival to our volunteer band, Becca from Ireland. We; weeded the organic garden, replaced bad soil for good in the garden, looked after the saplings in the fruit cage, dug water trenches, made new trails through the cloud forest (this was very strenuous but really good fun), cleaned the cabanas (cabins), cleared the sugar cane/corn (choclo) field with machetes, picked coffee beans. Our most interesting day was helping produce the panella (sugar) made from the sugar cane. To do this we cut cane, cleaned it, crushed it with the help of mules, boiled the juice, drank the juice mixed with local alcohol, ground the 'toffee' substance into sugar and whilst cleaning up had a huge water fight.
Our three weeks of work were hard but excellent fun and due to all the strenuous activity we were thankful for the really good food at Santa Lucia. We enjoyed our 'arroz con surprisa' (rice with a surprise) lunches out of plastic bags or off of banana leaves when working with Edi, Cesar and Marisio the most.
Over the three weeks we came across many different types of wildlife, as the photos show,
some we came across whilst working...these things were mainly snakes, lizards, tiny frogs and a variety of insects (including biting ones). Other animals that we saw included Plate billed mountain toucans, cocks of the rock(we rose at 4am on our day off to walk for two hours to the 'Lek', where the male birds hang out making lots of noise and flashing their very red breasts to attract a mate), toucanets (whilst sitting on the compost toilet), spiders (including tarantulas), many moths, hummingbirds (there are over 40 species in the surrounding cloud forest), and a vareity of other bird life (there are around 400 different types of birds in the Santa Lucia region). We would like to say a massive thank you to Matt for bringing back a giant earthworm, apparently he walked quite a long way with it, so that we could see first hand a (live) example of one of these crazy creatures, they can grown up to three metres long. Luce really worked on her phobias of snakes and all things wriggly over the three weeks!
We were lucky enough to be volunteering at Santa Lucia at the same time that the 'Earthwatch' programme were there
collecting information. Due to this we met Matt, Mika, Bryony and a number of other people and amused ourselves in the evenings with them, these evenings included singing (and composing) rude songs, visiting the Matt and Mika bar for a few rum tipples and generally laughing alot. It was also thanks to the Earthwatch group that we got to have many postres (desserts) on our stay there and were included in the end of earthwatch group fiestas (there were two groups, so two fiestas!). At these parties we watched and listened to traditional Ecuadorian music played by the Santa Lucia band, danced (alot) and were all virtually drowned in the local drink made from alcohol which is refined from sugar cane. They were great nights but we still had to get up at 7am on the days after to work...
On two of the Friday nights in the Santa Lucia region we sampled the great nightlife of the nearest town, two hours walk away-Nanegal. These nights included visting the 'Double Ace' bar to dance (alot) to South American popular music (also known as Reggaton) and the Ecuadorian way of drinking...basically one glass and three crates of beer ($1 for
a grande cervesa/beer), drink your provided beer in the glass and pass onto the next person...
After three weeks of hard graft and much, much fun it was time to leave our cloud forest 'home' and off to Quito we went with Becca, Matt, Alex, Jess and Rebecca. Once in Quito we went with Matt to the Equator and saw the pretend and real equator line. We all gained a certificate for balancing an egg on a nail, apparetly this proved that we were on the equatorial line!
The next day we headed off on a night bus, where Luce and Matt found themselves wedged in a 'seat sandwhich' for 11 hours, whilst the friendly local sat next to Rach plied her with blackcurrent chewing gum. Our destination...MontaƱita...town of hippies, herbs, surf, satay and cheap cocktails. We met with Becca again and the four of us spent four days chillaxing, getting brown (or trying to) as well as embarking on a trip to the 'Poor Man's Galapagos' (Isla de Plata) where we saw humpback whales (including a baby, this is apparently quite rare) a vareity of boobies (blue, nazca and red footed), frigget birds, snakes and lizards. Our
time in MontaƱita was a great way to end our time in Ecuador and as we bid a tearful farewell to Matt and Becca it dawned on us that at the end of the next leg of our journey we would be in our final destination, Lima, before we bid South America goodbye...
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