Archidona and Tena (November 19-21)

Another CIMAS student, Lela, and I fit a little trip to the Amazon in between class field trips and to escape the rainy weather of Quito. We had been offered a place to stay in Archidona when our class visited the Orient a few weeks before. Our friends are volunteering at an organization there called Runa. They are trying to grow and export a tea called guayusa, which has been used by the local Indigenous populations for a long time and has an amount of caffeine between black tea and coffee. The group is especially focused on interacting with the farmers and making it a feasible alternative to more destructive industries in the Amazon. We arrived at their office/volunteer house at about midday on Friday and it felt so good to be warm again! We went out to lunch with our friend Alex and a few of the Peacecorps volunteers who also work there. Then we took a walk to the swimming hole in the river located 2 blocks from Runa! In the afternoon we attended the organizations meeting to learn more about it and we found some delicious empanadas near the cute town square of Archidona for dinner.

There are also 7 Minnesota CIMAS students currently doing internships in Archidona and the nearby town of Tena, so Friday night we met up with them in Tena to celebrate a birthday and have a fun time dancing!

On Saturday we walked to Cavernas Jumandy with a few Runa people to hike through the lava tube and to swim in the pools filled with water coming out of the caves. There was also a horrifying waterslide that I think was meant to knock the wind out of poor kids like us brave enough to go down it!

Lela and I walked in the sunshine back into Archidona, made some lunch and took the bus to Tena. Parts of the town are really touristy because it is reputed to be the best place in Ecuador to river raft. But other than the two rivers that meet and divide the town in two, there wasn’t too much to see. We did run into a school gymnasium with an intense youth pingpong tournament going on. I had no idea that it was a big sport in Ecuador! We grabbed a bus back to Archidona and returned to the river near Runa to hike around and swim in the beautiful water. We hung out at the volunteer house for the night because we were mighty exhausted!

On Sunday morning we left early with 4 Runa volunteers to go to Tena to start a day-long raft trip! We had to ride in the raft company’s truck for a while before actually reaching the river, but once in the boats, we had an awesome time! Even though we were constantly being splashed and knocked into the water by the guides and their “games”, no wet suits were needed this time! The rapids were mostly a Class 3 and there were sections that we could float down. At one point we stopped to jump off of a bridge into the river and we estimated that it was about 25 feet tall! Terrifying! We also stopped for a side-canyon hike at one point to rub mud all over ourselves and then swim under a gorgeous waterfall. We didn’t reach the end until we’d covered 25 km of river and it was 6pm! Lela and I still had to get back to Quito that night and we ended up catching the second to last bus and getting home at 12:30 am on Monday! The raft trip was by far worth it and the whole weekend was a total blast! 

Pedro Moncayo Photos

 View of the highlands on the road from Quito to Otavalo

Flower plantation 

Inside of flower plantation: the de-spining line 

 

 Organic family farm

 Country home of our teacher Luis

 crazy avocados!!

 cuys (guinea pigs)- used for fertilizer and food!

laguna de mojanda

Pedro Moncayo County Field Trip (November 17-18)

Field trip number 3 of 4 was a bit shorter than the others, but nonetheless it was very informative and gave me some good ideas for my final term paper. We left Quito early on Wednesday and drove north 2 hours to Pedro Moncayo County, where a large percentage of Ecuador’s flower plantations are located. The main flowers that are grown are roses, carnations and chrysanthemums and they are almost entirely exported to the US. Russia, Holland and other European countries also import a small amount. The industry has grown rapidly in the past 30 years and there are now a slew of problems in Pedro Moncayo. Flower companies are using water and land meant for farming, contaminating the air, water and people with dangerous pesticides, treating workers horribly and even altering the culture of the communities in the area.

Our first stop on the trip was a tour of a smaller flower plantation, and we got to see their giant plastic greenhouses, the women working on the de-thorning lines and the cold rooms storing dozens of roses with names like “Forever Young” and “Latin Lady”. The flower plantation that we visited was actually one with “better” practices because they are trying to use fewer pesticides and they reuse the rainwater off of the roofs. All over the area there were much larger companies owned by non-Ecuadoreans and what goes on inside their gates is not open to the public.

Next we visited the small community where our teacher for the trip, Luis, has his weekend house. Luis and others in his community banded together to keep flower companies out of the area and they continue to farm the traditional crops of the Sierra: varieties of corn, potatoes, quinoa, veggies, etc. After lunch we got to see two different organic family farms with lots of different fruits and veggies and many “cuyes” or guinea pigs! Farmers can get $6 per cuy in a market and a BBQ’d cuy can cost $10! Apparently they are very high in protein and mighty tasty, especially the head!! Sadly, we didn’t get to try one…maybe next time! The cuyes are also very important because their excrement is a highly useful fertilizer for all of the food crops. Besides the cuys, the highlight of the afternoon was spent underneath a grass-roofed hut talking with an Ecuadorian woman about her 14 years spent on the plantations and the health problems that she dealt with. Now her and her husband have a productive farm where they produce all of their own food and pesticide-free flowers for the local markets.

On our way back to Luis’ house our minibus got stuck in the mud and we had to walk most of the way back and leave the driver there overnight! The walk was very refreshing and when we returned to Luis’ cute cottage, a traditional Sierra meal and a hot fire were waiting for us. The six of us students enjoyed the night by the fire.

On Thursday we drove by a few volcanoes and the famous market town of Otavalo on our way to the gorgeous Lagunas de Mojanda. We got to hear about the history and social struggles in the area from leaders of a community organization. They are battling to preserve their clean water and promoting reforestation projects in the nearby Indigenous communities.

After another delicious meal at Luis’ house, we stopped by a store for some bizcochos, a typical flaky breadstick that they make in the area. On our way back to Quito we hiked for a bit at the Jerusalem Dry Forest. It was a very neat experience in an environment that I had never really seen before. Returning to Quito, we each went home with 24 bright pink roses that were given to us by the flower company and 4 big lemons from one of the farms. I felt contaminated and didn’t even want to touch the flowers as I was putting them in a vase for my host family to enjoy. Knowing that 80 kinds of chemicals had been sprayed on each petal and the women working on the assembly line pulling the thorns off earned $250 last month made the flowers look a lot less pretty. Needless to say I enjoyed the lemonade much more!

Mindo Photos

Mindo-the land of the hummingbirds!

View of the valley from the road to the cable car 

 Eating dinner at the hostel!

 Katrina on the cable car!

One of many sketchy bridges

Mindo Weekend with Katrina (November 12-14)

Katrina and I were fortunate to be able to meet up for a weekend in the small cloud forest town of Mindo. After nearly 2 months of traveling on her own through Ecuador, we crossed paths again! We will be traveling together for about 2 weeks in December and she is attending CIMAS during winter quarter, so it was exciting to see my fellow Evergreener and do a little planning.

I arrived in Mindo about midday on Friday and found a hostel in the jungle. Since it was the beginning of the off-season, the room was free! I walked around a lot that afternoon, exploring the nearby roads and hummingbird sanctuary. It was raining for most of the time, so I stopped in at a Chocolate Café that roasts and grinds their own chocolate and coffee and the hot cocoa and freshly made brownie were quite amazing! I picked up Katrina at the bus station later on and we had some Mexican food! We hiked back to our hostel in the jungle and slept soundly while rain pitter-pattered on the roof.

Katrina was still feeling a little queasy the next morning, so we took it easy and enjoyed a place with few people and lots of trees! In the afternoon we walked up the road to the “tarabita” or cable car, which crosses a valley and leads to some hiking trails and waterfalls. Unfortunately we were a little late in the afternoon to do it Saturday, but we made our way back into town and enjoyed some tasty food and more from the Chocolate Café! It was once again raining for most of the day and I was beginning to understand the meaning of “off-season”!

On Sunday we actually got to ride the cable car and see lots of waterfalls before leaving and it was quite impressive! The crossing went over a huge valley and the bridges leading between waterfalls were equally as shaky! Katrina and I parted ways once again when we returned to Quito and we said “Hasta en Diciembre”!

Amazon Pictures from a classmate

 animals at our hotel in Coca (in the lobby!)

 "exploration site" for oil drilling between Archidona and Coca

 oil contaminating the soil near Coca

 a pool of oil that Texaco left open after mining from the 1970s-1990s

 one of hundreds of oil pools in the area

 oil pump, now run by PetroEcuador

 pipelines near Coca

"Crackers", one of the monkeys at our hotel

Photos from the Amazon trip

 My bed in the cabana while staying with a Quichua family in Rukullakta.

 A view of the Amazon!

 The house of the local shaman (Nelson´s dad)

 traditional music and dance in Rukullakta

 the swimming river...

...and the swimming pools in the Coca hotel

Field Trip to the Amazon: Rukullakta and Coca (Monday, November 1 - Friday November 5, 2010)

The purpose of our second field trip of the quarter was to view the effects of the oil industry on the Amazon Rainforest. After about 5 hours of driving over the eastern Andes on Monday morning, we arrived at a community near the town on Archidona. We grabbed our bags and hiked through the mud and humid air to the farm of a Quichua family that is found in an area of about 17 Quichua communities called Rukullakta that have all united to keep oil companies off their land. The surrounding were gorgeous; much flatter than the Sierra, but untouched, tropical and filled with life.

After a very healthy lunch, we also moved into a little guest house hut without running water or electricity, but our beds did have bug nets! Then we got a tour of some of the crop areas, learned more about the history of the area, and took a dip in the stream that flowed by our cabana. After dinner we went on a night hike through the jungle, where we got “super lost”, according to our guide Nelson, and we occasionally had to stop to kill the biting ants that were getting into our boots.

Tuesday morning after breakfast we walked through the forest surrounding the farm once again with Nelson. He showed us lots of medicinal plants, some neat caves and the sacred sites for his ancestors. Lunch was followed by a trip in the van to a neighboring Quichua village. First we saw and participated in a traditional music and dance performance and then we played soccer and volleyball with some of the people living there. After dark we sat around a campfire in a little hut and listened to a healer in the community tell folktales. We returned to Nelson’s farm for dinner and another swim in the river near our cabin.

Wednesday morning we woke up and had to say goodbye to Rukullakta, which was very hard to do, even through it was a very muddy, buggy, and primitive place! In the morning we visited a tourism office nearby and saw some old petrogliphs near a neighboring town that is currently being threatened by a Canadian oil company. Back in Archidona we stopped for a traditional lunch of fish cooked in a banana leaf over a fire, which gave it a very rich flavor. Then we all pilled in the car to drive further to the north, where oil companies have been extracting since the 1970s.

At about 5 pm we arrived in the town of Coca, which is surrounded by three contaminated rivers, lots of shacks of poor oil worker families and the actual oil fields themselves. The hotel that the school found us was very comfortable, and the entire setting was quite a contrast to where we had been staying the past 2 days! Our hotel was located near the center of town, right on one of the rivers, and it had three swimming pools and turtles, peacocks, parrots, toucans, monkeys, and guinea pigs right outside the lobby! The weather was hotter and sunnier in Coca, so we immediately jumped in the pool that afternoon. After a nice dinner at the hotel, we walked around Coca at night to get our bearings.

Thursday morning was very hot even when we woke up and our first stop in the van was the small town of Sacha, which is where a great amount of oil in Ecuador comes from. We saw where they are burning the excess natural gas, visited a few wells and walked around one of Texaco’s old dumping ponds, which is filled with heavy oil and has been leaking into rivers and the soil for years. We talked a lot with a farmer who lives right next to the mess, and the effects on the health of the people, animals and crops in the area has been disastrous. Texaco (now owned by Chevon) is still battling against the people here to avoid cleaning up the spill in a court case that has been going on since 1993.

We drove back into Coca and in the afternoon we visited three different offices to talk with the county division of the ministry of the environment, the office of tourism and a community organization of leaders fighting against oil companies. On Friday we visited two more offices involved with the Ministry of the Environment, and both were trying to stop the deforestation, illegal hunting, and rampant contamination by oil companies. We also learned a lot about Yasuni National Park, which lies on the border of Peru and in apparently filled with amazing wildlife and Indigenous communities with very little outside influence. The only way into the park is by boat from Coca and it takes a few days to get there. There are also a few oil fields within park boundaries, so it’s unclear how much longer remain pristine.

On Friday after lunch we drove back to Quito in the van for about 6 hours and it was a good time to reflect on the sharp contrast between the two sides of the Amazon that we saw.