By Tiernan
Hi all, Tiernan here, and welcome to the first student written blog post from Ecuador!
This country is absolutely beautiful. It's like Oregon rainforests if they were 300 times greener and more humid. The first four days were a sort of "ease in" period in a tiny town called Mindo, which is about 2.5 hours northeast of Quito. We stayed in a touristy hostel (it had hot showers, walls, and beds), and the town was very small but super cute! We pretty much just went through the orientation and rules there. There was a small market there, and many of us tried our hands at haggling in Spanish (to mixed results). After that, we drove down to a plantation called "Las Delicias Banana Farm," where they had 47 hectares (116 acres) of pure banana and cocoa plants. The farm is all organic, so we learned about what that process looks like and what steps they have to take in order to protect their crops from bugs and disease. We actually did every part of the process (carrying bananas on a bamboo stick is not easy), from cutting the bananas down to washing and packaging them. The family who owned the farm is a married couple named Juancarlos and Chari, and their kids Shani (12 years old), Pamela (16 years old), Mel (18 years old), and Johan (19 years old). They were awesome, and super eager to hang out with us and teach us Ecuadorian culture. They showed us some of their traditional foods and taught us Spanish, and Steven and I taught the girls to play Go Fish, Slide, and Cabo. We were really proud of that, since neither of us speak much Spanish. By the end of the week we had all gotten really close with the family, but Erick especially seemed to click with them. They absolutely loved him, and they all made sure to exchange contact info when we left. There are already plans being formed in the group to go back there in the next few years.
We loved the family, but the bugs were extremely challenging. I would guess that the majority of our 11 group members left with over 30 mosquito/sandfly bites. My ankles and elbows got destroyed, and the itching combined with the heat in the day and at night made it pretty tough. Also, there was no hot water and the rooms were mostly bamboo huts. Our group did better than I expected honestly, and I don’t think that anyone missed a single class or activity. On Saturday we made chocolate from scratch with cocoa from the farm and turned it into milkshakes, which was a nice reward to cap off the first real week.
We left Sunday, and stopped at the beach on the way to a coastal permaculture farm. I don’t think we understood how intense the UV is on the equator, because pretty much everyone got sunburnt except for Kayla, Leila, and Sky. The farm we’re at now is Finca Mono Verde in Tabuga. It’s near the coast so there’s a nice breeze which is a relieving, especially at night. The bugs are much better here because it is very biologically diverse, meaning there’s more predators for the mosquitos. Our next stop in a week is the town of Baños, which is famous for its hot springs. We’re definitely looking forward to actually living in/near a city again, and hopefully I can get some Qui (cooked guinea pig) there. That’s all for now, but I also decided to grace you with some photos from the trip!
