That's all folks

Thanks so much for reading the blog and keeping up with our trip - I think this worked out as a great way to tell people about what we were doing as well as to keep something of a journal for us to keep.

Hope eveyone enjoyed what they read...

Mike and Beth

Coming Home

We finally did it. We made it home (albeit 2 weeks ago - I'm a bit delayed on the post writing)! We can officially declare the trip a successful, incredible, and amazing experience. With the exception of the banana protesters, which really wasn't that huge a deal, we had no real problems on the trip. We both only had a stomach problem once and had no problems with robberies, late or missing busses, major delays, shady characters.... nothing! Its amazing - you barely live in the US for 4 months without having some issues. I don't even know that we ever felt like we were walking into shady territory - no danger issues at all.

Anyway, the flight home was relatively uneventful. We had a quick flight from Quito to Guayaquil, a large city on the coast where most international flights seem to take off and leave from... that flight was scheduled for an hour and we landed 30 minutes early! After an hour or so layover, we took off for New York on time and landed early enough that we made it through customs and were leaving the airport by the time the plane was scheduled to land. Not a bad way to end the trip.

We got home Wednesday the 8th at about 11pm and proceeded to do things like take hot showers, drink water straight from the tap, open the fridge and eat some of the abundance of food, and speak with locals in English - all novelties after such a long trip. We woke up the next morning and got Beth down to her parents house (I unfortunately missed Matt's graduation from Harvard Law) in time to pack and get down to school by Sunday. She started Arch classes on Monday - only 4 days to decompress and reflect, certainly not enough. As for me, I have been hanging out at home, planning out how to move our stuff from Cali to VA and other assorted things like that. I leave tomorrow for a trip to VEGAS, which should be excellent, although quite different from our trip to SA.

Anyway... that's about it. We're done!

Chao,
mike.

Back to Quito

We returned to Quito on Sunday (June 5) to spend our last days relaxing, tying up loose ends, and of course, visiting the ecuator! We stayed at a hostel called The Secret Garden, a very gringofied hostel, but a nice way to finish up. The roof is a giant deck looking over Old Town Quito and the hostel has figured out all of the things that make a hostal nice (free purified water, clean bathrooms with soap and TP, nice breakfast of eggs, etc...). We spent Sunday travelling from Otavalo and then just walking around the city a bit.

Monday was a bit more interesting - we went to the ecuator, which was quite an experience... cheesy, but really interesting. We took a few local busses to get there - a total ride of about an hour and half. There is a huge park at the site where the French calculated the site of the ecuator hundreds of years ago... the park has a huge monument, a number of small museums, and LOTS of craft shops and restaurants. After spending about an hour in the park, we left to go to the site of the REAL ecuator (the french were off by 300m, but they don't tell you that in the main park). The real ecuator park is pretty small and is behind... but what they lack in glammour, they make up for by having cool science experiments. You get to test the coriolis effect, balance an egg on a nail head, and see all sorts of sun clocks. We also got to see a shruken head and a poster with the 10 steps to shrink a head.

Our last full day in Quito was pretty uneventful - we walked around Old Town Quito for the morning and then went to a Turkish bathhouse to steam and sauna and jacuzzi for the afternoon. And thats it. Our last day!

I'll write about the flight home a bit later.

mike.

Leaving the Farm and Otavalo

We left the farm on Saturday morning (June 4th) and took the bus back to Otavalo... the ride was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that I had to stand for about an hour and I was a freaking giant. I was next to a few indiginous people who must have been at most 5 feet tall. It was definately good for my self esteem.

Anyway, Otavalo was a pretty great town. On Saturdays, they have this giant crafts fair there... and I mean giant. They actually have other stuff for the locals - animal and food markets - but we spent most of our time at the crafts fair. The town itself is known for its weavings, so you see lots of sweaters, tablecloths, hats, etc... And everything is gorgeous. We probably spent about 3 hours wandering around the stalls and topping off our souvenirs - we still had a few family members to buy for. We spent the rest of the day in an internet cafe, catching up on the 3 weeks of email that we missed while on the farm... its amazing how 3 hours of emailing can get really tiring.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat before falling asleep pretty early (hey, we were still on farm time)...

mike.

Our life on the farm

Life on the farm was good - no complaining from us!

First, we lived in this amazing house on the farm that the owner (Jose) had Patricio build for him. It is a more or less circular house, built out of wood with all of the structure exposed on the inside. There are two levels, on with living area and a bedroom with bunkbeds and an upstairs with a large bedroom and balcony. The whole place was very bright and open - a great place to relax after work. The only complaint about the living was the fact that there was a veritable roach motel in the place. It was infested with cochroaches.... that and the shower was cold, but that wasn't bad as it was pretty hot during the day.

The days weren't too bad - our daily schedule was something like this:
7:30 - breakfast
8-12 work
12 - lunch
12:30-1:30 break time (its too hot to work in the day - that and lunch is huge! and you need to digest)
1:30-4 work
4-6:30 free time
6:30 dinner
7 on free time

We usually went to bed by 9 and woke up between 6 and 7 with the sun, which was really nice. Beth did yoga for an hour or more most mornings, which made her really happy.

In terms of work, we did a little of everything - they were good at keeping things varied so we didn't get bored - we weeded small plants, we weeded with a hoe for bigger plants, we planted yuca, we picked oranges, we dug holes for bamboo supports, we made a bed to plant bamboo plants in, we put compost on plants, we built a garden, we picked and cleaned coffee, we shucked beans out of a pod (1000s of them), we rebuilt a dirt wall that had collapsed in the rain, etc... Everything. Some days were pretty darn hard, leaving us exhausted for the rest of teh day, while some others were pretty chill, with not much harder than weeding small beds of plants and picking oranges.

The food was amazing - we are both amazed with Irma's cooking considering where she lives, what she has to cook with (in terms of food and pots), and her variety in recipes with 5 base ingredients. Breakfast and lunch almost never repeated - breakfast was anything from fresh milk and fry bread to avena to tea to empanadas, lunch was usually rice and beans of some sort, sometimes with a bit of meat (chicken, usually), with a side of fried plantains or a salsa or salad of some sort, while dinner was always a soup. Even the soups varied - some with yuca, some potatoes, some with carrots or onions, etc.... and always with ají (chile pepper).

When we had time to relax, we generally read and played cards - I read every book we had, including some terrible books in english that were already there. Beth, luckily, reads a bit slower than me and still had a bit left in a good book when we came back... Beth also drew, wrote in her journal, did yoga, etc...

The only really notable story from the farm is that Irma got sick for a few days and the two of them had to leave for a few days, making us the caretakers. We had to chase the pigs into their pens and feed them, we had to make food for ourselveds (which was far harder than it sounds), etc... it was quite a few days. Luckily the farm never burned down!

Anway, my butt is starting to hurt from sitting in front of the computer for too long.

More later!

mike.

The farm...

The farm itself was amazing in many ways. It was in the middle of a cloud forest in the Andes, which means that there was often afternoon clouds just over our heads (think San Francisco), we were in the mountains, and you can grow tons of tropical fruits. The farm itself was also in the middle of nowhere - the closest phone to make international calls was 1 hour away by bus - the one time we went there, they only had 2 $5 phone cards and that was it.... After that, the next phone was 4 hours by bus. Talk about being out there!

Generally speaking, the farm is owned by Jose Cueva, who lives in Ecuador and works with organic farms in general, although we never met him, so I don't know exactly what he does. Day to day, the farm is run by Patricio and Irma, who live on the farm, work there, oversee the workers (when there are any) and the volunteers.

The farm is pretty small - 17 acres in all and 100% organic. They mostly grow fruits, but have a little of everything there:
Pineapple, oranges, mandarins, pitahaya (I don't know what this is either, it wasn't in season), coffee, mangos, papaya, yuca, beans, canaballa (used to fertilize other plants), corn, plantains, 3 pigs, 3 cows, chickens, and guinnea pigs.

In terms of work, Patricio and Irma were the only permanent workers... Patricio in the fields and Irma handled the cooking, animals, and anything around the house. For the first week we were there, some cousins were there to work, but it sounds like they only come for a few weeks here and there, several times a year. Aside from that, the only workers are volunteers. While we were there, there was one other volunteer... the day before we left another showed up. It sounds like they have at least one volunteer about 50-70% of the time.

Needless to say, there are basically no power tools on the farm with the exception of a weed wacker - all tilling, plowing, weeding, etc... is done by hand and sweat. Also, I would say that most of the food that we ate on the farm was grown there. They did buy some vegetables from the truck that came around once a week, but mostly we consisted on what they grew there (and rice and beans).

thats about it for description of the farm... now for a description of our work there...

mike.

Getting to the farm

So getting to the farm was one of the better bus adventures that we have had. We stayed in Quito for a night, taking a 7:30am bus out the next morning to Otavalo, a small city about 2 hours north of Quito (more on Otavalo later - it has an amazing crafts market). As soon as we got to the bus station, we bought a ticket for the 10am bus to Garcia Morena, the closest pueblo to the farm. Well... we got on the bus and we really went into the middle of nowhere.

The bus wound its way through the Andes on a dirt road, dropping about 3000 feet over 4 hours... We went through one or two small pueblos over the course of the trip - really nothing at all but mountainous farmland.

Our directions to the farm were something like this: take the farm towards Garcia Moreno, get off at "La Playa de Garcia Moreno", just before you start going uphill to Garcia. There will be a small store there painted red, with a coca cola sign. Take the road to the left, walk 1km and you will find the farm through a bamboo gate. If you get lost, ask for Jose's farm. Wow. That's pretty rough, considering there are random stores every 5 to 10 miles and all of them have a coca cola sign. The bus was also packed with people in the aisles, on the roof, etc... and we were in the last row of the bus. We only made it there by the kindness of a lady sitting next to beth who pointed our stop out to us (we would have never found it!)... and the bus was so packed, that we had to open the window next to me and climb out the window to get out. Talk about an entrance to the farm.

Sure enough, when we got off the bus we asked for Jose's farm and were pointed in teh right direction! What a trip though... clibming out the back of a bus in the middle of no where at the store with the coke sign.

mike.