Thursday 1 March 2012

Bo, Eva, Gabriel and I planted tangare trees near the old volunteer house: replacing either the ones that had not made it or starting two new (but short) lines this morning. We were only able to plant 20 of the 30 planted allocated to us. Usually, each pair (one person with the machete and the other with the fence post hole digger) plants between 15 plants each but in this case we pretty much ran out of clearable space. The plants were transported using the wheelbarrow (wide and awkward) as the donkey had been used to try and get the water supply sorted.

We finished a bit early as we were only able to plant 20 of the 30 trees taken from the nursery due to lack of space and the density of foliage and fallen logs for the last new line. When we got back, we were very happy to find that we finally had water (although the power supply was still down) and most of us quickly grabbed the opportunity to have a (cold, but welcome!) shower.

Anya had managed to make it to Quito in the late morning and rang to say that she had bumped into Marcus and Axel who were only able to meet up Friday night in Quito rather than Saturday as they were having a farewell dinner with their host family before they finally flew to the Galapagos Monday. We agreed to change plans for the weekend, staying in Quito to meet up with them Friday and then going to Quilotoa the following morning.

The afternoon was spent in the tree nursery with Eva and Bo, filling plastic bags with soil in preparation for planting bamboo later.

Power was restored to us later today. If there's anything that I can say about this trip, I think I'll go back home with a new appreciation of running water (hot or cold!), a consistent electricity supply, washing machines, central heating (no home has them in Ecuador: the electricity supply isn't reliable enough) and roads that aren't closed due to landslides!