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We are on the last day of our second stint of volunteering. this time in teh cloud forest on the western flanks of the andes. The farm where we have been staying is called La Hesperia and has been a biological reserve for 20 years. It is set in a fabulous location at 1,300m in a deep rivervalley surrounded by pristine cloud forest. It is a totally different set up to our previous work in Tsuraku. There were lots of volunteers from Canada, the US, Ireland, Sweden and Germany as well as several from britain. Unfortunately English was spoken rather than spanish but we did try to speak spanish at every opportunity.
Although we were twice the age of the other volunteers we all got on well and they took orders from us very willingly when they were working for us in the organic vegetable garden. We concentrated our efforts on clearing beds in the veg garden and sowing seeds in the mornings and in the afternoons we drafted bid document for funds to set up a community centre in the village. Hopefully they can raise the funds the centre will provide a pre school nursery which will free up time for mothers to undertake literacy and other training as well as grow and sell organic vegetables on the road side.
Our daily routine was breakfast at 7.30 followed by work until noon. The mornings were ususally sunny so this was the best time to be working outside. After lunch it usually rained so our work on the computor in the ofice doing the bid document saved us getting too wet! The sounds of the cloud forest at night were very similar to those of the jungle although we didn,t see so many cochroches and big insects. However there were many more tiny bighty things and mosquito nets for sleeping were essential.
Whilst we were there we spent the first weekend at the coast at Pedernales, our first time below 3,000ft since arriving in Ecuador. And also visited the mountain town of Otavalo where we had a great walk above the crater lake of a dormant volcano, see albums.
The owners of the farm Juan Pablo and Alexandra where great and we think they really apreciated the work we put in whilst we were there
Harriet and Mike
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