More about life at la hesperia

  La hesperia, Ecuador
Saturday, July 7, 2007

Hola

Important news first - last three games of gringos v equatorians - its three nil to the gringos (an unprecedented run), including a mammoth 2 hour marathon on wednesday which we won 7-4 (Hughes with another four to his tally and two in each of the previous games - i really am a goal machine!)

Well the dry seasons strated with a bang; literally in a couple of weks gone from almost constant rain every afternoon and evening to neding to water teh veggie garden twice a day. Its frickin boiling here, which of course means I´ve gone straight to red, did not pass brown, and am now constantly covered in factor 45 and DEET - a nice little mixture.

Because of the change of seasons the work has chnaged aswell - we´re basically working on improviong the infrastructure in time for the next wet season when we can plant again. One of these jobs is working on the building at the entrance to the reserve which they want to change into a shop, Unfortunately for us these structures all need roofs, roofs made of bamboo, roofs made of bamboo that needs to be split and claened, roofs made of bamboo that needs to be split and cleaned by us. This involves trekking dwon to the bamboo pile at the reserve entrance, spenidn the morning wielding an axe to split it (bloody tough stuff bamboo) and then walking the 1.6k with a 200m ascent back to the farm for lunch. Then repeating in the afternoon - really really not easy. Though to be fair actually only done that for two days - just about all I can manage in a week.

a. big load bamboo

 

b. which we then split

 

c. which then you clean

 

d. and clean

 

e. then stick up here to make a roof

Then theres a structure at a higjh point in the reserve where volunteers will be able to go and spend a night and then do two days of planting without needing to keep coming back down to the farm for grub, showers, sleep and all those mundane things that get in the way of work.
 

f. view from the new campsite

 

g. shower under the tree

 

h. big pit for - u guessed it

The job isn´t helped by having to stop halfway up the walk one day to fish out a nasty caterpillar hitching a ride inside your trousers; this resulted in a nasty rash for a few days, swiftly followed by hte same leg getting hammered in the football game and then a nice big gash down the thigh the following day (tho that was kinda my fault - I jumped up to get an orange and landed on a rather sharp branch) - poor leg.

Other exciting news is that the gringos have won two games in a row in the increasingly grudge wednesday matches. And yes, before you ask the Hughes was on the scoresheet twice in both games. With the sunny weather the pond is a must for a post match bath, and we even managed to persuade a couple of the ecuadorians kids to join us (well ok we threw one of them in).

Other work at the reserve is that they are buying a building in the local community to turn into an adult education and day care centre for the locals. Hopefully these photos sum up the before and hoped for after images. We´re stil trying to raise the funding required for it, its going to cost about $15,000 in total, which the reserve simply doesn´t have at the mo. But theres lots of fund raising going on worldwide by former volunteers so hopefully the target can be reached.


 

i. the before picture

     

j. and hopefully the after

If u want to know more about the reserve, theres a newish webiste - www.volunteersecuador.com
which is a lot nicer than the previous one i sent round. 






Off to attempt the volcano again - hopefully will succeed this time - and return without falling in any lava.

chao