Lalo Loor in full techicolour and sounds (maybe)

  Nr Pedernales right by Equator apparently, Ecuador
Friday, September 28, 2007

Hola all

Well Ive finished in the Loor, Im now back in civilization with fast internet connections, electricity and ESPN2 - which isnt freakin working in the hostel, and even if it was the channel in its infinite wisdom has decided to show womens golf at the time of the England game this afternoon, so gawd knows what theyre going to be showing at the time of the Wales game tomorrow. May have to tune into radio wales on intraweb thing.

Got back this am having taken the night bus from Quito to be greeted by some feck squirting mustard all over my luckily already very unclean trousers, its a common tactic, some nice helpful person will then come up and offer to help clean your trousers while another feck fecks off with your feckin bag. Luckily (or not) this has already happened to about 6 people I know here so I wasnt falling for it, if my machete wasnt buried inside my boots in my rucksack the guy who offered to "help" would have been in a world of pain. The look I gave him was ore than enough to make him realise I wasnt falling for it. Anyway, no harm done, was off to the laundrette with all my clothes anyway.

Anyway back to the Loor. Heres a few photos of the place generally, the entrance, house, lovely compost toilet, shower (which had a great view of monkeys quite often)

a. welcome to the loor

e. the lad bigote

b. Lalo Loor volunteer house

c. the bog

d. the shower

We built a bridge! Not just any old crappy thing either - a proper, well hard well foundationed? sorted bamboo structure. Makes the Golden Gate and Tower both look a bit lame to be honest. Also while there we built two sets of steps to let people walk up (and down, they're multi functional steps) the steep bits of the trail. Theres a new visitor centre being constructed at the entrance to the reserve and they wanted to complete the educational trail so all visitors can use it. Its really interesting, has loads of info boards along it telling people about the dry forest. Dry forest is one of the most endangered forests in the world; theres a map showing how it has reduced over the last fifty years in Ecuador alone and its really heartbreaking. The aim of the trail is to educate people about the forest and hopefully lead to it and more like it being protected.

Anyway heres what we did:
Started with some steps, bloody hard work using an old rickety hoe in ground that hasnt had any rain for a few months.

g. sarhod steps sign

h. Needs some steps

i. voila some steps

Then onto our piece de resistance, el puente TOMUZI.

j. el puente TOMUZI

The first day trying to do this I spent attempting to make holes for the foundations using a broken machete as a chisel and a bit of bamboo as a hammer - whole day to make one and a half holes, luckily after that we managed to nick some tools from the construction area and from then on we were joined in our efforts by Lumpy (who valiantly gave his life, or handle at least, in the construction efforts, poor guy), Spikey, Spikinho and a large assortment of nails - not one of whom was either straight or non-rusty.

k. lazy git

l. almost a bridge

m. looking cool

n. its a bridge!

o. wow!

Heres the opening ceremony, we tried to get Britney to come to open it, but she was busy so we had Tom instead - look at the skilful way he almost manged to machete right through his leg aswell...

p. opening ceremony

Then for good measure just quickly built a seat and then little old me on my lonesome built some more steps. Theres loads of photos on my facebook (http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=650451331) if anybody would like to learn the finer points of constructing stuff with bamboo, think Im going to start giving classes - sure I could teach these Ecuatorians a thing or two.

q. one seat, three guys with machetes

r. gryff haydn sign

u. gryff haydn steps 3

t. gryff haydn steps 2

s. gryff haydn steps

Heres a short clip of the highlights:

v. what workmanship

The wildlife at Lalo was amazing, saw monkeys all over the place everyday, and definitely heard the howler monkeys at 4 in the morning. I made a recording of them but on my iriver and dunno how to download it, all a bit much at time this technology stuff. Saw a few snakes there, few tarantulas (all of which seemed to be dead - my favourite type of tarantula), a tortoise and loads of cows which shouldnt have been there but couldnt keep the gits out.

zc. mono (zoom in a bit)

z. tortoise

z. tortoise

za. how cute!

y. dead tarantula

There's serious poverty in the community there, we went to lunch one day ay Bigote's house, which was pretty basic (although his wife cooked the obligatory rice for lunch and it wasnt crispy - amazing). But then up on the hill overlooking the community is the house of some rich guy from Guayquil that cost more to build than the entire rest of the community. Bit bizarre. We actually ran out of rice one day and porr Bigote was a broken man "No es comida sin arroz"! So instead of for lunch having the normal potato and pasta soup followed by rice with beans and maybe tuna. That day, just had the soup, poor guy simply could not conceive of a plate without rice.

w. casa de bigote

x. big nice house on the hill

I also discovered at the Loor that deciding to take a naked early morning dip in the ocean on your last morning is not a great idea when theres millions of little bastard bugs waiting to devour you on the beach. No damage to anything strategically important but my ankle and calves look like a war zone. Doh!

It was areally good experience there, going back to basics and was really good for my Spanish as I was forced to use it. Luckily aswell there was a really cool Peace Corps volunteer in the community there who had a dvd player and electricity and everything. So Tom and I escaped a couple of nights when we felt that one more game of chess or sudoku would drive us insane. Think a low (or high) point may have been the chess piece balancing championship...

zz. chess piece stacking championships

So I'm in Quito for the weekend to futily try to see some rugby, then back to La Hesperia where Im going to persuade them that they definitely need more bridges.

Hasta luego amigos.