No blog post since Dec 2?

I have no excuse, except that mi jefa has kept me so incredibly busy working on the farm that there's been precious little time to do anything else.



So then: sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm finally blogging again from the temperate climes of Canoa, Ecuador -- just declined to go ocean kayaking in favor of sitting in front of the Surf Shak for a couple more uncomplicated hours. We're finally faced with a couple days of downtime due to Andrea's sister Angela (and her friend Anne) visiting and the necessary guiding that comes with it. Great times! Chilling in Canoa has been refined to an art form by Andrea after three years of doing so, so showing a couple of pasty-white New Englanders our sunny alcove is not complicated or stressful in the least.



Getting the farm house ready for their visit was, however, but it was great that they were coming as it made us jam a whole bunch of work into a small bit of time, and I'm happy with the results. For those of you who don't know (as there hasn't been a concerted effort to get the word out), Andrea, Jason and their friend Ryan were able to purchase a 25-acre farm in Tabuga two months ago with the intent of eventually starting a sustainable-living ecotourism project. It's a beautiful piece of land with thrilling natural topography, and already had a house (with electricity) on it when they bought it. After a bit of fixing up, it was ready to live in, so about a week and a half ago we did just that and settled down to building the basic amenities: an indoor shower, a dry composting toilet, connecting the water, etc. Oh, and putting up mosquito netting as the bugs this time of year (moving from dry summer to wet winter) are bountiful.



Got most everything done before I had to bus out to Mindo to meet up with the girls, which was a load of both of our minds. Mindo was great -- definitely a place I'll revisit with some of my own visitors, as we cheaply enjoyed thousands of meters of ziplining above a tropical cloud forest, enjoyed both a hummingbird and butterfly sanctuary, and white water rafted in inner tubes as a guide kept us moving along the low river by basically running the whole thing in rubber boots.



Then back to Tabuga for a couple days, the second night of which we hosted a dinner party for our closest Tabugan friends which ended on a BEER PONG note -- as expected, our local handyman was a dead ringer at this game he'd never played and stayed on the table all night long, dancing and psyching out opponents the entire time.



To sum up, all good -- and I'll post pictures to prove it soon. We're off to Otovalo, the biggest market in South America, to check out the scene, the textiles and leathers and whatnot, and then picking up Andrea's psuedo-godparents in Quito and taking them up to the Andes before driving (they're renting a car) back to the coast. All in all we've started 2010 incredibly, and are enjoying the guests! More info and updates on the farm as it progresses.



Paz


J