Or, if you e-speaka the e-spanish, 'Sendero Tres Bosques'. It's what's been taking up all my time that usually spent on witty blogging commentary, reading in a hammock or working on the farm. So, you ask, what is 'Sendero Tres Bosques' and why is it important to our humble narrator?
Well, let's turn back the page a bit. When I lived in New Zealand right after college, one of the favorite things I did was the 'Milford Trek', which is one of NZ's 7 'Great Walks of New Zealand.' Each Great Walk is basically a 3 to 4 day hike in a different ecosystem (NZ has plenty to choose from) with a well-maintained trail and bunkhouses at the end of each day to sleep in. The Milford Trek is billed as the most beautiful walk in the world, and quite frankly if it wasn't that, it was pretty damn close. The interesting thing for me was what the walks didn't offer -- no guide, no food, etc, just lodging and water and a place to cook food -- and the fact that they costed like $300 and most had more than a 3 month waiting list. With that kind of money and that kind of quantity of international hiking tourist, it was easy for the Great Walks to be successful.
The next logical step came when I was first down in Ecuador and sat in on a meeting between Andrea and her boss Joe, who were talking about establishing a forest corridor by getting the local landowners to sign agreements to be paid by the Ecuadorian govt and Conservation International to not cut down their forests. Immediately my Great Walk experience jumped to mind, and I pointed out to them that a tourist trail running through this forest corridor would be an incredible, low impact way to bring tourism, interest and money to the area.
Some 8 months later, there I was getting signed agreements from 10 different landowners to construct a trail on their properties, GPSing possble trail routes and forming two trail crews of 4 guys each to start work. So, for the last 4 weeks, I've walked 5 days a week for an average of 7 hours a day, flagging trail, clearing brush, visiting landowners and teaching the finer points of trail creation and maintenance to my two trail crews (one from Tabuga, one from nearbye Camarones). In about another month or so, we'll have a 3-day hiking trail completed that winds through the three tipes of primary forest found in our zone, Dry Tropical Forest (incredibly endangered, something like 1% remains in the world), Pre-Montane forest and Cloud Forest. Each night will be in a nicely appointed bunkroom -- first in a private house in the forest with incredible views of the ocean, owned by 3 very special older women in Tabuga, then in the reserve house wayyyyy in the jungle at Jama-Coaque Reserve, and lastly at the reserve house in Bosque Seco Lalo Loor.
Working on the trail has been an incredible experience, what with being incredibly helpful for my Spanish, beneficial for my health (waking up at 5:30am and walking 7 hours up to 2000 ft elevation will do that) and awesome for the community. Meanwhile, I've had the chance to see the rare Capuchin monkeys three times, literally hundreds of Toucans, Trogans, Motmots, Woodpeckers, Tropical Eagles, a Coati, thousands of Tarantulas, some poisonous snakes and one dead Ocelot that got hit by a car. If you don't know what any of those things are, google them! They're awesome.
With any luck, I'll incorporate as an Ecuadorian business soon and start advertising locally and internationally, somewhere in the range of $150-$200 for a 4 day hike (including the entry and exit days), food, lodging and a local guide. At the same time I'll be providing economic incentives to landowners to not cut down their remaining tropical forests (via a per-tourist payment to them), jobs for my trail crew, jobs for local young people who want to learn how to guide gringos, and a point of access into a rapidly disapearing ecosystem for folks from all over the world.
First startup business, check. Who'dathunk it'd be in Ecuador of all places?
Email with any questions!
AJ
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Farm Pets and Work
Sue and Goma eyeing each other.
Sue.
Gito.
Goma.
Not really a pet, but really cool.
The sofa moves in!
New countertop.
Fixing holes in the roof.
Professor down the well.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Visitors!
A big LO SIENTO to all that had gotten used to regular updates on this blog... I´ve fallen prey (happily) to a steady stream of visitors through our neck of the woods that shows no signs of letting up. While getting to the internet and sitting down long enough to type or post a blog and pictures is difficult while living in Tabuga even during the most tranquil of times, doing so when also trying to entertain is often physically impossible.
I write currently from the Hotel Quito, where I am whiling away a couple of hours before my step-mom Linda and step-brothers Chris and Kevin (plus a friend) fly in tonight. Just this morning, bright and early, I said goodbye to my mom, who was here for three weeks (with an 8 day Galapagos romp in the middle of it). The last two nights Andrea and I spent in Pappallacta, at a resort named Termas that has built incredible cabanas around natural hot springs.
Wow this is really choppy and non-flowy, sorry about that. While mom was in the Galapagos, enjoying all that those volcanic islands had to offer, we hosted a pair of ex-Peace Corps volunteers who started a project called the GROW initiative. Donny and Brooke were great and very happily added Jason-Andrea-Ryan's farm to their list of organic farms they've visited over the last year and a half of traveling. Check them out at http://www.growinitiative.org/environmentalconservation.
Lo and behold, right after they left we got a surprise visit from our friend Danny and his gf Polly, up from Guayaquil. Great to have everyone, and we put them all to work transplanting and macheting on the farm!
Anyhoo, Linda, Chris and Kevin get in shortly, so I'm off to pick them up and take them to Mindo and then back to Tabuga. Next up on the visitors wheel after they're gone is the world-famous Mike Morrell, followed by Jason's mom Sandy.
Oh, in addition to showing folks around I've picked up a really cool side project--or main project, or whatever you'd like to call it. Inspired by the Great Walks of New Zealand, I'm putting together a 3 night, 4 day hike through the local dry tropical forest where we live in Manabi. The land owners and reserves are already on board (the reserves being Lalo Loor and Jama-Coaque), so now its just figuring out the best route, doing a bunch of trail building and then advertising! Any thoughts or questions on this, give me a holler.
Much love to all, photos someday.
J
I write currently from the Hotel Quito, where I am whiling away a couple of hours before my step-mom Linda and step-brothers Chris and Kevin (plus a friend) fly in tonight. Just this morning, bright and early, I said goodbye to my mom, who was here for three weeks (with an 8 day Galapagos romp in the middle of it). The last two nights Andrea and I spent in Pappallacta, at a resort named Termas that has built incredible cabanas around natural hot springs.
Wow this is really choppy and non-flowy, sorry about that. While mom was in the Galapagos, enjoying all that those volcanic islands had to offer, we hosted a pair of ex-Peace Corps volunteers who started a project called the GROW initiative. Donny and Brooke were great and very happily added Jason-Andrea-Ryan's farm to their list of organic farms they've visited over the last year and a half of traveling. Check them out at http://www.growinitiative.org/environmentalconservation.
Lo and behold, right after they left we got a surprise visit from our friend Danny and his gf Polly, up from Guayaquil. Great to have everyone, and we put them all to work transplanting and macheting on the farm!
Anyhoo, Linda, Chris and Kevin get in shortly, so I'm off to pick them up and take them to Mindo and then back to Tabuga. Next up on the visitors wheel after they're gone is the world-famous Mike Morrell, followed by Jason's mom Sandy.
Oh, in addition to showing folks around I've picked up a really cool side project--or main project, or whatever you'd like to call it. Inspired by the Great Walks of New Zealand, I'm putting together a 3 night, 4 day hike through the local dry tropical forest where we live in Manabi. The land owners and reserves are already on board (the reserves being Lalo Loor and Jama-Coaque), so now its just figuring out the best route, doing a bunch of trail building and then advertising! Any thoughts or questions on this, give me a holler.
Much love to all, photos someday.
J
Monday, March 1, 2010
All Good Here!
Just want to let all blog family and friends know that Andrea and I are completely unscathed and untouched by the Chile earthquake and following tsunami. We were on the beach when there was a tsunami warning (in Canoa), but it passed at 10am before we had made up our minds to flee, so all's well that ends well! As for the quake, there was a 5 second quake in our neck of the woods yesterday morning, but not even hard enough to knock anything off the wall (or the house off the stilts) so everything good there as well.
So don't worry about us! Send money to Haiti or Chile!
Talk soon gang,
AJ
So don't worry about us! Send money to Haiti or Chile!
Talk soon gang,
AJ
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Big One
Finally, after the bare-bones apology of last blog and nothing before that for a month or so, I'm happy to bring you a full blog with pictures (oh, what pictures!) and writing (oh, the writing!) and anecdotes and stories and whatnot as well.
Our life has almost settled back into something resembling normality... almost. We still have a ton of work to do on our house -- though we've been here for almost 3 weeks, we've been traveling and entertaining visitors for pretty much all of that time, so we haven't had any time to do much more than unpack the basics. Our last visitors of this busy stretch, Andrea and Bruce from NH, left us at the Budget office in Manta yesterday, and while we were very sad to see them go, we quickly switched back to our Tabuga mindset and rushed home to see the pets. It's good to be back!
The adventures we've been having have been incredibly worth it, and we've consummated a huge tour of the country, from the cloud forests of Mindo to the climes of Otovalo, Cayambe and Latacunga, and finally back down to our coastal region as well. Let's start off the pictures!
We were incredibly busy between Christmas and New Years (yes, I'm aware that this is a theme) because we still had our friend Greg's topless 70's Land Rover to tool around in – meaning that each day was filled with trips around town and to Pedernales to take advantage our our mobility. The day/night before NYE we were invaded by a bunch of visiting friends that were on their way to Canoa for New Years, so we cooked up a big meal, played a bunch of cards and then decided to drive to Tabuga beach around midnight to light our Christmas tree (and a bunch of driftwood) on fire. Notable that I made it to the beach and back in the Land Rover that had no headlights – I had to drive with my headlamp on, very very slowly. But having a car, headlights or not, just opens up so many great possibilities.
Andrea and hummingbirds in Mindo:
Our big group of visitors at the Middle of the World!
Pictures from Otovalo, the biggest market in South America:
In-room fire service at the Casa Sol in Otovalo
Casa Sol
Bus station, Cotocachi
Llama in Casa Sol
Cascades near Casa Sol, Otovalo
The workout deck at Black Sheep Inn, outside of Latacunga
Man and wife working together
The high Andes!
Our life has almost settled back into something resembling normality... almost. We still have a ton of work to do on our house -- though we've been here for almost 3 weeks, we've been traveling and entertaining visitors for pretty much all of that time, so we haven't had any time to do much more than unpack the basics. Our last visitors of this busy stretch, Andrea and Bruce from NH, left us at the Budget office in Manta yesterday, and while we were very sad to see them go, we quickly switched back to our Tabuga mindset and rushed home to see the pets. It's good to be back!
The adventures we've been having have been incredibly worth it, and we've consummated a huge tour of the country, from the cloud forests of Mindo to the climes of Otovalo, Cayambe and Latacunga, and finally back down to our coastal region as well. Let's start off the pictures!
We were incredibly busy between Christmas and New Years (yes, I'm aware that this is a theme) because we still had our friend Greg's topless 70's Land Rover to tool around in – meaning that each day was filled with trips around town and to Pedernales to take advantage our our mobility. The day/night before NYE we were invaded by a bunch of visiting friends that were on their way to Canoa for New Years, so we cooked up a big meal, played a bunch of cards and then decided to drive to Tabuga beach around midnight to light our Christmas tree (and a bunch of driftwood) on fire. Notable that I made it to the beach and back in the Land Rover that had no headlights – I had to drive with my headlamp on, very very slowly. But having a car, headlights or not, just opens up so many great possibilities.
Andrea and hummingbirds in Mindo:
Our big group of visitors at the Middle of the World!
Pictures from Otovalo, the biggest market in South America:
In-room fire service at the Casa Sol in Otovalo
Casa Sol
Bus station, Cotocachi
Llama in Casa Sol
Cascades near Casa Sol, Otovalo
The workout deck at Black Sheep Inn, outside of Latacunga
Man and wife working together
The high Andes!
Quilatoa Lake (kind of like Crater Lake in Oregon)
On the walk back from Quilatoa... chasm
On the walk back from Quilatoa... chasm
The trail
Once more to Isla de la Plata!
So that's where we've been for the past two weeks or so... and explains our happy tiredness! I'll also take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about our Christmas and New Years Eve, both of which were spent inside the friendly confines of the Tabuga town proper. First, here are some pictures taken when Andrea and I dressed up as the Christmas Fairy and Santa Claus and attended the pre-school Christmas party. It's hot and sweaty work being Santa in the tropics, but as pretty much everything I do down here is hot and sweaty work I paid no mind and just slapped on some sunglasses.
Christmas Eve we spent in the traditional way: drinking, dancing and hanging around with friends until midnight, at which point we hugged everyone a Merry Christmas and then were served a big Christmas dinner around 1am, followed by more drinking and dancing. Needless to say we were pretty wiped out on Christmas Day, so we spent the day drinking homemade eggnog (I found a recipe I could make in our blender), playing scrabble and inviting the neighboring kids to come in and pick up a little Christmas grab-bag we'd prepared for each of them. Pretty damn special!
So we were pretty tired when New Years Eve rolled around... especially since we spent the day driving to Canoa (only breaking down three times) to return the Land Rover, and didn't get back to Tabuga until around 5pm. No time for a nap – we showered and walked uptown to a party that was reminiscent of Christmas Eve: plenty of dancing, drinking and waiting until midnight. NYE was spiced up by a Quincenera going on downtown – the Ecua-equivalent of a Sweet Sixteen Party, and this one had free bottles of rum getting passed around to everyone in attendance.
At midnight it was time to burn the effigies. That's right, burn the effigies. All over Ecuador effigies get burned on New Years Eve, but there are apparently some translation problems inside the country because in the mountains the effigies that are burned are evil people or beings, to banish their energy for the year ahead, while on the coast your burn respected loved ones to receive their blessings. Being the good Tabugans that we are, we put together an effigy of my dad (we had found the perfect paper mache head in Pedernales or else we probably wouldn't have even thought of it) and brought him to the party. I must admit that it felt very, very strange when the effigies got thrown into a pile and lit, but as dad had very good company in the pile I got into the spirit and enjoyed the tradition.
After the burning, it was another late 1am dinner and then dancing in the middle of town until we could dance no more. At around 4:30am, Andrea looked over from a little kid she was dancing with to see me sleeping in my chair, like a true Ecuadorian... and that's how late we made it. A great way to greet the New Year!
I'm glad to report I typed this whole blog from our bamboo-walled farm house, which is nice and cool and not too buggy now that we've got some good mosquito netting up over the large bay windows. It's been raining the whole time – the rain (and the rainy season) started about a month ago and has come pretty much every day. Amazing to see the quick changes as the cracked and brown countryside immediately sprouted bunches of lush weeds and grass – and now it's up to our waist where there used to be only dirt and I'm planning on spending a day or two with a machete to reclaim our driveway. The rain also brought a cornucopia of birds to our farm, including Toucans on rare occasions that are crazy beautiful.
Once more to Isla de la Plata! 
So that's where we've been for the past two weeks or so... and explains our happy tiredness! I'll also take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about our Christmas and New Years Eve, both of which were spent inside the friendly confines of the Tabuga town proper. First, here are some pictures taken when Andrea and I dressed up as the Christmas Fairy and Santa Claus and attended the pre-school Christmas party. It's hot and sweaty work being Santa in the tropics, but as pretty much everything I do down here is hot and sweaty work I paid no mind and just slapped on some sunglasses.
Christmas Eve we spent in the traditional way: drinking, dancing and hanging around with friends until midnight, at which point we hugged everyone a Merry Christmas and then were served a big Christmas dinner around 1am, followed by more drinking and dancing. Needless to say we were pretty wiped out on Christmas Day, so we spent the day drinking homemade eggnog (I found a recipe I could make in our blender), playing scrabble and inviting the neighboring kids to come in and pick up a little Christmas grab-bag we'd prepared for each of them. Pretty damn special!
So we were pretty tired when New Years Eve rolled around... especially since we spent the day driving to Canoa (only breaking down three times) to return the Land Rover, and didn't get back to Tabuga until around 5pm. No time for a nap – we showered and walked uptown to a party that was reminiscent of Christmas Eve: plenty of dancing, drinking and waiting until midnight. NYE was spiced up by a Quincenera going on downtown – the Ecua-equivalent of a Sweet Sixteen Party, and this one had free bottles of rum getting passed around to everyone in attendance.
At midnight it was time to burn the effigies. That's right, burn the effigies. All over Ecuador effigies get burned on New Years Eve, but there are apparently some translation problems inside the country because in the mountains the effigies that are burned are evil people or beings, to banish their energy for the year ahead, while on the coast your burn respected loved ones to receive their blessings. Being the good Tabugans that we are, we put together an effigy of my dad (we had found the perfect paper mache head in Pedernales or else we probably wouldn't have even thought of it) and brought him to the party. I must admit that it felt very, very strange when the effigies got thrown into a pile and lit, but as dad had very good company in the pile I got into the spirit and enjoyed the tradition.
After the burning, it was another late 1am dinner and then dancing in the middle of town until we could dance no more. At around 4:30am, Andrea looked over from a little kid she was dancing with to see me sleeping in my chair, like a true Ecuadorian... and that's how late we made it. A great way to greet the New Year!
I'm glad to report I typed this whole blog from our bamboo-walled farm house, which is nice and cool and not too buggy now that we've got some good mosquito netting up over the large bay windows. It's been raining the whole time – the rain (and the rainy season) started about a month ago and has come pretty much every day. Amazing to see the quick changes as the cracked and brown countryside immediately sprouted bunches of lush weeds and grass – and now it's up to our waist where there used to be only dirt and I'm planning on spending a day or two with a machete to reclaim our driveway. The rain also brought a cornucopia of birds to our farm, including Toucans on rare occasions that are crazy beautiful.
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