Wanderlust

Gina. Bahia, Ecuador.

Since there had been a few days of on-and-off rain in Bahia, Clay decided that the boys didn’t need to water the trees on Thursday, so instead he decided to go on what we thought was going to be a pleasant morning hike through the hills collecting seeds from some of the native trees that they would then plant in the fall. I decided to tag along since I like hiking, collecting things, and being outside. It was a very hot morning, but I still suited up with my sun hat, long sleeved light-weight shirt, and bandana that is embedded with permethrin (a bug repellent) that I like to wear around my neck so I don’t have to put DEET on my face.

We caught a truck to the same beach area where I went with the kids for our bird watching hike. The land belongs to Ramone, the Bioregional Education teacher and a friend of Clay’s. The truck ride was a fun experience since we actually stood in the back of the truck. These are a common mode of transportation around Ecuador—a regular pick-up truck with a wooden fence built up around the bed of the truck. It was exciting and a bit scary. The Ecuadorian roads are full of pot holes, and even though the drivers are pretty good at swerving around most of them, there were a couple of jostling moments where we all stumbled around the back for a minute. The best part of the ride was when we drove along the beach. It was really a beautiful view with a big, empty white sand beach, cliffs, giant rocks sticking up out of the sand, and the receding waves of the ocean. Steve and I were both a bit sad that we couldn’t spend more time on the beach and instead started right up a very steep, dusty hill trail.

The first bunch of seeds we found were in cow poo. I guess the cows eat the seeds but they either can’t digest them at all or can’t digest them fully, so there were just piles of golf ball sized seed pods that were basically collected for us since they were in neat little poo piles. I let the boys handle collecting these seeds and instead wandered around the path a little looking at the giant mud mounds that were at the base and in the branches of a handful of trees. Clay later explained to me that they were actually termite mounds. Most of them just looked like piles of dark mud, but later on in the day I found one that must have been under construction or recently broken because I could see the tunnel holes as well as some tiny, finger-like mud parts that must have been the beginnings of new tunnels.

After the boys had collected a bunch of the poo-seeds, we continued on through the hills following the same path I’d taken with the kids. Now, Steve and I went into this hike thinking it was going to be a normal half-day of work, finishing just around noon in time to get back, take showers, and grab a cheap set lunch at one of the restaurants or grab some fruit and vegetables and a loaf of bread at the market before it shuts down around one. We knew that we would be hiking through, back to Bahia, and then catching a bus, but we didn’t know just how far and difficult this would be. We ended up not getting out of the hills until around 3:30. I was very tired, hungry, dirty, and unhappy. I just don’t appreciate not being given all of the information I need. Important points that weren’t revealed to us were that we would be hiking way past lunch, that a large part of the hike would not be on a real trail, so we would be bushwhacking through walls of vines and very tall grasses. If I would have known this all beforehand it would’ve have been a big deal. I would have brought more water and food. As it was we only brought a little bread for a snack since we were told it would be a normal day and we’d be back for lunch. I honestly don’t know if Clay just underestimated how long it would take us or what. We did stop a few times to collect seeds or rest that I’m sure added to the amount of time we were out there. But we were going out there to collect seeds, so that time should have been factored in. Anyway, I was mad. And Steve was mad. And we were so tired and hungry that towards the end we started stumbling over all of the vines and roots and everything else. It was also ridiculously hot and humid outside which just added to our general discomfort.

But on the happier side of things we collected a lot of different kinds of seeds and saw bugs and plants that were really interesting. I got some pictures of this crazy grasshopper that was so big and colorful that I actually stopped along a very steep dusty downhill slope to first ask Steve if I was real, and then to take photos. This was one of the last sections of the trip which was basically just sliding down a dusty hill on our butts because it was so steep and so overgrown with branches and vines that it would be impossible to try to walk down. But it was a really cool grasshopper—blue, yellow, and red with spikes on its legs an almost as big as my hand. I also got pictures of a giant spider with baby spiders in its web, a walking stick that was hanging out in Steve’s lap when we stopped for a snack, and a wasp nest we had to walk under along the trail. I saw tons of butterflies, one kind was big and beautiful with bright reddish orange spots on its wings, but they were all too fast and skittish for me to try to get a picture of. But they were really lovely.

By the time we caught the bus back to the house we got quick showers which weren’t even that refreshing since I was literally soaking wet from the hike. I didn’t feel better until I was dry and in clean clothes. Then we walked around town until we found the one restaurant that was still open, even though they were no longer serving the set lunch at 4 o’clock. I ended up getting a not-so-good shrimp and rice (it was really salty) because they were out of my first two meal choices and a really good watermelon juice. When we got back to the apartment I laid down in the hammock and slept until it was dark outside. It was a very long day. I guess I’ve learned from this experience that other people, even people who are supposed to be ‘in charge,’ aren’t always organized and/or considerate of other people and I should ask a lot more questions.

Gina. Bahia, Ecuador

It’s been almost two weeks since we arrived in Bahia, and I’ve grown really fond of this town. It’s just an all-around pleasant place to be. People are friendly—saying hello and how are you as you walk down the street; the food is cheap—bananas cost $0.3 a piece, a set lunch with juice, choice of soup, and choice of meat $1.50, a loaf of fresh baked bread $0.75; and the weather is pleasant. Bahia is located on a very tiny peninsula (it’s about 4 blocks wide at the tip) with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Rio Chone on the other. The river is home to mangrove reforestation projects, shrimp farms (including the world’s only certified organic shrimp farm), and a giant frigate bird colony as well as lots of other bird species. Just a short boat and bus ride away is the beautiful, sandy beach town of Canoa where there’s good surfing and lots of beachfront bars. Bahia has a couple of small beaches that are nice to sit around and have lunch or relax, but the real beach life is in Canoa which is fine by me… it means less tourists, less crime, and less noisy nightlife.

Planet Drum is nicely situated in the center of town, just a block away from the daily market that serves all of our produce needs (as well as seafood and meat). We splurged Sunday and bought an entire chicken for $5. It was very good which is a relief because buying chicken that’s just sitting on a table seemed a little scary at first, but it didn’t smell funny or look weird, so all was well. Every morning I have a giant bowl of fruit (pineapple, cantaloupe, kiwis, and bananas) with strawberry yogurt (the yogurt here is more liquidy than at home, which I actually like better). And usually Steve buys a warm loaf of bread from the bakery two houses down.

Originally I wasn’t going to help out with Planet Drum, but it turns out that there’s not much for me to do around Bahia. There are various volunteer opportunities (including Rio Muchacho Organic Farm which I want to go visit some time soon) but nothing that’s cheap and where I could still stay in the Planet Drum apartment with Steve. So we’ve worked it out where I come along to the sites they’re watering that day and work on mapping them and trying to record where there are dead plants or where stakes are missing. I’m also taking photos of the different trees they plant in order to try to put together some sort of tree identification packet, and I help out in the green house with watering, making dirt, replanting saplings, and weeding. It’s been pretty fun, actually. We only work half days—from 8 until noon, 5 days a week—so Steve and I have the afternoons and weekends to do our own thing which, unfortunately, is proving a little difficult since Bahia is a very long bus ride (or 3) from most everything else of interest. I think next weekend I’m going to go back to Puerto Lopez to do the Isla de la Plata trip and finally see the boobies! Steve might come with me for the weekend just for company, but his poor stomach won’t make the 1 ½ boat ride to the island.

We’re spending our free time looking into what we want to do once we leave here (our planned departure date is August 13^th). We have to be back in Lima for our September 2^nd plane back to the States, so we need to plan our last touristy adventures carefully so that we’ll be back in time. We’re especially looking into jungle adventure tours to the rainforest—something that’s been a must for us and this trip. We found a few promising looking tour operators, so hopefully we’ll have that all booked and ready to soon. We’ve also started looking into volunteer opportunities for China. It seems really early to do this, but I think we’re realizing more and more that China is going to be difficult to get around in with no knowledge of Mandarin or how to read Chinese symbols, so we think it’d be a good idea to line up a one month volunteering opportunity for right when we arrive so that we can take some Mandarin courses and get to know Chinese customs a little bit before heading off on our own. But it’s been really hard so far to find anything that doesn’t cost loads of money. It boggles my mind that they cost so much. Something like the panda reserve opportunities I understand since you get to play with pandas, so it’s more like a touristy thing than grunt labor, but paying $2,000 to volunteer as an English teacher is insane! Insane! I just don’t get it. But we’re going to try putting feelers out on some of the travel websites (like Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Forum and Bootsnall) to see if anyone can recommend opportunities that are more in our budget (how about free like Planet Drum!).

I’m not sure if I ever actually explained what Planet Drum does (and I’m really only finding out piecemeal myself). The facts: They’re a San Francisco based organization whose project in Bahia is based around reforesting the hillsides where El Nino flooding and then a massive earthquake caused mudslide and severe damage to the hills, river, and the community. They’ve acquired various tracts of land (I’m fuzzy on whether they own them or if the owners are just letting them reforest the land… I know there are contracts about people not cutting down the trees, so maybe it’s the latter) and they plant native trees before the rainy season (winter—which even though we’re still technically South of the ecuator, they’re on the same summer/winter schedule as the Northern Hemisphere, so yay for being back in summer!) and water them during the dry season (what we’re doing). They also own a green house where they plant seeds they’ve collected and nurture the baby trees until it’s planting time again. Somewhere in there they look for new sites and they also run an ecological school program where kids sign up for 4 hours of ecological courses a week per school term (I think they have 3 terms a year, so 2 small breaks instead of one big summer break) including field trips and nutritional information.

Since the devastation after the earthquake Bahia has tried to rebuild itself as an Eco-city. They have become a model of sustainability with the city-wide recycling and composting programs, the replanting the mangroves and the hillsides, organic farms, and eco-tourism programs. After seeing Peru and a little of the Ecuadorian coast, it really is remarkable just how clean the streets, air, and beaches are in and around Bahia. Walking on the beach was an olfactory nightmare in Puerto Lopez—trash and dead fish from the fishermen was everywhere on the beaches and in the streets.

I like it here. There are still lots of mosquitoes (I have the bumps on my feet to prove it. They love my feet.) and it’s painfully hot sometimes, but if I was more diligent with the bug spray the mosquitoes wouldn’t bother me as much and you can walk 5 blocks to the ocean during the hottest time of day and get an amazing breeze so you barely notice the heat. It’s a nice place. A good vacation from our vacation and a chance to get to know the people of Ecuador a little bit better.