Stepping into Ecuador, we headed straight to the famous cemetery of Tulcan. A topiary garden cemetery, decorated with large trees (shrubs) shaped as animals, angels and gods, it’s an impressive and unusual cemetery, pleasant to walk around, gazing at all the wonderful tree characters populating the cemetery and adding an Alice in Wonderland feel to the place of maze like paths and wonderful tree characters.
As we travelled through the highlands near the border of Colombia, we encountered arid green-less mountains which receive very little water and have little life living in its vicinity apart from the odd village here and there. Black communities have formed here, people saying because it reminded their ancestors of their homeland, before they were bought over from Africa as slaves by the Spanish.
We aimed to get to Quito (the Capital of Ecuador), the same day that we left Colombia and encountered on the road an environmental engineer who chatted to us about the political situation in Ecuador. The current government is a socialist leaning government in line with Chavez from Venezuela. Correa, the President, has been voted in for a second period in elections that took place in 2009. Our new friend commented to us that like with any government, there has been a mixed response to its programs. He believes that there are more than half who are against the President. He mentioned that most public sector employees have been banned from joining a union and instead, associations have been put in their place but don’t have the same power as unions and don't permit workers to participate in collective barganing. Correa later on this year will call for a referendum to vote for or against his policies and programs. The engineer believed that he will loose the referendum. He also mentioned that many private companies have become public in the last year or so e.g. electricity, energy, petrol and mining companies, and that this has been good in terms of the country recuperating its resources. This means that the government can control the prices set for customers and that the state can manage the activities of the company (especially to do with environmental issues) and not necessarily choose money over people or environment.
Ecuador reminds me a little of Guatemala, maybe due to the fact that there is a large indigenous population (approx. 25%), similarly to Guatemala. The rest of the population is mestizo with a small minority been Spanish or of African descent. The indigenous people seem to be much more integrated in society here than in other countries in America. Their culture appears to be celebrated rather than condemned and is seen throughout the Capital just as much as in rural communities.
There is a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables available on the street which is extremely cheap but prepared food on the other hand, is heavily fried with a lot of meat. There’s a lot of meat available and I can safely say that it’s so far the least vege friendly country I have come across in terms of street food. There is a lot of cassava and corn as well as potatoes available and many new fruits which I have never seen before including naranjilla which is part of the tomato family but tastes sweet and is excellent as a juice.
The ancient part of Quito is a treasure, which has been recognised as such by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage. It has beautiful, well-kept colonial buildings, pleasant plazas, numerous churches and palaces. Cobbled lane-ways which come alive especially at the end of the week, folkloric music emitting out of almost every hole in the wall café/restaurant which invites passers by to taste the traditional food on offer, not to mention the warm alcohol called canelazo available that is made from fruit such as naranjilla.
We visited the middled of the world while in Quito, where the Northern and Southern hemispheres meet and you can have one foot in both hemispheres at the same time. An exciting feeling for some reason!
Our main aim for heading to Quito was to reach a farm that we had decided to volunteer at. The farm is located in the beautiful cloud forest of Nanegalito, a beautiful landscape of thick rainforest with a rich diversity (one of the most diverse of the planet and one of the most deforested of Ecuador, having lost near 80% of its original vegetation) of birds, plants and animals that many come to observe and admire.
We stayed at the farm for two weeks and helped out the small family of only mum and daughter on their new farm. They had exchanged the 33 hectare property for another much smaller piece of land located in Quito with an old man who couldn’t continue to take care of the large property. This occurred three years ago and they have since planted an abundance of coffee plants, some vegetables as well as reforesting the land with native flora and practicing permaculture and biodynamics. Their objective is to help conserve the area using an organic, ecological philosophy and alternative food production. The plan is to turn the farm into a meditation centre in the nearby future. They plant according to the moon, meaning that there are certain days that are perfect for planting certain flora and others when it’s not advised. They had recently started to apply biodynamics which I knew very little about before volunteering there (and am still a little confused!) but from what I understand, is a practice of agriculture that believes that nature holds a spirit and that this spirit needs to be nurtured and energised for nature to produce well.
We were given the task to make circles around the young coffee plants located on steep terraces that they had built with a lot of overgrown grass. This meant clearing all plants and grass surrounding the coffee plants to make a small circle so as to give the plant some breathing space and also enable to see the plant and not accidentally chop it in half. It took us a week to finish the circles and thank god we finished as I was getting visuals of the process every time I closed my eyes. We also sprinkled biol on the small coffee plants which is a biodynamic concoction of sugar, milk, yeast and nitrogen to give extra nourishment to the plants. After finishing making circles, we cut the long grass that was left covering the slopes using a whipper sniper, destroying everything in my way when I was let loose with the machine (including one coffee plant, doh!).
We also dug holes where the coffee plants had died, with a special tool that’s damn heavy to carry around but makes the task much easier than with a shovel. The mum (Ximena) does most of the work on her own apart from the occasional help from volunteers like us and a 75 year old man who previously owned the property many years ago and ironically, is now helping to replant what he had once deforested. The large property is situated on a heavy slope with a long and steep driveway joining the house to the dirt road. Forest scatters around the house with creeks and small waterfalls within the vicinity. The place is tranquillity at its maximum with the nearest neighbours one kilometre away and the main road quite a few kilometres away, all you can hear are birds and the sound of the rain in the afternoon, during the rainy season.
Ximena is a very serene, admirable woman with a lot of gung-ho and is a large source of knowledge upon many different topics. She is a vet that uses homeopathy to treat animals and is self-taught in biodynamics, ayurvedic medicine, plumbing, woodwork and electricity amongst many other things. A she-woman!
From Ximena, we learnt that the government is wanting to transfer to a mining based economy (being a socialist based government who needs funds to support its programs) and is currently searching for resources to excavate. They have a law in place which states that the bottom soil of any property belongs to the government therefore giving them the right to take any property if they see fit. This means that there is little room for conservation of the environment. Farmers, we were told, receive very little support from the government and aren’t acknowledged for the work that they contribute to the nation. They are exploited by many, especially supermarkets who dictate how much they will buy their produce for. If supermarkets don’t sell all of the produce, they send back the leftovers to the farmers and demand money in return. If they have two for one special’s they expect farmers to fork out the costs instead of the supermarket. The prices at which customers buy goods is not represented in the price that the farmer receives for their produce. For example, Nestle buys milk from farmers at 27 cents a litre and then goes on to sell if for $1.30.
While at the farm, we learnt how to make yoghurt and butter and I realised how simple it was to make these food items that I love! We also made bread and granola, making as much as possible to combat the little food stock that we had to eat on most days. This was partially due to the simple manner in which Ximena eats, adhering to ayurvedic methods of eating according to constitution type, she added little spice or salt to her food and didn’t eat certain things such as onion or garlic which I crave!
We were left alone for several days to look after the farm and the animals started causing a ruckus on the first day! We took in the sheep before the rain and a couple of hours later, none were left in the shed where we had herded them to. We started to worry, imagining having to trek all night over the mountains to try and track them down. Luckily we found them happily munching away in the paddock next door, looking sheepishly at us as we came to herd them back. They put up little fight to be guided back to the shed but we did notice that there were an extra two that had appeared out of nowhere. They also went with the flock, as sheep do. Once inside the shed Agus tried his skills at being a cowboy, making a loop out of a rope and trying to catch the two odd sheep so as to send them back into the wilderness. After a few goes, it worked. Sheep snuggly locked inside, we were still three llamas and two donkeys short. A few minutes later, two llamas came wondering through the gate on their own accord, as if back from school or from a hard day of work in the fields. A little later the remaining llama, who thinks she’s a donkey, returned as well as the two donkeys. Sadly, chickling, a spritely and energetic chick who continuously followed us around the house, sometimes annoyingly, died on us from the cold, after a very cold night in the tool shed.We visited Mindo on our day off, a village nearby which is known for its beautiful wildlife including waterfalls, butterflies, hummingbirds and orchids. We visited a butterfly, orchid and hummingbird reserve and were reminded of the amazing process of transformation that a butterfly undertakes. Amazing! But the most beautiful part was seeing transparent butterflies which my dad had told me about and that I had been wanting to see since.
Ximena invited us to a meditation session and managed to explain the integration of meditation, biodynamics and ayurvedic medicine. The meditation that she led held the objective for us to be conscious of ourselves; our breathing, our body, how we feel, our thoughts, etc. She explained that biodynamics is the process of putting receivers in the earth to help connect with the cosmic energy which feeds nature. She explained that we receive this energy through the earth and feed it back to the cosmos (through meditation for example). Meditating once in the morning and once at night is taking time out from the day to calm down the mental noise and have some peace, she explained. In biodynamics, she continued, it is believed that each planet relates to specific plants and holds particular characteristics – the colours are significant and indicate what planets they relate to as well as the type of roots they have and the life span they hold e.g. Yellow flowers relates to Jupiter; Long roots also relates to Jupiter, a short life span of 30 or so days relates to the moon, green relates to the moon.
How cool you got to see the transparent butterflies!!!
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