Tech trip

At the end of training we had our technical training trips, for which we were divided up by program and then by the region of Ecuador we’ll be living in- coast, sierra, or oriente. All of NRC was together for the first few days. First we spent a day in Cotacachi where we learned about indigenous group organizations, small business, and a botanical garden. Then we continued on to Armenia near Quito where we stayed for 3 nights in a seminary. We spent a day and a half learning about Escuelas Verdes, an environmental education program, and an afternoon at a watershed conservation project. Then the sierra and oriente groups split off and me and the other people with coastal sites, Jess, JRex, Lauren, Laurel, David, Ross, Reid, and Reyes, went to San Vicente in Manabi where we stayed for 2 nights at a hotel with a pool, which was good times. We visited a mangrove reserve and learned about the mangroves and community-based ecotourism. Then we went to Bahia to see what the city is doing to be more eco-friendly. Our guide said he needed to stop by the school to feed the turtle and I was thinking a little turtle in a tank, but no, the school had a fully grown Galapagos turtle living there as a mascot. Then we hiked up into the dry forest reserve overlooking the city and down to the beach.

The next day we left for Tabuga and a private forest reserve named Lalo Loor, which is run by the Ceiba Foundation. I hadn’t put this together until then, but Ceiba is the foundation that Joe and Catherine started, our two visiting professors from the BU tropical ecology semester in Ecuador. I was impressed by what they’ve done there. The reserve has a visitor center that is really well done and then trails into the forest. We stayed for two nights at the volunteer cabin that’s a hike into the forest and has dry compost toilets and no electricity, so we spent those nights around the campfire the guys made. The first day we learned about the reserve and the SocioBosque program of paying Ecuadorians to preserve their forested land. In the afternoon we went on a hike. The next day we went to Camarones and learned about permaculture and agroforestry.

After Lalo Loor, we traveled up to Esmeraldas to Same, which is near my site, where we stayed at basically a beach resort for 4 nights and finally got to go swimming in the ocean :) We learned about the USAID Costas y Bosques program, about field schools for farmers, about integrated farms and cacao, and about working with coastal communities. The next day we went to Caimito to see some farms and pruned cacao trees. And on our last day we went to Cabo San Francisco and met with the people who work for Nazca on managing the marine reserve, saw the catch the fishermen brought in, and learned about the marine ecosystems in Ecuador. Then the next day we went back to Quito. We had all gotten sick, bug bites, sunburns, injuries, or in some cases all of the above on the trip (I had a brief disagreement with some stairs, and a large bruise) and were a bit of a mess when we got back. We were promptly informed by the other two groups that we were the stinky kids in class. Apparently two weeks of sweating on the coast followed by 8 hours of sweating in a bus does not make for good smelling volunteers.


mangroves




at the school in Bahia


Bahia


in Same


me and Jess