Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Yellow squares of rice drying in front yards seen from the bus window on the six-hour ride out to Bahia from Guayaquil seemed a little early. It was the most sparse & peculiar rainy season since the Eco-city Declaration five years ago. Starting late in January, it gave up February and stayed truant another two months after that. Rain came again in May […]

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador  There are now six revegetation sites strung like beads on the river-facing eroded hillsides leading into Bahia de Caraquez. One within sight above the vivero(greenhouse) at Universidad Catolica is fully planted and has thus far survived the summer drought. It can serve as a walk-through demonstration of the generalprocess and a specific model of controlling land subsidence on the face of a downhill swale.  Nearby is […]

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador When I first heard “pique y pasa” (pronounced pee-kee pah-sah) it was used in a traditional way to describe how to go about buying something when there were different items of all kinds offered. Not a single-minded hunting trip for just one thing or at best a few things where the range of possibilities is finite and it’s a matter of how […]

Bahia de caraquez, Ecuador Of all the differences between living here and in San Francisco there is one that creates a paramount necessity. It is the millimeter close proximity of organisms that use the human body for their own purposes and other natural effects. This slim space eventually becomes a factor in most activities if not a near obsession. There is a hospital quality about […]

Bahia de Carquez, Ecuador It has been nearly five years since the Ecological City Declaration in Bahia de Caraquez and there have been many developments and changes. These have overwhelmingly been for the better and are too great in number to describe fully in a short space. One major difference is that the mutual exuberant feeling of hopeful optimism that prevailed on February 23, 1999 […]

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador From a video music blaring shore side restaurant on the Rio Chone, the ancient vision of a dugout canoe with two men standing and throwing circular nets in the distance. It’s an accomplished skill for only one person to sit still in these narrow, shallow draft boats without upsetting their knife-edge balance. A large diesel engine ferry powers across the river […]

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador The main stage of the ambitious project to revegetate six kilometers of eroded hillsides directly facing Rio Chone on the road into Bahia de Caraquez with native plants of the tropical dry forest has begun. The list of bioregional criteria met by doing this is impressive. These hills are continuous with the metropolitan area and thus part of the ecological city […]

(Summary of talk at Universidad Espiritu Santi, Campus Sambopondon, 7PM February 21, 2003.) Introduction Along with all of the technological advances of our time like computer and space technology, the most significant cultural change for our species in the last 15,000 years is taking place in this decade. Homo sapiens is becoming an urban species. In less than 5 years 50% of all the people on our […]

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador When contacts are hard to make quickly they often get even harder. That’s the way Brian found getting in touch with Pedro Otero, an ecologically-minded biologist who teaches, does water testing as “Peter’s Lab”, and is an owner with four brothers of a significant parcel of badly eroded land. Located in the El Toro Creek watershed behind Leonidas Plaza, it is […]