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 […]

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador This is the last of five straight years worth of work pledged beginning in February 1999 when Planet Drum Foundation was invited to assist in realizing Bahia de Caraquez’s Ecological City Declaration.  An earthquake and El Nino mudslide ruined municipality in 1998 with fallen buildings, impassable streets and highways, and 5,000 outright homeless families living on the sidewalks, the city is […]

We started out the new year with one volunteer, Simon Winch, working on the Eco Ecuador Project. In early January Peter arrived, and about a week later Brian Teinert, who has been hired as chief of  operations for Planet Drum’s projects, arrived to carry on the work. Peter has been busy organizing the projects in Bahia and introducing Brian to everyone. On the side, he composed […]

Bahia de Caraquez All of Ecuador is in the near-frantic clutch of election fever. There are over ten political parties (listas) who have been running candidates for offices from president and first deputy down to city council members in a time frame of just two months before mid-October voting. In Bahia the pitch has risen daily since the first week in September when emphatic speeches […]