Eco-Ecuador

Collaboration for a Long-Term Sustainable City

Praying for rain.

By Patrick Wylie | April 4, 2006

April 4, 2006 Greetings from the land almost down under.  In these parts, the heat is having some interesting effects on our operation. This week we have been unable to plant trees as the ground is hard as a rock. As such we have been keeping busy in the greenhouse, maintaining sites that are becoming overgrown and praying for rain. There has been none in […]

We’re pretty full right now, but are loving every minute of it.

By Patrick Wylie | March 26, 2006

March 20-26, 2006 It’s been hectic down here this week in Bahia. Even as we were driving Dan and Valentina to the bus station on Monday night, Mark and Heather arrived to volunteer until May. This weekend we also welcomed Sarah and Catherine into the Planet Drum family. We’re pretty full right now, but are loving every minute of it. Lots of positive energy and […]

Planted the last of the seedlings

By Patrick Wylie | March 12, 2006

March 6-12, 2006 Greetings from Ecuador, I hope my first attempt at these weekly reports lives up to those that Heather has set the bar with. Planet Drum visited El Bosque Encantado not once, but twice this week. We carried out a lot of trail cutting and planting in several heavily eroded gullies. About fifty trees went in this area. Plenty of opportunity for more. […]

Winter’s Wet Green Heat

By Peter Berg | March 10, 2006

Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador The rainy season finally began at the end of January this year, late but potent. Only six weeks later the hills have been completely transformed from dust blurred brown-orange to wet vibrant green. Vine tendrils hang like searching snakes from trees and slink across paths. The ground is in a constant saturated state ranging from clutching mud that weighs down shoes […]

Blazed a trail with Ricardito, scouted out future plantings.

By Heather Crawford | March 5, 2006

February 27 to March 5, 2006 The week started off with a bang with carnival in full swing; luckily the rain held out until just the day after, when we got a heavy downpour, and another one a few days later. There was a mangrove planting for the Eco-Semana on International Day of the Mangrove (Feb 28), for which I helped to collect seeds. Patrick […]

Eco-Semano parade

By Heather Crawford | February 27, 2006

February 21-27, 2006 This week we transported another load of trees to the sites and planted in three places – La Cruz, Bosque Encantado y El Toro (on the other side of the creek although we don’t know who the land belongs to). We got rained on and it was very slippery!  We had help from both Jorge and Blas this week, who came to […]

We began planting at La Cruz.

By Heather Crawford | February 19, 2006

February 13 – 19, 2006 We’ve been getting rain about every other day, but it’s not consistently heavy.  Maybe one or two nights of heavy rain a week. It’s been getting cloudy in the daytime more often now, so it seems like the weather will stay wet for a while. The new plants are doing well. We haven’t had a chance to go back to the old […]

Another planting at El Torro, El Bosque Encantado

By Heather Crawford | February 12, 2006

February 6-12, 2006 I spoke to Alfredo Duenas and have arranged for him to get the remaining money for the map of our new land this week. No new news about our land in Las Coronas. I´ll try to talk to Johnny Delgado about including more sites on the Eco-Paseo.  I doubt the older trees at Inter Americano site will need watering this summer. We […]

El Sobrador, and asking for permission to plant on El Torro

By Heather Crawford | February 5, 2006

January 30-February 5, 2006 I just came from a “sobador” who cures things by moving things around in your body. Supposedly something had sunken in between my ribs and is now cured!  We’ll see tomorrow when I wake up. He also supposedly cured some other things which he guessed I had but I hadn’t even told him!   This weekend Valentina and I went to Rambuche […]

Doing home improvements

By Heather Crawford | January 29, 2006

January 23 – 29, 2006 Emilia says she’d like to switch apartments with us, sometime after March, which means we would move downstairs by the patio area. She has offered to throw in an office next to the bodgea at no extra charge. The apt. downstairs is as big as the one we are currently in, with 3 bedrooms. We’ve been doing some home improvements—fixing […]