June 21- August 19, 2013 Field Report Summer (verano) has set in and the days tend to be cooler and overcast with a nice breeze blowing through. When the sun comes out it’s still hot, but not like during winter (el invierno). This will likely be the typical weather pattern until late December. It’s been a busy summer so far with lots of volunteers and […]
April-June 2013 Field Report During the beginning of April, planting the 2013 Bellavista revegetation site with children from the community was completed. While delivering trees to the site, fruit trees were also given directly to community members for planting at their houses.This is the last Planet Drum (PD) revegetation site to be planted this year since the rainy season has wrapped up and the dry […]
February-March 2013 Pásalo bien,Clay
November 2012 – January 2013 Field Report There have been a number of developments related to the Planet Drum projects here in Bahía in the past few months. In November, we received a visit from Judy, Planet Drum Director (since Peter Berg passed away in July 2012), her daughter Ocean, and grandchildren Florence and Stelli. While they were here, Bahía unveiled a plaque honoring Peter […]
August – October, 2012 Keibo Oiwa, long time friend of Planet Drum and fellow collaborator in the original Eco-city movement, returned to Bahia for a short visit. The first time he was here in 1999, Bahia had recently suffered from massive mudslides due to heavy El Niño phenonmenon rains. Keibo was delighted to see how green and full of vegetation the hillsides looked now. In […]
“Building Bioregional Communities” in Bahía de Caráquez In 2012 the first Study-Abroad class arrived for three weeks in September from the University of Oregon with their teacher, Gerardo Sandoval. Planet Drum’s (PD) field projects in Ecuador came to an apex this past summer when a group of fourteen University of Oregon (UO) students traveled to Bahía de Caráquez on a three week, study-abroad program titled […]
In the summer of 2012, I traveled with thirteen other students and one professor to Ecuador to learn about bioregionalism and sustainable city building. Our destination was Bahia de Caraquez, a coastal city that met with disaster in 1997 and 98, experiencing heavy El Nino rain that resulted in a massive landslide followed by an earthquake. In 1999, the city decided to rebuild with a […]
Clay Plager-UngerField Projects ManagerPlanet Drum FoundationJuly, 2012 The dry season weather has set in solidly during the past month. Temperatures have dipped a tad, it’s a little windier and there tends to be more overcast days. The weather is very comfortable for working outdoors – even though when the sun comes out around midday it still scorches. And one of the best parts: the drier, […]
May-June, 2012 The rainy season has all but wrapped up, aside from a stray drizzle or light shower here and there. Windier weather, more over-cast days and less humidity are setting in, which is great for reducing the number of mosquitoes and makes for nicer temperatures at work. Yet the sun still comes out in force on occasion mid-day and reminds us that we are […]
March-April, 2012 It’s been the rainiest wet season that I’ve seen in my five years in Bahia. This has been fine for Bahia and the immediately surrounding areas, but other wetter regions (inland and to the north) have suffered greatly in the past few months from extreme excesses of water. Bear in mind that Bahia is part of Dry Tropical Forest and the “rainy season” […]