The Ecuador Diaries: Part 3

It's our first day going to our work placement, we get up and catch a ride with Ali and Kalina's dad, who muy easy-going and one my favourite people I met there. Ali, Steve and I got off at San Telmo, the ecological farm, where we would work for the first week. Our supervisor Felix, started off by showing us a pile of dirt that we determined he wanted us to fill in a well with, and move the rest next to a pair of banana plants about 10 meters away. He then promptly skiddadles without telling us where he's gone, so we do what we thought he asked. After moving most of the dirt, he turns up, with a bunch of horses he'd apparently left up in the hills to graze. We find out that we've moved the dirt wrong and spend time trying to figure out what he wanted us to do with it. Much later... he wanted us to create a basin of dirt around the two banana plants so that water collected there during the current wet season. At 10 (only 2 hours of work, and we were expecting 6!) we were picked up by Ali's dad again. It's an awesome way to keep cool, standing in the box of a truck going 110 kph between speed bumps, which is uncoincidentally the standard way of travelling. Lunch was fish and rice, which is pretty much all they eat, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We met another relative of the family, Fernando's cousin David, who lives in Puerto Lopez. We decide to walk down to Puerto Rico but meet Ali halfway. Since we only worked 2 hours, we are to go help the people working on the school site.

Building the school was brutal.

We have to dig 6 supporting holes 5 feet deep in the Ecuadorian sun. Dehydration was a big problem, resulting in many people getting sick from sunstroke and various other things that affect anyone with white skin. At 4 in the afternoon, we stop and go to the beach to cool off. Soccer game that night, and I fell asleep to the sound of Bon Jovi on my headphones.