Part Two

Last night I returned from a very efficient trip to El Poste. I was dropped off Monday evening during the middle of a small meeting and met the town council. My host family came to pick me up (in a truck!), and the next morning we were on the boundary at 9. We followed a similar routine Tuesday through Friday: meet up with community members who knew the area (often traveling with a group of 8 or more) at 9 am, stop for lunch after noon when a group of women would carry in food to border, then continue work until 3 pm. So working roughly 6 hours a day we finished in just 4 days. After marking the roads on motorcycle Friday afternoon, I got a ride into town and took the first bus back to Quito.

A couple significant differences between Los Naranjos and El Poste are that while Naranjos has some jagged edges, the community limits are roughly rectangular and often follow a road. More than half of El Poste’s property lines follow a river or a stream and we only walked on a clear path for a total of a few hundred meters. Needless to say, I spent a considerable portion of this week soaking wet. 

Wading the Rio Nile

So I actually only have two weeks of work left. I had been planning on pursuing a third project in a nearby community, but between finishing this map, printing and delivering it, then writing up reports to make my data usable by later volunteers, I might not have any extra time. That said, the next community I would visit does have a shared border with El Poste, so I already have some of it done, and I might just be able to squeeze it in.