Map #2

This map I made to show the portion of the boundary that follows a river or stream, which adds up to 11km.

I have to thank Victor Torres for the road file. He has a blog at http://tsachila.blogspot.com/ with photos and entries about different communities.

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.

The Commute

I think with the amount of time I've spent in transit, this topic deserves its own post. This last trip to the comuna went pretty smoothly. I walked up to the terminal just as the bus was pulling out (no thats not a cause for alarm, just means you're on time), some three and half hours I stepped into a taxi, once downtown I boarded an already full colectivo, and when I got to my stop, Richard (a motorcycle taxi friend) was waiting for me. On the way back, the whole trip takes an extra hour because we arrive at the south town station, which is two public buses from my hostal. For a journey 30 times shorter than an Oregon visit from school, it has twice as many legs.

Heading out of Los Naranjos (and marking the road)

Its interesting to change 7000 feet in altitude so frequently. I now anticipate some degree of explosion of my Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap when arriving in the low pressure Andes, after the death of a roller-tip deodorant stick that lost its ball. Another curious consistency has been the medical treatises given to a captive audience on the bus out of Quito. Instead of just extolling the benefits of their given product, ginsing or noni and maca tablets, these tag-a-long vendors deem it necessary to teach the passengers about the dangers of cancer, the intricacies of sexual health and any other attention-grabbing ailment. I was up front for the first talk, and it was riddled with misinformation. According to the lecturer, Asians can reproduce into their 90s (the ginseng of course) and skin cancer is ravaging the Ecuadorian population. I found it hard to believe that one, reproducing into my 90s was a good idea, and two, the sun was a bigger threat than the driver (judging by the uninhibited view of the valley floor thousands of feet below and the lack of seat belts). I pondered the mortality (or at least injury) rate of health lecturers standing in the aisle of a bus careening down a mountain road. Did I mention the rock slides? I've already had to return and take an alternate route once because the road was suddenly out of commission, a common occurrence if the bare hills are any sign. With all this entertainment, and killer views to boot, my commute is at least not too boring.

On this last visit, the main goal was to get revision suggestions on the map draft. We're ready to print off a final!