Life at the Rhiannon community

Hello all!
I am currently writing from a small interenet cafe in the town of Malchingui, Ecaudor. Malchingui is located about 15 minutes by cab from our farm, and myself and about 5 other volunteers called a cab today so that we could all use the internet and to buy some odds and ends. We arrived at the farm on March 15th, and have been meeting tons of wonderful people and enjoying ourselves thoroughly. Here at the farm there are 3 people from Oregon (2 from portland and one from corvallis) and some girls from maine and new mexico. Other volunteers are from all over the globe; Chile, Columbia, Australia, Germany, England, Canada and Austria to name a few. It is a wonderful mix of people, the only downside is that almost everyone at the farm speaks english, so this is generally the language of choice for communication. My Spanish is falling by the wayside, but hopefully it will get back on track when we hit the road again in a few days.

A typical day on the farm looks like this: At 7 am there is a community yoga class (several of which I have been teaching!) and then we have breakfast at 8:15. Then it is time for morning chores (generally, I feed the chickens and pigs, but other jobs include watering plants, cleaning up breakfast, and tiding the house)At 9:30 we are assigned our daily jobs, and we work for 4 hours with a half hour break in between. I have been doing a lot of different jobs, including planting, painting and building fences, and shoveling animal poo (fun fun), and Dave has been designated fix it man and has been doing little odds and ends fix jobs around the house for the majority of our time at the farm. We usually work in pairs or teams, so we have had a lot of time to get to know the other members of the community.
We have lunch at 2 pm (a different person is in charge of cooking each day) and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves to play music, go for a run, or read in the hammocks overlooking the mountains. We have no heat or electricity, so when it gets dark out we litter the house with candles,light the fireplace and chat or play music by candleight.

We also get 2 days a week off, so this week Dave and I took a bus to Quito and spent the day in Quito running errands and preparing for our hike around cotapaxi, which we plan to start 2 days after leaving the farm with another awesome volunteer we met named Emil. Before our side trip to Quito, however, I came down with my second bout of the stomach flu on this trip, the dreaded Rhiannon virus that apparently nearly everyone at the farm gets when they first arrive. Noone knows the origin of this unknown virus, but it results in a fever, horrible diarreah, and throwing up in the middle of the night. Awesome. Luckily, it only lasted 24 hours (largely due to everyones special remedies...such as coco tea and papaya seeds) and I was able to make the trek to Quito.

Tonight Dave and I will be doing a sweat lodge, also known as Temazcal with other members of the community. We perform the ritual in a mud hut, filled with hot rocks, which are doused with water to create a sort of steam room where we will all sit for about an hour (with breaks in between) as a way to cleanse our bodies of toxins. The secondary purpose for this Temazcal is to help prepare ourselves for San Pedro, a ritual which we will be partaking in this weekend with a Shaman who is coming to visit our farm. San Pedro is a South American medicinal plant that has been used for centuries to help cleanse the body and help provide guidance to those who are looking for purpose and direction. This ritual also requires fasting, which we will be doing all day tommorow in preparation for the ceremony on Friday evening.

Our next update will be after our 6 day trek around Cotapaxi, which we start on Monday and are navigating all by ourselves! (with maps and a compass, of course). Hope all is well with all those who are following our journey...we shall be in touch soon!

Hasta Luego,
-Robin(tweet tweet!)


Dave, weilding power tools and fixing the community sink. He´s psyched.


inspirational paintings abound


Tomas chilling during break time


Olivia and I attempting to relocate a fence post. At this point, it wasn´t going so well.


Helen´s birthday costume party at the farm


Dave and I with a beautiful evening sunset behind us:)


another view of the sunset


one of the many beautiful handpainted signs at the farm:)


riding donkeys


The super cool mosaic on our cobb oven!


Mikela and Olivia serve lunch:)


Hammocks at the farm (not occupied at the moment)

Fuya Fuya and Otavalo!

a view from the top of Fuya Fuya



halfway to the top


Us at the top of Fuya Fuya


EL LECHERO...beautiful tree that overlooks lake san pablo


The city of Otavalo from above


Lilli with our new travel guitar we bought at the market!





views of the saturday market in otavalo, note dave´s height compared to the locals!



view of the city center of Otavalo, with imbaburra in the backround!


sweet! fireplace at our hostel!


Dave´s awesome sunburn



more views of the lake


Lilli chillin at our hostel in Otavalo


La Laguna Cuicocha

Aight, its the Hopper writing this one so it is going to be short and sweet. Robin is looming over my shoulder making sure that it doesn´t fall short.
The story left off in Mindo, with us having conquered two waterfalls and having just met some chill folk who were expats. We took off from Mindo for Otavalo, one of the best known artisan locales in Ecuador. Every Saturday, thousands of vendors come to sell their wares, pets, and food to other Ecuadorians and tourists. It was pretty overwhelming as we left our hostel at 8 am and didn`t return until 12 pm. We had a blast dealing with vendors and seeing all the different types of products we could buy, from clothes to watches to sunglasses to shrunken heads! We were able to find a guitar as well from a friendly local artist who sold us the shredder for 30 bucks.
After the event, we took a short, actually turned out to be long, hike to Lago San Pablo, one of the largest natural lakes in Ecuador. Pretty cool but on the return we visited El Lechero, a famed spiritual tree located between Otavalo and the lake. It was a pretty magical place as the tree stood out on a hill with nothing surrounding it and had big, ole Mt Imbabura standing watch in the background.
Before all of this (I like to be similar to Quinto Terintito with none sequential stories), we took off for Laguna Cuicocha, a crater lake in the shadow of Cotacachi. We stayed at this cute hostel called El Mirador, which looks out on the lake and the beautiful peak of Cotacachi. Our second day there, we hiked around the lake for 11k (about 8 miles) and had some amazing views of the surrounding valley. We were pretty wiped out after the hike and decided to go for a short jaunt the following day. All in all, a great place and we had a ton of fun being out in nature.
So, we returned to Otavalo, did the market, and today summited a peak that is 13,900 ft! Booyyyaaaa! Our guide, Pablo, was a worker at the hostel we have been staying at. A very friendly guy who took us up the short walk to the summit. Lil and I both had a bit of exhausation wash over us due to the lack of oxygen but it was quite a lot of fun. We summited andhad returned to the trailhead around 11 so we cruised over to another lake, had some lunch, spoke in Spanish and called it a trip. When we got back into town, we both needed a nap but we rallied to write this blog and get ready for tomorrow and farming time! We are both super excited and will keep you all informed as the journey progresses. Much love and be well!

Da Hoppa

Hola from Mindo!

Hi all,
Dave and I have found ourselves in a little town called Mindo, about 2.5 hours west of Quito. Mindo is situated in a cloud rainforest, and it is well known for the hundreds of species of birds which live here. When we arrived on Wednesday night it was pouring rain, something that we found to be the norm over the past few days. The morning is usually bright and sunny and hot, and as the day wears on, clouds roll in over the forest and then it pours! The rain cools things down a bit, and then the rain continues on through the night and is wonderful to fall asleep listening to.

When we first arrived in Mindo, things were not going so well. Dave and I went out on a hike on a nearby trail to try and spot some birds on our first day here and all was going well until my stomach started churning. By the time we got back to the hostel I was feeling pretty sick and had a fever and Dave was starting to feel a bit sick as well. The night was spent taking turns in the bathroom and trying to comfort eachother as best we could. Needless to say, the next 2 days were spent recovering. We have no idea what we ate, or what we contracted that caused the virus; but being sick in a foreign country makes you homesick and sad. Luckily, a woman in town recommended we try some oregano tea, which is supposedly the cure-all for stomach ailments among the locals. We were cured!

When we were finally feeling well enough to venture out, we decided to take a 10 minute busride out of town to a place called Mindo Lindo, which we were told was a key birdwatching spot in town. We found that Mindo Lindo is actually a family´s house, they let people walk around their property (which is all rainforest) and look at the birds for a small charge. The woman who owns the business is a german ornotholigist who asked if her daughter might be able to accompany us on our hike to hear us speak english (she apparently really wanted her daughter to learn). Once we started hiking, it became clear that Edith, her 11 year old daughter, had absolutly no interest in speaking english at all, but instead wanted to teach us all the names of the plants and animals in the forest in Spanish. She was quite an intellegent little girl, she taught us about certain plants that could cause you to vomit blood if eaten, and how certain plants in the forest have adapted to growing upside down, so that they are protected by their leaves from the sun and from hungry animals.

Today we ventured farther from Mindo and walked about 4 miles to some waterfalls which we had heard about from a man who rode the bus with us from quito to Mindo. There were lots of people hiking the trails and swimming underneath the watherfalls, and there was also a slide which you could slide down which dumped you out into the river. It was super crazy! Dave convinced me to do it, and I ended up flying off the end of the slide and landing with a huge splash and a mouthfull of water. Well worth it though, super fun!

Dave and I just got back from hanging around a small coffee shop owned by a woman from Corvallis, OR (go figure), her friend who is also from the states, and another man from Ecuador. Tonight we will be meeting up with them to do some slacklining and hopefully, if it stops raining, they said that they would spin fire for a bit! We shall see.

Tomorrow it is off to Otavalo, where we will be doing some hiking before heading off to our first farm.

Ok, time to post some pictures...more to come soon!


Dave on a lookout above the waterfalls


beautiful view of the cloud forest



hummingbirds everywhere!


the poisonous berry....don´t eat this!



Views in the forest while we hiked with Edith


Yay Mindo!


Dave and I on a lookout over the forest


beautiful forest hike...this was before the stomach flu hit :(


beautiful flowers on the terrace of our favorite cafe in Mindo


ooo, lily flower!

More from Quito!

the view up the street that our hostel is on


frutas en el mercado


jugos!


Medicinal plants that are sold at el mercado


Jackie (my Spanish teacher) and I on the terrace


Robert, Dave and Nicolai in La Mariscal


mmm...star fruit in my mojito!


Dave rock climbing at el roco droma


Public graffiti in Quito

This past week has been full of Spanish, spanish and more spanish. Dave and I have been taking classes at the school run through the Secret Garden hostel, the classes were taught on the upstairs terrace overlooking the city and we each took about 4 hours of class a day. I was originally going to take 40 hours of classes, but decided to only take 20…the city is a little claustrophobic for us, not to mention Spanish lessons are muy caro (very expensive). We decided to end our time in a Quito a week before schedule to allow us some time to explore the countryside before heading to our first farm on March 15th.
I have been studying Spanish with two friends we have met here from Europe; Nicolai from Germany and Robert from Holland. We have a lot of fun in our classes, we are constantly mispronouncing things; causing Jackie to erupt in laughing fits. The other day we were learning how to talk about temperature. Caliente = hot and frio= cold. Apparently you can only use the word “caliente” when talking about the temperature outside, not when referring to your body temperature. I learned this the hard way by saying “Yo estoy caliente” when Jackie asked how I was doing that particular day. This, in Spanish, literally means “I am horny”. And thus, the laughing fit began.
Other funny things about our Spanish classes; Dave and I take our Spanish classes at the same time, on the same terrace, but with different teachers. Our teachers enjoy asking us funny questions about our significant other and then shouting across the room in Spanish to tell the other one what we said about them. Good stuff. On Saturday, Jackie and Diana took me, Dave, Nicolai and Robert to the local market to teach us the names of fruits, vegetables, and popular Ecuadorian dishes. We stopped at a jugo stand (juice stand) and tried all different kinds of juices and milkshakes made from tropical fruits. The juices here are amazing! You pick any kind of fruit you want, in any combination, and they throw it all in a blender with ice and sugar and give you a huge cup of it; usually jugos cost only .50 cents! Our Spanish teachers introduced us to the women at the jugo stand and they kept giving us more and more combinations to try. I love love love the jugo de coco (coconut milk juice) and Dave likes alpalfa and morra (a green mixture similar to wheatgrass, and blackberry).
Also while exploring the market, Dave decided to buy me a lily flower to try and get a rise out of our Spanish teachers (the Ecaudorian people are very romantic, and Diana and Jackie swoon at us whenever we do anything remotely romantic). One of the women at the flower carts saw Dave give me the flower and was so enamored than she came over and gave me a rose as well. I came home from the market with a tummy full of jugo and an armful of flowers.
Sunday was our day off from class, so Dave, me, Nicolai and Robert walked down to an outdoor climbing gym in Quito and went climbing for a few hours. The routes were really difficult; definatly a challenge for Dave and pretty much an impossibility for me. Dave and Nicolai climbed while Robert and I ate mangos and lounged in the sun. Afterwards we went out for drinks in the tourist area of Quito, called La Mariscal.

Before I end this entry; just a few more observations of note:
-Buying school supplies is very very funny. In all the bookstores and school supply shops, they keep the spiral notebooks behind the counter and you need to ask for what you want (lined, not lined, big, small, etc.) They then pick one out for you, and there are always really funny pictures on the covers; which you just get stuck with. I wanted to get a super suave plain black notebook but I ended up with a huge picture of tweety bird winking at me. Yesterday Dave and I went to get another notebook because we ran out of paper, and ended up with a picture of a tiger and the caption “happy animals” on the cover. I find this small detail of life in Ecuador absolutely hysterical.
- Speaking in Spanish is like playing charades. My grip on the Spanish language is quite minimal, so asking for directions or ordering things often involves excessive gesturing and animation. Last night we met a man from Argentina whose English was just about as bad as our Spanish and we talked for a half an hour with him, acting out words in Spanish and English, pointing and making funny faces in order to get our points across. We laughed at each other more than we actually ended up talking, but it was a good language lesson for all parties involved.

Tomorrow Dave and I leave Quito for Mindo, a cloud rainforest that is home to more than 450 species of tropical birds! We will try and update soon; but no promises, we might be very busy chasing butterflies and spying on hummingbirds!

We love and miss you all….
Hasta la vista!