Cotopaxi

Dear Family and Friends,

This past weekend seven of us camped on a farm near Cotopaxi, a snow capped volcano in the Andes that reaches over 19,000 feet. This is a picture I took at about 6:30am before the clouds came in and covered the volcano.

We had access to a small cabin with a bathroom, a kitchen, and a small living area to hang out in. 


We camped inside a large barn/green house, so it was drier and warmer than outside.






Our hike on Saturday was spectacular.  Here are Bonnie, Robin, Carolyn (with a dog that followed us the whole way on our hike), Eliot and I when we arrived at the southern refuge lodge.

Bonnie, Eliot, Robin, Xavi and I went off on the hike:

The plants in the mountains are so different from the jungle.

 

 Here are are Eliot and Xavi with some brown alpacas (or are they llamas?) on our hike:

And we saw one white fluffy alpaca:

We hiked from the refuge  on the southern face of Cotopaxi at about 13,000 feet up to about 15,700 feet. Here are pictures of  Bonnie and I and Xavi and I on the hike (no, he didn't carry me the whole way, haha...).

It was hard to breath at the top! Plus, at the end of our hike there was a hail storm and the ground was covered in white. Here is Xavi hiking up the last bit:

Here is our view of the peak of Cotopaxi from the top of our hike:

 

We were VERY cold at the top, so we were trying to warm up...

At the end of our hike we relaxed at the lodge and dried our cold, wet clothes. Andy (in the green shirt) and Carolyn stayed behind and relaxed in the lodge while we hiked.

 

 It was a great experience and lots of fun. I'm looking forward to the next hiking trip!

Love, 

Aliana

Día de Campo

Hi Family and Friends!

Happy Easter and Passover to all!

Last week, Runa hosted a Día de Campo or Field Day to show local communities, organizations, and government officials what we do and the advances we have made.

Just to quickly explain, Runatarpuna is the guayusa production, processing and export business here in Ecuador. Fundación Runa works on projects with indigenous communities and does research on the production of guayusa. These two entities form part of the social enterprise, Runa.

Here we are setting up the Fundación Runa tent before the Día de Campo:

Runatarpuna's General Manager, Francisco Mantilla and Fundación Runa's Executive Director, Eliot Logan-Hines gave presentations on business and research advances respectively:

The Prefecto of Napo Province, Sergio Enrique Chacón Padilla, was also in attendance, so he said a few words:

The guests then broke into groups and visited tents and processing plant where the Runatarpuna field team, factory staff, and  Fundación Runa employees and volunteers explained advances in the production and processing of Guayusa and social and environmental projects.

Volunteers, Welcome and Lindsay, explaining the mapping project and community needs assessments that they have worked on with Fundación Runa. 

Field technicians, Angel, Silverio and Elisa at their tent explaining how to take cuttings from guayusa trees and plant new plants.

Manolo, the factory manager, and a factory staff member explaining the guayusa processing.





After the guests visited all the tents, we went to Silverio's chacra or farm where he explained  how he plants guayusa with other crops, like cacao, in an agroforestry system and the pruning methods that he is experimenting with.

Finally, we came back to Runa's farm, ate lunch and watched a traditional Kichwa dance performance.

I hope you all have a wonderful day! I will post later this week about my weekend in the mountains with friends.

Love,
Aliana