Visit to Santiago, Chile

Hello friends and family!

It has been almost two months since my last blog post! I must catch you all up on the wonderful things that have been happening in my life since June. I'll start with my trip to Santiago to visit my mom, who was living and teaching in Chile as a Fulbright Scholar.

I was in Chile for five days and my mom was an excellent guide, I saw so many wonderful sights in a short period of time.

Chile is known for its wine and my mom and I love wine, so we visited the Cousiño Macul winery which is accessible by the metro system in Santiago. It was founded in 1870 by Matías Cousiño and is still run by the same family, six generations later.

Here I am with the founder:

Mom and I in the old bottling room.

Here are mom and the tour guide in the cellar where the wine used to be stored. Now this storage area is just used for show.

Another highlight of the trip was our visit to the Pablo Neruda house in Santiago called "La Chascona". While he was married to his first wife, he had a mistress who lived in this house that he bought for her. He eventually left his wife and married his mistress and they were together until he passed away. Besides his creativity in poetry, he was an artful home decorator and displayed many of his collections from his world travels. We were also told that he loved to entertain guests at dinner parties and so his dining room and bar were lively and fun. We were not able to take photos while inside the house, but here is the website if you would like to see photos.

The other museum that we went to was the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights). In a sensitive and moving way, it tells the story of the dictatorship of Agusto Pinochet and the human rights abuses that many suffered under his rule. If you are ever in Santiago I highly recommend it.

For lunch one day we went to the Mercado Central Fish Market.

On the Sunday we went to visit my friend, Carolina, a native of Santiago who I met while she was visiting Ecuador (she was featured here in Jungle Postcards back in March).  We had a fantastic lunch with her two sisters and her mom.

On my last day in Chile my mom took me to the Cerro Santa Lucía where the city of Santiago was founded by Pedro de Valdivia in 1541.

It was such a lovely trip! Thanks Moom for a fun trip to a new city!

I hope everyone is doing well. I'll post about my other adventures soon :)

Love,
Aliana

Afternoon in Papallacta

Papallacta is a town in the Andes mountains between Quito and Tena known for its natural hot springs.  It has an altitude of 3300 meters or 10,800 feet, so it is cold and sometimes even snows there.

Xavier and I had been planning to go for awhile and we finally went for a day trip a few weeks ago. We took a couple of buses from his house in Quito to Papallacta, which took about an hour and a half. We had planned to go for a hike as well, but it is winter in Papallacta now and so it rained the whole time we were there. 

We spent the afternoon lounging around in the different thermal pools, all with gorgeous views of the mountains.

The plants in this region, at this altitude are so different from the jungle.

We hope to go back when the rainy season is over to do a hike and go camping by one of the many lagoons in the area.

If any of you come to visit me in Ecuador, we will go to Papallacta - it is amazing!

Love,
Aliana

Running in Archidona

In March, Cass and I starting running after work in Archidona. We are NOT runners, but we were convinced by our athletic boyfriends and friends to exercise. At first we resisted and complained, but after the first couple of runs, we began to really enjoy it.  We sometimes go by ourselves, with interns, friends, coworkers or our boyfriends, but we always bring Penelope with us.

We run behind the office and cross the river on a wooden foot bridge.

The trail that we run is slightly hilly and filled with pebbles and rocks and the occasional pothole. We have to be careful!

We cross a small bridge over this stream.

The views of the mountains and the clouds are spectacular and make running in this area worth it.

We estimate it is around a 3 mile run, although recently we've been trying to run further. Upon our return, Cass often jumps into the river to cool down and swim around a bit.

There is talk of a group of us running a 10k in Quito (in the high altitude!) in August... we'll see if we can work up to it!

Have a great weekend, all!
Love,
Aliana

Quito Hike: Teleférico to Centro Historico

On Sunday, April 29th I went for a hike with Xavier, Eliot and Kate (a Runa intern) from the top of the Teleférico (cable car/tram) to the Old Town of Quito. It was a long walk, but thankfully it was all downhill...

First we went up the teleférico and we could see all of Quito below us.

Then I saw a woman at the top with llamas and pochos and a sign advertizing 50 cents per person to take a picture. I had to take one with the llama in a poncho and a hat; it so cheesy, but how great is this!?

We walked down towards the city, occasionally cutting through cow pastures.

This was a relaxed hike, so we stopped to rest and chat. Eliot explained the vegetation to us as we descended in elevation.

We stopped to enjoy the sun when it came out.

 
The guys rolled down a hill... and got very dizzy!

All in all it was about a 3 hour downhill walk, which was a great was to spend a Sunday. :)

Love,
Aliana

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