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I found this really interesting sounding sustainable organic farm in Ecuador called Never Land. It’s run by an American woman named Tina who lives there with a local Ecuadorian named Killo. A couple of local paid workers come during the week to help with the workload. They have a bio-dynamic garden and are doing alternative building. I read someone else’s account on their blog and it sounded like a nice break: work on a farm, be in the middle of nowhere and have a community.
I communicated via e-mail to Tina and planned our arrival and printed the directions (there are 3 buses a day that take you to a small village, 45 minutes outside of Vilcabamba, then you hike for 45 minutes through a valley). A few days before we left town, I emailed Tina to confirm and she told me that she had to go back to the US for some family stuff, but we were still welcome to come and live at the farm. The website states that they don’t charge anything, we work for our food and lodging and help carry food into the farm.

So we headed there, I with perhaps too high expectations of a welcoming, friendly community and projects to work on where we could learn as well as help them become sustainable. My expectations were too high. The land is beautiful, located next to a river that if you hike upstream for 2 hours you find a waterfall. The land was previously owned by Johnny Lovewisdom, a very interesting guy who wrote some crazy books and believed in eating only fruits. He also suffered a lot of health problems, not sure if trying to live off papaya helped or hurt his health. Anyways, Tina now owns the land and runs a WWOOF type project where people can come and help and stay. We arrived there at dusk, were offered dinner and were shown our lodging, which was a bamboo bed (I don’t recommend it) and a mosquito net over it.
I’ll just get to the point and summarize our experience. We were the ONLY volunteers there. The following morning we asked what we could do, how we could help, what were the projects and we got vague answers like, we don’t need help right now. So we just followed around the paid guy and helped him move rocks the first day and I got bored and annoyed. They are building a round stone house for a friend of Tina who’s going to move there but when questioned no one would explain the specifics of the house, why it’s sustainable or any sort of knowledge about what we were doing or why. I got frustrated so I went back to the main house and helped Killo prepare lunch, which is where I learned he was leaving us for a few days to go get his son. I went to town with him on his horse and rode the horse back in the rain, which was a fun experience (the path is narrow with steep drop-offs).
The next day the paid guy didn’t show up and we didn’t know what to do, so Matt macheted the paths and I made bread and cooked the meals for us and the paid guy who was living there for the week. Killo, who supposedly ran the farm was always vague when we asked to help and never gave us direction or a project. We felt unnecessary and alone. There was no community and when the workers were there, they barely talked at all, even when we asked questions, they answered in short answers. There was a list next to the kitchen that said projects for 2007 and it included macheteing the path and feeding the 3 dogs and 3 cats.
So all I can think is that Tina must organize the volunteers and make it seem like a welcoming community because without her, I didn’t have any experiences there that I read of. There was no organization or planning. We moved rocks the first day and next 4 days no one worked on the house again. We helped weed the garden because we followed the paid guy there and we helped week the leeks. Matt asked what was in the other rows and he didn’t or wouldn’t tell us, so when we were left without supervision we couldn’t even weed on our own because most of the rows were not labeled and we weren’t told what was a weed and what wasn’t. It was quite frustrating because we wanted to help and learn and share and we basically were ignored. I would have felt different if the intention was to go and hang out and read books and relax, but we felt we should help and couldn’t. So we basically gave up. I tried to enjoy cooking and I tried to sleep through the night (the dogs are barkers at anything) and I definitely enjoyed the scenery. But we were lonely. Killo left us 4 of the 7 nights we were on the farm and we were left totally alone on the farm for a few days in a row. So much for community farming.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was that the website says there’s no fee (one of the reasons we decided to go), but then we get there and there’s a sign on the wall, next to the exciting projects that says all volunteers must pay $15 US per week to stay there…which doesn’t seem fair to have no advance warning. BUT we were never told of this fee by anyone on the farm during our week or Tina via email. Our last night Killo told us we had to pay $25 US per week per person to cover our expenses and I just about flipped out. We have been having repeated experiences in Peru and Ecuador of people trying to rip us off by telling us a different price for food and lodging and they always do it at the end. These people won’t even be straightforward with us. What a horrible thing to be on a farm for a week, feeling useless and unwanted and then have them ask for money on the last day with no warning? It’s SO wrong and the next morning we showed Killo the sign on the wall that says $15 and he said it was from last year (even though it clearly says 2007) and that the website hasn’t been updated and he thought Tina told us. Jeez, I would have thought twice about going before paying $50 for a week whether we were working or not. We paid about $50 a week to have our own room, bathroom, hot water and shared kitchen in Huanchaco and we didn’t have to work on a farm. So we fought his attempts to take advantage of the gringos and decided $15 a week is fair for the food but unfair in their methods of asking for it and left. One week there was too much. I got to read “The World According to Garp,” which is a bit depressing and moved rocks, baked bread, took a few hikes and weeded leek rows.
While in Vilcabamba relaxing and recovering from our disappointment and anger at the money thing we found a sign for another sustainable farm of sorts, which sounds exactly like what we had in mind. It’s called Sacred Suenos and is 2 hours by foot from Vilcabamba. If anyone checks it out, let me know if it’s anything better than what I experienced.

Matt and I headed north to Ecuador the most direct way on the map, but the longest and most uncomfortable way, filled with more tests of my patience. We took a 3 hour combi (those 15 passenger vans they cram us into like sardines) at 5am from Leymembamba to Chachapoyas (our other option was the 3am bus). Once in Chachapoyas we had to kill the whole day because they are doing construction on the road OUT of Chacha (making a 1 lane mountain road into 2 lanes…this required the road to be closed from 6am until 6pm every day for the next few months). Chacha has nothing to offer the tourist except guides to the ruins and mountains outside of town. We found an okay vegetarian restaurant across from the combi stop on calle 2 de Mayo and tried to waste the day as best as we could…sleeping in the bus station, emails, sitting in the plaza, walking to the mirador and getting stared at by many locals. I know we’re not the only foreigners that pass through this town but we had a girl stare at us for at least 10 minutes then ask if we would pose in a picture. We asked her why and her reason was that we were gringos. Maybe staring isn’t considered rude in this country but I find it unsettling. I’d much rather have someone talk to me than look at me like I’m some freak. I don’t think I ever ask foreigners to pose in pictures with me. Famous people and drag queens, yes, the average foreigner, no.

Anyways, we took the 7:30pm bus from Chachapoyas (the road is NOT finished, the bus actually went through a cave and barely made it and crossed a river…not the bridge) to Bagua Grande (3 hours) where I almost got killed by two junkyard dogs while looking for a place to pee. Luckily they were on chains and I swear I was 2 feet from the end of the chain. They were foaming at the mouth and I’m proud to say I yelled at the dogs instead of going fetal and crying. I’ve made such improvements over my fear of the man-eating dogs. Within 10 minutes of arriving in Bagua, the Jaen Express showed up (VERY lucky timing. our plan was to sleep in Bagua and try to get a bus at 6am). We hopped on the Jaen Express, which reminds me of those old buses that the gospel people ride in the south. We were the only non locals and we tried to sleep the hour or so to get to Jaen. We found a hostal and slept a little amid the loud music videos the concierage was watching all night.

That morning we hopped on a colectivo (still the same as a combi, except these don’t leave until they are full, so you could wait a few minutes or hours) to San Ignacio. The road was mostly dirt and bumpy but beautiful. The road followed a brown raging rapid river and we passed a lot of corn fields, coconut palms, mango and papayatrees and coffee plantations. Once we got to San Ignacio we walked through town to find a colectivo taxi to take us to the border. The car filled up fast so we were lucky there, too. Imagine a hatchback ford escort and fitting 4 people in the back and 2 in the passenger seat for 2.5 hours on an extremely pot-holed road. I’m glad I’m not big, but I barely fit my shoulders in this taxi…but that was the only way to the border.

Once at the border, we tried to cross but the border guard was at home eating lunch and wouldn’t be back. We relaxed, had some veggie sandwiches, watched the dogs chase the donkeys and when our hour was up (I had to go to the person’s house to get them…but they weren’t ready yet) we got stamped, walked across the bridge into Ecuador, got our entry stamp and learned that our only mode of transport was the ranchera trucks (imagine a giant open air wooden benched bus, perhaps from a circus or farm tour). The next ranchera was in 2.5 hours, so once again we had to find something to do. It was nice and hot outside, so we decided to swim in the river that divides Peru from Ecuador. The was was fast moving, clear and cold and hopefully no parasites found us because it was refreshing and so nice after all the buses and taxis.

When we hopped on the ranchera, we endured the 2 hour ride on wooden benches and were practically underneath a thunderstorm the whole time. Luckily the truck had a roof, but we had plenty of rain whipped at us from the sides. The lightening was beautiful, though and when we arrived in Zumba, we were just in time to hop on the bus to Loja (a real bus with seats that recline and doors and windows). I don’t remember the 4 hours on that bus but we arrived really late at night, found a cheap hostal and passed out.

The next day we found an ATM (Ecuador is on the US Dollar and we didn’t have much on us) and caught another bus (1 hour) to Vilcabamba, the valley of longevity. Our guidebook states there is no ATM in Vilcabamba but there is. It didn’t like my debit card but Matt’s was fine. I have also heard it won’t accept cards from Switzerland.

So that was our off the beaten path journey to Ecuador. It was about 18 hours in transit plus too much waiting time. Our return journey we’re going a different way and will only take 3 buses instead of 6. It’s 2 hours longer by bus but I think we’ll both be happy to not deal with all the bus changes and wait times. It was definitely an adventure and once was enough.

Our plans are constantly changing, which is difficult for me but is a good lesson for me to learn to go with the flow. The current volunteer coordinators at Otra Cosa are highly disorganized and led us to believe we could do a project in the cloud forest, teaching English. (Apparently they promised another volunteer the same time frame as us…but she got fed up and found a different project run by other people). We confirmed it before we even arrived in Peru, then for our whole time in Huanchaco they wouldn’t discuss it with us–it was always let’s talk about it next week…until we were ready to leave and forced them to tell us there were volunteers there and no room for us.

I’m finding it difficult to get most people to give me straightforward answers…it’s nice they don’t want to disappoint us but I’d rather hear a no a month ahead and make new plans than believe something is possible. I get me hopes up too easily. Anyways, we decided to just head east anyways and see the cloud forests and travel on through. Three days before we left town, the coordinator told me the volunteers were leaving and there was room for us (hooray!) and lucky for us, the guy who runs the program (Maibel) was in town (he’s the brother of one of the girls who runs the restaurant) so we met with him before we left…only to hear him say the volunteers were NOT leaving and he doesn’t know why she thought they were (booh!). So apparently the communication is poor among the locals as well, but poor Maibel, he’s organized and is a man of his word. He was disappointed to lose us and after many discussions and ideas and plans changing and seeing the program in Leimembamba, Matt and I decided to spend a few weeks in Ecuador and return to Leimembamba in December to volunteer when there will be guaranteed work for us.

I’m learning to take a big breath and just move forward…but it’s frustrating when we only have so much time in South America and to be pushed and pulled around like we can just waste time and money…it’s not right. Otra Cosa is paired up with some really great projects, but the new coordinators both work full time and have a family. I don’t know why they are coordinating Otra Cosa if they can’t even be organized and tell volunteers what is available when. It’s a great concept and I hope it improves, but for now I recommend to just deal with the projects directly if you are interested in it…

After changing our plans multiple times, we have decided to head to Ecuador for a few weeks to renew our visas and work on an organic farm. We won’t have much computer access but be patient, the blogs and photo updates will come!

We took a 5 hour daytime bus from Cajamarca to Celendin on a bumpy steep pot-holed dirt road. Apparently they are widening the road since it is barely wide enough for me to walk on it alone and think I will not fall down into the steep valleys, let alone for 2 coach buses to pass each other without crashing or tipping over into the beyond. This road project of widening a dirt road full of potholes and steep switchbacks may last until January. The ride was beautiful and frightening at the same time. We had to stop a few times (once for about a half hour) so the workers could clear the rubble for us to pass. Buses in this country are amazingly hardcore. Great views, big mountains, lush green valleys and low clouds.

Anyways, 5 hours of up and down and around these mountains, seeing not much more than some little cottage or farm here and there, and we come to Celendin. Which has plazas, electricity and very friendly people. We spent most of our time in the town eating and sleeping, which is basically all there is to do. Oh, and I bought some yarn and now have a project for future bus rides, if I can ignore the bumps. The town is cute and has huge potential for developing tourist-wise, if only the road there wasn’t so uncomfortable or scary.

Our reason for heading this way was because the ride is beautiful and the less-taken route to Leymembamba. Plus there’s a hotsprings and mud bath near Celendin that we had to check out. When I say nearby, I mean a 2 hour cargo bus ride (at 7am) up a mountain and down the other side into the valley below. When I say cargo, I mean lambs in the aisle, shite-ing on my sneakers and socks, giving me fleas, momma lamb tied up and lounging on a front seat with baby chicks in a bag underneath her. We were obviously the only non-locals. It was an entertaining and smelly morning. Just in time for the hot springs in the town of Llanguat.

I don’t know if it’s really a town, a few houses clustered together and a church at the valley floor. We went the the thermal baths, which seemed to be in some guy’s backyard. He was very friendly and very interested in having volunteers or some sort of assistance to help him develp an eco-tourism project. It makes me so happy to talk to locals that care so much about protecting the environment around them. Not only does he live on the river, but there’s a day hike to a tunnel and a waterfall nearby (but we ran out of time). We spent our afternoon swimming in the brown pool filled with river water and hot springs water. We attempted to get to the mud baths across the river but it was quite dangerous to cross the water. We got halfway across and had to turn back. Hopefully I will find mud somewhere else to roll in. We also got to use of of his baños, which were similar to the private baths at Cajamarca, where you get a room and can fill the tub up as high as you like and relax. All of this for sl. 2 per person! The scenery was gorgeous and on our adventure to try to cross the river, we hiked through some farmland and found some free range cows that didn’t mind us trespassing to find a suitable river crossing.

We assumed we could just find another combi to return to town (we saw a bunch passing us on the way down…but apparently in the morning the trend is to go TO Celendin, and in the afternoon it is to go the opposite direction…which we didn’t know). We walked in the rain for about 2 hours (6 km) before a bus came and squeezed us into backwards unpadded seats for the bumpy remaining 15km. Lucky for us they got us just in time because a few kilometers up the road we passed some other people but there was no room for them. I don’t think I had the energy after a hot bath and a muddy pool to hike the entire 21 kms.