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Cayapas EcoLodge, 1st Yurt Court, Quiroga (2026)

23/05/2016

Starting week 3 of construction.

The floor is level, not concrete, but dirt and crushed blocks, the foundations are all done, the "chain" at the bottom of the wall is full of rebar and well anchored and cast in cement, and the walls are climbing.

Today there was a "minga" at our place. Many of the neighbors showed up with their hoes, and we dug the 175 meter water line trench in about 2.5 hours. I have read it is a tradition that goes back to the Incan times, where the locals were required to work on state assigned projects... I just feel that old after running a digging hoe this morning.

The water comes out of the national park, about 5 kms from our property, and this is how the water system was built and is maintained in our community, at least according to Manuel, the water master.

My guys continued to work on the walls, but joined us at lunchtime for salad and potatoes and rice, (Ecuadorians enjoy 2 starches with most meals), chicken. Everyone had there fill, and there were about 23-25 people there for lunch. It is hard to keep count with everyone coming and going.

Thanks neighbors. We had a beautiful day for a minga.

07/05/2016

The end of week one, and what a week.

We started the repair project to have a casita, a little house, on the property that we could live in or rent or whatever. That is a good idea, but we also needed it to be safe in case of another earthquake, so that had to figure into our plans.
The foundations were strong, but the walls looked a bit weak. After we had dug cubic meter holes to anchor the columns and foundation, (I say we, most of that part was the guys, I was just digging foundation trenches), some of the holes went under the foundations. After a few days as we banged away on the other parts of the foundation, I noticed we had created cracks in the walls, so we took down the walls.
After cleaning the blocks just far enough away to be out of the way, (the blocks will be broken and used for gravel under the floor), we proceeded to clean out the old foundations and prep them for the new ones that I hope are all done next week. I was part of that digging, hahaha.
While the guys were refiguring the level and squareness of the foundations I continued to make short pieces of rebar out of long pieces of rebar, and to bend the smaller bar into squares on the bending post that we built out of material that we pulled from the old roof. Later they will be wired together into reinforcement metal for the foundation. I cut and bent a couple hundred pieces between the other things I needed to help with, and things that were going on....
For example when Bob came from down the road came up with his Bobcat, (aptly named), and moved the gravel for us, closer to where we are working, and he also helped us move 4 big barrels of water from the neighbor's house up to the building site. Thanks Bob, and thanks to the Flores family for the water. Water is a little difficult up there, it comes about 5 km to this property, when and if we get it. Feels good having both gravel and water close at hand for next week.
End of the day, end of the week, we have all the foundations dug, the walls are down and four "columnas" (metal reinforcement for the poured concrete columns) are in place. It feels like a good start.

On other notes, do any of you remember the Big Wheel tricycles for kids? This last week there have been a few people a day zooming down the mountain on ADULT SIZE Big Wheels. They appear and leave so quickly that I have yet to get a good picture of them, but I did catch the tail-end of one before it made it around the corner. Zzzzzing! So when you are ready to have that Big Wheel experience as an adult, come on down! I will do the research to find out where they are coming from. I recognize the truck that delivers them to the top of the mountain.

The last 2 pics are Cotacachi mountain looking up from the property, and the last one, just another beautiful sunset...

04/05/2016

Another day at the job. An indigenous guy came up and talked to us about water today, still trying to get that settled, but I think it will be fine.
Today we were digging foundation holes for the columns that will hole the walls and roof up, but also we built an emergency road, trying to get several dump-trucks full of sand, fino-sand, gravel and big stones to use to create foundations, make concrete, and finish the walls. We dug like mad men while the truck waited, and even the truck driver and the guy who came to talk about water pitched in to help.
The first truck that came in the morning got stuck almost immediately, it rained last night, and he ended up dumping his load of gravel, blocking the driveway after we spent about an hour digging and creating an impromptu road. Two more trucks came in the afternoon and we were able to get them to the area where we wanted the material, close to casita. No such luck with levitating the gravel.
More happens every day, and I survive the work, haha, in fact it hurts pretty good, hahaha. More aspirin please.
The most interesting thing I learned today was measuring that black rich topsoil, it is over 40 inches deep, that is just over a meter, then it turns to a yellowish sand.
This pile of gravel look very lonely waaaaay over here, instead of waaaay over there with the sand. Even the wheelbarrow is complaining about it...

03/05/2016

A lot of things have happened in the last two weeks. I know it might be better in chronological order, but I randomly wander through time in my head so why not here?

03/05/2016

Its just a little house for a helper/watchman, if we decide to do that. It might also house some volunteers, if and when we get around to that. 6 meters my about 8 meters. That it is about 480 sq feet for the metrically impared.

03/05/2016

By the end of the day today.... Monday, things looked a lot different. I am really impressed with our black, rich soil.
I have a maestro, and his helper, and me, both of their helpers.
We did a lot lf measuring and found that the walls are 30cm out of square, ;-)

03/05/2016

Let the fun begin. We finally have some of the permissions, and we can start to make something happen. I was up to the land on Saturday with a friend Ron, and we tried to get a head start on making something happen.

20/03/2016

10 March

Ummm, did I mention not all went as planned?

Well good news, the internet guys came in the afternoon, and now we have internet. A little on and off, and I had the pleasure of reconfiguring everything to work with the router they left, but I got it worked out, and it is mostly working well. A little spotty some days.

We brought a scanner-copier-laser printer combo machine with us that will print and scan via wifi. It turned out that was a breeze to install, and I'm very happy with it.

Well bad news, the refrigerator doesn't work. Major bummer. Clare called Oskar, the fridge guy, and he is coming at 3:00 to fix it... only it is evening now, and he has not shown up.

The bottom drawer in the fridge side will freeze vegetables, the freezer side won't freeze anything, and the lights on the control panel have gone wacko. They make no sense.

As my mother used to say, "It makes you want to say bad words." And maybe I said a few. ;-)

No one promised us a rose garden, We'll have to settle for a beautiful view and a bird flying by. The sun and clouds on the mountains are better than TV, even though with a little less plot.

20/03/2016

9 March

The adventure continues.

Yesterday we hung around the house all day, but we didn't receive a visit from the refrigerator man, or from CNT, the internet people, not even a phone call, or a return to our phone calls.

Today more phone calls, and talking to the landlord to get them to urge the internet guys to appear.

By midafternoon the refrigerator guy had appeared. He came alone in a taxi-pickup truck with a monsterous refrigerator. He knew we were living on the 3rd floor, but he brought no help. He had agreed to deliver the fridge to the apartment or take it back...

He started asking young men who were walking by on the street, and in a few minutes he had collected 4 young men, early to mid 20's who agreed to help him, and so the fun began.

It is big, and it is heavy, and it looked impossible to me, but with out even looking at the quirky corners in the stairs he started urging them up the stairs. They got to the first bend, and were stymied.

Back down it came and they all scratched their head for a few minutes and one suggested that they could maybe do it if they took off the doors, which it was obvious they would have to do to get it in the apartment door, if anyone was looking, so off came the doors. But they still could not grunt and push it past the first corner of the stairs.

Back down and more head scratching... it would have to go up the outside of the stairs, pull it up from the flat roof of the building, and push it in the opening at the third floor, and that was the next attempt. Taking off the doors the fridge man cut one of the supply tubes, a silly mistake, since the dis-connector was only 3" away. Sigh...

Across the street to the Su Fereteria (your hardware store) for rope and tape, and a cardboard box that we had brought down with us became the protection for the big doorless device.

With a lot of straining and grunting and a little cursing, up the refrigerator began to float, with the help of 3 (one decided it was crazy, like I was thinking), young men, and finally the fridge man, Oskar, and my landlord who decided to come out and join in the fun. I told him it was crazy, and he told me they did it all the time, hahaha.

Not all went as promised. I ended up paying for the rope, and paying the guys to haul it up, but now we have a fridge. :-)

Now the Monster is sitting in the living room. Not quite enough room in the kitchen.

20/03/2016

8 March

We have been in the apartment for a week, and today they are supposed to deliver a used refrigerator that we bought at a second-hand electronics shop in Otavolo. A big fridge, and a pretty good deal. Things aren't prompt in Ecuador, so we will see what happens.

19/03/2016

I am typing in the things I wrote, before we had internet, and then as we were too busy to get it posted, so I will start dating the writings, in spite of the date it is posted on FB. ;-)

17/03/2016

Boots on the ground in Ecuador....

Now where to begin. I guess at the beginning is the best place.

We is Clare and Rod. We are a United States couple that has been doing experiencial research and training for the move to Ecuador since about 2003 when we spent our long awaited and saved for honeymoon hiking and traveling in Chile and Argentina.

We came to Ecuador from Zhuhai, Guangdong, China, where we had been traveling and teaching in a university for the last 9+ years.

We have rented an unfurnished apartment on the third floor in Cotacachi, Ecuador, and thus the adventure begins. It was totally bare and fairly clean the day we moved in. Unfurnished meaning naked, no fridge, stove, no anything.

Clare said it was like moving in with a college boyfriend, and we are still living an off-campus college student life. We have a new mattress on the floor, a cardboard box for a coffee table, 2 lawn furniture chairs and a plastic stool, a box of dishes we bought in a nearby town, a towel apiece, and a set of sheets from a moving sale. I brought a set of speakers for my PC, and that plugged into an MP3 player is our home entertainment system.

It is comfortable day and night with no heating or cooling, just wearing a long sleeve shirt and long pants. Sometimes I wear a fleece vest if it has been raining... and a raincoat is a good thing too. It is the rainy season here, but it hasn't been bad so far. A few rainy nights, and some sprinkles in the day time.

People here are friendly, both the locals and the expats. Interestingly enough, I hadn't really thought about it, but some of the most friendly expats are the Colombian expats. They are South Americans, but they aren't living in their own country either.

The food situation is better than China, but China wasn't so bad, there just wasn't much of a break from it, hahaha. Guangdong food is good, it just isn't exciting. Many things involve the same flavors, so they taste about the same.

A couple pictures from the roof of our apartment building, Sunrise over Imbaburra mountain, Cotacachi town.

He (Imbaburra) is on the east end of the valley, she (Cotacachi) is on the west end of the valley. Cotacachi town is in the valley.

Cayapas EcoLodge

23/05/2016

07/05/2016

04/05/2016

03/05/2016

03/05/2016

03/05/2016

03/05/2016

20/03/2016

20/03/2016

20/03/2016

19/03/2016

17/03/2016

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