The more I travel, and the more I see of this great, big, beautiful world we call home, the more I have come to terms with the undeniable truth that my dogs are simply better than eeryone else’s dogs.
It’s hard not to miss y own little fluffies, who are sweet and gentle and so inured to noise that they snore right through garbage pickup day, when I’m in the middle of nowhere, doing never-ending hard manual labor and being awoken at 3am by a chorus of yodeling streetdogs directly below my window. For hours. Every. Damn. Night.
So I’m now in Ecuador, taking some much-needed chill weeks after months of busting tail to get here. I suppose I could’ve fucked around Colombia for longer, but after a combined total of three months spent in the country (between this trip and my time there in 2010), I still don’t get what all the fuss is about. Am I the only one who thinks it’s just “meh”? Crazier still, there are heaps of travelers who claim it to be their favorite country in Latin America, and some (well-traveled folk!) even declare it their favorite in the world! Is something happening to them that isn’t happening to me? …Because every time someone starts going on about how great Colombia is compared to other places in Latin America, I can’t help but wonder to myself if the person speaking happens to have a brain tumor.
Anyway, after leaving Colombia, I decided to squirrel myself away in a tiny town to partake in a small permaculture project run by an energetic 70-year old Belgian. It’s pretty remote and it’s pretty rustic, but happily, since it’s a small project, they’ll take on just about anybody- even weak, noodley urbanites without any pertinent skills to offer (me).
For a bit of history, Parque Bambu was originally started about 35 years ago on a denuded hillside in Northern Ecuador by a European environmentalist named Piet. Parcel by parcel, this fervent Belgian has bought up and reforested 15 hectares of land, making it the only spot of biodiversity in an area that was once covered in primary rainforest. On his farm, he singlehandedly raises everything from chickens to papayas to yucca to black soldier flies to loofas, and the park has become one of the region’s best areas for birdwatching. Just about everything is reused, and there is so little waste that the only trash can on site is the size of a large cookie tin and only needs to be emptied every two or three weeks. Additionally, the farm runs educational workshops for interested local farmers, and participates in various conservation initiatives all over the country.
Of course, all this takes a lot of work and even more dedication. Reforestation projects aren’t exactly giant money-makers, and so they are completely dependent on volunteers to make things come together. I’ve now spent a month here, working six-ish hours a day, six days a week, and am slowly hatching from my urbanite coccoon. Every day is filled with different tasks- one day we spent cutting firewood and making compost, another we spent harvesting crops and planting trees, and another was spent felling a tree that the municipality had deemed dangerous- citing its looming presence hovering over the town’s precious water tank as a concern.
But, overall, it hasn’t take me as long to become accustomed to rustic life as I thought it would. I sleep like a damn baby in a dormitory a-fly with fungal spores, brush my teeth in a bathroom with spiders the size of work boots dangling above my head, and sing and scrub myself squeaky clean in an outdoor shower while an amorous tree frog suggestively lays its eggs at my feet.
Perhaps most impressively, in my time here, I’ve managed to learn to cook on this beast:
… which is actually not that hard, considering that you need to cook, stoke and feed the flames within, and also pat out the parts of your hair and clothing that have of course caught on fire in the meantime, all at once. Using the wooden stove also has the added bonus of heating the overhead water storage tank so there is the possibility of a (not quite hot, but) tepid shower afterwards. Woot!
My only other major preoccupation here is attempting to keep a small baby chick alive. While this kind of task would normally be in the purview of the mother hen,… well, this particular hen is kind of a disaster tbh. When I arrived at the finca, she was haughtily marching about followed by eight newly hatched baby chickadees. Within a week, she had trampled two of them to death on accident, all by herself. By the next week, she had kicked one chick so hard in the face that its beak got dislocated. In short order, the rest of the chickadees disappeared- eaten by squirrels or simply enveloped by the surrounding brush, while momma hen continued about her merry way. By the time my third week rolled around, this little girl was the only one left, and even then, she was nearly lost down a hole in one of our compost piles while her mother made googly-eyes at the park rooster.
Really, the actual farm-life components are pretty great. I’ve spent my days pushing wheelbarrows and swinging machetes, baking bread and gesticulating with a pick-axe. I probably could stay for another month or two, if it wasn’t for the dogs and the cats. Oh the dogs. And even worse, the cats! I mean, I’m an animal lover – I volunteer at the SPCA for Christ’s sake! – but everyone has a limit.
In my constant company for the last month have been five dogs. Five. It may not seem like that much until you take into consideration that one of them is an eight-year old lab mix, who, for the entire last month, has had some sort of oozing ear wound that sporadically bursts open and spurts blood and pus everywhere. Another is a smart and adorable beagle (?) mix who regularly spends an hour each night giving her vocal dissertation just under the volunteer sleeping quarters. Yet another is a black and white 6-month old puppy with no real perceivable defects, except for the overwhelming desire to bite small children without warning.
Lastly, I need to mention Lira:
Think about the worst-behaved dog you know. The one that has had absolutely no training or discipline, and who you suspect might really have something wrong with them. Like, in the paranormal sense. Then, make that dog close to 100lbs and so damn strong it can break chains and force down doors. That’s Lira.
All the dogs would howl disconsolately, every night, starting at 3am. Sometimes the lab mix takes the opportunity to run down to the village and brawl with the dogs there, just for variety’s sake. Other times, the entire canine population of Northern Ecuador comes to the finca so that they can wail discordantly in unison (at least until either I get fed up and spray them down with the hose or the other volunteer goes out and starts shouting at them in Italian). We thought we might solve the problem by penning the dogs up at night so that they couldn’t just go run amok with the other, roving packs of village hounds…
… but of course you see how that turned out.
Even with all this said, I’d still take the company of most of the dogs over that of the cats. Oh my god the cats. There are only two, but it really feels like much more when one spends all mealtimes walking over the table and literally snatching food off of your plate and even out of your damn mouth while you’re still chewing for Christ’s sake, and the other insists on walking all over food as it’s being prepared in the kitchen. Her specialty is napping directly on top of bread while it’s rising. In fact, she’s so great at it, that even when I have hidden the bread away in a locked cabinet, covered with a collander and towel, she still manages to make sure she’s in there first. Then, once she’s found the bread, there’s absolutely no recourse. If you try to push her off, however gently, she will bite.
Overall, my time spent on the finca has been one filled with much personal discovery, and I’ve learned a ton- about farming, about conservation, and about just how much I can take before I punch someone else’s dog in the face. I also came to the conclusion that I’m actually much better at adapting to rustic, isolated farm life than I thought I’d be… although if I ever own my own little finca, I’ll need to hire some people to help me figure out all the actual logistical stuff.
So, for now, I’m spending a couple of days in a small town close to the Peruvian border. I had thought it might be off the beaten track, given its proximity to, well, nothing, but it’s apparently turned into a bustling enclave of American and European expat hippies and conspiracy theorists. As I am the only person here who has a history of paid employment and who is also wearing shoes, I am regarded as a bit of an oddity. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I have attached a copy of the town bulletin board below:
Anyway, I need to go do other things as I’m still trying to figure out my transit into Peru, so I’ll leave you with a sideways video of me learning to do a thing.
“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” ― Henry David Thoreau
Oh, the Places Chu'll Go! 