At breakfast we meet Freddie our personal guide for the next 4 days. He was fab! We found ourselves in a really unusual situation, the only two people in a whole resort and well, you know, it could be a bit much with only two people and one guide but Freddie wasfantastic. He was from a mountainous region near Tena but had travelled extensively through N America and Europe. During our time with him there was never a time he did not recognizea bird call.. insect trail or plant …and he was really good fun.
So after breakfast we set off in thepouring rain (of course it is rainforest) over to the secondary school where our friend Katy was organizing internships. Its probably a good time to explain how the whole Yachanna complex works. The Complex has 4 main enterprises: The resort, the Secondary School, the scientific research centre and the medical centre. They all support each other.
Douglas & Juan started off by wanting to preserve rainforest, which they still do. They realized that education was an important aspect of this and so they started a school for kids from the jungle. They stay for 3 weeks and then go back to their families. They rotate through 3 programs. Hospitality … running the resort; Micro economics … running a small business usually jewelry making and agriculture.
The students keep pigs, chickens and grow all of the produce for the resort. They take these skills back to their families so that they can better manage their land and get more varied and better food production. Freddie took us on a grand tour of the animals.
When we got to the school buildings we met up with Katy which was great…She was really looking forward to Caroline visiting (her aunt who we met up with on Galapagos trip). The generator had broken at the school (a common occurrence) and so everyone was heading up to the resort where we had the luxury of generated electricity for 4 hours each day from 6.00 – 10.00!
In no time t all it was time for lunch served by our shy students and then siesta! Bliss!
No comments:
Post a Comment