jessaadventures-blog

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Nine: The Final Week!

My painted volunteer rock going under the sign!

My last week in Lobitos was very chill and I spent a lot of time finishing up my work and preparing for Patagonia while I enjoyed some final traditions and experiences! These last few days had their ups and downs (I got sick again), but now I’m on to a new adventure and I couldn’t be more excited :)

The EcoHouse

Yummm mango :)

We said goodbye to Chris on Tuesday, and Michael left for vacation on Tuesday as well, so I said farewell to him before he left on his adventure. That only left Ale, Joris, Anthony, and I with Diego and Nai Ana; a big change from having eleven people in the house last week! The house was pretty chill all week, we all did a lot of reading and sleeping but had some fun nights as well!

On Monday we decided to make breakfast for dinner on Monday with our leftover food (we still had a lot because of the number of people that had just left). We made a whole spread with pancakes with honey, a potato and onion hash, avocado and tomato toast, and eggs; it was wonderful! Taco Tuesday happened for the ninth consecutive week (every Tuesday since I arrived) and it was sad to have my last one, though I hope the guys keep it going. On Wednesday we had a bunch of leftover chickpeas from lunch and the guys decided to create some falafels with homemade tortillas. They were very tasty in a deep-fried way, and the guys got creative with the batter by throwing a bunch of other veggies and leftovers in there, but I’m pretty sure the falafels made me sick. 

It might’ve been the large amount of oil that my stomach wasn’t used to or eating some raw flour, I’m not sure, but both Nai Ana and I got quite sick later that night. I had absolutely no appetite for the next two and a half days, though I tried to eat some delicious tomato soup that Anthony made for us sickies (it didn’t stay down). On Friday I managed a banana and some cornflakes, but it wasn’t until Saturday morning that I felt mostly back to normal. I’m extremely relieved that I got (mostly) better by the time I left; traveling while sick would not be fun! I ended up spending a few evenings of my last week lying in bed watching movies and feeling pretty horrible, which was sad, but the end of the week took an upturn!

I made some yummy avocado toast for lunch after a breakfast of cornflakes on Saturday, and ate a super sweet mango for snack (I’m gonna miss the tropical fruit)! For my last dinner I had to cook something good, so I whipped up one last veggie pot pie! I think it was my best yet, and the comfort food felt right before heading into the Patagonian winter. I also baked a really yummy  vegan vanilla cake that we ate with fried sweet plantains on top; the combination worked beautifully!

The last veggie pot pie with biscuit dough crust topping!

For my last night, now that everyone was recovered, we drank some delicious homemade maracuya sours made by Diego and played a few rounds of King of Tokyo, a new board game that was really fun and nerdy! Overall it was a really great last night, I’ll definitely miss the EcoSwell pisco and game nights. 

My last maracuya (passionfruit) sour! I’m going to miss pisco.

Otherwise, I spent Sunday morning packing everything up (shoving everything in my backpack always takes some time), painting a rock to leave by the sign (a recently-begun tradition), and writing my most famous recipes in the EcoSwell recipe book. It was a chill last morning, and it was nice to not be in a rush to get packed and out the door!

Work 

Planting day at the school!

My last week of work was really successful! I finished the manual I was making for the next volunteer, who will be building a new (and better) solar distiller and we fixed and tested the current distiller for the last time and it made more water than any of the other tests (about 15 liters in three days)!! Joris and I also launched a crowdfunding campaign on Friday to raise money to build the next solar distiller, and last time I checked (Sunday morning) we only needed $30 to reach our goal of $1000! That’s way quicker than we expected (thanks to all of you who donated or tried to donate)!! It felt so good to end on a huge high note after my nine weeks of effort at EcoSwell; I managed to finish a whole big segment of the solar distiller project and I feel pretty proud of all I learned.

One of the highlights of the work week was spending planting day at the Lobitos primary school planting native trees and vetiver! Diego had gotten in touch with the school, and they had a small plot that they wanted to plant with some eco friendly plants, so we headed to the school at 8am on Wednesday with some seedlings from our nursery and all of our tools. While we didn’t get to interact the kids much (they were in classes), we had quite a few run up to watch what we were doing and we got to see their PE class that was near where we were planting. It was a fun morning and it was so nice to see a bunch of curious little kids playing around outside; it’s been a while since I’ve been in that environment and it made me miss my little sisters even more than I already do! After planting some trees and vetiver, fertilizing the soil, and setting up protection around the seedlings so the wind doesn’t knock them over, we talked to the teachers for a bit, took some pictures, and headed back to the EcoHouse. It was a wonderful last planting day (and we didn’t have to get up as early as normal)!

Adventures 

I’m a surfer girl now, look at that massive wave !! ;)

Because of my stomach bug, I didn’t get out of the house much this week, but I did make sure to do some of the things I’ll miss in Lobitos. I watched the sunset on my last night; I’ll miss walking the beach in the golden glow of the sun or hiking to the water tower to watch the sun go down over the fishing boats. 

I also managed to get out surfing for the last time on Saturday, and it was a ton of fun! We went to Piscinas to surf, and though the waves were small there were a lot to catch and I managed to stand up more times than I ever have in one surfing session! I’m definitely thankful I was over my sickness enough to hit the waves, because it really was a highlight (and Joris got some pictures of me surfing)! I wish I had gone surfing more while I was in Lobitos, but I’m definitely planning on heading to Santa Cruz to surf while I’m at school and up to Tofino hopefully next time I’m home (and it’s warm enough)! 

One of my last sunsets over the Lobitos pier.

These nine weeks have been an incredible experience, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’ve learned so much about the reality of working to encourage sustainable development in small communities (it’s difficult but I’m passionate about it and definitely what I want to continue to do in the future, especially at the beginning of my career), how to go about finding (and building) solutions to community issues and running a non-profit, and how to have patience and include all stakeholders and perspectives when developing these projects. I’ve gone on so many amazing adventures (and managed to survive living in a desert-like environment for two months - I didn’t feel a drop of rain the whole time I lived in Lobitos), and met so many incredible people. During my time at EcoSwell, I’ve met twenty people, and those are just the ones that were living in the house. I’ve made a list, in roughly chronological order: Kyler, Sean, Isa, Dion (I already knew him but we’ll count it), Javi, Ale, Brady, Joris, Jenny, Jack, Orianna, Seth, Claudia, Chris, Anthony, Alejandro, Diego, Andres, Michael, and Nai Ana. I also met and interacted with a lot of Lobitos locals and made friends with some of the travelers that came in and out of the nearby hostels! 

I’ll remember this experience forever, and EcoSwell will always have a place in my heart. 

And now I’m heading off on another unforgettable adventure: Patagonia! I’m currently sitting in the Lima airport (after almost not making it onto my flight from Talara to Lima because the flight was overbooked) waiting to board the plane to Santiago and then to Punta Arenas, Chile to meet up with my professors and the fourteen other students in the class!

We’ll be in Punta Arenas from September 3rd to the 5th, then Puerto Natales, Chile from the 5th to the 17th, then El Chalten, Argentina from the 17th to the 20th, and finally El Calafate, Argentina from the 20th to the 22nd, when I fly home and get back to campus on Sunday, September 23rd, twenty-one hours before my first class! Woooo, I’m ready!!

I’m going to try to continue posting roughly every weekend while I’m down there, but I’m not sure of the internet situation, so bear with me! I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories to tell when I do manage to post :) As always, I love and miss everyone and hope the end of your summers are going well!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Eight: The Mass Exodus

A little red crab at Capullana caves!

This week was a good one; we had so many great volunteers and spent a lot of time bonding, adventuring, and going a bit crazy at times! Most everyone left this weekend, though, and now we’re down to only four volunteers. This week was memorable and a great last exciting week before I begin preparing to head to Patagonia (I have a lot of work to do).

The EcoHouse

Party time in the EcoHouse!

We didn’t get any new volunteers this week, and no one else arrives until over a week after I leave, and it’s weird to think that I won’t meet any more new interns before I leave! 

Jack left on Tuesday to head back to Bristol for school, and it’s been weird not having him and his polite and “posh” self around the house; everybody misses him.

Andres left on Wednesday to go to a wedding in Canada, and isn’t coming back for quite a while, so I won't see him again. I’m really going to miss his joking and stories around the house. Michael came back on Wednesday (with a new haircut) to replace Andres leaving.

Orianna left yesterday to head back home to Boston and to school, and Seth and Claudia left today; Seth to go home to Indiana to start looking for a new job, and Claudia to head back to Bristol for her third year of university! Chris leaves tomorrow for the UK, which leaves only Ale, Joris, Anthony, and I in the house. I’ll have my own room and I’ll be the only girl (apart from Nai Ana) for the first time since I got here.

It’s sad to see everyone leave, we’ve had some really great times these past few weeks with so many people. At the same time, though, it’ll be nice to have some quiet and time to reflect and relax before I head to Patagonia and meet a bunch of new people and have minimal alone time for three weeks.

We had a pretty typical food week, with some new recipes thrown in. On Monday we went to Tranqui’s and most people got dessert at a cute little stand that just opened up nearby, we had tacos on Tuesday (of course), veggie burgers on Wednesday, pot pie on Thursday, and we did a special director’s night on Friday, when Diego, Nai Ana, and Michael made some AMAZING lasagna (a vegan and a vegetarian one) and a wonderful vegan carrot cake pudding. I was thoroughly impressed, we have to have the directors cook more! On Saturday we went to La Casona to try out their food for Orianna’s last night, but the food took three hours to come out and wasn’t that great. On Sunday we headed to Cora for lunch and Tranqui’s for Claudia and Seth’s last night! 

Nai Ana’s vegan carrot cake pudding with chocolate sauce on top! It was incredible.

We also had some crazier nights this week. On Wednesday, after veggie burgers, Diego and Nai Ana made maracuya (passionfruit) sours (like pisco sours but with passionfruit too) that were amazing but very strong, and those combined with the several runs the boys went on for beers resulted in everyone getting pretty tipsy. We all ended up having a dance party and trying to salsa around the dining room, which was highly entertaining! On Friday we celebrated Nai Ana’s birthday (it’s actually today but we wanted to celebrate while everyone was still here) by making pisco sours, drinking beer, having a jam session with all the instruments laying around the house, and talking around a bonfire in the courtyard. Another fun night!

Work 

Bonfire in the courtyard!

We tested the solar distiller again this week, after trying to seal up all the holes, and though we fixed most of the worst holes, there were still some little leaks and the drips weren’t falling in the water catch, so we got very little water out of it. This week we’re going to try to do one more fix so we can get enough water to put through the carbon filter and drink, but at this point there’s too many issues with the distiller to move it to the guild. It’s important that the technology and products we introduce to the community work well, are easy to use, and have the issues and kinks all worked out, because if the locals are introduced to a new technology and all it does is cause issues and not work they’ll stop using it and also lose trust in EcoSwell.

We’ve learned a lot from this pilot distiller, and it has helped us identify ways to make the next one much more functional and easier to use. So, though we’re doing one last test to see if we can get more water out of it, during this last week I’ll be working to finish writing a manual for building a functional solar distiller, incorporating the lessons I’ve learned from working with the current distiller, and I’ll be launching a crowdfunding campaign to fund the construction of the next distiller (so keep an eye out for that, I’d really appreciate you all donating what you can so my project can continue on to be a success and help the Lobitos community)!

Other than the distiller, we had planting day (I pulled weeds, thinned vetiver, put mulch on vetiver, and pulled more weeds), cleaning day (I got to deep clean the bathroom woo), and social media (mostly SteemIt posts). EcoSwell was on Peruvian National Television this week as well, which was very exciting! A show did a short segment (filmed in February) on EcoSwell and their mission, and it was really well done!

As I’m getting ready to head to Patagonia, I have a lot of preparation to do. We’ve been given six papers to read over before we come, along with five more papers about energy issues in Patagonia that I would like to read over to determine what I want to focus my research project on and get a feel for what we’ll be learning about down there. We also have a short essay to write about what we’re looking forward to and what we want to learn while we’re traveling around Patagonia. I’m trying to get all this done in my free time and in the evenings, and it’s all very interesting but definitely sucks up some time!

Adventures 

Emerging onto the hidden beach at Capullana caves.

On Wednesday the whole house headed to Piscinas, some to surf and some to watch (I took pictures of the surfers) and it was really nice to watch the sunset (it was beautiful) before we headed back to make veggie burgers.

On Saturday we decided to take a hike to the caves so the people who hadn’t been yet could experience them! We ended up walking eight miles (round trip) on the dusty roads, having lots of interesting and fun conversations, occasionally running ahead of the others and scaring people, and listening for Cortarramas (the endangered bird). We reached the caves and scrambled down the ropes, spent time bouldering on some of the cliffs, exploring the caves (there were a lot of bats), chasing the little red crabs, and trying to spot blue-footed boobies. It was a great adventure and was a wonderful last outing with the big crew of volunteers. We also briefly met a big group of Peruvians who were on vacation, and we took a picture with them! They seemed excited to meet so many foreigners in a pretty random place. Capullana caves is definitely one of my favorite places in the area; it’s really beautiful and with a bit of work (cleaning up litter, making the ropes a little safer, doing some research on the ecosystem) it would be an amazing place for ecotourism! 

The EcoTeam at Capullana Caves!

It’s weird to have so few people in the house now, and I already miss everyone that has left, but it’ll be nice to have some down time to focus on preparing for Patagonia and finishing up my work here. Only one more week here in Lobitos, and I’m definitely ready to head down south, meet new people, travel around, and spend time hiking around some of the most beautiful mountains and environments in the world! I miss everyone and home (I hear the smoke is finally going away), and I’m excited to head back to school too!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Seven: The Usual (with a sprinkle of adventure)

The lighthouse at Punta Balcones.

It was another pretty standard week! We had some creative meals and ventured to the westernmost point of South America for a fun half-day adventure, along with a couple fun game nights. It’s crazy to think I’m only here for two more weeks!

The EcoHouse

One of our pasta nights with roasted chickpeas and stir fried veggies!

There’s been a lot of changeover this week in the EcoHouse! Jenny left on Tuesday for school at Humboldt State, Michael left on Wednesday for a week to see family and go back to Lima for a bit, Andres had to leave last weekend for a week to say goodbye to his sick grandad (he passed away this weekend), but he’s back now until Michael comes back on Wednesday. Diego came back on Tuesday with his girlfriend, Nai Ana, who is really sweet! She’ll be handling Talara trips and does organization around the house and volunteer coordination.

We also have two new volunteers in the house! Chris arrived on Tuesday, he’s from the UK and is going into his final year at university there. He’s quite quiet so I don’t know much about him yet, and he’s only here for two weeks. He’s been helping Jack with reforestation a lot because Jack leaves tomorrow, so Chris will take over his jobs when he leaves.

Anthony got here yesterday, and he’ll be here all the way through November. He’s from Chicago and goes to Loyola, but is living in New Orleans right now and is taking a leave of absence from school to do research here at EcoSwell. He’ll be doing a Surfonomics survey to try to calculate the economic impact of surfing in Lobitos. It seems like a really cool project and he’s very outgoing!

For food this week we were really good about not eating out. We had Tranqui’s on Sunday and went to 420 for pizzas on Monday for Jenny’s last night, but otherwise we’ve cooked in every meal. We did our classic Taco Tuesday (of course), and had planting day breakfast with a huge fruit salad because we had pineapple, papaya, and mangos that were going bad. On Wednesday we made our trusty veggie burgers with leftover beans, lentils, and potatoes (we didn’t have enough sweet potatoes, but they still turned out great). On Thursday we decided to make the guys take over cooking for once and we did a boy’s night. They made enough mushy rice to feed all of Lobitos (they didn’t know how much rice expands when you cook it) along with hummus, which was pretty good, and a vegetable stirfry, which they had accidentally put super spicy peppers in so some people were red-faced and tearing up a bit as we ate, and a fruit salad for dessert. Overall, though, it was better than I had expected and the boys had a ton of fun with it! 

On Friday we tried to make rice balls with our abundance of leftover rice, but it was too mushy to form into balls so we made some greek mush with rice, cucumber, tomato, leftover hummus, and some spices and some mexican mush with avocado, black beans, tomato, rice, and spices. I also made some rice pudding with leftover white rice, cinnamon, nutmeg, soymilk, and sugar and it worked pretty well! This was probably our most interesting meal to date and we called it the “mushes of the world” meal. On Saturday and Sunday we made pasta (we had many packs to eat) with various veggies and roasted chickpeas on Saturday and squash, cauliflower, and peas on Sunday. I spent most of Saturday hanging out at the house (some of the other volunteers went to Mancora) and I decided to make carrot cake again. I made a huge batch and it turned out really delicious, everyone agreed! We had some pretty good food for it being the weekend!

Mmmm...mush!

We had some more game nights this week! We played Secret Hitler twice (I was secret Hitler four times somehow), we played mafia a few times, quite a few rounds of spoons, some BS, and the name game again. Definitely some fun times!

A bunch of the group started watching a show called Vikings, which we have downloaded, but I’ve been feeling a little under the weather with a sore throat and a headache, so I mostly just read in my bed at night. I managed to finish the entire Harry Potter series in two weeks (my fifth time reading them)! It’s been quite a few years since I read the series, and I’d forgotten a lot of the details, so it was really fun to read them again!

Work

The newly painted front wall!

Work this week was pretty chill. We had to fix the cracks in the distiller, which involved a lot of waiting for layers of glue and silicone to dry, so there was a lot of in-between time to work on other stuff. I’m working on writing manuals both for building a distiller (and making note of all the mistakes we’ve made and lessons we’ve learned) and for maintaining the distiller we have, so once the distiller is moved to the guild the fishermen can monitor the process on their own. I’ve also been keeping up with social media posts pretty well and generating content to post on Facebook and SteemIt. I spent planting day finishing up painting the front wall with Claudia, and now it looks so much nicer with no paint chips!

Adventures

The most western point of South America! 

Because I’ve been feeling a bit sick, I didn’t get out of the house much this week. However, on Sunday morning we all jumped in a van organized by Diego and headed to the most western point in South America, Punta Balcones! It was a really pretty and secluded area with a rocky point, a nice beach, and another point with a lighthouse. We scrambled up to the western point when we first go there and spent some time taking pictures, admiring the view, and watching sea lions. We decided to walk over to the lighthouse, so we climbed back down the rocks to the beach, where we met a group of locals who were doing a beach cleanup (yay!) and they took a video of us saying thank you to the organization that they were working with to clean the beach. After talking for a bit and exchanging contact info, we headed on down the beach. The sun started to come through the clouds and it was a really nice walk in a beautiful natural area. We reached the lighthouse and met some guys from Lima who were vacationing in the area and talked with them for quite a while about what we were doing and what they thought of sustainability and fishing issues (they talked a lot about what they knew of fishing practices and controversies, and agreed that there is a big problem of overfishing in Peru). We hung out around the lighthouse for a bit after saying goodbye to them and then headed back down to the beach, where we picked up trash (LOTS of plastic water bottles) on our way back to the parking lot. We filled a big bag of trash for the beach cleanup and took a picture with the guys running it when we made it back! It was really nice to see that people are doing something about the huge amount of plastic waste that is flying around everywhere and dimming the beauty of the area. We sat on the beach for a while enjoying the sun and examining cool shells and rocks until Victor, our van driver came back to pick us up. I really liked this little adventure; it was nice to get out of Lobitos without the hassle of taking a van to Talara and then trying to find another person to take us where we wanted to go and then catching a bus back, etc. It was a beautiful area and the fresh air felt nice!

Walking back to the beach and western point from the lighthouse.

This week was a good one; it was nice to make some progress on the distiller, meet new faces, make fun food, and go on one solid adventure. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the distiller up to the guild before I leave and hand off my tasks to one of the new volunteers; I’m starting to think about how to wrap up my work here so nothing is left hanging. I’m continuing to prepare for Patagonia by reading papers we’ve been assigned and starting to write the short essay we have to do before we arrive!

Miss and love you all!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Six: Chillin’ Out

Under the Lobitos pier.

This week was nice and chill, which was much needed after the craziness of last week! Nothing too crazy happened, but there were still some fun times with the EcoTeam. I’m already two-thirds through my time in Lobitos, and it feels both like I just got here and I’ve been here forever. I’m sure these next three weeks will fly by, and I’m excited to see what they hold!

The EcoHouse

My banana and strawberry compote crepe!

We only had one addition to the EcoTeam this week. Claudia arrived on Tuesday from the UK! She goes to Bristol University like Jack, but is a year ahead of him in the same geography program  (going into her third year of uni). Claudia is great, she’s always really enthusiastic and funny and we’ve had fun pointing out differences between British and American slang (it’s her and Jack and Joris against the rest of us usually). Claudia is doing research for her dissertation while she’s here, so she isn’t directly involved in any of the existing projects. She’s been interviewing local fisherman about overfishing and illegal fishing, which is really interesting! She’ll be here for three weeks total, so her, Seth, Orianna, and Chris (who comes tomorrow for two weeks) all leave the weekend before me. We have eight volunteers right now, with two people staying at Nacho’s hostel. Jenny leaves tomorrow and Chris comes to replace her, and we have one more guy, Anthony, coming on Sunday so we’ll have nine volunteers! That’s a super full house.

Diego (the Director) and his girlfriend, Nai Ana, are arriving tomorrow as well to replace Michael leaving for a week, and then Andres leaves when Michael gets back. It’ll be a big crew for my last few weeks!

We cooked a lot this week in an effort to reduce the money we’re spending by going out to eat so much. The four girls were almost always the chefs, and the four guys were the clean up crew! We did our classic Taco Tuesday, which everyone always enjoys, and on Wednesday we made two amazing vegan pot pies! Still my favorite food I think :) On Thursday we had a sweet and savory vegan crepe night with homemade strawberry compote, bananas, avocados, tomatoes, chickpeas, veggies, and more. This was a big hit; I definitely want to make crepes again before I leave. We also had some pisco sours to go with our fancy crepes! On Friday we made our famous veggie burgers (the guys were all extremely hungry though, so they went for starters at Tranqui’s and then  came back and demolished the rest of the burgers). By Saturday we were getting low on homemade dinner materials (it’s hard cooking for ten people, six of whom eat for two or three people each), but we made a big batch of pasta and stir fried some squash and veggies to go with it and the remade pasta sauce we buy. Last night we gave up and went to Tranqui’s for dinner, which was as good as always!

A slice of vegan pot pie :)

Other than food, we had some fun nighttime activities this week! We had two game nights, one where we played BS (the card game) and Seth, who worked as a gondolier in Indianapolis, gave a wonderful performance of a famous Italian song that he would have to sing while he rowed tourists down the river so Claudia would take some of his cards (he’s quite talented). For the other game night we played the name game, where everyone writes down names of famous people on pieces of paper, and one person on each of the two teams has to get the rest of the team to guess what name they have (similar to taboo or charades), and we played some vary intense rounds of spoons, one of which was spoons hide-and-seek and we had to get up and run around the house trying to find the spoons. It was a blast!

The other big event we had was a Lord of the Rings marathon! We watched all the extended editions (each is four hours or more) over the course of four almost-consecutive days. We watched the first movie on Wednesday, split the second movie between Thursday and Friday, and watched the third (4.5 hours) on Sunday because it hadn’t fully downloaded on Saturday. Because I just finished the books, it was interesting to rewatch the movies and notice all the things they left out and little plot changes in the movies that weren’t in the books.

This weekend was really chill for me, all of the newer volunteers went to El Ñuro to swim with the turtles on Saturday, so I just hung out and read Harry Potter (I’ve just started the fifth book and I started the first one a week ago) and laid in the sun and did a big load of laundry. On Sunday everyone was tired but I got outside for a while and went for a swim (the waves were too big for me to surf) and a walk.

Overall a fun week in the EcoHouse getting to know the new interns, playing games, and cooking!

Work

Chipping paint in the sunrise!

This week was a little frustrating work-wise. I found a bunch of big cracks in the basin of the distiller that have opened up again (they originally were formed because the volunteer that built the actual wood structure of the distiller didn’t let the wood dry long enough and it warped) and the seawater was just leaking straight out of the bottom of the distiller. We got more silicone from Seth, and I did my best to fill all the gaps and create a seal between the window and the basin, but when I went to test the distiller again on Saturday morning there was still a big crack that I had missed, so all the water drained out again. Now I have to let the distiller dry again and then fix the cracks again and let it dry before testing it again hopefully on Friday. I think the seal is working a lot better, but the warping is definitely slowing down progress and making it difficult to get the distiller to perform at its best. But, I guess that’s the point of pilot unit like this one, to try it and make mistakes and learn from them! My main goal for the distiller at this point is to to a fully functional test (with no holes and a good seal) and move it up to the fisherman’s guild, where Joris has just finished building a stand for the distiller, before I leave. I think that’s doable, but I don’t want to rush it and sacrifice functionality like the guy who built the wood structure did. We’ll see how far I get! I also got my first Lobitos sunburn while painting silicone on the distiller this week, but its already faded.

Planting day was more like painting day this week. We got up at 6am as usual, and we finally decided to repaint the front outside wall of the house (there were a bunch of big paint chips in it that had been bugging me since I got here), so we spent five hours chipping the paint off the wall and getting covered in paint dust (we had catchy music to work to, so it was fun)! We then had an EcoBrunch, which was our usual big planting day breakfast immediately followed by the lunch that Angelita was already done making by the time we called planting day quits.

I’ve been keeping up with social media posts much better now, so that went well this week! We also launched and completed a crowdfunding campaign in four days, during which we raised $750 for Ale’s wind turbine project!

There’s still a lot to do before I leave, and I hope I can get it all done! I’m still very motivated to get this distiller up and running efficiently and reliably.

Adventures

Surfers jumping into the big waves at Piscinas.

There weren’t too many adventures this week, but we went to Tranqui’s for Saturday dinner and 420 for Monday dinner (we got there early and got the warm inside table and quick service)!

I went surfing a few times this week, though I usually ended up going at low tide when the waves aren’t as great, but I got up on a little green wave (before the wave had curled) which was exciting! I had only been catching the white wash before then.

My swim this weekend was nice, and my walk afterwards took me down to the Piscinas cliffs, where I watched surfers catching the big waves, saw a bunch of crabs, and picked up a bunch of trash (I haven’t talked much about it, but there’s an open landfill nearby and plastic bags and other trash tend to escape and litter the beach and everywhere between Lobitos and Talara, it’s really sad).

The EcoTeam at Tranqui’s!

This was a nice, chill week with a lot of fun nights! I’m looking forward to the next three weeks, and I’m definitely getting excited for Patagonia (we have some readings to do now, and I’m starting to read up on Patagonian energy issues) and the mountains and beauty there. I’m also missing my friends and am excited to be back on campus soon and move into my new house!

Miss and love you all as well, I hope all your summers are going well and are full of fun adventures!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Five: Craziness!

Sunset at the water tower!

Wow. SO much happened this week! It ended up being full of adventures and unexpected surprises!

P.S. I’m going to start posting on Mondays permanently because I rarely have time to write the post for Friday and we generally don’t have much wifi over the weekend! This post includes both last weekend and this past weekend.

The EcoHouse

Isa and I with our new sign!

We’ve had some more change over in the house this week! Isa left on Friday after being here for two months, and it’s definitely weird without her. She was my cooking buddy, so now I’ve gotta find a newbie to help me make food (or convince the guys to help me make their huge portions of food haha). Isa is off to Lima for a few days and then she’s heading to Cuzco and Machu Picchu before going home to her second year at Florida State. A pretty impressive trip for her first time out of the US!

Brady left this Sunday, and it’s weird without him here too. He was our funny southern fix-it guy and he definitely had a big presence in the house! He’s heading home to study for the LSAT and then (hopefully) heading to law school in Vermont. He’s a super intense skier and really wants to come ski at Mt. Baker, so maybe I’ll see him someday soon!

We also had two new arrivals this Saturday! Orianna goes to Northeastern and just finished her second year there in engineering. She’s going to be helping out with renewable energy and restarting an aeroponics project using solar panels to grow herbs super fast! She seems great, and we’ve already gone out surfing together, she seems like a go-getter.

Seth is from Indiana University and did his bachelor’s in environmental science and is doing his master’s in energy, so he’s also here for renewable energy (we have seven volunteers right now and six are here for renewable energy, so a lot of awesome energy stuff is going to be happening)! He’s starting a project called Hole in the Wall, where a computer is put in an outdoor wall in a public area and protected so the screen can’t be touched (basically cemented inside a concrete wall with a thick plastic barrier over it) and there is a keyboard stuck outside and the computer is given internet access and powered using solar panels and left there. Then the community (especially kids) can use the computer at any time to teach themselves various things, but they have to figure it out on their own. At other Hole in the Walls there’s apparently been a really impressive rate of learning by the kids that use the computer; they’ve taught themselves English and complicated science concepts and other cool things. We’re going to try to create Peru’s first Hole in the Wall!

We also have a volunteer coming today, Claudia, and I’m excited to meet her!

Other than the volunteer change overs, we had some good food again this week. We did our classic taco tuesday and made some vegan cookies for dessert, which we ate while playing Secret Hitler (our favorite board game) and drinking pisco sours. On Wednesday night Isa and I had a lasagna-off (we had a ton of lasagna noodles to use) and she made a non-vegan lasagna while I made a vegan one. Both turned out really good and not many people could tell that mine was vegan! I’m getting better at improvising recipes, and I really liked the way I made that lasagna (although I only had sweet soy milk to use, so it turned out a little sweet but it would be amazing with unsweetened almond milk). 

Isa and I also made her a crazy vegan going away cake that was pretty damn amazing (and super rich). It was two layers; the bottom layer was vanilla chocolate chunk (Andres found vegan chocolate in Talara) and the top layer was vanilla with strawberry puree. We made vegan chocolate ganache and put it between the layers with fresh strawberries and drizzled it on top as well. Everyone agreed that it was delicious! We also had a bunch of pears going bad, so Andres made a sugar-less pear crumble one morning that really didn’t need any sugar; it was really good!

Our yummy vegan layer cake :)

I also tried to make a lentil curry this weekend, which kind of worked but we didn’t have all the spices I needed so it mostly just tasted like slightly spicy lentils. I’ll try again soon and hopefully it’ll turn out better!

Work

An EcoTeam jumping selfie from our hike day! (See the adventure section)

Work this week was pretty chill, but we still got a lot done! We had friends join for planting day again, a guy named Connor from Ireland who is staying at La Casona came and helped out and there were some friends of one of the members of EcoSwell’s UK team that were visiting so they helped out as well! Our veggie garden is half planted and we transferred some seedlings and planted more seeds for germination! Most of planting day was spent removing invasive tree stumps from the front yard though. We hacked away at those things forever and ended up removing two huge stumps and a few little trees that were springing up. It was a fun planting day with some groovy music though!

As for the distiller, we painted it with wood primer because the water was starting to damage the window frame (it was nasty, sticky stuff that got in my hair and is still in my hair a week later…) and I fixed the door handle and we found some bigger water jugs to distill the water into. We’re getting more silicone today, so this week we have to seal up any little cracks and make the whole distiller as air-tight as possible to keep the heat and the water vapor in! We’re also working on some really cool components that should increase the efficiency even more, stay tuned! We tested the distiller again this week and got similar results (about 10 liters out when we put 40 liters in) so hopefully our next test, after all the improvements, will give us a higher yield!

On Thursday morning we all went hiking in Piedritas, a nearby town! See the adventure section for the story.

Other than that, I’ve been organizing social media posts three times a week and have finally started lining up facebook posts and instagram posts, so there’s been progress there! Isa and I also painted a cute sign for the EcoSwell entrance, because before you could only tell that this is the EcoSwell house coming from one direction. I think we did a pretty great job and it was a fun creative outlet!

Adventures

The interns grabbing a beer in Mancora!

There were a lot of adventures this past week! I’ll try to make this section short-ish, but there’s lots to tell :)

Last weekend was Peruvian Independence Day and, coincidentally, Brady’s birthday. All of the volunteers decided to go spend a night in the famous beach/party town of Mancora to celebrate! Mom and I had gone for a quick day trip the weekend before, so I was the only one that had  spent any time there (Isa had bussed through Mancora, but that was it). We headed out after an early lunch on Saturday, caught the combie to Talara and a van to Mancora and checked into our hostel, Palosanto Backpackers, as soon as we got there. There were seven of us, so we got a whole hostel dorm room to ourselves! The hostel had a bar, a pool, a restaurant, and a bunch of comfy hammocks. Once we were settled we headed to the beach to check out the town and the crowds (there were TONS of people ready to celebrate Peru’s independence). Music was blasting all along the beach, and we found a restaurant on the beach to grab a snack and a beer while we people watched. There were banana boats and crazy water hover boards speeding around just off the shore, and it was fun to watch some of the beginner surfers trying to stand up. After some yucca fries and our beers (have I mentioned that the beers here are 650 ml and about $2 USD and quite good?), we wandered around the booths for a bit before stopping at a convenience store to stock up for our party night. We got some Pisco, of course, because you have to drink Peru’s national liquor on their independence day! We weren’t allowed to bring the alcohol into the hostel, so we went back to the beach and hung out watching a soccer game and sipping our drinks. Isa and I bought a coconut to drink, in classic tourist fashion. The guy who sold us the coconut told us to make it a “CocoLoco” by adding some of our Pisco, which was a wonderful recommendation ;) Once the sun had set, we went and played some games in our room to pass the time and then went to find some veggie burgers for dinner. We ended up in a place that was only playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers and had a funny bartender in a big chef’s hat. The food was okay, and we wandered around afterwards trying to find the best place to celebrate. The beach was crazy, there were lights flashing and so many different bars playing different music and lots of drunk people taking pictures. There’s also a famous hostel called Loki that apparently has the craziest parties, but the line was huge so we ended up back at our hostel, which was also throwing a party. However, the party didn’t start until 1am and didn’t pick up until almost 3am, by which time most of us were fast asleep (we usually go to bed at 10 in the EcoHouse). Most of us made it until around 2 and got a bit of dancing in, but only Ale and Brady saw the true Mancora party scene, and they were out until 5am! In the morning we got our free breakfast at the hostel and hung out on the beach for a bit before gathering our things and grabbing lunch at the Black Sheep (the really yummy vegan restaurant that Mom and I went to the weekend before) and hopping on the Eppo bus home. Needless to say, the rest of that day was very chill and everyone went to bed early that night, but it was a fun adventure that brought us all closer together!

On Monday night we hiked up to the water tower for the sunset, which was nice but there was a marine layer blocking the lower part of the sunset that you could just tell was amazing! That night, a group of us had gotten back from dinner at Tranqui’s and were talking when Andres noticed a fire up the hill. A nearby house had caught fire (they figured out it was an electrical fire) and people were gathering trying to put it out (Lobitos doesn’t have a fire department). We ran to help out. It was pretty scary because this area is very dry, so the fire could have easily spread and destroyed much of Lobitos. Luckily, the community really rallied, bringing fire extinguishers and carrying buckets of water and shoveling dirt on the flames, and the fire was put out and no one was hurt. I was impressed and inspired by how many people drove from all corners of town to help fight the fire, it shows how close-knit the Lobitos community is. 

On Thursday the Directors decided to take us on a work outing to Piedritas, the little town between Lobitos and Talara, to show us the hiking trails that EcoSwell is trying to develop into an ecotourism and education destination. We spent four hours hiking the rough trails in the dry forest, spotting cool birds and other wildlife, identifying plants, jumping across a muddy stream or two, and admiring the view over the dry forest from the highest point on the trails. It was a really fun day and showed us the beauty and the potential of the area. The trail project is about to take off, so I may get to help a little with that before I leave! Maybe my trail work experience will come in handy :)

Heading out on the hike in Piedritas!

On Friday morning we had the opportunity to go jump off one of the abandoned offshore oil rigs, and most of the volunteers decided to go (including me)! Tullio, the same guy that took us fishing, loaded us and a bunch of other people from nearby hostels into his boat and we puttered off to the platform. When we got there there were two huge sea lions lying on the stairs, so we had to scare them off by yelling at them until they sleepily rolled off the platform. The oil platforms have three levels, one four meter (13 ft), one eight meter (26 ft), and one fourteen meter (46 ft). We got to choose which to jump off of, and almost everyone went off the tallest one. It was high!! But the adrenaline rush was great and no one was hurt worse than a couple of tight muscles and bruises from landing wrong (I landed well and was perfectly fine!). I’ve done a lot of cliff jumping, and it was different to jump into the big ocean waves but nice to not have to try to avoid rocks when I jumped. It was definitely an experience and took some nerve, but it was a lot of fun and now I can say that I’ve jumped off the top of an offshore oil rig! 

The oil rig we jumped off of (those stacks of tires at the bottom are about as tall as me, for reference).

I also went surfing twice in the past few days, and I’m determined to start going more often! It was a lot of fun, and both times I got up on the board at least four times. Also, the water has been really warm lately, so there’s no need for wetsuits! I’m ready to become a surfer girl :)

Finally, we went out to El Cuartel (a restaurant/hostel mom and I went to) for the first time with the EcoTeam for Isa’s last night and it was delicious! Most of the guys got veggie burgers (Ale is going vegetarian for August, yay!), I got a quinoa salad, and Isa got what looked like an amazing seafood risotto! On the way home it was pitch dark and everyone was admiring the milky way and the constellations. It was a fun night with everyone, and El Cuartel is becoming my favorite restaurant in Lobitos (though it is the furthest away from the house).

Phew! I think that covers all the adventures this week. This past weekend was really nice and chill; I spent most of the time reading (I’ve moved on to rereading the Harry Potter series), hanging out on the beach, surfing, and cooking. I’m looking forward to the next four weeks and what adventures they bring!

Looking out over the Piedritas dry forest :)

It’s been the craziest and most fun week yet, but I also have been missing home more than ever. When I can get online, the pictures of the mountains and green trees remind me of all the hikes I love in the summer and the mountain views that I love so much. I’m sad to be missing summer traditions, but this is truly an incredible experience and I’m trying my best to live in the moment! I’m sure I’ll have my fair share of mountains, trees, and views in my three weeks in Patagonia at the end of summer!

That’s all for now, miss and love you all! Look for another update next Monday :)

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Four: Friends, Family, and Food

The Capullana caves arch.

**Sorry for the late post, wifi access was minimal this weekend! I wrote most of this on Friday, so just pretend it’s Friday instead of Monday :) **

A month has flown by!! It was fun to see my mom this week and show her around Lobitos. The EcoSwell team made a number of new friends this week, including a couple of new volunteers. We are also now generating clean and drinkable distilled water! It’s been a busy week and there is lots to tell :)

The EcoHouse

Our homemade vegan fruit crumble!! It was delicious :)

We have a couple of new people in the EcoHouse!! Jenny arrived on Tuesday afternoon, and she seems great! She is going into her final year at Humboldt State in energy resources engineering (a major I almost did too) and is from the bay area. It’s been really fun to have another girl in the house; she’s very outgoing and fun to talk to! Jenny is helping Joris and I with the solar distiller, so we’re hopefully going to make a lot of progress in the next few weeks!

Jack arrived yesterday (Thursday). He’s from London and just finished his first year at uni studying geography (with a Spanish component). I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to him yet, but he seems really friendly and eager to help out. He’s here for NGO management, so he’ll be able to help me out with social media (yay!). With Jack we have seven volunteers and we only have room in the house for six, so he’s staying at Nacho’s hostel until Isa leaves next Friday.

Other than our newbies, we’ve had a crazy good food week. During this week’s Talara trip, the guys that went bought a lot less food than normal, which I think has upped our creativity and thus upped the awesomeness of our home-cooked meals. We had Taco Tuesday (as always), but we didn’t have tortillas, so we whipped up some homemade tortillas that were pretty amazing!! Wednesday was veggie burger night again and we cooked up some amazing veggie burgers using our now tried and trusted recipe (minimalist baker’s sweet potato black bean burgers). We also made a strawberry, nectarine, and papaya crumble that hit the spot for dessert! Thursday night we went out to Tranqui’s because Jack had just arrived and Jenny hadn’t been there yet, but he was out of his yummy plantains and french fries :( Luckily, though, Isa and Jenny and I had made two AMAZING vegan carrot cakes earlier in the day (we had a bunch of carrots we needed to get rid of) and everybody chowed down on them both Thursday night and this morning. And tonight we have a vegan pot pie in the oven that looks delicious and I can’t wait to eat!!

We also watched a couple of cool movies this week, one was called Rushmore, a Wes Anderson film about a guy who wants to stay at his prep school forever, and Ex Machina, which I hadn’t seen before and was a little crazy but pretty well done, I thought.

There also was a pisco party one evening, and four of our new friends (two pairs of van-life couples staying at La Casona from Germany and Austria) joined us and learned about what we do at EcoSwell (they were very into it)!

Work

Joris, Jenny, and I with our working distiller!

The distiller is officially up and running! It still needs quite a few improvements, but it can produce very pure distilled water. Right now we’re getting about three liters a day, but we think we can increase that quite a bit by making it more air-tight and making some other changes. We have spent quite a bit of time filtering seawater to get macro organisms out of the water (you don’t want stuff dying in the distiller and stinking up the water) and the distiller can take about 50 liters at a time, which it distills over about five days (right now). We’re on the way to making a really effective and sustainable source of clean drinking water for Lobitos!

Planting day was really fun this week, we had both of our new van life couples come help out, so we got a lot done pretty fast Wednesday morning! I helped germinate some oregano and cilantro and then mixed and poured dirt for the veggie garden/orchard. We also planted a bunch of vetiver (bug and odor repellant grass) on the path to the dry toilet. We took some group pictures and gave the van lifers EcoSwell shirts as thanks for their help! Then we made our classic big planting day breakfast and got working on the projects again.

On Friday, a few of us went in to Talara to look for materials for our projects (Jenny and I got some items that will improve the distiller), and I got to experience ProMart (the weirdly similar Peruvian version of Home Depot) and Plazavea, the grocery store. We went to lunch at Black Pepe, a local restaurant run out of a man’s living room, and had a delicious salad (I also tried a bite of a yummy classic seafood dish called mariscos) before heading home with our new materials.

Adventures

Mom and I at the Capullana caves!

This weekend was really fun because my mom was here from Friday to Tuesday and we got to go on some adventures and I got to show her around Lobitos! She arrived early Friday morning and knocked on the door just as I was leaving for a run. If you want to hear her wild travel story check out her facebook! Anyway, she made it after an exhausting night and crashed in my bed while she waited for the hostel to open. She moved into her room at lunch time and after work I went up to La Casona (the hostel up the hill where she stayed) and had a nice happy hour with her on the deck as we watched the sun set. She had already made friends with one of the van life couples (from Germany) and was talking up a storm in classic mom fashion. After sunset we decided to walk the beach down to a restaurant she had been recommended by some surfers, El Cuartel. It had amazing veggie burgers and sweet potato fries, along with quinoa and potato salads! After dinner we headed home and decided to watch The Martian with everyone, which ended up going until midnight and Mom found out that she had been locked out of her hostel. So, she came and slept in my twin-size bottom bunk bed with me and kept me up half the night with her snoring (haha..).

On Saturday we decided to head to Mancora (a touristy party town an hour and a half north) for the day as a little mother-daughter adventure. While we were waiting for the combie to take us to Talara from Lobitos, we met the other van-life couple (from Austria) and talked to them for a while as we all looked for a combie that would fit us. (We happened to meet both van-life couples at different times than the EcoSwell directors, but they both became friends with all of us! Funny how we all ran into each other one way or another.) Anyway, Mom and I successfully made it to Talara and then into a van going to Mancora, and as soon as we got to Mancora we walked the beach and wandered the vendor stalls (super touristy) and then had a yummy lunch at the Black Sheep, which had amazing vegan burgers and juices. We spent the next few hours hanging out on the beach reading, napping, and watching horses give people rides and rented ATVs zooming down the beach. After we had enjoyed the atmosphere for a while we went and had happy hour at one of the nearby restaurants, and I tried a Bolivian drink that mom had in Ecuador and mom tried a maracuya (passionfruit) sour. We wandered our way to the bus station and hopped on the Expo bus back to Talara with a French surfer dude we met in the bus station who was also headed to Lobitos. We made it into Talara after dark and barely caught the last Lobitos combie of the night, which we packed with sixteen people, a spare tire, a few bags of groceries, and a surfboard. It was a wild ride! We cooked up some pasta back at the EcoHouse, and that was the same night of the pisco party with the van-lifers that we’d met! Mom made it back before the hostel locked up, so I got my bed to myself again :)

Sunday morning I attempted to do laundry and mostly flooded the kitchen, but after a few hours my clothes were clean and the kitchen was once again dry. Mom and I went to the rocks at La Punta and tanned, read, and watched the surfers ride the big waves. We headed to lunch at Cora, a restaurant I’d heard a lot about but hadn’t yet been to, and had a yummy veggie stir fry while mom tried the fresh fish. That evening, Henry (our local surfer friend) offered to take us all to the Capullana caves up the coast a bit. A bunch of us hopped in his and his brother’s mototaxis with Henry’s two dogs and drove the dirt road to scramble around some cliffs and caves and watch the sunset. It was really beautiful, and climbing down and up the ropes was exciting! We saw little red crabs everywhere and a bunch of blue-footed boobies (famous birds that Darwin studied) that mom hadn’t even seen in the Galapagos. The caves were an incredible adventure, and I’m really glad mom was there to experience them too! We got home after dark and headed to Tranqui’s for our classic Sunday dinner.

On Monday after work, I went up to La Casona for happy hour and sunset with mom again, and the EcoTeam joined us a bit later! Mom challenged Andres, one of the directors, to a game of digital backgammon on her phone (he won but she was in the lead for most of the game) and we all headed to 420 for dinner after, where we had some yummy pizza and pasta and piña coladas for mom’s last night :)

Mom stopped by for lunch on Tuesday before she left for the airport, and I said goodbye and wished her good luck with the rest of her travels (from what I’ve heard it sounds like they’ve been going well!) and sent her off to the Talara airport with Julio, our neighbor. 

There weren’t many adventures the rest of the week, but on Thursday night at Tranqui’s we made friends with a drunk British guy who was cycling South America, and he called us EcoWarriors, so that was fun! 

One of the fishing boats (still in use!) on the beach.

This was a great week; it was really fun to see mom and hear her stories of her travels alone in Latin America, which I’m really impressed with (especially because she doesn’t speak any Spanish) and I’m glad I got out to see more of this area of Peru! The cooking this week was really fun, I definitely want to eat in and cook more. I can’t believe I’ve been here a month already; only five more weeks until I head south to Patagonia! Stay tuned for more fun stories and adventures (I had a bit of a wild weekend, details will be included in the next post)!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Three: New Faces and New Places

La Casona, the hostel up the hill, at happy hour.

Wow, time flies! I’m already one third of the way through my time here at EcoSwell. This week sped by. Last weekend involved a fun adventure, and then I settled back into the weekly routine of the EcoHouse, cooking some more fun meals and enjoying getting to know the new interns.

The EcoHouse

Veggie burger night!!

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, we had three volunteers leave and two new ones arrive last weekend. Javi, Dion, and Kyler all left and Brady and Joris arrived!

Brady is from Mississippi and is taking online classes through University of Northern Mississippi. He is super into skiing and actually almost moved to Bellingham recently. He lived in Taos, New Mexico for a while skiing and enjoying the people there and was going to hike part of the PCT this summer until he got this internship. He’s here for the NGO management internship, so he’s helping out with running some office items and generally helping out with all the projects, especially the dry toilet. He’s been out surfing twice a day, which is impressive, and he seems to really love it here! He’s been a great addition to the house.

Joris is Lithuanian and goes to school in London, but spent a semester at UBC in Vancouver recently, so we’ve connected over our experiences in the Pacific Northwest. He’s here for renewable energy projects and he’s been splitting his time between helping me with the solar distiller and helping Ale with his wind turbine project. However, Joris got really sick right after getting here, so he hasn’t been able to do much the past few days, but he’s back on his feet today! He’s a very upbeat and energetic person, and definitely a fun addition to the house as well.

Michael, the fourth director, also arrived this weekend and he’s been really fun to have in the house! Michael definitely doesn’t know Lobitos quite as well as Andres and the others, but he’s just as enthusiastic and energetic about the projects as the other directors. His main job in EcoSwell is to work with the volunteers and help them prepare for life at the EcoHouse, so he’s been talking to us all individually about what we’re working on and how we think the EcoSwell house and the application/volunteer preparation process could be improved. He’s really upbeat and loves to talk about the projects and EcoSwell, so he’s been another great addition to the house.

Other than the new volunteers, we did the classic Sunday dinner at Tranqui’s, I had a nice happy hour sunset and beer with Andres, Joris, and Isa at La Casona (the hostel up the hill) on Monday, and then Isa and I made veggie lasagna for the whole house. On Tuesday we had a ton of black beans left over from lunch, so we made black bean and sweet potato veggie burgers that were DELICIOUS (everyone agreed, even the guys that are usually against veggie burgers)! On Wednesday I went and did a beach workout while the guys surfed (we don’t have enough boards for everyone to surf at once) and then dove in the waves with no wetsuit (the water here is much warmer than at home, but the guys were impressed that I didn’t freeze). I finished Lord of the Rings after almost a year, finished another book called The Letter, and started reading The Stand by Stephen King (another big undertaking, but really good so far)! Yesterday we had a fun EcoTeam dinner at 420 Cafe, where we watched some surfer kids play an exciting game of tag around the tables!

Work

Me with my solar distiller!

We had our weekly Wednesday planting day at 6am again, and Isa and I spent the time cleaning our little courtyard (it was really messy and there were a lot of random remnants of old projects laying around) and attempting to remove a stump in the middle of the courtyard (we failed). The rest of the team worked at clearing branches and setting up a little vegetable garden that we’re going to start next week!

I’ve been making steady progress on the solar distiller this week; I finished painting all the silicone and primer on both the distiller basin and its window, I painted the water catch with silicone as well and secured it into place, and I figured out the outlet system for the freshwater. I also stopped by the Fisherman’s Guild a couple times to figure out the best place to put the distiller when it’s ready to be installed there. There are a few shadows that I’ve needed to track, but I think I have a good idea of where to put it!

I’ve been posting on SteemIt pretty regularly, but I’ve been slacking on facebook a bit, so look for a bunch EcoSwell posts on facebook in the next week or two! I’m also gaining access to the EcoSwell instagram so I can keep that going a little more than it is now. Gotta start taking more cool pictures!

Adventures

On the El Ñuro pier (I haven’t gone through my GoPro for turtle pics yet..)

Last weekend before Dion and Javi left, Ale and I went on a grand adventure with them to El Ñuro to swim with turtles! We caught the combie to Talara from Lobitos and got a cab in Talara that drove us the hour to El Ñuro! It was very touristy and there were many people trying to sell many things, but there were truly sea turtles EVERYWHERE. I can’t count the number I saw, it was pretty incredible. We paid for a boat tour, and the guide told us some of the history of the area and the turtles before stopping so we could swim with the turtles! They threw some fish guts into the water and we hopped into the (surprisingly warm) water to chill with the sea turtles. They were not shy at all. Turtles would come up behind you and bump into your feet or your back and give you quite a surprise! Dion screamed a few times (haha) and there was a huge family on the boat with us, and the three little girls were screaming and crying most of the time they were in the water because turtles kept touching them and scaring them. I loved it, but I was definitely caught off guard a couple times (one turtle came up and stuck its head in my armpit !!). Overall it was a funny and memorable experience, and we sat down for a late lunch of sweet potatoes, rice, salad, and ceviche for the meat eaters when we got back to the dock. To get back home we had to take mototaxis (motorcycles with a side-by-side passenger rig on the back - a little sketchy) to a bus stop, take the bus to Talara, and catch the combie back to Lobitos. It was a great day!

Also, mom just arrived after a bit of a crazy journey from the Galapagos! She’s here until Tuesday and I get to show her around Lobitos and maybe go on an adventure or two :)

Post-workout and swim sunset!

It was another great week at EcoSwell, and I can’t believe I only have six left already! Looking forward to spending time with mom this coming week and making some serious progress on the solar distiller :) As always, feel free to ask any question! Miss and love you all!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week Two: Lovin’ Life in Lobitos

A Lobitos boat out on the water. Spot the blue water tower in the background - a great place to watch sunsets!

This week was another good one! There were some fun adventures, I made some decent progress on my project, met more of the locals, and saw much more of Lobitos. Apart from a bit of an upset stomach, everything has only been getting better!

The EcoHouse

One of our homemade pizzas from our midnight pizza party, with a vegan portion :)

There have been some more shifts in the EcoTeam this week; Andres arrived on Saturday to replace Alejo leaving last week. Andres is the third of the four directors I’ve met, and he’s a fun addition to the house! He’s known as the most chill and spontaneous director, and it definitely shows. He loves to tell us stories of his life (he was born in Canada and moved to Lima when he was ten, where he met the other three directors in school, and then went to Toronto for university and ended up on the Wall Street of Canada for a few years before he moved to Lobitos to start EcoSwell) and throws in some Peruvian history too. He is also mostly vegan, so now I’ve got a friend in the food department! 

Diego, the other director that was here, left Thursday to vacation with his girlfriend and speak at a big UK conference in Rio de Janeiro. He’ll be back in a few weeks with his girlfriend, who is the volunteer coordinator for EcoSwell, and I’m excited to meet her!

Michael, the only director I haven’t met, arrives Sunday to replace Diego while he’s gone. Michael’s spent most of his time in the UK and doesn’t come to Lobitos as much as the other three, so he’s known as the “city kid”. It’ll be interesting to see how he fits in at the house, and I’m excited to see the dynamic between Andres and Michael as directors.

There’s also a big volunteer change-over this weekend; we’re losing half of the crew and gaining two newbies! Kyler flew out on Saturday (after two months in the EcoHouse), Dion just left today (he’s been here three weeks), and Javi leaves tomorrow, Monday, after just two weeks. There’s a new volunteer arriving today and another arriving Monday, so we’ll have one empty bed in the house for a little while (Isa and I get a room to ourselves and I can move to the bottom bunk now that Javi will be gone)!

I’m excited to show the new guys around, but I’ll miss having people here who know more of the secrets of Lobitos than I do.

As for the general happenings in the house, we’ve had a few more fun meals (some yummy veggie pasta and garlic bread Monday night, taco Tuesday again, a midnight pizza-making and bonfire party initiated by Andres, and Andres found some soy milk for me so now I can have cereal!), watched the first season of Silicon Valley together, experienced two blackouts (one in the morning, one at night), and played Secret Hitler (a board game that I played a lot while studying abroad in Australia, which happens to be the go-to group game here as well). I’ve also gotten back into reading Lord of the Rings, which I started almost a year ago in Australia, and now I’m almost done with the trilogy!

The only downside of the week was the upset stomach that I’ve had for the past four days (pretty much everyone gets it during their second week of volunteering, so nothing out of the ordinary), but it’s feeling a lot better now!

Work

Javi and I “painting” silicone onto the distiller!

This week I actually got to start working on the solar distiller, and we got a lot done with it! The distiller had already been designed and the frame had been built by previous volunteers, so I mostly have the job of putting it all together, making sure the system works, and putting it to use in the community! Part of this is painting the basin (where the water goes) with black food-grade silicone caulk, so the wood is waterproof, the water isn’t contaminated with chemicals, and the leftover salt can be used for cooking. The previous volunteer that worked on the distiller had painted the silicone on and then realized, just before the whole basin was covered, that the silicone wasn’t food-grade. So he spent the rest of his time scraping it back off again (that had to suck). He didn’t quite finish before he left, though, so Javi and I spent the first two and a half days of the work week scraping the rest of the silicone off the distiller so we could repaint it with the food-grade silicone we now have. On Thursday, we painted the distiller with white primer, and Friday we were able to almost finish painting the silicone on the basin (I learned that silicone caulk is a really hard thing to “paint” and it doesn’t like to be smooth and it stinks). So, we’re already a couple steps closer to a complete solar distiller! With Javi leaving, however, I’m losing my project partner, though one of the new volunteers will likely be helping me out when they arrive.

Outside of my main project, I posted on Facebook and SteemIt a couple times about EcoSwell’s progress/events and we had our weekly planting day on Wednesday starting at 6:30am. The guys spent the four hours of planting day trimming branches, grasses, and other plants around the house, and Isa and I checked all of the drip irrigation holes to make sure they were working, added some more drip lines, and planted a bunch of seeds ready to germinate in the nursery. 

Adventures

Sunset at La Punta - spot Gino surfing the crazy wave!

We did some fun things this week outside of the house and work! On Friday we went to check out a new restaurant in town called 420 Cafe, which has great pastas and pizzas (I had yummy pesto gnocchi), a chill surfer dude atmosphere, some fancy cocktails (and wine!), and fast wifi! On Saturday I hung out on the beach and read for a while (and got covered in sand, thanks to the wind), and that evening we all went up to the water tower, the highest point in town, to watch the sun set over Lobitos. It was a fun little walk with a great view and we saw some roaming horses and wild foxes on the way down. 

Sunday was the main adventure day of the week; all the newer volunteers (Dion, Ale, Javi, and me) went on the Lobitos Ocean Adventure run by Tulio, a local fisherman friend. We met him at the end of the pier at 7am, where we all jumped onto his fishing boat in between the big rolling waves coming in, and settled in for a classic Peruvian fishing experience. Tulio, his two sons, and his brother Jorge were with us on the boat and they told us about the generations of fishermen that have fished in this area, and passed down their knowledge and techniques through their families that still fish here today. 

Tulio (right) and his brother Jorge teaching us to fish!

We took a forty minute boat ride through the oil platforms out to a reef, and then we dropped anchor and learned how to fish like a Peruvian. Each of us was given a thick plastic fishing line (no rod) that split three ways at the end; two had hooks on them, and one had a metal weight. The fishermen baited the hooks, and we would toss the line over the edge of the boat, letting it sink until the weight reached the bottom. Then we would hold the line in our hands and wait to feel a pull or wiggle or other sign that we had hooked a fish (it was really hard to tell), and then we pulled the line up to see what we got! Ale was the first to catch something, which ended up being a sea serpent that Tulio stunned before he tossed it back in the water. He caught a couple more small fish, but none big enough to keep. Javi and Dion both got seasick pretty fast, so the boys did most of the fishing for them, but they only caught one fish big enough to keep. I ended up getting lucky and catching four keepers! 

My first fish!

Once we were done fishing, we pulled up the anchor and started heading home while Tulio prepared super-fresh ceviche for us with the fish that we caught. We had a snack of ceviche (complete with the onions and lemon) and plantain chips for the ride home, which mostly Ale and I ate (vegan or not, I couldn’t pass up ceviche that fresh), because Dion and Javi were still feeling sick. We made it back to land and thanked Tulio and his family for the experience, and they gave us the fish we didn’t eat to bring back to the house for lunch the next day. It was a fun morning!

Yum, ceviche doesn't get any fresher than this!

That night we watched the sunset from La Punta, where there are a bunch of big rock formations that form a point (and great surf waves!) and watched Gino, one of the local surfers, surf one of the most dangerous waves in Lobitos, El Hueco. It was crazy to watch.

Other than that, I saw and held a stick bug that we saw while painting the distiller, there were two blackouts (one on Wednesday night and one Sunday morning), and we went back to Tranqui’s for dinner on Sunday and Thursday, where Henry, a local guy (and also an insanely good surfer) who works for Waves for Development (the other non-profit in town) and one of his volunteers met us to eat. 

Sunset over Lobitos from the water tower

There’s this week’s update! Sorry for the late post; I was really busy with work this week and forgot to start writing this post early enough on Friday, and I was gone most of the day yesterday (I’ll include that adventure in next week’s post!). I’m still having a ton of fun and learning a lot! Feel free to ask any questions :) Love and miss you all!

[jessaadventures-blog]

Week One: Getting settled in the EcoHouse!

** This is a reallyyy long post, they won’t usually be this long :) **

My first week in Lobitos has been exciting and busy! The EcoSwell team is incredible and Lobitos is a cute and friendly little town that I’m already in love with. Here’s a highlight reel of the last week:

Traveling

Lobitos from the sky!

I had a relatively smooth and low-stress 24 hours of travel. I only slept a couple hours on the flights over, thanks to plane movies and excitement about the weeks to come, so I was exhausted but happy when I arrived in the tiny Talara airport. It had one small conveyor belt for bags and two small rooms: one for the baggage claim and one for flight check-in. After grabbing my backpack, I went outside and met the driver, Víctor, that EcoSwell had sent to pick me up. He didn’t speak much English at all; but we made some small talk during the drive with the help of my (very) rusty Spanish. This area is really dry and brown, and definitely quite rural. The road was gravel in a lot of places, and has some serious potholes and washed out sections. There was trash everywhere and more plastic bags tumbling across the landscape than I could count as we drove to Lobitos. Most houses I saw in Talara were no bigger than sheds, and many were falling apart. The drive took about half an hour, and after entering the gate to Lobitos and driving down the road a few hundred feet, I made it to the EcoHouse!

The EcoHouse

The EcoTeam, from left to right: Sean, Dion, Diego, Kyler, Javi, Ale, Alejo, and Isa and I are in front.

When I arrived, I met the current EcoSwell team. The mix of people in the house is always changing as volunteers come and leave and the four cofounders (they call themselves directors) trade off every few months (there’s usually two directors at the house at any given time). The directors here when I arrived were Alejandro (who just left yesterday) and Diego (who is leaving in just over a week). Andres, another one of the four, arrives today, and Michael, the last of the directors, will come when Diego leaves. As for the volunteers, Kyler and Isa are from Florida State University, Sean was from the University of North Carolina (he just left yesterday), Javier is from Spain but is doing a master’s thesis in Sydney, Australia, Alejandro is from El Salvador and goes to university in Chicago, and Dion, my second cousin, is also here after graduating from the University of Arizona this spring. It’s a great group, everyone is super friendly and fun!

Alejo, the director, gave me a tour and a run down of how the house functions. Water is very scarce here; this area is a dry forest that is now mostly desert-like as a result of deforestation, and water deliveries come through the pipes from Talara usually three times a week, though there often won’t be a delivery for two weeks or more. Because of this, there is an intense water-conservation system in the house, which includes using a dry toilet outside, using dishwater to water the plants around the house, and strictly regulating the drip irrigation for the plants that don’t receive grey water. Additionally, there is no hot water (yay cold showers!) and the tap water is not safe to drink, so we have one water filter for drinking water and cooking. We have 100 gigabytes of internet each month, which is used for all the research needed for the work that the (usually) eight people in the house have to do, so we have to be careful with how much we use the wifi. Finally, there is no grocery store in Lobitos, so a director and a volunteer go to Talara once a week on Tuesdays to pick up groceries for the week and anything else that needs to be bought. The budget is strict, so by Sunday and Monday the food options are pretty limited.

There are also two EcoSwell cats, Tiniebli (little mist) and Prince Oberyn (the red viper) that roam the house and enjoy cuddling with the volunteers.

There have been some memorable meals here so far, as I came right before shopping day, so we had to get creative with food. On Monday night we made breakfast for dinner, including vegan pancakes with various toppings, roasted potatoes, and a vegetable scramble. We also had Taco Tuesday with fajita veggies, rice, and homemade guac and pico de gallo. Isa and I typically end up cooking and the boys do the dishes (a great set up, I think). Sometimes everyone will make their own food, but the small kitchen tends to get quite crowded when that happens, so we try to do group meals as much as we can. There is also a local woman, Angelita, who cooks lunch for us on work days, and she’s made some great Peruvian dishes for us! There is a lot of rice, potatoes, and quinoa eaten here, and we’ve been joking about our carb-heavy meals. There’s rarely any meat in the house (perfect for me!), unless a local fisherman drops off some fresh fish, which I have yet to try but I plan to soon!

Work

Javi cleaning the solar panels!

We have a classic 9 to 5 work schedule here in the house, except for special days once a week when we start at 6am and work on any improvements the house needs for the first several hours of the day. Every Monday morning there is a team meeting to plan what everyone is working on for the week. This week there were three newbies in the house (Ale and Javi had both arrived over the weekend too), so there was a lot of planning to do. There are quite a few projects going on right now; here’s how the work divvies up:

Isa is in charge of reforestation and plants. Last week the team and local volunteers planted two hundred native trees nearby, all of which need watering through a drip irrigation system every few days. Additionally, we have a nursery for germinating and raising seedlings, and plants and fruit trees around the house that need caring for and careful monitoring. Isa tracks all the plant species we plant, their locations, makes sure they’re getting the right amount of water and sun, and takes care of the baby seedlings in the nursery. She also occasionally helps out with social media posts.

Kyler is an NGO management intern, so he helps the directors out with finances and is also the main guy for social media. He also is heading the management of our sanitation project, which mostly involves tracking water savings from the dry toilet, cleaning it, and trying to get rid of the flies in the dry toilet. The toilet is a pilot project that has been going for three months, and EcoSwell is hoping to install more around Lobitos once they are able to receive some funding. The sewer system here is leaky, so there are waste water ponds around town that could be fixed with dry toilets.

Sean, before he left, was also an NGO management intern, and he was heading a survey to identify the economic impact of tourism and surfing in Lobitos. He got to the pilot stage of the survey, and a future volunteer will continue his work. Sean also did the weekly Wilipipe, the chart that we create and post around town to inform fishermen of low and high-tide times and tell surfers when the swell (the waves) will be big or small.

Dion and Ale are working on a project to install a wind turbine at the local medical post to power the refrigeration system there so vaccines don’t have to be thrown out or quickly driven to Talara every time there is a black out (which are pretty common here). It’s constantly windy here, which isn’t something I expected, but even though there’s also an incredible solar resource here, wind almost makes more sense to use because of its consistency and its ability to create power at night. Dion is also helping Kyler with the dry toilet and Ale is taking over the Wilipipe and will help the directors with finances when Kyler leave in a week.

Javi and I are working on building a large-scale solar water distiller that will create fresh drinking water from seawater. This project has been in the works for years; smaller prototypes have been built by past volunteers and the methods have been laid out. Once we get the distiller built and functioning just off the heat from the sun, we plan to install it at the local Fisherman’s Community Center and then use excess solar power from the two solar panels on the roof of the center to power heaters and fans to increase the efficiency of the distiller, so Lobitos has an emergency source of drinking water and the excess energy produced by the solar panels during the day will be used for a productive purpose. My goal for my two months here is to finish the distiller project successfully, and, as long as everything goes to plan, I should finish the project just before I leave! I’m also going to be in charge of social media once Kyler leaves, especially Facebook and Steemit posts. This week, I’ve mostly been reading over what the past volunteers have done and figuring out the project timeline and materials we’ll need to build the distiller. It’s an exciting project that will have a positive impact on the local community and I’m looking forward to working on it for the next two months! On Wednesday, Javi and I went to the Community Center to check out the solar panels, and discovered that the system’s batteries are pretty shot and the solar panels were dirty (which is really bad for efficiency and output), so we cleaned the panels (the picture below shows the third cleaning, they were very dusty) and plan to track solar PV output and usage while we’re here. There’s some really cool stuff going on here, I’m excited to be a part of it!

Adventures

Kyler and Sean heading into the waves during sunset.

We’ve gone out for food a few times, there are more restaurants here than I expected! The first night I was here we all went out to a small restaurant called Trankie’s, which is run on the porch of a local man’s house, and had some rice, plantains, and a soupy potato dish. The food was great and Trankie is definitely a character! My food cost 6 soles, which is less than 2 USD; a pretty good deal :) We also went to Don Lucho’s on Wednesday night, and he made me a delicious veggie stir fry with rice and plantains, while everyone else had a kind of Peruvian chicken gravy. Also, beers are around 2 USD for a 650 ml bottle, so we all split some beers. Also, a classic Peruvian drink is Pisco sours, made with a Peru’s national liquor, Pisco, lime juice, and foamy egg whites. We all had a nice jam session with a guitar, bongos, maracas, and other funny instruments around the house while we drank our Pisco sours the other night (I got a special vegan version). There are also a couple pizza places, a burger place, and some other small restaurants around town.

The stars are gorgeous here and, thanks to my quarter in Australia, I can identify some of the southern hemisphere constellations (scorpio is my favorite). The other night, Dion and I went to the beach with our cameras and took some cool long-exposure shots like this one!

Facing Nuevo Lobitos and La Punta from the beach.

I went surfing for the first time since I’ve been here yesterday, and it was a lot of fun! The waves were tiny and there were lots of surfers fighting for them, but I got up a couple times. The water is “cold” right now, but is still much warmer than the water at home, especially with a wetsuit on! The sun was setting as we surfed, which made it even better. I plan to surf a lot while I’m here and hopefully get a lot better than I am right now!

One of the directors, Diego, catching a wave!

That pretty much sums up my first week in Lobitos! I miss everyone at home and at school, but I’m so excited for these next couple months here; I know it’ll be an incredible experience. If you have any questions feel free to ask them on my ask page here on the blog or email me! I’ve decided not to get a SIM card here, as I have pretty regular wifi access, so iMessage and WhatsApp work well too :)

A Lobitos sunset.

[jessaadventures-blog]

Here we go...

I’m in LAX waiting for my flight to board to Lima, where I’ll land in the morning and catch a flight five hours later to Talara. It’s then a short drive to Lobitos, my home for the next nine weeks!

I’m getting very excited to meet everyone and experience life in a small Peruvian surfing and fishing village, I’ve heard only good things so far :)

Here we go!!

[jessaadventures-blog]

South America here I come!!

In a few days I’m heading to South America for the first time. I’ll be working with EcoSwell, a sustainable development nonprofit, in Lobitos, Peru for nine weeks (July 2 - August 31), and then traveling around Patagonia for three weeks through a Stanford overseas seminar before flying back to campus for senior fall!