Bienvenido a Intag

On the recently constructed road into Santa Rosa. Sunhat and sunblock are mandatory
for the fierce Equatorial Sunshine.

Before heading up North to begin the development projects, 24th July was marked by city-wide celebrations for national patron Simon Bolivar, liberator of Ecuador from Spanish rule. The celebrations coincided with my second last night in the city, and my third last night as a 23 year old. This gave me good reason to join the Ecuadorians and begin celebrations in an open top bus through the old city, followed by a weekend of traditional and modern parties.

Ibarra is a far smaller city than Quito, it has a warmer climate due to its lesser altitude, and affords its inhabitants the priviledge of abundant clean air, which was too often lacking in the congested capital. On arrival I was taken to my apartment by the past president of PRODECI who shared a coffee with me and welcomed me to the city.

The office of PRODECI is a base for all fifteen of the foundation´s various engineers, agronomists, and educational and healthcare professionals. I spent the day on Monday getting to know them during some meetings, lunch, and then after work where they kindly presented me with a birthday cake. My first impressions are of a well equipped team with dedicated and competent professionals working on a variety of projects to improve the quality of life of communities in various provinces in Northern Ecuador.

I spent the remainder of the week working in Intag, which is a remote and sparsely populated mountainous region about a three hour drive from Ibarra. We have an apartment in Nangulvi where I stayed for four days, every day traversing the mountain slopes in 4x4 vehicles which are necessary to cover the rocky roads between villages.

The majority of my work this week has involved travelling between the various villages and having meetings to get to know the communities and talk with them about their water supplies. I have been fortunate to work with Ian Baggs, my EWB project manager, who worked here last year for six months on water projects. He is a great source of knowledge on the multitude of problems and solutions in water supply systems.

Meetings in the office last week were also very informative. It looks like PRODECI have a number of additional engineering projects that will need my input, including design of a hydroelectric renewable energy scheme, the design and construction of a replacement bridge at a strategic river crossing, and a number of school buildings and water supply systems as were previously planned.

I´m looking forward to working with PRODECI on these projects. Meeting the beneficiaries, assessing the social impacts, and then designing and constructing these schemes allows me to have a far more direct and immediate impact than would have been possible from an office in the UK.

View from the open top bus on route through Quito´s Old Town. Simon Bolivar Day.

At Cuicocha lake below Volcano Cotacachi, reputed highest active Volcano on Earth. Near Intag.
With Ruth Almeida, Ex-Presidenta of PRODECI.

Ian and I chat with Don Aurelio at a spring capture point. Don Aurelio is president of Quinde whose community are having problems with a poorly constructed water supply scheme built some years back by an Ecuadorian engineer.
Development gone wrong. We aim to fix that.

On the left you can see a buried water pipeline. A few months ago a landslide caused the ground surrounding it to slide away and here you can see the crater that remains.
The water supply scheme is in good working operation.

Touchdown in Quito

On Friday at Midnight above the sparkling city lights, we manouvered tightly between the mountains that surround the city of Quito as my Continental Airlines airbus touched down on the runway. I stepped off to a cool welcome of fresh mountainous air and then waited in line at passport control, shuffling along with numerous Christian groups from Texas and various scientists and biologists making their way to Galapagos.

I was glad to get my papers stamped and meet Xavier, my driver, who would take me into the city. Twenty-five hours and three flights after leaving Edinburgh, I was happy to touch down and didn´t care that my luggage was still in Texas.

I had thought that because I was on their soil for little more than 90 minutes, US Homeland Security would be glad to see me on my way to Ecuador. Instead after a thorough search I was met with a double act of Good-Cop and Bad-Cop at Houston who were intent on examining every single detail of my hand luggage. The half-hour interrogation began with the commonly asked "is this your first time flying?" and the less commonly asked "this socket adapter looks awfully like like a tazer, doesn´t it?"

We then discussed their suspicions about my trips to Brasil and Argentina last year.... and why I had on my possession a shiny mobile phone... "where does a young guy like you get all this cash..?" was the recurrent theme. Thankfully my papers were meticulous and I had avoided any controversial items in the luggage.

I had to hold back the laughter when one of them pulled a $3 cuban peso note out of my wallet.

"Tell me you haven´t been to Cuba, sir.....?"
"Me..? Cuba..? No..."

So two days on it´s Sunday afternoon and I´ve been getting to know my family in Quito. My Spanish is coming on a treat, but I´m looking forward to the lessons in a school here for two weeks before heading up to Ibarra and beginning the development work.

Yesterday morning we saw the volcano Cotapaxi completely clear from cloud. It towers above Quito from a distance to the South, at a height somewhere around 5900m. I quite fancy climbing that at some point. I´m also told that further south the volcano Tungurahua is rumbling away and lighting up the sky at night.

It´s beoming clear to me that these amazing surroundings are no longer pictures and wonders in guidebooks, they are the environment that I am going to be working in for the rest of the year. It´s a magical feeling, and my impressions so far are of a magical country with fantastic, warm and genuinely welcoming people. There is a respect and appreciation from from everyone I have spoken to so far when I talk about the projects that Mariam and I will be working on.

The country, the people, the projects. It´s all coming together for me.

I reckon I´m going to like it here.