After some quality time in Ambato with Laura, our WWOOFing adventures next took us to a beautiful Hacienda and horse breeding farm high up in the Ecuadorian Andes called Hacienda Yurac Alto. The location was originally a Jesuit monestary and the buildings are now used to house volunteers working at the hacienda, like us. Therefore, we got to stay in a beautiful 400 year old building with meter thick walls. It was awesome!
LIVING
The distant view from our bedroom window :)
This consisted of traveling to the work site in the bed of the old, AWESOME pickup
The papa pit bull
The beautiful mare right after being put down
Our favorite part of the farm to hike through
Pajarita, our favorite hiking buddy - This cat would follow you around the farm for miles, just like a dog...up the hills, to the horses, into town, to the work site...it was fascinating and super cute!
A small portion of the chocolate chip cookies Brent and I baked on our day off
The entrance to the main building where we stayed
The beautiful courtyard outside our living quarters
Awesome old stone sink outside where we did our dishes
The close up view outside our bedroom window
The main living area right outside our bedroom
The best feature of the house, the wood burning fireplace. :) It was definitely necessary with the cool weather we had up in the mountains and the old building that acted as a natural refrigerator. Sometimes we had the fire going all day.
WORKING
A work day here started around 7:30 and ended around 3:00. We usually ate a quick packed lunch at the work site. Here's a sampling of the work we did on a daily basis.
Check the horses - Every morning a couple volunteers would check the horses. We would hike out to each field with horses and make sure all of them were accounted for and that they were all healthy and well.
One morning a couple of volunteers even found a new colt!
Checking the horses meant hiking 2 to 2.5 hours up and down the mountainous hills at abould 9,500 feet. It was a workout, but the terrain was beautiful, and it was even more picturesque with horses in the background.
Brent and one of the owners of the hacienda hiking back down after checking the horses
This is what it was like when the horses decided to not hang out right by the fence (which happened most days). One group of horses seemed to especially enjoy playing hide-and-go-seek in the trees. We would spend about 45 minutes searching for them on a steep slope full of thorn bushes.
Fence Building - A large portion of our job was building fences on new parts of the property so they could continue expanding the area that the horses were kept.
Digging lots of holes
Hauling and tarring posts
Pounding the dirt for each post in by hand so it is extremely secure
Stringing the barbed wire
And after many, many hours. . . voila, you have a fence!
Building Water Troughs for the Horses - Since I spoke Spanish, I got to work with Augustin for a couple of days. We spent some quality time rebuilding water troughs for the horses. They originally paid a guy $1,000 to put in the entire water system. It was done so poorly, that we got to go back through and redo all his work. Classic Ecuador....
Augustin securing the trough so the horses don't knock it over
I spent about 1 hour the first day using this tool to dig a trench and about 2-3 hours the second day hoeing the trench for a water line. It was exhausting!
The curious colts that hung out and watched us all day while we were working.
Building Natural Fences & Clearing Brush - This was by far the most painful job we have done in all our travels so far. While I actually enjoyed the process of building a natural barrier/fence for the horses out of trees, thorns and bushes, it was nearly impossible to get through a day without a handful of nasty slivers, puncture wounds and bleeding arms.
We spent a good amount of time clearing brush from fields in order to get it ready for horses and in this case, we cleared away a section of forest so the horses could get to the river.
This is an example of what it looked like before....
....and after.
The rest of the time was spent breaking down trees and hauling thorns to build the natural fence. This is how we spent the day! (typically + a machette and saw as well)
What the 'fence' looked like when finished
Some of the thorns were a good 2 inches long! The longest one I got imbedded in my finger was burried 1/2 an inch into my knuckle. Another got wedged under my thumb nail and required some decent surgery with a nail clipper, knife and tweezer.
A good day simply consisted of puncture wounds and scrapes, but I have yet to survive a day without pulling at least 5 thorns out of my hands/arms.
Weeding - While I don't have pictures of us pulling weeds, I do have pictures of some of the critters we uncovered while pulling up weeds!
A tarantula that a fellow volunteer pulled up while weeding
One of the many lizards we saw when weeding. I may have accidentally pulled a tail of one of these lizards off with a handful of grass while I was pulling weeds. The tail, which immediately detached from the body, continued wriggling for a good 5+ minutes (yes, I may have timed it)! Needless to say, I never found the body.
NOT SO FUN
As much as I would like to forget about a couple days at the Hacienda, they were still part of the experience. So, before I share with you all of the FUN things we got to do, I thought I'd share a couple days that were pretty tough.
Dog Fights - There was a small family of pit bulls that lived on the farm. The two older black ones were the parents of the young brown one. As cute as they were and as friendly as they were towards people, they frequently got into major fights with each other, that I'm convinced would have been to the death if someone wouldn't have intervened. We witnessed about 3 or 4 of these scary fights, which resulted in both dogs gushing blood from their head, neck and gums.
The son
Eventually the two older ones were completely separated from the younger one, which helped keep the fighting to a minimum.
Sad horse story - One morning a mare was found giving birth to a baby colt. The colt was turned sideways with all four feet trying to come out at once. After hours of work on the colt in the morning, the colt ended up dying inside the mare. As it was a weekend, it took a number of hours for the vets to get out to the farm. By the time they arrived, the mare was in poor condition and the colt had been dead for hours and smelled terrible.
The vet working to remove the dead colt from the mare
The vets spent so long (unsuccessfully) working to remove the colt and the c-section surgery location was so far away that by the afternoon they had to make the decision to put the mare down. It was their best and favorite mare, and it was a very tough, emotional afternoon for everyone.
FUN!
As I wouldn't want to leave you on that note, besides working, we had some free time to explore the area, hike, and make some delicious food. Here's a sampling of the awesome things we did during our time off.
Visiting the horses
Hiking
Relaxing on the top of a grassy hill with blue skys and an incredible view of the surrounding volcanoes
Making delicious food
We thoroughly enjoyed and mastered the art of cooking in the old adobe oven. It's a challenge getting a fire started in there at this elevation.
Prepping pizzas in the kitchen
Pizza in the adobe oven!
Saint Nicholas' Day
As two of our fellow volunteers were Dutch, they insisted that we celebrate St. Nicholas' Day. The evening before, we left our shoes in front of the fireplace and in the morning they were full of all kinds of goodies!
Sinterklaas was very generous this year (I think he may have had helpers from the Netherlands, Russia and the US). :)
Brent, Ivo and Sanna (our friends from the Netherlands) playing with their toys from Sinterklaas.
Now, off to our next advenure....
Brent! So much fun to find this post.
ReplyDeleteLook what Sanne made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4itRVQHRs4