Rio Muchacho organic farm and school of the environment

The second main stage of my travels is a stay at the Rio Muchacho organic farm in Ecuador. I’m studying a “Permaculture” course for four weeks. Both the course itself and life on the farm are having a profound effect on me. I originally thought that permaculture was just an agricultural method of living in harmony with the land. But it’s much more than that. It’s about architecture of your house and gardens, of a town or city, of getting the balance of life right, of being part of a community. I’ve had many of these concepts floating around in my head for the last few years, and now I find myself on this course which concurs with many of my own thoughts and conclusions. I find it very inspiring.

We have a healthy lifestyle here. The day begins at 6:30 with sweeping out the animal pens and then feeding them. It’s about half an hour’s exercise before breakfast which will be a bowl of fruit with granola and some bread. We’ll take it in turns to wash up for everyone, and then the classes (which can be quite physical) go until 4:30 with a stop for lunch at 12. This is the big meal of the day, with soup before the main course of rice, salad and some vegetarian sauce, occasionally with fish. We’re then free till 6pm dinner – I’ll fill that time with some exercise on my balcony and then some further reading.

The vegetables are organic, the bread is home baked, the teas are brewed from cardamom, pineapple, camomile or something else grown in the garden here. We’ll try to chat Spanish around the dinner table (the classes are taught in English). In the evening we will watch a video related to permaculture.

On Wednesdays we have a cultural day, where we are taught about local customs, beliefs and institutions. This is taught to us in nice slow clear Spanish by Dario, the co-owner of the farm – I always surprise myself with how much I can understand. This is in sharp contrast to the locals who work on the farm – they have very colloquial Spanish which is so hard to comprehend.

In our free time, we have fished for shrimp on the river, swam in the river, climbed up the waterfall and jumped back in, walked bare foot down the road, feeling the mud squelching between my toes, shared my living space with a beast of a spider (we’ve set down some rules – she doesn’t come within 6 inches of the bed, and I’ll try not to kick her whilst I’m sleeping – she hasn’t broken the rules yet, but she walks a fine line), climbed an awesome tree and, last but not least, visited the environmental primary school (more on that later). We've visited the local paper recycling "factory". This is essentially one room with lots of paper, a shredder, some water, and some biodegradable glue. I turned some trash paper into usable paper - and we all had a go at turning this paper into bookmarks or greetings cards. It is an amazingly simple process - I often think about how we over complicate so many things that really don't need to be complicated at all.
We spend the weekends in the beach resort village of Canoa where we surf in the day and dance on the beach at night – some kind of Salsa fusion dancing.

Every day I'm exercising my mind and body, feeling inspiration all around me and feeling excitement for the future, as well as appreciating the now.