Moskowitz Adventures 2015: Palugo

Tuesday, November 10th- Thursday, November 12th.

Last morning in Otavalo, before our two hour bus ride south to Palugo.

Dogs were all over the city- even praying for forgiveness!

Beautiful paintings all around the church.

The owner of the Hostal Riveria Sucre where we traveled in and out of for about two weeks.

A good view of Imbabura leaving Otavalo. Brad was on the peak the previous day.

When Brad and Gayle were initially planning the trip to Ecuador it was going to be a bike tour. During his research (on equipment of course!) Brad had found a blog post about adventure cycling in South America, and the relatively new concept of "bike-packing." Through some correspondence with the author of the blog, Brad discovered that this individual was the co-founder of a comprehensive outdoor education program that integrates adventure activities (bikepacking, whitewater paddling, mountaineering, etc.) with sustainable agriculture via a family farm with a rich history in Ecuador. The program, Nahual (http://nahual.com.ec/home.htm), has direct ties with Vermont by providing a semester-long outdoor education program for Kroka Expeditions, a program that Brad already was familiar with. Without going into too much detail, we were invited to visit the farm and spent two nights in this beautiful location, with the most welcoming and generous family of adventurers, farmers and educators. Coincidentally, one of the high school students that was part of the Kroka semester lives just up the road from us in Vermont and is the son of Eli's Hebrew tutor (and Bar Mitzvah emcee). It was nice to connect with him while observing the great work that the program was doing to transform the youth, and our future.

The Farm
by Asa
The last 2 days we stayed at some persons farm that dad met online. It turned out not to be bad. We stayed at Francisco's house. A really nice and big house that they use for a "bed and breakfast." Francisco's house is across the road from the farm. On the farm are his 3 sons; Thomas, Michael and Matias. Also staying on the farm are Kroka kids from USA. They were doing a semester of hiking and biking in Ecuador with Michael.

I think that Thomas's, Michael's and Matias's houses are super cool. I think I liked Thomas's the best because it is built around this really big volcanic rock and built into the rock is a sink and a shower. All of their houses were built by themselves and all of them have really cool bamboo and tiled roofs, the rest of their houses are made by all wood or stone. All of their houses are also really sustainable houses because they are made of all natural resources. On the farm they have gardens, cows, chickens, alpacas, pigs, horses and sheep.

On the first day we arrived we pretty much did a little tour of the farm, ate dinner and went to bed. The next day we borrowed some bikes from them and rode a loop around Francisco's house and then we rode up the hill to the farm and rode a loop there. On the way back we rode to the town to get some food. Then we rode back up to the farm and watched them milk the cows. At night Francisco took us to these really nice hot springs. At the hot springs there were 6 different pools. All of them were different temperatures. The next day we left to go hiking for 3 days and now we are in some town doing school work before we leave to go hiking.