Notes from the Jungle: “Volunteering” vs. “Tourist-ing”

To be blunt, we decided on Picaflor because it was cheap.  As a “volunteer”, you paid only $15 per day instead of the $100 that “cheaper” jungle lodges ask.  As low budget travelers with dwindling bank accounts and without an aversion to hard work, it sounded like a good idea.  In the end, it worked [...]

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Thanks for all the good times Huaraz

It seems crazy, but after nearly 6 months the time has come for us to leave Huaraz.  We´ll miss the Lodge, all the great people, the mountains, the restaurants, the biking, the ice cream and many other things, but it feels right to be back on the road again.
A special thanks to Alex and Bruni [...]

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Mountain Bikes, Pie, and Hydro-electricity OH MY!

So….my last post said quick update and I’ll post again soon, eh? Sorry about that one. We’ve been living up at the lodge, which has no electricity (and definitely no internet), so I’ve been slow to write up new posts.
We are working at The Way Inn, mostly at the lodge. We’ve done [...]

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Life in Lima

We arrived in Lima in the beginning of January with high hopes for finding volunteer work. It’s not that we actually wanted to work in Lima, it was more that most of the national organizations have headquarters in Lima. After our experience of waiting 3 months before anything worked out in Quito, we kept our [...]

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Casa de Ciclistas Amistad

During our stay in Huanchaco we met an impressive woman who’d been traveling the world for over 20 years…on a bicycle. Annie had many, many stories to tell and it was a pleasure to get to meet someone who had experienced such epic travels.
Annie shared a lot with us, but one thing we wanted to [...]

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Valley of Longevity

Sorry for the long silence followed by an onslaught of postings, but we’ve been both busy and away from the internet past few weeks. However, we have yet again found a place to hang our hats for a few weeks and have settled down for one last time before heading to Peru.
We arrived in Vilcabamba [...]

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Cutting Off the Tags

After three fantastic weeks with ESPOIR in Portoviejo, the time has come for us to say our goodbyes and move on. Working with the foundation has been amazingly helpful, for both exploration of my posible future career path and our Spanish skills!

From Our time with…

We are once again packing up to move. This is the [...]

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Update from the Office of Liz

Well, since we´ve arrived in Portoviejo, they´ve put us to work! It´s been wierd going from being bums to having 9-5 M-F jobs again. In the past week and a half, we´ve been pretty much fully trained to be loan officers as well over different office jobs. We´ve gone to group meetings all over the [...]

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Thank the Stars

The stars have finally aligned for us a bit this week.The volunteering is working out great. Last week we went around Manabi province with different loan officers, visiting communal banks. Next week, we’re going to be trained as if we were “real” employees. It will be great to learn the ins-and-outs of the microfinance business. [...]

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In Portoviejo

Well, we didn´t make it to the beach last weekend, but we did make it to Portoviejo by Monday morning to start working with Fundacion ESPOIR. We´re here, it´s going great, woo!

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