somewhere under the sky

the other return

i´m catching up on my blog. soon, very soon, we will be caught up.
last weekend i returned to saraguro and went to the Oriente with 4 other people from the foundation. there is a hike from Saraguro to the Oriente and they are developing this to offer to tourists so we went to the first stop in the Oriente, a tiny town called Tutupali to present the idea of community tourism to this town.
we traveled by car through Loja, in the south, and then into the oriente and took the road until we could, because then it was blocked by some machine. then we hiked down to the town and had dinner, and i discovered another delicious cheese! ecuador really has a great variety of cheese but only if you travel. for instance the cheese in cuenca, i don´t like. the cheese in saraguro, if i haven´t talked about it, i looooove and is my favorite cheese in ecuador. and now the south of the oriente contains my 2nd favorite cheese.
anyway then we had a meeting with some people of the community. for those who don´t know, community tourism is being developed by indigenous communities as a way for the community itself to participate in the tourism, and of course for themselves to get the money, although you can´t say it makes them rich. but it´s a way of sharing their way of life, their culture, and a way helping them maintain and be proud of their heritage. so you can stay with families, do activities with them, and you eat what they eat (if you want to of course) stay more or less where they stay and can see artesans, music, dance, etc. the reason i´m a fan of this is because it´s what introduced me to saraguro, and more than anything, it´s a concept of sharing life, of sharing culture.
we had the meeting, conversed for awhile, and in the morning we left. it was absolutely beautiful, everything. and i returned to cuenca, back to life here.
next entry will be about this tefl program i´m in and how i´ve been feeling here in cuenca. until later!

posted by leah v @ 7:20 PM