hacienda chan chan

we just finished a week of volunteering at wonderful dairy farm outside of cuenca called hacienda chan chan.  the owners, julie and luke martin, are from the states and were dairy farmers there as well.  several years ago they were in search of a more balanced lifestyle for their family (including five kids!) and ended up buying a few hundred acres of green grassed land in ecuador.  they recently expanded their operation to host tourists and actually have a website you can check out.  www.haciendachanchan.com   it is a wonderful little piece of heaven and if you are in the cuenca area i highly recommend a visit!

as i said julie and luke have a fair bit of space and a couple guest houses plus a house for volunteers.  so we ended up having an entire house to ourselves! what a luxury! the kids each had their own room and after several months of all of us being in one room together, we very much enjoyed the space and privacy.

our volunteer house

the martin family house sits below the guest houses overlooking a beautiful valley.....

as far as work todd and i did a little of this and a little of that during our stay at the farm. we tidied up the greenhouse.....

just starting

one fun project we did was helping to map out a hiking trail system and mark the trails for future guests. one of the trails was a kids loop called the 'butterfly trail' complete with fairy houses along the way built by all the kids.

hiking with riley

fairy house

we also helped a little with the milking.....and i use the word 'help' loosely as todd and i were both intimidated by the cows even though julie and luke and even the kids push them around like its nothing.

riley and lucy found themselves to be most useful just playing with the kids.  the little ones just adored them and we all fell in love with this little family.  farm life suited the kids just fine and they had so much fun running around unfettered over grassy hills for a week.  the martin kids are ivan (age 11), sebastian (age 8), gwen (age 6), emmett (age 4) and thomas (age 1).

emmett loved loved loved riley and was his little shadow for the week

sebastian and his dog

sweet baby thomas

every morning we would all eat breakfast together.....and boy oh boy was this a meal worth waking up for! julie makes homemade yogurt, homemade granola, homemade butter, homemade jam and homemade cinnamon bread!  it was soooooo amazing......i already miss that breakfast!

but alas our week came to an end as much as we wished we could've stayed longer.  we hope to see our new friends again which may actually happen because julie's sister lives in stevenson, washington....just across the river from us! small world!



yesterday we took a bus to guayaquil, which is a pretty large city on the southern coast.  i did not have particularly high expectations of guayaquil and i gotta say i was pleasantly surprised.  we spent the day first at a park in the city that was full of iguanas! lima has the cat park and guayaquil has the iguana park! both kids thought the iguanas were cooler.

this ornate cathedral was across the street from the iguana park....crazy juxtaposition!

then we strolled along this beautiful boardwalk for the afternoon.....a great example of a successful urban renewal project.

the boardwalk ended looking up at this part of town called the cerro santa ana with colorful old historic houses on the hill.

we were glad we had a day to visit guayaquil which exceeded expectations.
tomorrow we fly to the galapagos for ten days.....squeeeeee!!!  soooooo excited!
hasta luego!