We spent the day last Saturday filled with adrenaline in the Andes.
On our first real day off, we were invited by our friends Gato and Paul for a tour of the small town called Pimampiro and the surrounding country side, which is about an hour drive away from Ibarra.
Our tour started with us first driving for hours on a narrow mountainside in the country where one of our drivers, Gato, an amputee runner, drove over boulders, mud, and rocks clinging to the very edge of a huge mountain with drops 100′s of feet down into a raging river. Amazing and beautiful, but also a bit unnerving. One of the really amazing things is seeing Gato drive a stick shift with complete ease over these mountains with a prosthetic.
Our other driver, Paul, is a New Yorker who now spends most of his time here working at and running a foundation that helps with organic farming and gifted school children in Pimampiro.
Gato wanted to show us his family farm which was tucked deeply into the mountain side filled with rich green pastures and views of the entire valley and mountain range. His family no longer lives there, but now a small caretaker family occupies and works the land as farmers.
Our group that grew to 11, stopped and ate a lovely picnic on a mountain side of fresh cucumber, tomato, and red onion salad, toasted corn, queso fresco, avocados, fresh rolls, and juice. We then toured more of the country side while getting a thrill of the crazy roads and precarious passes. I decided with a couple of others in our car that perhaps a seatbelt is not the best thing to use in this situation in case you need to jump out and bale before the truck goes tumbling over the cliff. Fortunately we never had to consider this option.
Later we went to another family home, this time an abandoned home since our friend Patricia still has too many memories of when her parents were alive and living there to ever live there herself again. The property was filled with avocado, peach, and tomato trees. Tree tomatoes are a very interesting fruit from this area. Bitter and not very tasty, it grows everywhere and it’s said that with a lot a sugar, it makes good juice. We haven’t figured that one out yet.
We ended the day with a dinner at a restaurant where we sat outside in a garden filled with fruit ready to eat right off the branches. We had an amazing salad of greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados, carrots, and broccoli and then a wonderful vegetable pizza. Our first pizza here and it wasn’t too bad. We were also served beautiful juice of strawberry and lime complete with fresh strawberries and mint flouting in each clear glass pitcher. The perfect end to a long, but fun day off.
Only 15 more days to make a pledge to contribute to our Prosthetics for Life documentary helping the clinic in Ibarra, Ecuador. Please spread the word!
http://www.indiegogo.com/Prosthetics-For-Life-Documentary
http://igg.me/p/53421?a=2410
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Jaime Byrd is an award winning director, DP, and editor for Blind Lyle Films. She studied Fine Arts and Music at California State University of Los Angeles. She is now producing a documentary in Ecuador for the Prosthetics For Life Foundation.
She has produced, directed, and/or edited multiple shorts, a TV pilot, several award winning commercials, an award winning web series, multiple documentaries, a cooking show, and music videos.
She helped produce the TV pilot show “Talker” (featuring Jay Thomas, Tim Matheson, and Sharon Lawrence), which won best actor, best director, and best comedy at the 2011 International TV awards in Los Angeles.
