Finished Volunteering

Montañita, Ecuador

So we finished volunteering and the end of our experience didnt end like the beginning of it. let me explain... Last Monday when we returned from our weekend at Montañita all the volunteers had our usual talk with the owner where he explains his master plan of the day. We weren´t going to say anything about our grievances with the volunteering programs because he doesn't speak English and our Spanish wasnt good enough to politely explain our issues. But the head volunteer thought we should and she translated our problems with the program we had into spanish.
Here were are main problems:

• Volunteers should not clean the public bathrooms
• Volunteers should have rides to the beach after work(it was a 40 min. walk and then a 30 bus ride to the beach)
• The Coordinators should explain the whole volunteering experience better in their emails and website

Well we didnt even get through our first problem when he started talking extremely fast and didnt have a happy look on his face. He thought volunteers should have the experience of cleaning the bathrooms and that it was part of the volunteering experience. He really didnt care about what we had to say (or that we were paying to be there!!!) and pretty much left it as if you had a problem you could leave. The meeting ended with the volunteers coming up with a list of jobs they would like to do around the grounds (ie making trails, cooking, giving tours). Well Jess and I mentioned that we would like to look at the water system to see if we could help make any improvements. This list was passed on to the owner and within 12 hours we were being taken away to Alandaluz to live in the lap of luxury.

The owner all of the sudden was very apologetic, and one night even bought us a round of drinks, and very much wanted us to take a tour of the main hotels facilities. Without making this go on too long, the first day we sat around and read, took long walks on the beach, went swimming, and had great food. Day two we saw their systems for the morning and then did the same things we did day one. Day three we did some research and calculations about system they could use to purify there water without boiling it.

With all that being said one of the most ironic things was that a maid cleaned our rooms and bathrooms for us at Alandaluz... What an experience.

This weekend we are back in Montañita to party with all the volunteers before heading south down the coast to Salinas. Salinas is supposed to be vey upscale so it will be a nice change for us. After that we off to the major city of Guayaquil to find a cheap Galapagos trip.

Anyways hope all is well

Justin

PS we forgot the camera but we will post pictures tomorrow