Bomboli

The other weekend I took a trip with my program to Bomboli, a cloud forest about an hour drive from Quito. Cloud forests are characterized by heavy fog cover and precipitation, and are located on the slopes of mountains in the area between the coast and the sierra.

The government has proposed to build a new road though the mountain to cut the time it takes to drive to the coast. The proposed tunnel would exit through this waterfall, drastically changing the landscape and ecosystem of the area.

The water was safe to drink, so a few students in our group decided to try it out!

We visited a couple that owns a large area of land where they do conservation work. The couple explained the importance of their work to us in simple terms: if you cut down the trees here, the water will disappear, and water is what sustains life. As we walked around the forest we learned about the medicinal uses of plants and symbiotic relationships. 

The couple supports themselves by making cheese, manjar de leche (a.k.a. dulce de leche), chocolate sauce, and wooden crafts. We learned about the process of making queso fresco (above) and mozzarella and got to try the fresh cheeses!

The above flower is used to make a "date rape drug", but in small doses it causes drowsiness. Apparently the naps under this tree are superb.

There were many calla lilies around.

 We saw many types of orchids and we learned that they have a symbiotic relationship with moss:

some cool moss!

After exploring the forest, we went back to the house for a delicious lunch:

Soup with their homemade cheese

A stuffed squash

I ate the crepe before I remembered to take a picture of it. It was filled with the homemade manjar de leche and chocolate sauce.