Lost Boys

To answer Jim V´s comment from the last post, no, Neverland Farm in Ecuador is not owned by Micheal Jackson. Rather, the farmer decided on the name after Peter Pan´s Neverland and call all the volunteers Lost Boys, which is what we quickly became. What is a Lost Boy? A lost boy is someone who stays at Neverland long enough to figure out that they can get lost eating fruit or scrambling up the hillside or swiming in the flashing river and it is still part of work. Lost boys have special pet projects on the farm - mine was digging in the compost because I love building compost piles and looking at rotting food decompose, and Andy´s was building shelves. One lost boy was quite good at moonwalking, but not because MJ was there to teach her. No, we didn´t learn much about agriculture because the farmer wasn´t too much of a farmer. Regardless of the frustrations, we learned how to work and play simultaneously, and to work things out in our little group of transients. By transients, I mean that we made friends with some great great people. Friends for a month mean more than you can imagine when on the move.

Now we are in Vilcabamaba, the larger town near the farm. We are staying at a hostal, which is really a resort, for $10 per night, which would be $300 per night in Hawaii. I cannot emphasize how beautiful this valley is. We are on a hill and get tremendously impressive sunsets every night. This place attracts gringos for life. There is a large community of them who have come to stay - most of them are pretty weird to me, but so is then nature of an ex-patriot, verdad? I don´t think I´ll become one because I like the west coast too much and I miss my friends and family (yes you). By the way, thank you so much for commenting. I´m glad you are still paying attention after our infrequent posting habits. You are very encouraging with your comments and I greatly appreciate it.

We will be in Vilcabamba getting clean and relaxing for a few days, then onto Peru. We don´t have plans yet, but I think we might avoid the big tourism places like MachuPichu because you can see ruins just as impressive without the tourists elsewhere. We´ll be looking for another farm as well. Someday we will post more pictures. My hair is longer and Andy´s is shorter. We have plenty of bugbites and I generally smell bad, sorry. The internet is slow so posting pictures is a pain but we´ll try to bring ourselves to do it before we leave for Peru. If you´ve been to Peru, send us advice.

One more note, Endlesswinter seems to be a misnomber because it is always warm here. When it rains it pours and washes out roads and houses, but most of the weather has been mild and wonderful. I hear it will be cold in the south, and it is still officially fall.

Love,
Lauren