A few words of clarification: finca, as I learned, is a Spanish word most commonly used in tropical areas meaning, as best I can translate it, plantation. Though this conjures up images of Southern cotton farmers and rich families with girls in poofy dresses (at least for me), it’s really more like the field. Working in the finca means working in the fields, in the land that is used for cultivating agriculture. A person can also own a finca, which usually includes their home and land. Visiting a finca usually means staying in a bamboo cabaña and learning about agricultural methods used on the land, in the fields. The word campo can also be used in non-tropical areas, and many people in southern Chile and Argentina live or work in the campo rather than the finca.

This weekend and I (my French friend from Yanapuma) are headed out to Canoa, along the coast, to finally soak in some sun. I think we’re bringing another French friend of ours from the hostel with us, and hopefully the two of them don’t speak too much French because mine is limited to phrases such as body parts, numbers, hello, thank you, I love cheese, and I don’t speak French. Next week I’ll have a few meetings to chat about cacao and then I’ll move back to Bua for a few weeks before coming back to Quito to write a report and finish up my internship…I can’t believe that there’s really only a few weeks left of interning, but thankfully I have a bit more time to travel afterwards, and I’m getting lots of ganas to get out and know other parts of Ecuador (hence Canoa).

Despite telling myself that I wasn’t going to spend unnecessary money washing clothing when I could do it with my organic, fair trade, all natural biodegradable concentrated soap in a bathtub in the hostel, upon coming back from Bua I realized that I had worn everything that I had brought at least 3 days in a row in terrible humidity and that everything was covered in dirt from planting and moving LOADS of reforestation plants back and forth, as well as my work in the fincas, so I caved in and sent my clothes to a laundry place. It was beautiful! They returned to me washed, dried, and folded! It was a bit weird to think of someone else folding my clothes and underwear and everything, but I quickly got over it.

Also, I found a delicious pandadería yesterday and had one of the better scones of my life. LOVELY. Today it’s sunny (when isn’t it sunny in the morning, though? It always gets worse in the afternoon) and maybe we’ll try some asian food in Ecuador (always a risk) and try to eat outside.

Back to cacao. It’s taken over my life- the past two nights I’ve dreamt of cacao as well. The first night I was part of some crazy murder mystery that involved cocoa powder and liquor and antlers (I don’t even want to think about attempting analysis of that) and last night I was at the beach and it was raining and there were puddles filling up with panela, a sugar-like substance that we made in the Finca Sarita and other puddles were filling with cacao.

Con amor-
M