RHIANNON (Malchingui Ecuador)

We spent our first month in Ecuador volunteering at a vegetarian permaculture farm/commune. The farm was located 2 hours north of Quito in a small town called Malchingui. This was by far one of our best months yet! It is an amazing place with some amazing people all of which we will miss tremendously!

Here we are writing out RHIANNON with our bodies for a picture in a calender they are making.

Patrick and I ready to work!

The views at the farm were breath taking. We were surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. Here is a picture of Volcan Cayambe, one of the snow capped volcanos we could see from the farm.

A beautiful sun flower in the garden behind the main house.

At some point in the day we were always above and below some clouds. As you can imagine this made for some amazing sunsets.

Rhiannon has 7 dogs on the farm. Here is a picture of Matt and Azul enjoying one of the gorgeous sunsets.

We also got to do some bee keeping! Which has inspired us to get bees when we get back home! If you are lucky you may get a taste!

Surrounded by bees! The hive had around 50k bees.

Patrick and Adam getting the donkeys(Ursula & Feya) who escaped 2 days in a row. Patrick was the donkey wisperer for the month.

They are making a huge new earth bag house. The first few weeks we helped work on the building project. We would mix dirt, clay and cement to fill these bags for the walls.

Rhiannon sunrise.

The morning dew.

Here we are recreating a Rhiannon style nativity scene. Patricks beard got him the role of Joseph. We also have Adam as a wiseman with our friend Ricardo.

There was lots to do in our spare time. Here I am doing some outdoor yoga. Also a good view of the property.

We got some lessons on acrobatic yoga as well!

Adam getting some flying lessons from Ricardo!

Sylve giving Ursina and me a lesson.

The farm is not prodcutive enough to provide food for all 25 of us so once a week fresh produce was delivered. Best Mangos ever!

Here Patrick is making breakfast with Ester and James.

Here is where we did our laundry, a bicycle powered laundry machine!

haha... Patrick got his beard/mustache braided.

On Thanksgiving we spent our night in the temazcal. This is similar to a sweat lodge. We spent over 2 hours in here singing, chanting and sweating. It was quite a hot and cleansing experience.

Singing songs around the fire as the rocks heat up for the temazcal. 

On our very last weekend we were lucky enough to have Vladi, a Shaman who works with the community regularly lead a San Pedro ceremony. This is a very special ceremony that has been perfromed for hundreds of years and passed down from generation to generation from native Ecuadroians.We spent 12 hours singing chanting and learning from him.