Today the Ecuadorian Flag has the exact same distribution of colours to the colombian flag (which lacks the coat of arms) and the Venezuelan Flag which you can differentiate by an arch of stars in the blue section and its own coat of arms in the top right.

The colour yellow which is twice the size as the other two bands symbolises the abundance and fertility of the land.

The colour blue represents the sea and sky and Grand Colombias independence from the Spanish Conquistadores. Depending on who you ask the red is said to represent Courage or the blood spilt during the battle for Indepence though these two meanings do not seem mutually exclusive at all.

Ecuadorian Flags Coat of Arms

The coat of arms which is Ecuadors alone pictures Ecuadors highest mountain Chimborazo from which the mighty river Guayas flows where a steamboat floats. Historically speaking the River Guayas has been one of the major ports in South America since colonial times and the steamboat pictured was the first of its kind constructed in South America.

This represents PROGRESS.

Sadly I do find it a little ironic to see that poor old Condor flying over the coat of arms – the mythical creature and Ecuadors national bird is said to symbolise the protector of the country but after centuries of overzealous farmers shooting them down to protect their livestocks it has disappeared from much of the Ecuadorian Andes.

In fact the Condor is now extinct in Chimborazo National Park but if it were still alive in that region today it would see the highest mountain in the country stripped of much of its glaciers; a River Guayas so polluted that more plastic bags grace the place between its banks than fish; and steamboats, thousands and thousands of steamboats.

Ecuador is one of the best countries in the Andes mountain range if you like trekking and hiking. Many of the best treks in Ecuador require guides, donkeys and private transport but there are some great day hikes and independent treks you can do on your own

A great day trek for experienced and inexperienced trekkers alike is one to the cave, waterfalls, and abandoned hotsprings around the active Volcano Tungurahua . Here are the directions to get there with photos below:

- From the “Terminal Orient” in Riobamba catch the bus to Palitachwa (pronounced Palitawa)

- Get off at Palitachwa and follow the road down past the village and continue past the houses destroyed by the Volcano Tungurahua on the edge of a cliff above the River Patso
 
- The road will continue for about 45 minutes past farmland as you get closer and closer to Volcano Tungurahua until you reach a bridge. Cross the bridge and you will go past a cement gate over the road and then you will see a basketball court and the abandoned hotsprings facilities which you can enter and explore.

- From here there are two routes that you can take one to the beautiful view of several stunning waterfalls and the other to a cave inside the Volcano Tungurahua.

- The path to both these routes starts above the abandoned hot-springs, you will see a dirt track that goes to the left and the right but for both routes you want to go to the left and climb as the path to the right only leads to the river.

- Once you take the path to the right which climbs up the hill it will split in two again; to go to the waterfalls head to the right away from Tungurahua which follows the river and to see the cave head to the left..

- The right path to the waterfalls will climb for about two hours with multiple switchbacks and past a few remote indigenous farm-houses and plantations of Eucalyptus trees (the locals are super friendly so dont forget to say “hola!”) soon the path will curve North to the left which is where you will see many beautiful and very large waterfalls.

- The left path to the cave weaves and turns on the side of the mountain. Some parts of the trail were destroyed the last time the volcano erupted so you will need to do some path finding but there are old signs that point to another hotsprings higher up that have been destroyed.

- Once you get the hotsprings that have been destroyed, you will know because of the mangled cement and rocks, keep heading further up the source of the river and climb over the rocks. Then you will be inside the Corazon de Tungurahua (The Heart of Tungurahua) the giant cave with a beautiful waterfall above it.

I dont need to say that if the volcano is spewing lava this day trek is not the best idea. Ask the locals about the safety of the volcano, if its merely “fumando / smoking” the worst thing that will happen is a bit of ash will be in your lungs but when the volcano is very active this day trek can be dangerous.

Now youve had a taste of trekking in Ecuador and want to get off the beaten track then check out Ecuadors Best Treks

You wont regret it.

[Show as slideshow]

12►

Ive criticised Rafael Correa a little on here with regards to Freedom of Expression in Ecuador and the murky undercurrents of the Yasuni ITT deal. There is no doubt however that Rafael Correa is one of the best presidents Ecuador has ever had.

Not since Jaime Roldós (the Ecuadorian president who was allegedly assasinated in a plane crash near an American military base for taking on the foreign owned oil and gas industry) has Ecuador had a president that cared more about its people and not self-enrichment. Its the reason the government has lasted so long:

The government is now the most stable in recent times and will soon become the longest serving in Ecuador’s tumultuous history. The president’s approval ratings are well over 70%. All this is due to the reorientation of the government’s approach, made possible by a constitution remarkable for its recognition of human rights and the rights of nature, and its acceptance of plurality and cultural diversity.

The consequence of these economic reforms enacted by Correa to create a more just and equitable society is that they have made him some very powerful enemies in Ecuadors elite class. This resentment boiled over on the 31st of September last year when rogue police forces kidnapped the president in what the government believes was an attempted coup.

Fortunately it failed and Rafael Correa has continued to use his doctorate in Economics to turn this once Banana Republic into a strong and steady latin american economy that will benefit Ecuadorians for decades to come.

Firstly this is fantastic news that this important issue is still in the international spotlight.

It means more scrutiny for reports on corrupt dealings like Chevron Texaco using “blood money” to bribe the Ecuadorian government with $500 Million for the Yasuni ITT protection in exchange for forgetting its $18 Billion in damages it needs to pay for creating a “Chenobyl in the Amazon” 30 years ago.

“Given Chevron’s toxic legacy and the debt it owes the people and rainforests of Ecuador, the fact that this ‘bribe’ is even on the table is an aberration of justice. “This is a multi-billion dollar bait and switch, it’s illegal, and can’t be allowed.” said the Ecuador program coordinator for Kevin Koenig for Amazon Watch.

Why then are my friends who work at the Ministry of Environment and the Provincial Council for Coca in Orellana Province which controls Yasuni National Park not convinced?

Reaching the 100 million dollars may have saved Yasuni National Park for another year but my friends say the prospecting continues as usual. Its encouraging however to see that Rafael Correa donated the proceeds of the $40million lawsuit against the newspaper El Universo even though it challenged Freedom of Expression in Ecuador.

Lets hope that what the ex-president of the Yasuni ITT initiative Roque Sevilla said about President Rafael Correa in his Yasuni interview is not true.

Ive talked about the downward slide of Freedom of Expression in Ecuador before but what makes any attack on the Internet dangerous is that it restricts the freedoms of EVERYONE.

These Bills claim that they are to stop Piracy and the theft of Intellectual Property. The problem is that like the Prohibition of Alcohol in America in the 1920s it will only push Piracy further underground while punishing normal users like us. Anyone with the smallest amount of tech knowledge can use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and a number of other ways to get around SOPA and there will always be ways to ensure the existence of big torrent sites like the Pirate Bay.

The scariest thing about SOPA however is it can crush dissenting voices on the web

For Martin Luther King day last monday if someone were to post a copyrighted speech of the great man in the comments section of this website then the SOPA could technically block the DNS of this website and PayPal freeze our account.

While I doubt anyone would ever want to target a tiny site in Ecuador like this one the SOPA and PIPA bills are more sinister when you take into account what very powerful forces have already done to dissenting voices like Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was subjected to a Banking Blockade that dried up its funding for its release of thousands of leaked reports on war crimes and government and corporate corruption. You can still donate to the extreemist racist sites like Ku Klux Klan however – as long as they dont get on the bad side of the powers that be.

With SOPA if one of twitters 100 million users posted a link to anything under copyright it gives the government hte right to shut it down. Same goes for Facebook, Google plus, and any other social network or community website.

This bill is dangerous and needs to be stopped.

I enjoy traveling best when I am most involved with the communities that I am visiting. Ecuador Eco Volunteer provided a great opportunity for this and I felt very fortunate to have met him and his family and friends.

Really they went above and beyond for me in terms of hospitality. It was such a welcoming experience, especially traveling on my own, I felt as if I had a family there.

I have vounteered in the past, where I wasn’t sure what I was doing was really helping out the community but I really felt I got to see, first hand how the community was benefitting. I volunteered at the Andes Alpaca Ranch near Chimborazo, teaching English to a wonderful group of children and I will always cherish the memories I had there among many other things.

If you have any questions for me feel free to get my email through Wlady and I would be more than happy to go into further detail about this awesome experience. Thanks Wlady and to your family as well…por favor mande saludas para mi.

So if frogs are one of the best indicators of the overall health of an ecosystem what does it mean when mass extinctions of frogs around the planet are occurring at a rate unseen in human history?

It means the world is dying.

That is not alarmist or bleeding heart tree hugging extremist thinking – its a fact. Every eco-system on earth is in a state of decline.

Frogs in Ecuadorian Amazon and Coastal Forests

Ecuador is home to over 480 species of frogs and other amphibians with hundreds more yet to be described and discovered.

About 70% of these species are endemic to Ecuador which means you will not find them anywhere else on Earth. They live in vastly different climates and landscapes from the Coastal Forests and Galapagos Islands to the Andean Paramo and Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest and vary greatly in appearance.

The two biodiversity hotspots in Ecuador are its coastal dry forest and amazon rainforest in particular the Yasuni Biosphere. Sadly 95% of Ecuadors Coastal Dry Forest has already been deforested to make way for farmland. Considering scientists recently discovered 30 new species of frogs in whats left of this extremely special and endangered ecosystem makes you wonder how many amazing creatures in the area have already been extinguished from the planet.

Now that the Ecuadorian Government failed to raise $100million before January 1st in its Yasuni ITT Initiative we will soon find out the fate of the frog and amphibian life in Ecuadors other biodiversity hotspot – one of the last pristine regions left on the planet – Yasuni National Park.

[Show as slideshow]

2011 was a very tough year but the challenges made it all the more rewarding and we have grown and learned a lot not only as a company but as individuals as well. Here are some achievements and milestones we are most proud of from last year:

Achievements and Milestones for 2011

- We moved out of the office we shared with another company to save on rent and moved into our very own office in a much better location on Riobambas main avenida.  The new office is smaller but its nice and intimate as well and since its ours we have complete creative control over the decoration and interior design.  We are paying more for rent but to subsidize that cost we are selling high-quality camping and trekking equipment.

- One of our fantastic volunteers from Austin Texas redesigned the logos and banners for Ecuador Eco Volunteer and Ecuador Eco Adventure. Logos and branding are very important in todays cutthroat world of tourism even for a social enterprise like us and these new logos make us look much more professional than before.

- Over $20,000 was invested into our various volunteer programs in 2011 thanks to our volunteers. This money helps keep programs like the Animal Rescue Center running and increases the quality of life

We also created Volunteer Transparency Graphs and will be updating it every quarter or 3 months in 2012 to increase accountability to our volunteers.

- We have started up a new volunteer program in a Shiwiar Amazon Tribe in a very remote region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. This new program will help the tribe receive an alternative source of income so they do not have to rely on illegal timber loggers and oil companies that wish to extract the rich resources from their land.

What Needs Improvement

As we have grown this year organizing and communicating between the various volunteer programs we run and our volunteers has become more difficult and complex. This has at times led to a breakdown in communication in certain cases.

To resolve this issue in 2012 Jeniffer from Chicago has been visiting all of our volunteer programs around Ecuador to see what works and what needs to be changed to improve the volunteer experience for both the volunteer and the host.

In 2012 Jeniffer will now be working as our Volunteer Supervisor to help make our volunteers time in Ecuador as comfortable as possible. Jennifer will be available to support all our volunteers with any questions or preoccupations they have while traveling in Ecuador from topics as diverse as travel advice to issues with health.

To track our progress from the year before last check out the post I wrote on Ecuador Eco Volunteer Review for 2010

Thankyou for helping us make the Ecuador Eco Volunteer project possible!

best regards,
Jake, Wlady, Jennifer, and Mauri

New Years is always a great time to reflect on the year that past and plan for the oncomming year. If this year coming is the year you want to do something vastly different from anything you have ever experienced before then now is the time to get off the fence and make up your mind.

There are 3 days left between now and New Years and if you want to avoid the price rise and save $100 on a months volunteer work in Ecuador then send us a message and book your place now.

You wont regret it :)

- Jake, Wlady, Jenniffer, and the rest of the Ecuador Eco Volunteer Team.