A second day of traveling...

Full day of exploring Ecuador today! First we drove over to the local office for Charity Anywhere, our nonprofit partners this year for our project. Very nice office space with the usual Quito views of mountains everywhere! Then we were off to the equator-first, the original one and then the new one identified by GPS technology. They're not vey far apart, but they made for some great photo ops and some fascinating learning for all of us!

Then, it was a drive through the Andes mountains to the coastal town of Esmeraldas. We had lunch at a roadside inn and arrived at Es. Just before dark. We went to see the site of a house we are going to demolish tomorrow and rebuild with a prefab house kit for a single mother and her 6 children! We can't wait to start! Finally, we drove to our hotel in Atacames, about 20 min from Esmeraldas to eat dinner, have our team meeting, go shop for water, and take a quick walk in the dark on the beach here.

Esmeraldas is a town whose ecosystem and whose citizens's health has suffered tremendously as a result of the petroleum company that is based there. The poverty is tremendous. Those reasons are why Charity Anywhere has made such a commitment to this town. They have established a permanent health clinic in the town and have additional teams of doctors and dentists come in for a week or two every month. A team of 30 is coming tomorrow and some of us will rotate in every day this week to help them with their work. So it should be a busy week!