(ACT4) Visionary Ally-nment

"It is not so much of a water shortage crisis, but a water management crisis."

Like the water it held, my time in Ecuador last summer was filled with plastic. A commodity heavily utilized by a foreigner like myself, the almighty water bottle was everywhere I went. Which is why when I visited Bahía de Caráquez, an ecocity along the Pacific coast of Ecuador, I was nervous at the mention of staying at a place miles from the sale of such "safe" water.

I had come to Bahía de Caráquez for its innovation and vision in transforming its values as a city after the occurrence of two natural disasters in the late 1990's. At the realization that traditional businesses would leave with the threat of further devastation, along with the desire to preserve and restore local resources, three pioneers initiated a model for the city to sustain itself as a leader in environment-friendly practices. Tying the health of the environment with the prosperity of the economy, the plan transformed the city's development with the government passing laws and regulations on food, water, energy, transportation, recycling, sewage treatment, wild habitat and species protection and restoration, education, human resources, business development, cultural initiatives, and municipal planning.

And it was one of those original visionaries and his two friends that led me on my visit to life without bottled water. He had a place south of the city called Cabin Tortuguita on the Punta Gorda Reserve. Accessible only at low tide via the coastline, there would be no traveling back and forth to the city for the three day stay. Water would be collected, not bought. And the means to do so quite simple and the source quite cheap: rain from the rooftop. Cabin Tortuguita was built with gutters that diverted rain into a cement holding tank. Simple yet novel.

Such novelty, though, is the norm for Che, Ramon, and Marcelo, who not only showed me ways of living, especially in relation to water, outside the bounds of what I previously thought were secure and safe, but are doing so at large for the city of Bahia de Caráquez. As Peter Berg of Planet Drum has said: "Since a lot of the early work of how to put these things together is being done there, Bahia de Caráquez represents a kind of teaching institution for visitors and students to see how the trasnformation into an ecological city can be done."

If you ever go to see for yourself, a place to stay and connect with Che, Ramon, and Marcelo is the Coco Bongo hostel with Suzanne. And a place to volunteer is the Cerro Seco Reserve with Marcelo.