The last two days have been pretty enjoyable.Yesterday I went to Guayaquill in the south for the day. There are many domestic flights going to Guayaquill as it is the biggest city in Ecuador and the commercial capital. We have many of our businesses in the coffee and cocoa industries that we work with based in Guayaquill who we are helping connect directly with farmers in rural communities. This is the crux of the whole value chain approach that ACDI/VOCA and a lot of people in international development are preaching at the moment. In Ecuador it is much easier to build such relationships since the private sector seems to be so strong here.
My colleague, Esteban, the deputy program manager on the project took me around to visit three companies. I was able to meet the directors of each company, talk with them about how our project had impacted their businesses and whether they intended to continue working and investing directly with their suppliers with credits and training. I took tours of all the facilities. One of the larger companies, Ecococoa, had a huge facility. They were not only buying and exporting cocoa beans but also roasting and crushing them to make "cocoa liqueur" (100% pure cocoa) and cocoa butter ( the by product which is a fat that is used in cosmetics).
A highlight of the day was being able to sample the different kinds of cocoa from all the different parts of Ecuador. They set out a six or so jars of melted cocoa and I took a tongue depressor to each rolling the cocoa liquor in my mouth. Amazingly there is a lot of difference between cocoa beans grown on the coast or in the Amazon or in central parts of the country. Some have floral and fruitty after tastes while others are more bitter or subtle tasting. Like wine there is a whole science to picking the right bean and then making sure you know which tree it came from and then regenerating many of these "super trees" through grafting techniques. Considering my chocolate sweet tooth it was incredibly interesting.
The other cool visit was with the largest coffee and sweet shop in Ecuador called, Sweet and Coffee. they have 41 stores throughout the country and are growing like mad and expanding to countries like Panama and Peru. I was met by this young, tall, handsome Ecuadorian guy who looked very European. Niles, was the marketing director for the company. He must have been only 23 or 24 years old as he said he just graduated from LSU university in the US. He gave us a tour of the "coffee university" where they train their baristas and then took us to two sweet and coffee shops where I devoured the biggest piece of chocolate cake I had seen in a long time. We rushed back to the airport at the end of the day and 30 minutes later I was back in Quito.
Dad- you would not recognize Guayaquil. It has been totally made over in the last fifteen years with a renovated downtown and port and all this "Miami style" developments in these very American looking gated communities. There is still a lot of poverty but you don't see much of it in the downtown.
Today was also a interesting day as Esteban and I toured through the old town of Quito which was the first UNESCO city heritage sight. Esteban loves playing tour guide and insisted we not finish our work plan in the office but go to lunch in the old town. We were gone for about 5 hours touring around narrow cobble stoned streets, walking past very European and ornate government office buildings and beautiful catholic churches. One of the most famous churches is filled with gold leaf in side and was built at the height of the Spanish rule when they were pillaging all of south america for gold. I don't think i had ever seen so much gold lead in my life. We stopped into a fancy old style restaurant that looked out on to independence square. We then continued to stuff ourselves with empanadas, potato soup and a huge steak with fried egss on top. My stomach was stretched to the brim.
So this has been one of the more entertaining work trips. There are not too many places in the USAID world that are as nice. There are two more years on this project so i am hopeful to at least go back once more - maybe next time I could even fit in the Galapagos.
