Common Commute

The purpose of our trip was simple: Demarcate the watershed found at the Quebrada Barro Colorado in southern Panama. The trip itself was much more complicated.

The Quebrada Barro Colorado is located in Punta Patiño Nature Reserve deep in the Darién, Panama. This reserve is remote, private, and administered by the National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON), a private nonprofit organization founded in Panama. I was headed there with Eric Lorenzo and Humberto Tamayo of ANCON.

That's me on the left and my travelling companions Eric and Humberto.

Our journey started in Panama City, where we took a three hour car ride to the city of Metetí. There we changed routes and hopped over to Puerto Quimba along the coast, about 12 miles west. We boarded a boat and prepared for travel through the estuary that would eventually bring us to the community of Mogué. The entire trip was scheduled around high tide in order to get out of the mouth of the estuary. We timed it right and the entire boat ride took about an hour and a half. The sights from the boat were overwhelming in their beauty. You have mangroves on either side of you, seabirds flying overhead and, if you’re lucky, a group of dolphins might escort you for part of the way. The ride filled me with that sense of freedom that only nature can bring.

Picture time while traveling through the estuary.

Eventually we docked our boat and had a short 10-minute walk along a beautiful trail which cut through the comarca of the Embera and Wounaan peoples. It is a beautiful land dotted with Embera and Wounaan dairy farms, and traditional houses built on stilts. We passed several young women in brightly colored parumas, or traditional clothing.

Embera and Wounaan community members taking a rest during the day.

Upon arrival it was important to contact the traditional authority of the community. We explained to him the purpose of our visit, in this case ours was simply taking a shortcut through their lands to get to Quebrada Barro Colorado. The meeting was pleasant and quick and then we were on our way.

For generations, the Quebrada Barro Colorado has been the source of water for communities in Punta Alegre. It is important to demarcate the land to ensure the watershed is protected. The people hope to eventually build an aqueduct—running about 8 miles—that will continue to provide water to communities. 

We decided to take a quick break at "Rosita," a small store. It was there that we met up with a guide Lucio, who was to be our guide the rest of the way. He kindly offered to put us up at the worker’s house on his ranch where we could spend the night. ¡Que bueno!

Nothing like a sip of natural, cold water.

To get to the small ranch home it was a long, but pleasant two mile hike through lush rainforest full of large
trees and small streams. We arrived at Lucio’s ranch house at sunset. The small house was perfect – and so was the nearby lake where we caught our dinner. We cooked our fresh catch over a small campfire.

The late night sky gave us a breathtaking star show. We shared stories throughout the evening, enjoying the meal and each other’s company, and eventually went to sleep. Some of us slept in hammocks, some slept on the floor inside the ranch house.

We were all up bright and early, made some very strong coffee and ate a few yuccas. We walked an hour on narrower trails where at one point we saw titi monkeys playing in a high tree and at another we watched a beautiful, majestic eagle land on a Cuipo tree. The tree had been full of small birds that quickly scattered leaving the eagle alone as the mistress of her tree.

Let's recap: Panama City, to Metei, to Puerto Quimba, over to Mogue and finally down to
La Reserva Natural de Punta Patiño.

From the dense, thick jungle we finally arrived at the Quebrada Barado CoIorado water source. We had made it. Now, it was time to get to work demarcating the water source.

So, how did you get to work today?

- Yaira Allois Pino, Program Officer for Panama
Yaira is from Santiago de Veraguas, Panama and works on EcoLogic's projects with our partner organizations in that country.

Under the Weather in Upper Guatemala

¡Buenos días!

Every morning I wake up in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, to the blue mountains of the Cuchumatanes that rise more than 2 miles above sea level. This morning, the temperature in the city is around 5 ° C (40°F). Here, January is typically the coldest month of the year and yet I am travelling from Huehuetenango to the upper parts of the Cuchumatanes Mountains, where nighttime and early morning temperatures can dip even lower, often below freezing.

Passing through the towns of San Juan Ixcoy, Soloma, Santa Eulalia, and San Mateo Ixtatán along the way I pass through fog, heavy rain, and then a little drizzle. Eventually, I arrive at the city of Barillas where it is no drier. In fact, it rains here about 11 months out of the year.

A local villager is all smiles in the early morning fog.

The weather here in northern Guatemala is predictably unpredictable. Sometimes, on days without a cloud in the sky, I’ll  suddenly be in the middle of a heavy downpour. Other times, there will be sunshine day after day and only a light rain at night. It can make travel plans and deciding what to wear pretty difficult.

For example, one day I visited the Maxbal lagoon in Barillas and decided not to pack rubber boots. When it was time for us to hike – since we couldn’t go any further in our truck, I realized just how big a mistake that was. Trail conditions were a mess since it had rained heavily the night before, but I needed to continue on to the lagoon, and so I hiked. I fell more times than I care to admit, but I learned my lesson. Wherever, whenever, and no matter what, you should always bring rubber boots. 

Muddy conditions after a rainstorm.

Another time, last year, I was participating in a community training in the middle of the village of Xapper at a tin-roofed community meeting house. The day was beautiful and bright, and then, around noon, a shower came down so intensely we had to suspend the training since no one could hear anything over the relentless pounding of the rain on the roof! We had to wait nearly an hour until the rain had subsided enough to continue the training. 

A view from the village center, with a tin-roofed meeting house and expansive mountains in the distance.

The weather in this area is much more than just an unpredictable inconvenience, though. The land itself is very hilly and mountainous with large areas that have been completely deforested due to illegal logging and slash-and-burn agriculture. Without trees and vegetation the heavy rains wash away soil and frequent landslides occur that can destroy remaining trees, cause water contamination and harm people and buildings as well. Additionally, the landslides often spread across highways and streets, restricting reliable transportation access, emergency evacuation routes, and communication with rural communities.

From desert to jungle, from chilly to oppressive heat, Guatemala is a land of diverse climates, in part thanks to our expansive and majestic mountains. The climate is unpredictable, but the work EcoLogic does, and our commitments to communities and to conserving the land are consistent and unwavering. 

Daniel Herrera, Program Officer for Guatemala
Daniel first joined EcoLogic in 2010 as a field technician, and in 2012 became a Program Officer, overseeing all EcoLogic's projects in Guatemala and providing technical assistance to our local partners.

"The trees are absolutely essential"

This Wednesday, I visited the 5 greenhouses that EcoLogic has built and currently manages in Totonicapan, Guatemala. Within each greenhouse are 16,500 saplings of several varieties of native trees. Community members, led by two local full-time caretakers, do everything: collect the seeds from the forest, plant them, water them with water flowing from the forest above the greenhouses, apply organic compost and fertilizers, and then take them into the forest once they're big enough (about 10 months old). The greenhouses are managed by Don Augustin. This man LOVES TREES! Three more greenhouses are currently under construction and will be done this year! We have greenhouses in this region because of the altitude - it's pretty cool and at night it even frosts over. Also, the greenhouses protect the trees from animals and insects and offer the ability to set up irrigation systems.

All the trees will be planted around water sources and in recharge zones (land that absorbs water faster than most) in order to combat erosion and ensure that the water doesn't dry out. In order to get water in your home, you have to do two things: 1) pay a water user fee to your local village water committee (each village has one of these - totally volunteer run) and 2.) volunteer your time in some capacity. The water user fee covers expenses related to the maintenance of water tanks, pipes, etc. The volunteering can consist of helping out in the greenhouses, reforesting, or providing materials for the greenhouses, like soil or compost. Most people opt to reforest, and during the months of May and June - the beginning of the rainy season - groups of community members enter the forest with all the saplings from the greenhouses and plant the trees in strategic places around their water source.

Each village water board has an executive committee that manages the money, goes into the forest to check out and perform maintenance on the tanks and pipes, and ensure that each household is volunteering and paying their fee. Or the water gets cut! Village water board leadership are voted into their position and the leadership changes each year.

So what's a water source? It's basically the ground. That's it. Community members have identified spots in the forest where there's significant water underground, based on the type of plants that are growing and the moisture in the soil. Then, you dig it out, lay some concrete in a way that collects the water, and install a pipe that carries the water to a larger tank. This larger tank collects the water from several of these sources, called "nacimientos" or "births." From the larger collecting tank, the water travels via pipe all the way to a community distribution tank, which could be 10 or 15 kilometers away. From the distribution tank, the water travels to households.

Ain't gravity somethin?

So the water essentially comes from the ground, not a stream or river or well. It's not that deep. The reason you want to capture the water from the ground itself is because it's pure. If you get it out of the stream or river, it could be contaminated with animal waste, algae, tadpoles, trash, who knows? So you get the water before it's exposed to the elements. The trees sort of filter and slow down the water after it rains which enables the water to accumulate enough to be captured. The trees are absolutely essential.

I asked Fernando, EcoLogic's project technician in Totonicapan, how everyone knows that there is a close relationship between the trees and water; if some expert came in and told everyone or if the people have known for generations. I bet you can guess the answer: they knew. They knew based on experiences of villages who cut all the trees in their nearby forests and lost their water. And these stories have been passed down for generations. It was later that the experts came in and essentially confirmed what the locals already understood.


- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and has documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011.