Balda Lupaxi certainly has an interesting potential as a touristic area. The landscapes are fatastic, the community shows up a lot of cultural elements, and it is near to some attractive places such as the Chimborazo, the Inca ways and the train to La Nariz del Diablo. The idea of building up ecotourism is quite appropriated and would open the village on greater prospects and could ameliorate the future of the inhabitants and of Balda Lupaxi itself.

However, there are so many things to do to develop the area and nothing moves enough. Three weeks ago, when we arrive, they presented us a mountain of projects (mend the house for the tourists, build a toilet and a shower, develop the use of Internet, plant some trees, teach english to children of the school and of the community´s organisation CEDIBAL...) But, to tell the truth, almost none of these projetcts has been started. It has been necesary to force the things to start the house and we barely planted 70 trees. What´s going on with the other projects? The sand that will be used to build the toilet is still down the hill (since two months), and as long as it stays there, we won´t begin the construction. Internet, which was supposed to be installed a month ago still isn´t installed. More than half of the trees hasn´t been planted and will die soon. The courses of english will begin on week before we leave the community. What misses here is a real group effort. Everybody has to work.

Nevertheless, and even with our little deception to see that thing aren´t moving as fast as we´d have wanted to, we are proud to see that our work here brings some changes. We´ve started the house, even if the local director had nearly abandonned the idea. We traduced publicities and informative papers in three languages, took some pictures for the ongoing website, planted some trees, and showed to the director a couple of attractive places for tourists. We hope that our 2 days´trip to the hopital will help our family to understand the importance of boiling the water. We will continue to put pression on the realisation of the projects and explain to the sometimes unwilling population the real reasons of our presence in Balda Lupaxi. Let´s continue facing the challenges!