It finally happened! After 18 months we received our first student group last week. Elevent students and three teachers of the School for International Training visited Santa Lucía for a week in order to learn something Montane Rainforests and their flora and fauna.
Although we were prepared to receive them on Monday at 1pm and had lunch ready for everybody at that time, the group arrived around 3.30pm because the students were so interested in what they found along the way that they need around 4 hours to climb up the Santa Lucía mountain.
This continued throughout the week, the students and their teachers showed so much interest in Santa Lucía's unique flora and fauna that hardly any of the planned activities went acoording to schedule.
However, this is something that makes us very happy of course because it illustrates the value of a location like Santa Lucía for educational purposes!
The students received training on hummingbirds, macroinvertebrates, mist-netting, orchids, epiphytes and many other topics.
After five days that went by surprisingly quickly, they returned back to Quito - apparently with lots of new knowledge and inspired by what they had found in the forest.
As for Santa Lucía - we are extremely happy about the visit and hope to see the students back at some point in the future.
