Manduriacu

Please supply an executive summary of the project of 200 words maximum...

In 2015 Rodrigo was on one of his journeys. He started in Spain, where he went to study a Permaculture Design Course at the Eco-dharma Ecovillage, which is situated in a beautiful and wild part of the Catalan Pyrenees. It was his second experience living in an ecovillage and learning about Permaculture, after his introductory course at Eluwn Ecovillage in Chile. The contact with people who are consciously living in harmony with nature made Rodrigo realise that it is important to share these kinds of new systems, which in most cases are connected with the ancestral knowledge of our civilisations, and to incorporate current technologies that help interact with the different ecosystems around the planet

In that year, Rodrigo also walked El Camino de Santiago. From the border between France and Spain, the path started for the pilgrimage. In the small town of Irun, Rodrigo decided to walk until Finisterre, the end of the El Camino for the more pagan pilgrims. After 29 days of walking through the mountains, coast, forests, cities and small towns, Rodrigo arrived at the place where he found the courage needed to complete the rest of his journey that same year.

After spending some weeks in Italy, Rodrigo got a call inviting him to visit Israel. The call came from Matias de Stefano. Without knowing what exactly he was going to do in that particular region of the planet Rodrigo travelled to Jerusalem. Matias had invited him in order to participate in an activation ceremony. It was not until the last place they visited, at Rujm el-Hīrī, that Rodrigo was able to understand why he had had such a strong feeling that he needed to go to Israel. While performing his activation ceremony, Matias threw a wooden heart and a wooden key inside the rock structure at Rujm el-Hīrī. Without knowing that at the same moment Rodrigo was inside the structure, both wooden pieces hit Rodrigo’s head. As Matias said to Rodrigo, it was not his intention to 'break Rodrigo’s head with the heart'. However, this psychomagic event helped Rodrigo to open his heart more, in order to listen to the messages coming from divine sources.

One of the messages Rodrigo received during his journey was that he needed to secure land with clean soil, air and water. At the beginning of 2016, he bought 123 hectares (304 acres) of primary forest near Quito (the capital of Ecuador). The reason he bought this particular forest was because of a river that flows through it: the name of the river is Río Corazón (Heart River).

Video credits: Sebastian Kohn, biologist and director of the Fundación Cóndor Andino.

Rodrigo's reason for purchase purchase was to protect this land, as much of local flora and fauna is threatened. The bio-diversity of the forest is impressive, including big animals such as pumas, jaguars, bears, deer and more. In recent years, a type of frog that biologists thought was extinct, was found in this region of the forest. The trees in this forest are native to the area and produce a large amount of oxygen for the planet.