Oil and Water Project

La Fabril is an Ecuadorian based company that produces over 36 million gallons of Biodiesel from African Palm Oil seed per year.  Because of the abundance of petroleum in Ecuador and the lack of education, virtually none of this product goes into a local market.  100% of this Biodiesel is exported to the US, Europe and the Royal Carribean Cruise Lines are using B100 for all of their Ships.

They were happy to sponsor us with all we needed (especially following our highly sucessful press conference the day before).

They filled every last tank we had with over 200 gallons of Biodiesel.  This will get us a long way!

Every newspaper, TV station and Radio program in all of Ecuador turned up for the merging of forces between Oil and Water and La Fabril.  La Fabril is the biggest producer of Biodiesel in the western hemisphere here in Ecuador, and they leveraged the O+WP visit to hype their cause through public relations.  It was a pretty slick plan to get some serious promotions for their cause.

We had some spectacular views of Chimborazo.

The culture in the high mountains of Central Ecuador were definitely absent of tourism and outside influences.

As we were driving, there was this crazy parade blocking the street for no apparent reason.

They invited us to join the festivities.

This was the Napo River Festival’s seventh year, conducted by local kayak guru Matt Terry.  It has been a successful medium in promoting the conservation of the Napo River drainage outside of Tena, Ecuador.  Fortunately, we were able to squeeze in an appearance of the Oil and Water rig to be included in a series of conservation seminars.

This festival attracts everyone from the area, and we got parked the truck dead center of the festivities.  They crowned the Napo Queen of the river.

The paddling in Ecuador is classic.  We teamed up with Capo and had some fun runs in the Oriente.

We made it…..half way around the world.

There was a quick view of Cotapaxi on the way out of town.

We had a foggy, bumpy, slow dirt road into the Oriente for the Napo River Festival.

We got pulled over 28 times by the police in Colombia!  This crew told us that we couldn´t leave until Jenny danced for them.

We have been trying desperately to use up all this nasty African Palm Oil that we picked up in Cartagena. The stuff is so thick that it gels up at room temperature on a hot day. Such a savage job lately. 20 minutes after we kill the motor, this is what it looks like.

We have to heat it up just to get it into the tank.

Each morning we have to take apart the whole system and purge every hose that is full of coagulated oil. It is almost gone thank goodness.

I think I´m gonna be due for a manecure soon! They are making 36 million gallons/year of this stuff into Biodiesel in Ecuador. We are looking forward to hooking up with La Fabril to show us just exactly how they are doing it.

The drive from Cali to Pasto Colombia is among the most beautiful we had ever scene. We picked up a couple members of the Retig family, Jenny and Capo to be our South Colombia and Ecuador team members!

There were several huge passes, and an 80km lawless section that is notorious for bandits and theives. We made it though hassel free.

The curvy road cut into the talus mountain side.

We did a demonstration for 400 CIAT employees, and tried to use the press to make oil from the Kasser Beans we collected around Colombia.

We couldn´t get it running, but our demonstration was well recieved anyway.

We were able to use this small press to get some oil though.