Accommodation: Sitio Bacchus

This lovely house is best described as 20 Century mock Tudor. It was built in the 1970's from local timber, some of which had lain for fifty years in the forest without decaying. The most enduring feature of the house is its homeliness. It is a place where you at once feel at ease.

There is a spacious kitchen with a wood burning stove – the heart of the house - which leads into a large living-cum-dining room with a sunken area facing a large fireplace. Fires are needed during the evenings at most times of the year as the house is at 5000 feet altitude and temperatures drop quickly at night. Around the living rooms are picture windows looking out onto lawn, forest and swarms of humming birds which come to the feeders just outside the windows.

There are three double/twin bedrooms and three singles. Two large shower rooms complete the picture. Outside is a small swimming pool and beneath it. a sauna. Fresh spring water is piped 800 metres from the depth of the forest to the house.

Around the House

The plateau on which the house is built is surrounded by paths which are safe to walk. There is also an area known as the 'park'. This is original forest on another hillock from which the undergrowth has been cleared and which is used as an intensive care unit for orchids that have been collected from the forest and from fallen trees.

These plants are tied onto trees or tree ferns where they become established and should they flower, they are photographed and if appropriate, pollinated and the seed collected and sown. Many of these have established well and proliferated into large, spreading second generation colonies. Look especially for the elegant Gomesa glaziovii, Maxillaria ochroleuca and the minute Maxillaria cogniauxiana.

In the 'park' you can also see the results of our first large scale rescue operation. When a nearby valley was being deforested, we collected a couple of hundred Laelia crispa plants which were relocated here. After the plants established and were pollinated, we monitored the prodigious growth of seedlings. The third generation of reintroduced plants are now coming up to flowering stage. This operation was a great success and a model for other reintroduction work.