Mashpi Lodge, Ecuador Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby

All over the world, there are remarkable hotels,

born of bold vision and daring endeavour.

Oh, my goodness, look at that!

Whether it's an epic structure housing a sky park

the length of the Eiffel Tower...

This is definitely the biggest space I've ever been inside.

..or a glass box, perched in the cloud forest.

-Look at that view!

-Wow.

..they're all products of innovation,

creativity and hard graft.

The people running these hotels

strive to create the perfect sanctuary.

But what does it take to offer once-in-a-lifetime experiences

in stunning locations?

To build a hotel in a place like this, everybody thinks I'm crazy!

In total, we have about 160,000 pieces of uniform.

Oh, my word!

I'm a restaurant writer, newspaper columnist and critic.

I have opinions on just about everything.

What a mad place to build a hotel!

I feel like Scott of the Antarctic, and it did not end well for him.

And I'm a chef, who's worked at the top end of the hospitality industry

for well over 20 years.

How many opportunities do you get to cook breakfast with elephants and giraffes?

We'll travel to amazing hotels in every corner of the world.

To spend time getting to know the people working away behind the scenes.

When did you last have a full night's sleep?

-I don't remember.

-Really?

-Yes.

What motivates you to work so hard?

The kids. I would sacrifice everything for them.

Join us as we venture inside...

..the world's most extraordinary hotels.

We're on a winding single-track road

in the South American country of Ecuador...

Oi, oi, oi!

..on the way to a private reserve...

..and a hotel called Mashpi Lodge.

You can see the mist in the background, and the palms and the huge trees.

Really terribly exciting. Kind of Garden of Eden vibes.

Ecuador straddles the equator

on South America's West Coast.

And the Mashpi Reserve is situated in the Andean foothills,

three hours' drive from the capital, Quito.

My goodness, now there's a big gate.

I feel like we're in Jurassic Park.

It's like, what are they trying to keep out?!

LAUGHTER

I think we're here.

This is amazing!

Oh, my life!

That's a hell of a road. I'd have had a bigger jeep or something.

-That's a bit of a town car.

-That was bumpy, wasn't it?

-But look at this!

-Hey!

-Hi.

-Welcome to Mashpi.

-Hi.

'We're greeted by general manager Marc Berry.'

What a mad place to build a hotel!

It is, isn't it? Right in the middle of a cloud.

Mashpi Lodge is a 10 million hotel, offering understated jungle luxury

to guests willing to pay up to 1,500 a night.

-Look at that view!

-Wow.

That is amazing.

Opened four years ago, this 22-room eco-hotel

is an air-conditioned modernist glass bubble,

with jaw-dropping views from every window.

It's like a massive treehouse, where 84 staff outnumber guests two-to-one,

and work around the clock providing five-star food and maintaining

the minimalist accommodation.

Upstairs, please. The restaurant is downstairs.

It looks lovely, it looks amazing.

'Marc Berry ran busy restaurants in Mexico and Quito,

'before joining Mashpi as operations manager two years ago.'

We're sustainable, we don't have any kind of pollution,

we don't have landfills.

We don't want to leave a mark.

So we really are making a big effort to respect nature.

It's a tall order for a hotel in such a remote location.

Mashpi is an incongruous luxury sanctuary, buried deep in the heart

of one of the last surviving examples of primary

Andean cloud forest.

Guests travel here from all over the world,

for a chance to experience the extraordinary animal and plant life,

guided by highly-trained naturalists.

I've never seen anything like this before.

I was not even absolutely certain until I saw it that it really

existed, outside of a Warner Brothers set.

It looks proper Tarzan.

What I most want to do is get out into it, I think.

I don't know how I'd ever get back.

'Giles may be taking in the view, but we are here to work,

'and I'm already in the bar

'learning the ropes as part of the welcome team.'

Ah, it's amazing.

'Every guest is greeted with a special drink, which today includes

'sugar syrup, citronella, lime and sparkling water.'

That is delicious.

We receive with a big smile, "How are you, sir?"

Of course, the most important ingredient.

-Hello, welcome to Mashpi.

-Thank you.

British newlyweds David and Fiona have just arrived for their honeymoon.

There we go, would you like a welcome drink?

-I'd love one, thank you.

-Personally made by myself for you.

-Oh, wow!

-Excellent.

-Congratulations, I hear.

Thank you.

-How was the journey?

-Yeah, good.

-Not too bad.

So, this is your room key.

'I've been told to let the view do the talking.'

Your room.

-Wow.

-Pretty impressive.

That is phenomenal.

You just feel like you're in the jungle.

-It's kind of all-encompassing, really.

-Immersed in it.

Because of all the glass, it's incredible.

I should leave you two honeymooners to enjoy your room.

Thanks very much.

Have a great honeymoon.

The owner of Mashpi Lodge is Roque Sevilla.

Formerly the Mayor of Quito,

Roque made his fortune in insurance and communications.

But as owner of Mashpi Lodge,

he's combined business acumen with his deep love of nature.

The visitors that come here come to see not the hotel, but the forest.

That's the main objective.

So, the building should be a beautiful thing,

but shouldn't compete with the beauty of nature.

So, I decided to build this shell of glass.

This bubble of glass,

that allows you to be in constant contact with the forest.

So, wherever you are in the hotel, you'll have a glimpse of the forest.

It's a bold idea,

but how do the staff manage to keep up appearances in a hotel

that's surrounded by vegetation, and regularly buried in cloud?

23-year-old Ana Gabriela Moya is head of housekeeping.

The hotel is like a cocoon for the guests to feel safe here,

and they can relax, but also to be part of the forest,

and see how mysterious it is and how beautiful it is.

So, they expect to be able to get super dirty outside in the forest,

but to be able to come back and have luxury.

Like, a mix of those things.

Ana runs a staff of 12, whose battle with the elements is never-ending.

-Giles!

-Hi, Ana.

'And today, she's got an extra pair of hands - me!'

First this, you're going to have to wear your name tag.

Thank you very much.

'I'm going to help her fight her nemesis - mould.'

This is the result of the humidity of the forest.

Humidity inside the hotel is, like, our biggest enemy.

Well, that's the forest basically trying to grow in the hotel, isn't it?

It's like saying, "This is my spot."

It is, but that would eventually turn into rainforest,

if it wasn't for you.

Housekeeping.

A cloud forest is similar to a rainforest,

but situated high above sea-level.

So, the rising air cools to create clouds,

meaning that everything here stays moist.

Great for plants and vegetation, but not so great for hotels.

So, it's a very hostile environment to keep a room clean, isn't it?

The humidity is crazy here - it's really crazy.

And it's like a constant battle, like, it's never stopping.

We have to paint the rooms continuously,

maybe every three weeks.

-You repaint every three weeks?

-Just, like, the mouldy parts.

Really?

Ana wages war on the 90% humidity with a fleet of dehumidifiers that

liberate a staggering 15 litres of water each and every day.

To further complicate her job,

Roque insists that every product in the hotel,

from cleaning products to guest shampoo, is chemical-free.

Is this good wheeling?

Really good wheeling, isn't it?

He's very committed to, like, the environment,

so we have to use things that are eco-friendly.

-Biodegradable?

-Biodegradable.

And we have to come up with different ideas,

like vinegar and baking soda,

so that makes my job a lot harder.

And then there's Ecuador's estimated one million different species of insect.

Moths every night get attracted when we turn on the lights.

So it's, kind of, moth carnage in there.

I am world-famous for my moth cleaning skills.

-OK?

-This is like a major suicide spot for moths.

Somersault, and... Boom!

-Thank you very much.

-Good job.

Having experienced first-hand the challenges of running a hotel

in this environment, I want to meet the man behind the vision.

So, why on earth would you build a hotel here?

Why did you want to do that?

Basically, because I wanted to show other people

the beauty of this place.

To help me understand his ambition for Mashpi Lodge,

Roque has invited me to his observation tower.

It stands 20 metres high on a ridge above the hotel and the forest

that he bought 15 years ago.

Yeah, I don't really like heights.

I wish you'd bought a lower bit of forest, frankly.

Right...

You see, there you can see...

-Is that it, there?

-That's the hotel.

-Wow!

Everybody thinks I'm completely crazy,

because who cares to build a hotel in a place like this one?

Tell me, so, you were the Mayor of Quito, you're a businessman.

What led you to buy a chunk of cloud forest?

Well, when I bought it, I had no idea of doing a business here,

a tourist business. It was just a protection of this area.

This kind of forest is disappearing at an incredible rate,

and in Ecuador we have only 5% of it still standing.

Roque's 1,200 hectares of tropical forest

reaches almost as far as I can see,

but it's just a fraction of the Choco, a once vast forest

that stretched for thousands of miles through Panama,

Colombia and Ecuador.

Widespread logging and farming in the Ecuadorian Choco has seen 95% of

it cut down in the last 50 years.

Roque's land was owned by a logging company,

but the mountainous terrain slowed them down long enough for him to

buy it, before it was too late.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty of how much it all cost, first of all,

buying the forest in the first place - was that expensive?

It cost exactly the same as a 200 square metre apartment in Quito.

350,000 to buy 1,200 hectares.

So, it's probably the cheapest thing I've bought in my life,

because it's the most valuable thing I have.

Roque's passion for nature meant that he insisted no large trees or

plants were disturbed by the build.

So, the structure was fabricated off-site in large pieces, and trucked in.

It took two years to build, and cost 10 million.

That was the place where the logging company had cut the forest,

for putting the mill.

-It's on the site of where the mill was...

-Exactly.

..that sawed up the trees that they cut down?

-Exactly.

-That's actually, like, the centre of evil.

That's the centre of evil, yes!

Roque didn't just save a forest -

he preserved some of the most diverse habitat in the world.

Ecuador is home to around 10% of all plant life on the planet,

and a phenomenal 1,700 bird species,

more than twice the amount found in the whole of North America.

Just looking around, all the life

that you have in this green

mass of forest, it's amazing.

There's no other hotel, probably, that has so much life near to it,

in the world.

So, I think it's the best idea I've had in my life.

Roque's made it his mission to encourage everyone

who visits the hotel to see the forest through his eyes.

What we would like is that when people come here,

their view of the planet would change,

that they would consider themselves as part of the whole system,

and not as the king of the creation.

That would be the most wonderful thing that could happen.

Roque's desire for guests to engage with nature has led to a wondrous

invention, deep in the forest.

I know it's a gondola, that's all I know.

A gondola in the sense of a ski lift, kind of a thing?

Yes, in the middle of this rainforest.

This is Roque's latest project,

a jungle cable car called the Dragonfly.

Gondola baskets float for almost a mile

through the reserve's treetops,

at heights of up to 200 metres from the ground.

Some experts suggest that it's up here that around 70% of life in

the forest is found, and this gives guests a unique opportunity

to catch a glimpse of it.

That looks kind of exciting. That looks like Jurassic Park, doesn't it?

I feel like we're going to get in this gondola,

and a huge bird is just going to come and take us out.

-A pterodactyl?

-Pterodactyl, there you go.

'Today, we'll be helping operations manager Marc

'carry out vital safety checks.'

It has to be very smooth, it has to be very safe,

it has to be very comfortable.

And to do that right in the middle of nowhere

is a real, real challenge.

Oh, my word!

Yeah!

This is so cool.

I could stay out here all day.

I wish my daughter was here with me - she'd love it.

If Roque thought it was tough to build the hotel without impacting

the environment, it was nothing

compared to constructing a mile-long jungle ski lift.

He had to find a way to put this system somewhere in the middle of

the Mashpi Reserve, without having to cut down trees.

This extraordinary feat of engineering took four years

and 3 million to complete, employing a crew of 20 and using

over 1,000 tonnes of concrete.

Whoo! Can you imagine just going...zip down there?

I mean, it's a beautiful, amazing thing -

it's just really terrifying.

I mean, really terrifying. If you have any sort of imagination,

I don't see how you can think about anything except

the twang of the cable snapping, and the whole thing plummeting down,

smashing through the trees, and the twigs and the branches,

and bam, hitting the deck.

And then waking up with your limbs all broken,

with a panther eating you.

That's probably not going to happen,

but there does have to be a rescue procedure in case of power failure.

And there is - it's called a rope.

The thing is that you never know what can happen -

better to be safe than sorry.

MONICA GASPS

That's high!

'Staff members take turns to test the escape drill, but, today,

'that dubious honour has fallen to one of us.'

It looks like quite a long way down.

Certainly, if you fell out of this thing, you would die.

I am just too scared, so I'm not going to do it.

I reckon I'm being quite brave by staying up here.

With Giles bravely opting to keep my seat warm...

..it's my turn to take one for the team.

Well done, well done.

Whoa-ho!

-Don't...

-Don't look down.

-Don't look down.

-Slowly sit back.

-Sit back?!

-Trust your equipment.

-OK.

Whoo! Woohoo!

Whoa! Don't do that!

Woohoo! This is so cool!

This feels awesome, just sitting in a swing, really.

It's the letting go. It's the letting go.

Giles, did we bring any champagne with us?

'This isn't just thrill-seeking -

'it's a drill that has to be tested regularly.'

Woohoo! That's so awesome.

Shall we do it again?!

Argh! Wet foot.

After doing that and managing to get myself down here in one piece,

the system is really safe.

How was that, then, Mon, are you all right?

Yeah, I am. I made it down in one piece!

Would you do it again?

Yeah, I would do it again.

Come on, then!

LAUGHTER

Have you got a pub up here, mate?

Mwah!

You really do get a sense of how huge it is and how dense the forest

is when you're right in the middle of it.

It's an amazing experience.

Mashpi Lodge's remote location is a big part of its charm,

but running a five-star eco-hotel in such a wild environment

comes with unique logistical issues.

In keeping with Roque's zero-impact policy,

the access road hasn't been modernised since the logging company

established it 40 years ago.

Landslides are a weekly occurrence and threaten to

derail guest transfers unless they're cleared quickly.

Today, I'm joining operations manager Marc to find out

how to run a hotel in the middle of nowhere.

It is a challenge, and, if it was easy, it would be boring.

This is one kitchen that really needs their walk-in fridge,

as the bulk of their weekly supplies arrive in a single delivery.

It's not like living in the city, you're missing something,

you can get something delivered in maybe a few minutes.

So you've got to be on top of things, plan everything ahead.

When the lodge is full, the kitchen feeds 44 guests, plus 60 staff

three meals a day.

That's 300 plates of food.

I'm delighted to see that a special request I made for Giles has arrived -

a local delicacy that is only found in this part of the world.

Here in Ecuador they eat guinea pig,

and Giles is just about to discover how that tastes.

The cloud forest may steal the show here,

but Roque has made sure the food doesn't disappoint either.

Head chef Oswaldo and his team

lay on a comprehensive breakfast and lunch buffet,

switching to an Ecuadorian-influenced a la carte in the evening.

Today, I'm working with Oswaldo to prepare lunch -

guinea pig.

'Guinea pig, or cuy, isn't a permanent fixture on the menu here...'

Do you want me to take that out?

'..but it is widely eaten in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.'

I'm so sorry, it's squeaking!

-Sale?

-Sal.

-Sal.

So really rubbing the salt and the garlic into the guinea pig.

That just sounds so wrong.

'Achiote is the saffron of South America.

'Mixed with cooking oil, it adds perfume and colour.'

It's just a little bit bitter. It's fragrant.

And now we have a fluorescent orange guinea pig.

And in the oven we go.

One nation's pet, another's traditional lunch.

Will I try it? Yes, I will.

Will I put it on the menu back at home?

No, I won't.

The structure of this hotel is dominated by one thing - glass.

Roque designed it this way

to keep guests connected to the forest at all times.

The daunting task of keeping it all clean

falls to maintenance man Fabian.

He works his way around each pane every three weeks,

but, today, Ana's nominated me to help.

They're not technically windows, are they?

Because they're just walls made of glass.

I think of a window as a little thing in a wall.

-You've got a hotel made entirely of glass.

-A lot of glass, that's true.

Ana tells me Fabian will only answer to the name Nino,

which in Spanish means "boy".

'As Nino is famously a man of few words...'

Fabian.

'..I'm not sure how he feels about me trying my hand at his job.'

Nice wobbly ladder you've got here, Nino.

That's great.

Nice view from up here, though.

How many metres of glass are there in this building?

We have around 1,000 square metres of glass inside the hotel.

In some ways you might say it's a project of sheer madness to build

a giant glass box in the jungle and then try and keep it clean all day.

I mean, that's slightly mental, isn't it?

Do you ever get the sense that you're fighting the jungle?

The jungle wants you to be dirty, doesn't it?

That's the thing about jungles, they're dirty, wet, bacteria, life,

everything grows out of this dirt.

You must know deep down that you're going to lose.

-1,000 years from now...

-Yeah.

..the jungle is going to have eaten this place and everything in it.

That's why we have to keep all the details and the constant cleaning

all the time. We cannot even stop for a week -

we have to do it all the time.

Do you wake up in the night screaming at the thought?

No, I don't. I'm not that obsessed with cleaning.

-Yes, you are.

-I'm not.

-You are!

It's actually rather satisfying, that is the thing.

What does Nino think? Is this all right?

ANA SPEAKS IN SPANISH

Si?

'Hats off to Nino.

'This is a tiring job, and anyone who can spend

'45 solitary hours a week doing it deserves a medal.'

Oh, terra firma.

How about that? Top job, eh? Nino's out of a job.

That's actually quite good fun for me to climb up there

and there's a satisfaction in cleaning a couple of panes,

but there's 1,000 square metres of glass here, and poor old Nino,

his entire life, day after day after day,

hour after hour after hour is keeping this clean.

What do you suppose "served with smoked moron pepper gelais" is?

-Do you know what a moron is?

-Moron? Well... You're here.

I hope Giles has worked up an appetite for his special lunch -

guinea pig a la Mashpi.

Sir, traditional plato Ecuador. Cuy.

Oh, cool.

So, I took the liberty of ordering you something special.

Did you save the skin, because I did want to make a pair of gloves?

Cuy. Very good.

-Gracias.

-Otro cuy.

-Ah!

-What are you having?

-The same.

Why does yours look like that?

-Is yours the traditional way?

-No, yours is the traditional way.

I thought you'd enjoy it better that way.

This recipe has been handed down by the Incas...

Because they didn't want it any more.

Can I offer you the head? Because you don't seem to have got one.

-No.

-What I really need is a steak knife.

Do you have a guinea pig knife? Is that a...?

It's quite difficult to cut.

-Mmm. It's delicious.

-Is it?

It's got a lot more fat than I thought it would have had.

I assume it's farmed guinea pig, isn't it?

'In South America, the guinea pig was around long before the cow,

'and still carries a certain status for special occasions.

You look at a meal like this, don't you? And you say that we,

in Europe, have become quite separated from

the reality of the food we eat, and you thank heaven for it.

LAUGHTER

I'm trying to think of this as a rat, because then if I eat it,

even if I don't enjoy it, at least there's one less in the world.

I mean, to be honest, as a restaurant critic for the last 20 years,

how many rats I've eaten without knowing it, I don't know.

'Our waitress, Miriam, has even got a local tip for using those

'little guinea pig claws.'

SHE SPEAKS IN SPANISH

To clean your teeth with.

-I see that.

-Does it work?

Oh, you missed a spot.

Normally you'd look in there.

The usual, non-rodent cooking here is so good,

it would be easy to put on weight.

But, thankfully, there's an army of nature guides on hand

to help guests walk it off round the reserve's nine miles of trails.

It's a very beautiful flower - it's known as Gesneriaceae.

Let me take maybe one of these little things out of here.

And just magic comes, right?

So, what do you see now? A hummingbird.

-Oh, yes.

-Oh!

-THEY LAUGH

But Roque wanted to do more with the forest than just preserve it,

so he allocated hotel money to pay an unusual employee,

resident biologist Carlos Morochz.

When I started here, they hired me for four months.

After four months, imagine being here eight years -

I never imagined here being eight years.

Carlos began with an audit of the forest to see how much wildlife had

survived years of hunting and logging.

Three years ago, everything was just cut down,

logging companies everywhere.

Now it has stopped, it's just amazing -

you want to be here for the rest of your life.

Every day is understanding something new or finding something new,

and we are getting amazing results of our research.

And we are trying to share this information to the world, to science

and to people in general.

Tonight, Carlos has asked us to help out on a research trip into the jungle...

in the dark.

I'm told that I need a head torch.

Look at that, it comes on.

So you put that on, I don't know whether this is...

I didn't think anybody apart from a coal miner or a gynaecologist

would need one of these.

EERIE MUSIC PLAYS

Everything changes at night.

There are more mammals that usually come out at night, too.

Tonight, we're hunting Carlos' latest discovery,

a brand-new species of frog.

This is the lagoon -

this is the place that we're going to find the Mashpi frog.

But a close cousin captures our attention.

Amazing, this is a type of tree frog, here.

This is called the Inbabura tree frog.

-Inbabura?

-They're very charismatic.

Oh, look at that.

Hey, baby.

Ah!

I don't mind. That's all right.

Oh, that is so cool. It's love at first sight.

When he arrived here eight years ago, Carlos spent months living

in a tent while he explored every inch of the reserve.

Many of the nights, you just work for two or three hours,

work in the dark,

and you keep seeing stuff, and then you just start understanding

how the ecosystem works.

It's a connection with nature that I think all humans

need and have, actually.

Absolutely.

It's a connection that Giles is struggling to make.

Argh! Look!

There's a BLEEP butterfly the size of a cat flying around!

Carlos, what brings you to this part of the world?

-What brings me?

-Yeah.

-Yeah, I'm not afraid of anything.

I'm freaked out by the jungle,

so I'm just having a bit of a moment, here.

Mon's a chef, she's different.

The insect in question is just a harmless owl butterfly.

Yeah, all right, fine.

I've got a light on my head, which means the moths just want to mate

with my eyes, and, you know...

Argh! Horrible.

I'd rather there were gorillas and tigers, frankly,

than all these revolting giant insects.

'But then I spot a pair of tiny eyes in the darkness.'

Yes, just behind that leaf.

-What is it?

-Yeah!

-Is that it?

-I found the Mashpi?

-Yeah, you find a Mashpi.

-Really?

-Yeah.

-Ha-ha!

Is it definitely the Mashpi?

-Because this could be the giant frog.

-It's definitely the Mashpi.

Can I see? That's quite exciting, actually.

I just found the Mashpi frog. I'm very, very good at this.

I'm like a Crocodile Dundee, except with weenie amphibians.

It's every biologist's dream to describe a new species to science,

but the Mashpi frog also helps validate Carlos' staff job.

If it wasn't for the Mashpi preservation,

if it was not for this project,

if it was not for the hotel, almost, you wouldn't have the frog?

Exactly.

Oh, God. Carlos, your work here is done.

You've converted me, that's for sure.

Carlos's enthusiasm has spurred me on

to find out about his other projects,

so he's agreed to introduce me to some of the locals.

I'm very proud of these local people that have been working for us

in the last six years.

They're the ambassadors, right now, of our conservation efforts.

Look how beautiful it is.

Six years ago, Carlos persuaded Roque to fund a life centre,

enabling the detailed study of the 35 butterfly species

native to Mashpi...

..and paying the salary of four local people.

Ola, Nixon.

'Nixon Napa is Carlos's right-hand man.'

Oh!

I'm going to call you Mr Coren.

Look how gorgeous that is - that's what you're going to turn into.

'Previously, Nixon was a farmer.

'Before Carlos hired him, he viewed caterpillars as a pest.'

Look how beautiful it is.

That's so beautiful.

While Monica is chasing butterflies,

I'm heading out to meet Nixon's brother.

Jose Napa is a man who knows Mashpi Reserve better than anyone,

having spent years logging and hunting in it.

He was the only inhabitant of this area.

When I first met him, he had his machete, of course,

with him all the time, and people in the vicinity said,

"Be careful of Jose Napa, he's a dangerous fellow."

But he knows very well the area, he had been hunting all around,

so we wanted to know what we had bought.

Instead of chasing Jose away, Roque hired him on the spot

and, 15 years on, he's a senior guide responsible for the upkeep of the trails.

Jose is also leader of a small local community called Mashpi village,

home to other staff members too.

Today, we're clearing some fallen trees from the path

leading to the village, which is three miles from the lodge.

Watching Jose at work is a stark reminder of what could have been.

That's a man who could deforest an entire jungle with a Swiss army knife.

Did it make you sad to cut down the trees?

Jose was initially deeply suspicious of Roque, but his trust was won

when his new boss visited the forest with an orchid expert.

Winding our way through the forest towards Mashpi village,

I'm beginning to understand what all the fuss is about,

and things are about to get even more jungle-tastic.

-That's a laugh - that's an actual vine.

-Yes.

Hold that and then...

Really? So it's OK?

Safe? I'm not going to die?

Yes.

MAKES TARZAN CALL

That sounded more like fear, didn't it, than Tarzan?

Yes!

MAKES TARZAN CALL

The only thing is those lions are going to come running, and the gorillas.

That's proper jungle living, that is.

Maybe I should swing from that one, onto another one

and then another one and then another one.

Eventually arriving, with a bit of luck, at a pub.

But after two hours walking, the trees start to thin...

..and we're running out of cloud forest.

God, it just ends, doesn't it?

That's it.

Wow!

That's the jungle which was supposed to go on forever all the way

to the sea, and there it just stops,

and you walk out like it was a park.

Leaving the reserve, we're confronted with a reason for

deforestation the world over -

agriculture.

Here, it's palm hearts, an increasingly popular vegetable

that tastes a bit like artichoke

and yields around 200 a year per square metre.

And this all used to be forest and was all cut down so you could grow this?

As we arrive on the outskirts of Mashpi village,

Jose invites me to see his pride and joy.

Amazing.

What an amazing place - what an incredible array of orchids.

I was just thinking,

I wonder how they keep the conditions right for these orchids.

And then I realised these are the conditions of the orchids.

And every greenhouse you ever go to in the world,

anything you go to in Kew Gardens, what they're trying to do is

replicate this cloud forest environment,

to keep the orchids happy.

My wife keeps orchids, or pet sticks as I tend to think of them,

because they just die immediately if you don't look after them,

and you couldn't kill an orchid if you tried here.

In the last five years, Jose has found 200 of the 4,600 different

species of orchid in Ecuador.

And we're adding another to his collection from our walk down today.

So you're going to plant the orchid bulb in the wood?

That's so clever.

Yes, Jose was offered a job.

Yes, he was offered an easier way of life than he had before.

But it was seeing the orchids and realising there was something

beautiful and different that he hadn't understood about the forest,

that could be the way the future worked for him, that changed his mind.

So the orchids, effectively, have helped to save this bit of cloud forest.

Jose was the first of many locals with no formal hospitality

experience whom Roque hired at the hotel as part of his mission

to bring alternative employment to this former logging community.

Oh, really?

The basic principle was that the people who are in the area

would benefit from the project.

So here in this hotel,

70% of the people who work here come from the area.

The other 30% are hospitality professionals from Quito.

They live on site for 20 days a month, and share the staff house

with local employees overnighting between shifts.

Oh, sorry, that's rubbish! What am I doing?

There we go again.

'So I realise family must be far away from here.'

What's it like staying with everyone here?

Well, people here become your second family.

So these are the ones you spend more time with.

This is not for everybody.

We've had people that haven't even stayed for 24 hours.

For the ones that are married, it's hard, like,

knowing that you haven't seen your children.

I can imagine that. That, for me, would be tough.

-It's tough.

-I would find that tough.

36-year-old Miriam is a hard-working waitress who never stops smiling.

But I know that her job means regular overnights away from her family.

As a working mum myself, I want to find out how Miriam manages,

so I'm visiting her at home

on the outskirts of the village of La Delicia.

Monica!

'What she didn't tell me is that along with her husband

'she's got four children,

'and the youngest, Gabrielle, is just a year old.'

-Cheers!

-Cheers!

Miriam's house is surrounded by fields of sugar cane,

which is brewed into a local pick-me-up.

Oh, it's lovely! But very sweet.

-Natural.

-Yeah, very natural.

-Natural.

-That's delicious.

-Chilli. Oh, that's good.

-Very good.

-Limona?

-Limon. Si, limon.

Look at your view!

How did I miss that?! Oh, my word!

-Beautiful.

-Yes.

This four-hectare sugar cane plantation is owned

by Miriam's husband's family.

In exchange for living here, they maintain it and harvest the crop.

Today, I'm helping out.

Oh! I like that.

That is not easy.

OK. One down...

..three and a half hectares to go!

Miriam and her husband need to harvest 200 kilos of cane every week,

so any time she's not working at the lodge, she gets stuck in down here.

Are you kidding me right now, Miriam?

-You finish working and you come and do this?

-OK.

So, Miriam, having the job at the hotel,

has it made a big difference financially for you and the family?

'While Miriam's new career is providing financial stability,

'her husband now juggles his workload in the sugar cane plantation with

'single-handedly looking after the kids when Miriam's at the lodge.

'It's an unusual set-up for a man in this part of the world.'

How do you feel, being the one to stay home now

and raise the children?

So, Miriam, it must be hard for you now to work in the hotel

and having to leave the family?

Everything you're doing is for your family.

I come from a family where I hardly saw my mother,

because she had to work to provide for myself and my siblings,

and I'm sure as hell that your girls and your little boy will grow up

better adults for what you're sacrificing now.

What Miriam's doing is she's breaking boundaries here,

to be a woman that is leaving family life and the babies to go in search

of a career, to better their way of life

and to provide a future for her babies.

She wants them to see that they too can achieve more.

Any parent can relate to that.

It's amazing to see the impact of the hotel on one family,

but what about the hundreds of other people who can no longer log or hunt

in the cloud forest?

I do wonder how the local people in the community really do feel about the hotel.

Is there a bit of resentment of the tourists

that just come here for the hotel?

All the towns and villages were presumably once logging towns,

so there's a sort of slight sadness, like when you have a thing that used

to be a mining village, there's people now with nothing to do.

I guess there are people in what used to be logging villages with

nothing to do, and I suppose

if they get sequestered into the tourism business,

that's better than logging?

Roque believes that tourism may be the answer,

even for those not employed by the lodge.

It has taken some time, so that people begin to understand

that what we're doing is developing a touristic business,

and they're beginning to see that it is a good idea.

So we hope that they copy us,

and that they learn how to do it in the best way possible.

So we hope to have a lot of competition by people

who have worked with us!

That would be very good.

Three miles from the lodge, in Mashpi,

village chief Jose has been applying everything he's learned at work

to his own community.

Under his stewardship, they've transformed their picturesque

stretch of river into a family-friendly picnic spot,

hoping to entice weekend tourists from Quito,

and it seems to be catching on.

Today, they're having a procession to mark the opening

of another community milestone.

FIREWORK BANGS

As more than 80% of Ecuadorians are Roman Catholic,

an official place of worship will help put Mashpi on the map,

inaugurated today by a Polish missionary and his giant Alsatian.

Just like any city needs a cathedral,

a village needs an outdoor place of worship and a shrine to the Virgin.

It's got slightly more dogs and chickens in it than you'd be used to

back home, but it has a very lovely, special feeling.

Jose's nephew, Manolo, is benefiting from his well-paid job

as an English-speaking guide up at the hotel.

-Oh, wow!

-This here is my little cabin.

It's beautiful.

'He wants to show me the house he's built for his family.'

-Open-plan living.

-Yes.

-Very nice.

-Yes.

And so, are there enough jobs at Mashpi?

I mean, if, supposing all the men in the village...

There aren't enough jobs, are there?

No, no, no. Here, it's very difficult to get a job.

That's why we're trying to have tourism in the place.

In that way, we can make more jobs for the community.

'He may now be one of the most prosperous people in town,

'but Manolo still likes to provide for his family the old-fashioned way.'

-We're going fishing, then, are we?

-Yeah! Yes, we go for fishing.

Using a line, but not using a rod?

Yeah. It's much better.

-You put a piece of cheese on the end of a string and put the other end in your pocket?

-Yeah.

-And this definitely works?

-Yeah, put it in your pocket.

This is a strange way of fishing.

You've been fishing here all your life, have you?

-Yes.

-What kind of cheese do you use for this?

-Normal cheese.

-Normal cheese, OK.

Oops, that didn't work! Give me one more go.

Because it's not the most obvious way to fish, but I love it.

I love it.

-Good, good.

-OK, my son, there we go.

-Well done, well done.

-Is that good?

-OK, wait.

-OK.

-When they pull, you have to...

Now, now!

-Oh, no, no.

-Oh, for heaven's sake!

LAUGHTER

When you were a kid and you used to fish here, did it look the same?

No. Years ago, we had more, bigger fish in these waters,

so now you can see just little ones.

Why are there not big fish now?

Too many people. They're always fishing.

No, no, no, no. You got it, you got it. You got it!

OK! That's a biggie.

Ow! I got the... Got the thing. There we go.

So is there any downside to the tourism?

-You had a good childhood here.

-Yeah.

If you have lots and lots of tourists coming,

do you think your children will have the same childhood?

No, no. If we have a lot of visitors in this place, I think...

I think one day this is going to change.

But for the kids, it's going to be a good change, because, you know,

better school, high school.

I hope one day we have better jobs in this area.

The people, they stay here, they don't have to migrate

if we have a lot of visitors here.

In some parts of the world, where tourism is just opening up,

you do get a sense of, if not anger, then certainly regret and loss

from the locals of the passing of a way of life which is being

sucked out by visitors.

I don't think that's the case here.

I think what was going to be lost was already lost, the rainforest,

the cloud forest.

Big agriculture and the loggers had already done the harm, and indeed,

the local people, they were in a fairly dark place before the advent

of the lodge at Mashpi, and tourism generally.

And I think for them, the future really is much brighter

than it could possibly have been without it, and I think

it truly is a symbiotic and happy relationship.

Before we leave, Mashpi's resident biologist, Carlos Morochz,

wants to show me one of his most promising research projects -

a series of camera traps around the reserve that capture

the forest's nocturnal activity.

This one here, see?

They work with an infrared sensor,

so they sense the heat and the movement of the animal.

-Yeah.

-Before on the site,

we used to have just mostly rodents at the beginning for the first year,

and now we've been getting interesting, interesting results.

Oh, come on, let's do it!

OK? Armadillo. Right there.

-And it's in the shot!

-Yeah.

-Oh, look at it!

-Look at it.

-That's a nice picture.

-Oh, wow!

You have all the...

Wow, look! That's an agouti.

-Agouti?

-Agouti. It's a rodent.

-It's a big rat.

Twice the size of a guinea pig.

-That is amazing.

-It's very nice.

'Under Roque's protection,

'there's been a huge increase in smaller mammals that were previously

'hunted for food, but there's been some bigger surprises too.'

I will show you something very interesting that we saw last year.

Oh, look at that!

-We have a puma.

-Beauty!

OK?

'Wild puma have been pushed to the brink of extinction here in Ecuador,

'so to see these individuals thriving alongside the lodge

'is a real success.'

Look at this video.

-It's got a baby!

-One cub.

-Two.

-Two cubs.

-Three!

-Three cubs.

Oh, my word!

-Oh, that is so neat.

-So, this is something very, very rare.

It tells you also that the forest is in good shape.

The sighting of species thought extinct provides yet more proof of

the success of Roque's vision.

We have found, for instance, birds that haven't been seen since 1936,

and that happened just six months ago.

That gives us a lot of hope that we can recover

many, many forms of life, and that's the good news.

All along, Roque has known that

the long-term survival of the cloud forest lies with the local people,

so, today, he's making the journey to Mashpi village

to visit his old friend Jose Napa.

He's keen to see how the community are progressing

with their transformation of this former logging town

to a tourist destination.

Roque has brought along his wife, Pilar.

Jose has helped transform the communal areas of the village

since Roque's last visit,

but there's one place he's been cultivating all alone.

We can see the whole collection of orchids here,

and that is an incredible work of Jose.

He's not only the leader of this village,

he's also now a botanist guide.

It's a complete transformation.

Through his involvement of the local people, Roque has empowered them to

take the future of the cloud forest into their own hands.

And with Mashpi Lodge on the verge of making a profit,

he's even offering them a chance to take a share of the financial

rewards from the hotel they've helped make a success.

The objective is that the people who live in the area will be our partners.

I feel I'm very lucky to have had the opportunity to develop this.

The help of the people has been invaluable,

and they're part of it now.

A place like this could never be arrived at by committee.

It's just... It's too crazy.

It requires one person with a very rooted feeling about his country and

the land, and a lot of money.

He feels it offers great hope for the ecological future of places like

this, and it may do, but it also does offer you the slightly scary

vision that none of this is going to be repeated anywhere unless

there are lots of Roques, and I slightly wonder whether there are.

Look at that one!

The colours are stunning when they get in the light, aren't they?

Don't you think Mashpi Lodge has basically,

in terms of the wild-versus-comfort balance,

-don't you think they've nailed it?

-Absolutely.

Five-star luxury, yet, also, the huge emphasis on getting out of

the hotel and seeing the real reason it's there,

and that's to preserve this -

this little bit of paradise that we have left.