On day 2 in Quito, before we toured a chocolate factory, we went to a rose farm. It was called Casanto Miray and was a family owned business. They make gorgeous bouquets of roses and sell them all over the world. First, we went to the actual farm where they grow the roses in greenhouses. They grow about 100,000 roses at full capacity, and each month sell that much. they sell for 25 cents per stem (rose), and profit about 6-10 cents on each stem. This means that on average they’re profiting about $8,000 per month. We also learned that not only white roses are used to be dyed to other colors, but light pink roses, as well.

We then went down to the processing/dying area of the facility. We learned all about how they dye roses, which colors are most popular, and that they do specialty holiday dye jobs. On Halloween, they made a rose look like a jackolantern, and other times they split the stems of the roses at the very bottom in order to turn them into rainbow spirals. The people who ran the business were so incredibly nice, they gave us bouquets of flowers for free!

After the rose tour, we stopped for lunch in a small town. Unfortunately, our bus driver lost his keys and we were left to walk around for a few hours. Thankfully, we met a super sweet woman named Rosita. She spoke no English, and lots of us speak very little/very bad Spanish, so the actual communication was not super great, but the best part was that despite this barrier, we still had a great time with her. She showed us a church that was still under construction, and gave us all hugs and a warm smile, she was super welcoming, as are many Ecuadorians as we’ve learned!