I´m writing to you from Esmeralda. In the 16th Century Spanish cuinquestadors were said to have found emeralds the size of pigeon eggs when the landed here. Flash forward to today. While the hillsides are as green as emeralds, Esmeralda is a industrial coastal town. When we arrived, our drive through town took us past welding facilities, auto repair shops and bus stations. Our hotel is a short walk to the ocean, but the shoreline is shared with oil tankers, cargo containers and the cranes needed to lift and load them onto the boats.

Upon arrival on Wednesday afternoon we hit the ground running. While in Quito we had made friends with a sex workers association called Red Trab Sex. They want sex work to be recognized as a legitimate profession with workers rights, health benefits that extend beyond gynocological exams, and appropriate pay. In Esmeralda we spent the afternoon getting them to know them better. But more importantly, over shrimp cerviches and mucha agua, they got to know us. By the end of the evening they had invited us to attend the sex workers conference that they organized. Brothel owners, sex workers, police and health officials would attend. The major issue on the agenda is to make sex work legal. Currently, sex work is neither legal nor illegal, if contained behind closed doors.

Thursday was a jam packed day. At the sex workers conference we made a number of good contacts including Lucia, a women who is a brothel owner in Esmerelda. What is interesting about her is unlike the Red Trab Sex association of sex workers who believe that sex work should be considered a legitimate profession, Lucia believes that sex work is a profession that only people in desperate situations choose. She wishes that the demand for sex work didn´t exist and that women never had to be put in these positions.

In the evening, more shrimp cerviche. Then we hit the road with our trusted driver Stalin to our next shooting location in Borbon, La Jardin de Sensation, a brothel that granted us permission to shoot inside.

Now we´re in Esmeralda with a full day of shooting ahead.
-- Amy Brown