Tiputini Biodiversity Station, aka Awesome incarnate

Adventures in the Amazon: Check!  I just got to spend a week at the Tiputini biodiversity station, a research station run by USFQ and deep within the Amazon rain forest.  The station was amazing, and the trip there was an adventure in itself.  The first leg of the journey was a brief plane ride from Quito to Coca, we spent a little time befriending local monkeys until out first boat was ready.  From there, we spend 2 hours traveling down the Napo river.  It’s a big river, probably 600 or 700 feet across, but judging from how much out captain had to avoid sandbars, fairly shallow, and full of silt.  The current was fairly strong, and the trip was spent with jungle on both sides of the river, with the occasional hut along the shore, propped up on stilts for when the river rises.  Eventually we reached the edge of the park, and left out boat, stepping  onto oil territory.  In the paradox that is Ecuador, almost all of Yasuni National Park is open to drilling, and because the largest park in the country had until recently only 7 rangers, the oil companies control access to the Park.  Yep, a little bit disgusting.  After we passed through the oil checkpoint, we loaded onto an open air bus, with the sides open and build on the back of a truck, and began the trek down the Maxus road, built by oil companies.  On the way it, the jungle looked pretty intense, but on the way out, it was obvious from the lack of wildlife how disturbed it was.  After an hour and a half, we reached the bridge over the Tiputini river, where our boat awaited.  It was the same style boat that brought us down the Napo river- long and narrow hulled metal boat, covered by a tarp and with a row of benches running down each side.  Twin outboard motors were mounted at the back.  The cruise to the station was fast and amazing; the boat took bends in the river at full speed, throwing up a bow wave that kept all of us near the front damp from the spray.  Even with the outboards going full tilt, we still saw plenty of bird life overhead- scarlet macaws, toucans, and several small brown herons.

 our noble steed!

The first sight of the station was the small wooden dock with the yellow domed gazebo above the bank.  The station is completely surrounded by jungle- with the exceptions of the 2 clusters of cabins, all the buildings are out of sight from each other for the trees. The open air dining hall is directly behind the gazebo, the closest building to the river.  Further back, across a small bridge, is the lab, a combination of library, lab space for researchers, the station’s office, and classroom space in two stories, and more importantly, the only building with air conditioning (to help preserve the books from the humidity).  Branching from the lab in both directions are twin clumps of cabins, each with 2 four-person rooms to house the researchers and other guests.  Closer to the river was the water purification system and the small generator that only ran for a few hours each day.   

 the lab peaking out of the jungle

the dining hall

The jungle around the station is full of an incredible amount of life if you look closely- but more different species than I could ever recognize, let along remember.  Hence our guides.  During out trips into the jungle, out class broke into small groups that each worked with a guide on our hikes  so that we could learn the most from the experience.  We learned everything from the types of vines the Haorani use to coat their poison darts to how to rile up a leaf cutter ant colony ( stomp near the nest, and within seconds big bulky soldier ants will be pouring from the mound and attacking your boots).  And of course, they helped us find things to begin with.  For example, the frogs were often almost impossible to spot for their incredible camouflage.  Most I saw had a brown or tan coloration, but even the red poison dart from was hard to spot at first because of the shear amount of color and things to look at.  Like the huge bugs.  During the day, streams of countless thousands of army ants and inch long bullet ants dominated the scene (both were impressive- I saw a column of soldier ants, 5 wide, that passed for 10 minutes with no sign of stopping.  The bullet ants were everywhere, but almost always solitary- except when my guide Ramiro decided to stir up a nest.  It was a little disconcerting to watch ants bigger than most beetles in NC swarm a tree…). But at night, the huge creatures came out.  Outside of one of the cabins, a beautiful tarantula had set up camp outside of her burrow.  7 inches from leg to leg, she was black with orange hairs on her abdomen, and she was perfectly peaceful as she waited for a tasty meal to stumble by.  In contrast to the tiny poison dart from, a massive frog lounged on the ground near the spider.  Had he stretched out, I bet he would have reached a foot and a half.  Giant cockroaches, 5 inches long, shared a similar size with giant grasshoppers, with even longer antennae. 

 epiphytes in the high canopy

the base of a walking palm- and yes, they can move location over the course of a couple years

For all the adventures with the crawlers, the most unique part of the Tiputini was journeying into the canopy of the rainforest.  The station has not one, but two access points to the skype, a stand-alone tower leading to a platform 130 feet up in a massive tree pushing above the canopy, and a series of three bridges connecting a series of platforms.  On the first night in, Estaban took a group of us up to the tower and we watched the sunset- after watching brilliant red macaws fly by in pairs, and sapphire blue and gold tanagers bath in the water collecting the bromeliads that coated the branches of the massive tree.  For all its size, the tree wasn’t well endowed with leaves.  The trunk was wider that a truck, but the leaves at the top were smaller than my finger.   On another one of the 5 days of our trip, Ramiro took my group into the branches again on the sky bridges, where we had the freedom the move around a little more and look at things, including the ever present bullet ants, at our pace.  The finale was climbing up a rickety ladder, one at a time, to a small platform 30 feet above the rest of the tree houses.  Big enough (and probably only sturdy enough) for one person, the highest platform gave an incredible view- only a few branches were above my head, with the entire canopy of the forest stretched out below me. 

 epiphytes on a branch with the canopy in the background

in the canopy

a gecko

a beautiful tarantula

A frog

By the time we finally had to leave the station after three full days of nothing but exploring the jungle, looking at wildlife, and floating down the river, I was needless to say, sad to go.

Mountain Tumbaco

Yesterday was the expedition to the summit of the mountain looming over Tumbaco, the next town over from Cumbaya.  A group of us met at the bus stop, then began the trek through neighborhoods to reach the base of the mountain.   A poor suburb of Tumbaco runs up the slope of the mountain, going up two ridgelines and split by a valley.  The lower part of is made up of cobble stone streets and cinder block houses, with a few small stores and houses, and accompanied by a soccer field.  Driving through the town was phantom presence: a pick-up loaded with scrap metal and with a loud speaker mounted on top, alternating between preaching the bible and  trying to buy scrap metal.  No matter where we were in town, it seemed like we could hear the truck as an eternal part of the landscape.

Unsure whether to take the left or right slope, we settled on the left. Our only direction was to go up, so we took side streets, alleys, anything that looked like it would head towards the summit.  For a while we hiked up dirt steps, going past small houses and fields, with ever-present dogs barking at us as we neared their homes.  The views were incredible, but the ground itself was littered with trash in town.  After a series of stairs and roads, we found ourselves at the edge of a field, unsure of where to go.  At this point, our group split ways- 4 trekked through the field towards maiz, while the rest of us turned up an road-bed that meanded left, and slightly uphill.  The "slightly" part proved to be very short-lived.  Soon, we were gasping for breath as we sludged up the stone-paved road's steep grade & switchbacks before it finally turned to a dirt road and we saw the tire tracks of the rare 4-wheel drive vehicles that had braved the upper reaches of the mountain.  This was not a good omen of things to come.  Every time we rounded a bend, we though the summit would be almost upon us, but every time it was only slightly less distant.  As we finally neared the top, we rounded another summit, only to find a group less mobile than us- a family trying to work a green Izuzu trooper out of the muddy ditch beside the road.  It's back tire was lodged in mud and the fender was jammed against the four feet of cutout that marked the side of the road.  For a while we paused to try and help the family- lodging rocks under tires and pushing from behind, but alas us environmental majors can only do some much in a world of engineering and physics.  We helped them to call for help before making the final push to the summit.
At the top of mountain was a white cross- fully 20 feet and made of concrete...and definitely not a zip-line. At some point while talking to the locals for directions (apparently I have trouble figuring out how to go up a hill), one of our party though a local was describing a little zip-line at the summit of the mountain.  Later it was obvious that the guy was stretching is arms out like Jesus on the cross, but to be fair, at the time he definitely make a WOOSH sound and made soaring motions.  Yay for limited language skills!

Today my host-brother took Hannah & I biking with several of his friends. I can safely say it was the muddiest I have been in a long time.  The old road bed was covered in mud, and cut through the lower reaches of the paramo- a lot of the time we had to carry the bikes uphill, and when we were pedaling the tires would often spin with no forward motion- the treads vanishing under a dense coat of black, tarry mud.  The constant mist ensured that the ride down was treacherous and exhilarating- brakes had minial impact as we skidded downhill, back to the truck!

Maquipucuna Biological Preserve

Got to see my first tarantula in the wild!  With something like 10% of Ecuador's biodiversity on only 6000 hectares, Maquipucuna is a pretty damn awesome place.  2 hours north of Quito, the drive there is incredible- passing through cloud forests, you have green covered peaks rising on both sides, with only the very occasional patch of subsistence agriculture breaking the mass of epiphyte covered trees.  Being a cloud forest, the tops of the forested peaks are almost always hidden  by clouds, and with constant moisture in the atmosphere.  Most of hte way there, we stopped at an old ranger station to look at the plant life of an upper montane forest, the top part of the cloud forest.  It seemed like every exposed branch was covered in epiphytes, either mosses, lichens, orchids, or larger plants, hanging or growing up from the tree limbs.  The orchids are definitely not the typical houseplant most people thing of- some look similar, but many are much smaller, green, and mostly unflowerlike plants, while others are large, thick pieces of color.

orchid

orchid 2

epiphyte

the lodge

Eventually we turned off the road, and took the bus up a long dirt road until we reached the bridge over a mountain river that marked the entrance to the lodge.  The lodge itself was a gorgeous building made mostly of bamboo (which is one of the fast growing species in the cloud forest), and covered by a thatched roof.  Two stories, it has kitchen, dining, bathroom below, and common area and lodging above.  Because of how many of us there were, I slept with Prof Esteban and several of the other guys in a cabin of similar architecture further up the hill.  After a hearty lunch, we broke into groups and went with guides for a hike.  My group focused on the soil of the area.  Most of the area around the lodge, which is only ~20 years old, was once sugar cane farmland, and that's apparent in the soil.  Near the lodge, where the soil has been used the longest, it goes almost from leaf litter to clay beneath, with little topsoil.  Further up the slope, near the undisturbed primary forest, the topsoil is thicker, full of root mass and hunks of organic matter.  Because the lodge is in a lower montane forest, the amount of epiphytes on the trees is not quite as extensive, though they are definitely still present, especially in the primary forest.  Stretched across the property, and intersected by several trails, is an old Incan road.  A trail cut 3 or 4 feet into the soil by centuries of use, it was used to connect the coast in Esmeraldas province with the Andes themselves.  The next morning, the rain made a birdwatching session fairly unsuccessful- untill we returned to the lodge, and found a toucan calmly sitting on a branch outside.

no fruit loops with this fellow

One of the other great finds from right by the lodge was a line of leaf cutter ants, busily at work, bringing pieces of leaves back to their colony to grow fungus on the leaves for food.  The whole time we were at Maquipucuna, the position of the line never changed, and it only broke during downpours as the ants were forced to abandon their work.  In the line, medium ants carried the leaves, small ones, I assume the cutters, rode atop their price, and big warriors with bulking heads and mandibles patrolled the line, to and from the colony, up by my cabin.  Unfortunately, they were difficult to photograph.  

Having seen the area around the lodge, a trek through the undisturbed secondary forest seemed necessary.  The forest's trees became recoated in the epiphytes that had become less plentiful, and ferns  and palms appeared in places.  Behind a ridgeline from the lodge, the old growth forest was goregous, with green every where- with the exception of the trail, there was hardly any exposed soil.  The amount of vegetation was insane.  Part way through the hike, we stopped and swam in a mountain river- the water was gushing over rocks and rather cold, but absolutely worth it.  On the trek back to the lodge, we worked our way up through an old flood path, a narrow gully several people high.  The bottom was mud (rubber boots were highly appreciated!), and the sides were coated in mosses and small plants, with the larger trees hanging overhead.  It is an amazing place!

crack the fruit open, rub the berries, and you've got facepaint!

fearsome warrior

cloud forest

more forest

Today on the bus, I saw two little girls, probably 4 & 6, singing to their dad. Both had mouths full of cavities.  Welcome to the third world.

Hiking in the Páramo

Yesterday was my tropical ecology class's field trip to the Páramo, the high altitude grassland that runs down the Andes.  In addition to being a wicked place to hike and explore, the Paramo is important to Ecuador because it's soil acts like a giant sponge- soaking up to 400% of the soil's weight in water.  It's this massive stockpile of water that gives Quito it's drinking water and fuels the lake behind the dam that generates 50% of Ecuador's electricity.  Yeah, it's kind of a big deal.  For the hike itself, we drove through Cumbaya & Tumbaco, heading up narrow roads to the (relatively speaking) highlands.  As our bus climbed a narrow dirt road, the conditions developed into what would become the normal for the day: blustery wind, light showers, and a heavy dose of fog.  We abandoned the bus at a set of radio towers, and began to hike quickly to avoid the cold, despite out layers. 

The first part of the downward hike was through the super-paramo, the highest part of grassland, where the elements ensured that nothing over 6 inches grew. The plants were all completely adapted to surviving in a frigid climate- they're mostly built low to the ground to avoid the wind, and the leaves, in most cases more like stubbly hemlock needles, are covered in a thick, waxy coating.  One of the coolest are cushion plants, which grow in mounts like coral- slowly building upon the previous layer of growth to create a warm, insulated core.  Within the plants, the conditions are too extreme for competition to exist- instead, they try to live together in ways the will mutualistically benefit both individuals.  For example, cushion plants often have other plants growing out of them to benefit from the warm shelter of the cushion plant.

cushion plant

something

the first lake

The beginning of the hike was a little brutal due to the wind and constant mist/rain- almost immediately pants were wet, and tops would have been the same without rain jackets.  The trail was barely there, and comprised mostly of scurrying down rocks and muddy patches between the plants.  After we finally dropped below the ridge line, the wind abated, and the trail wasn't as steep.  Not long after, the first small lakes appeared.  The first wasn't large at all, maybe 10 meters across, but with green algae on the banks, and initially shrouded in mist.   By the time we reached the second, a lake in it's own right, we had descended into the paramo itself, which is dominated by grasses instead of hardy, short plants.  The grass in the paramo works along the same principle as the cushion plants- it grows in big tan tussocks, where most of the blades present are actually dead, but stay attached to the plant to provide insulation for the few green, growing blades.  In the paramo itself, there's an almost monoculture.  Where the super-paramo was comprised of many species of various mosses and high alpine plants, the paramo is comprised almost entirely of grasses, with occasional pockets of other plants in sheltered areas.  We ate lunch at the large lake, then continued further down in altitude, to where the paramo began to include bogs in the patches of grass, surrounded by small hillocks, with larger crests further back.  Because of the clouds constantly blowing back and forth at ground level, what was clear one minute for a quarter mile, would be shrouded in white within moments.

me

the paramo, with a bog

professor esteban, man of the hour

the paramo

my foot after post-holing up to my ankle in a mud hole

Eventually, we descended into pockets of sub-paramo, where small, short forests can survive in the cold, wind protected areas.  After a particularly steep descent, we passed a small lake bordered by forests, where every surface from branches & stems to rocks was covered in a thick layer of assorted mosses.  At this lake, we saw inland gulls- just about the only animal life we saw during the whole excursion.  With a last downhill push through the sub-paramo, we ended our 8-mile hike at the bus for a short drive to a hotspring, fueled by the geologic activity of the Andes, which was a perfect end to a cold, exhausting, but thoroughly amazing trek through the high altitude!

the sub-paramo

Intro to the City

Wednesday was the first full day of classes at USFQ, the Universidad de San Franciso de Quito.  For the last couple of days (re: Monday & Tuesday), we had orientations in the morning at the University and adventures about town.  After out intro to the campus, us GAIAS kids spend the afternoon touring Quito Colonial, the historical section of the city filled with churches and overlooked by the Panecilla, little loaf mountain, it’s self-crowned with its own religious icon- the Virgin of Quito.  According to some sources, she’s the “woman of the apocalypse.”  The tour led us behind the traditional edge of the city, the calle that borders the ravine that used to ring the edge of the city before it was filled for the city’s expansion.  From there we traipsed towards the Plaza Grande besides the Catedral Metropoliano.  Fun fact: it’s also known as the Plaza Viejo, because it’s the place in Quito where the old people spend their afternoons.  Apparently several years ago there was a major strike there because the old people wanted more money in their pensions.  Though in this case, instead of protesting by being in the square, none of the viejos showed up in the square.  From there, we travelled to the Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, which was absolutely coated in gold inside the baroque church.  Despite that, it also had a lot of Moorish influence, with geometric designs inlaid in the golden walls.   From there, we continued to pass through the old part of town, eventually making our way to the Iglesia de San Franciso, the oldest church in Quito.  As the name would imply, it was founded by Franciscans, giving the city it’s official name: San Francisco de Quito.

The historic border of Quito

View from the Plaza Grande

The church were we began our tour of the old city

Tuesday continued the trend of orientation and meeting the non-UNC members of Quito.  At 15 students, UNC makes up the largest percentage of the 54 members of GAIAS this semester.  The campus of USFQ itself is beautiful, but in a lot of ways mirrors the rampant growth that’s occurred in Cumbaya over the last couple decades.  At the center of campus is a eutrophic pond, lined with rocks and teeming with koi.  Bounding it are the Asian Studies buildings, and the packed mass of buildings on the other side.  These academic & classroom buildings are brightly colored- my ecology class was held in the “Purple building,” while orientation was in Teatro de Casa Blanca.  In far better repair than most structures in Cumbaya, the campus has the same jumbled building model, with no hint of a grid pattern, with courtyards, both green  & bricked, filling the vacancies between structures.  On campus, everyone is addressed on a first name basis.  Even the president of the University goes only by Carlos.  Two of the best moments from orientation were the quote “double spouted fountain of fury” in regards to traveler’s diarrhea, and the fact that Raphael Correa, Ecuador’s resident democratic-dictator, was fired from being a professor at USFQ for handling his responsibility terribly.  I don’t think Carlos’ stance towards Correa has changed.

View of the University of the parking lot

The pond at USFQ

Cumbaya my friends, Cumbaya

I'll been in the country less than 24 hours, and already broken the rule against drinking local water.

Arrived in Ecuador last night!  The flight from Miami to Quito was nothing unique, but certainly nicer than any flight I've had on an American airline.  Customs was straight forward as well, then I got to meet my host family!  I was met at the Airport by Natacha and Antonio Pernas, my host mum & dad, and we got to know each other as we waited for Hannah, the Aussie who is the other student living from the GAIAS program I'm living with here in Quito.  Natacha & Antonio don't speak any English, but conversing in Spanish with them certainly went better than I thought it would.  My linguistic skills weren't great, but we got our points across!

After we got Hannah, we drove to Cumbaya, the suburb of Quito where the Pernas' live.  The drive wasn't bad at all, and as we neared their house they pointed out that the University de San Francisco de Quito, aka where I'll take my first couple classes before  I go to the Galapagos, is only a 10 minute walk away.  The house is in a private neighborhood, un barrio, with the house itself behind a wall and surrounded by a small garden on 3 sides.  Inside I met the 2 Pernas kids living at home- Jose Antonio, a civil engineer in Quito, and Claudia, a law student in her last year at USFQ.  After a brief dinner, Antonio & Natacha turned in, and us youngins' well out for a few drinks at the Turtle Head Cumbaya, a British-style bar near the University.  The bar was fun, though a little bit on the loud side, especially after a band started playing, doing a lot of covers of bands like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles. In keeping with the Latin American stereotype of being soccer obsessed, we played a bit of futbolino, fuisball, before we turned in for the night.  The drinking was definitely geared towards sociality- instead of individually ordering drinks, we got a bottle of gin, a pitcher of water, bucket of ice, and a smidge of lemon juice to make simple mixed drinks.

This morning, Jose Antonio, Claudia, one of their mates & I went in for a bike ride while Hannah slept off her cross-Pacific flights.  The trail we rode was a couple of km from the house in Cumbaya, and followed the path of an old railroad from the early 1900s.  The first little bit went though the city, passing though neighborhoods and showing economic contrast that is Ecuador-  There'd be a couple big, gorgeous houses with red tile roofs and painted walls, and beside them would be rundown houses for los pobres, made of bare cinder block with plain windows, flat cement roofs, and stray dogs laying in the dirt drives.  The second, and superior, part of the ride traveled on both sides of a massive canyon formed by the Rio Chichi.  Stupidly, I didn't bring my camera with me by here's another blog with pictures, but the walls of the canyon were dry earth coated in scrappy plants, with larger plants and pines on the ridge line and by the river. The trail slowly worked down the decline of one bank of the canyon before crossing Rio Chichi on a small stone bridge and slowly climbing up the opposite bank.  The far bank had a couple of old railway tunnels- some short enough to see the far end, but the longest one pitch black inside except for a couple holes in the side to view the outside and let light in.  Honestly, the light just make the following darkness even harder to see though.  The whole day was overcast, and it began to sprinkle as we loaded our bikes back into the pickup!

Countdown (cue Europe- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw)

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere- Frank Herbert


I do hope that quote's true- because as it is, there's still a lot that I'm unsure of about traveling to Ecuador.  I still really have no idea what I'm doing for most of May and June (besides that it has something to do with Tarantulas), the whole living with a host family situation is uncertain for how little I know about my families, and the individual day trips I take for hiking or snorkeling are completely unplanned.  I guess there really is something nice about keeping set plans as minimal as possible.  I can see it being taken the other way, but it's kind of relaxing before I leave- with less planned, there are fewer plans that can change or be disrupted!  


Now I get to finish the joys of packing.  The big stuff; clothes, hiking gear, books; are easy to select and pack.  It's the small stuff, the personal stuff, that's not quite so easy to manage.  I'm going to try to pack as light as possible, as unlikely as that is for me, but narrowing down how many important personal things I carry on my 6-months of travels seems almost a little harsh a more than a tad disheartening.  At least it's better than the return flight, weighed down with souvenirs!