Half way.

Monday was our halfway mark for our stay in the rainforest. I definitely do NOT have half of my projects completed, but I am getting some work done everyday. I just don’t like depending on partners to have to finalize things, but that’s part of what I’m learning to get over in this program.

Anyway, I haven’t written my ‘blog-a-day’ lately, so I thought I’d just do a recap of what’s been going on since last Wednesday. On Thursday night we set a canopy net and some nets along a trail about half a kilometer from camp, but we only caught 2 bats of the same species and none in the canopy net. On Friday night we were about 200m from camp with a bunch of nets and we caught 3 species, 2 insectivores and 1 frugivorous bat. I did get to look at 4 new species that we haven’t seen before, which was good for my data and my project on bat dentition. On Friday night Jaime found a baby opossum and so we got to look at that. Thursday night we just saw an interesting spider and a lot of moths who were attracted to our candle light.

Friday morning after breakfast, Sean, Carina, and I went to Tower 1 and tried out our preliminary butterfly observations. We were going to try to do an altitudinal observational study with sweat bait and banana bait, but it failed. We didn’t get very much data, so now we’re working on revamping that project idea. I was sitting in the middle of the canopy tower and aside from the zillions of sweat bees attacking me, I did see some pretty butterflies who were totally uninterested in the banana or my sweaty sock. They did like my backpack and the trees around the canopy, though. As I was sitting I heard some monkeys in the trees around where I was and when I looked straight ahead I saw 3 of them, one-by-one, jump from one tree to the next directly in front of me. I snapped a picture of one, but it turned out blurry because it was so spur of the moment that the camera didn’t even have time to focus. Oh well, you can still tell it’s a monkey in a tree less than 10 feet away from me.

Saturday afternoon we did a boat float down the river per Jess’ request to look for butterflies. We saw a pink river dolphin soon after we left the dock, which was my first river dolphin sighting! It was really cool and we were able to follow its path pretty easily since they come up to breath every few minutes. In addition to the dolphin, we saw a speckled caiman perched on a log sunning itself, which was also a first for me. So far I’ve only seen the black caimans, which are the big ones. Once we floated downriver for about an hour we got to jump off the boat and float in our lifejackets downriver for another hour. It’s really fun to just let the current take you down river, although you do have to watch out for branches and fallen trees in the water.

Sunday morning we left camp with José, our guide, and Jaime, our assistant professor, and did a 6km walk around Parahuaco trail. We were about 50m from the river for most of the time, but it was VERY hot. We didn’t see much wildlife aside from a bunch of lizards and spiders. We saw a couple cool birds, a nocturnal bird (not sure on the species) flew away from its nest in the leaf litter and we saw her egg. And we also saw a cream-colored woodpecker, which is actually pretty bright yellow. They’re a pretty rare sight around here, so we were excited to get to see it so well up in a tree. We smelled a dead animal, but we couldn’t find it when we went looking for it. We walked right through the only female jaguar’s territory while we were on our walk. Tiputini has recorded up to 11 males in the area and only 1 female. We didn’t see any signs of her, though. We did see tapir tracks, peccary tracks, other small rodent tracks, and even a juvenile jaguar’s tracks in the mud along the trail. Some people tried a therapeutic treatment for rheumatoid, which involved sticking your hand into a leaf-cutter ant colony and letting them bite you and inject their saliva into your skin. Apparently it’s a miracle cure for sore joints. I tried to let them bite me, but my insect repellent really worked! We got back just in time for lunch and in the afternoon on our way back from lunch we saw a whole clan of golden-mantled tamarins hanging around the little footbridge we have to cross to get the Lab. These little monkeys are so cute, they’re like little tree kittens with white moustaches and really long furry tails. We watched them for a while and that’s when I decided that I need to carry my camera around more often. I do have some nice pictures, but certainly not of everything we’ve seen. And my only monkey picture is from Tower 1 and it’s blurry.

Yesterday Caitlin and I went out measuring buttress roots along Matapalo Trail in the morning. We measured a dozen trees and started our data collection for the project. On our walk back to camp we heard howler monkeys that were being very rowdy! They were so loud, I can’t imagine if we were right underneath their tree what it would have sounded like. Yesterday afternoon was very hot and sunny and lazy. We went for a swim for about an hour and then we played Ecua-volley. Sunday was a pretty exciting afternoon of volley, but yesterday was even better. I’m the official scorekeeper, because even though I can hold my own under the net, this competition is so fierce that I’d rather just watch and keep score and call penalties. So I’ve been named the official scorekeeper and no game can be played without my butt in the official chair with the scoreboard ready to go. I like the power, I must say, ha. Last night Simone, the German bat researcher who’s working on his PhD, caught a frog eating bat so we got to process her. We put her in the ‘bat box’ that’s set up out in the hammock area and caught her some katydids and a frog to eat. We also watched most of The Hangover or Que Pasó Ayer in Spanish last night. I was learning how to count to 10 in Huau (‘wow’) and Quechua—the indigenous languages around here.

Today has been pretty relaxed, I wrote the introduction for the buttress root paper, worked more on my bat paper, made some excel tables for our project data, and read more of The Shining. We’re getting 36 people on Friday for the weekend, which I’m not excited about, but whatever. This afternoon I think I’ll work more on some papers and maybe go for a short hike before the afternoon’s Ecua-volley games start up.

Hope all is well with everyone. I’m sending you a little bit of this 85 degree and 90% humidity weather and looking forward to the winter weather that I’ll be coming home to.

I posted a link for the Tiputini Biodiversity Station if you were interested in seeing how I was living this month.

Enjoy!

xo

This morning I did a hike with Jaime and four of my classmates. We went back on the trail we tried yesterday, but turned back because of the big tree across the path. Today we climbed over the tree and continued. We decided to do a long route and it wound up being 4.5km total of hiking. We stopped and visited a salt lick or mud wallow for about 45 minutes. We only saw a piping guan, it’s a chicken sized bird with a funny head. Then we got caught in a thunderstorm and got a chance to cool off. It was a really fun hike, but pretty quick. We left at 7:45 and were back by about 11:15, only because we were walking quickly—especially when the rain started.

There’s no water today because there are 60+ people in camp and these new people take showers like every time they get back from hiking a trail. So I just decided that the rainstorm was my shower for the day, I certainly feel clean—and a little like I’ll won’t be completely dry for the rest of the day. This afternoon I think I’ll relax a little and then if the sun comes back out before 4pm, I might hike to Tower 1 with someone and do a photo shoot so you all can have some pictures to look at. I was thinking that I should put up a link to the biodiversity station on my blog, but the connection is bad here—and slow. So I’m sure that if you googled TIPUTINI BIODIVERSITY STATION you’ll find some good information, and if you can look for info on the camera trapping program sponsored by National Geographic.

I’m feeling kind of introverted today—it might have to do with the rain. I’m missing home, but I’m loving my time here. The river has risen a couple meters since we’ve been here, which is really nice to watch. I sit out on one of the docks and just watch the rain and the river for a while, it’s very peaceful. Tomorrow is another bat night; we’re only expecting to catch maybe a dozen bats this time. I’ll get more of a chance to look at the teeth and take some pictures for my possible PowerPoint project.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Yesterday we said goodbye to Peter and unhappily welcomed 31 new people. We’re all pretty bitter about having all these people here at ‘our’ place, but they’re only here until Friday. Apparently we’re getting another pretty big group from Friday to Monday and then after that we’re home free until we leave on the 30^th. The group is from Ohio—some small liberal arts school—and they are touring Ecuador for 2 months. They spent the first two months in Ohio “getting ready”—whatever that means. They live in Cuenca with host families and they have chaperones and/or professors, I can’t tell which. That’s all I’ve managed to learn about them, but I haven’t been making much of an effort to get to know them. It’s really rowdy and loud around here all the time now and meals are the WORST! Oh well, I guess I just have to grin and bear it for a few days. There is a change in the serenity around camp, though, and we haven’t seen much wildlife activity since their arrival.

I just got back from a walk with James and Bob. We tried to go down the Puma trail but we were stopped by a massive tree fall, so we turned around and came back down a well known trail that we’ve taken a few times before. We saw a tarantula hole and coaxed the spider out into the light so we could see it. We saw some cool beetles and some absolutely unknown bugs and/or fungus…we’re not sure which. When a beetle flies by you absolutely know it; it sounds like a helicopter flying around your head!! It’s crazy. The trail we started on, Guacamayo, was FULL of monkey and bird life this morning. We saw some red howlers really well, and they were pretty close. Then we walked about 100 feet and found some spider monkeys that were also really close by. We heard tons of birds, but none of us are good at spotting them in the trees, so we just stopped and listened.

I think we’re playing some Ecua-volley at 2 this afternoon and then I might go for a swim. Tomorrow I think people are planning to do an all-day hike, I’ll probably go.

That’s all to report right now, just another normal day here at Tiputini.

The other day we went seining for fish with Kelly. We just ran a big net through the water close to shore and caught some tiny fish, mostly catfish. The banks that we were fishing off of were really muddy so we decided that we’d have a mud fight. It started with Jaime and James who pushed each other in the mud and turned into a full out mud flinging battle. Some of the mud was really sandy and some was more like soft clay, but both were equally dirty. In some places on the shore you sank down to your knees and were kind of stuck. I was exfoliating my skin and scratching my bug bites by rubbing the mud all over my arms, legs, and face. I really enjoyed it.

After our fishing trip and mud fight, we decided to float downriver back to camp. It was about a 20 minute float downriver and we decided to do it naked! We all had life jackets on, so exhibitionism wasn’t an issue as long as our butts didn’t float too high out of the water. Kelly got some pictures of us from the boat flinging our clothes around over our heads as we floated. I hope he does a final PowerPoint presentation of all of the pictures he’s taken of us this semester. It was exhilarating to be floating down the Tiputini, being naked made it better, and having pictures taken made it one of the best days so far!

Kelly caught a river turtle that was stuck on the log she was sunning on. It’s pretty impossible to catch river turtles and we only got her because she was stuck. We brought her up to the volleyball court and got to hold her for a little bit. We think we saved her from overheating because she was being really docile and usually they’re pretty feisty. We let her go on the banks of the camp and watched her swim away.

I watched an INTENSE couple of games of Ecua-volley, and was cheering. I didn’t play because there were an odd number of people for a while. I hope to get to play today or tomorrow.

That night we had an EPIC thunderstorm that started around 11pm. The lightning started around 9pm, but the rain and thunder didn’t come until later. We were all asleep in our beds and were woken up by HUGE cracks of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning. We live in cabins that are wooden frames with screens for windows—there’s no real structure to them at all. It was scary to hear trees cracking and breaking close by our little match-stick houses. At one point there was such a big crack of thunder and a tree breaking that I jumped up and gasped—I sleep on the bottom bunk so I almost smacked my head. It was really fun to be awake listening to, but we were all a little scared.

The next morning it was still raining pretty hard. It didn’t stop till around 10:30am, so we all hung around camp working on developing projects. We had class at 11 with Kelly and then after lunch I collaborated with Jaime on our bat data. Then I went on a hike with all the girls and the boys went off on their own hike. We were gone for about two and a half hours and then were back in time for class at 6. We played cards after dinner with some of the staff—there were 10 of us playing. We played Burrito—it’s kind of like asshole, but easier. Then we played spoons! We did elimination rounds until only 2 people were in and there was 1 victor. It was really loud and fun. The staff members here are really interesting and hilarious. They are either Quechua or Huarani and most live in Coca, the city we flew into on our way here from Quito. Santiago is one of my favorites—he’s Quechua, but he married a Huarani woman so he knows both cultures. Tomas is Huarani and he’s about 5 feet tall with big muscles and a really deep voice. Don Garcia is a little old man who cleans our cabins and he has a classic native face that is beautiful—I’d love to take tons of pictures of him. Alfonso and Enrique are hard to tell apart, and I keep thinking they’re brothers. Juan Carlos is missing a front tooth and his laugh is so contagious—it’s kind of like the sound a hyena makes. Mayer is one of the best ‘attractions’ here I think. He’s a guide and is SO knowledgeable about everything in the forest. If you want to know the location of a Conga ant colony he can tell you exactly which trail, and under which tree to find it. It’s amazing. He’s great and so cute. He’s also missing several front teeth, but his smile is infectious nonetheless. I am looking forward to spending a lot more of my time with the staff.

Diego, the director, is a young guy who has an impossible job. Sometimes he looks like he hates life, but I always make an effort to say hi and get a smile out of him. He left today for vacation in Quito, so we’ll be joined by the assistant director, Juan Pablo. We’re also getting a group of 30 people coming in today until Friday—we’re not excited. I’m sure that some of them are going to be interesting, but it kind of ruins your experiences when there are 40 people running around. We’ll see what happens.

Today is a nice sunny day and we’re waiting for class to start at 11 before lunch at noon. We’ll probably do a hike later and maybe a swim. Hopefully there’s some Ecua-volley planned since it’s not rainy. The group will get here around 4pm, I think. I just watched a leaf mantis eating a butterfly—pretty cool!! I also forgot to mention the jaguar sighting on our batting trip on Friday. He actually approached Mayer, Kat, and Carina within 4 meters. I didn’t get to see him because he ran away, but there are some pretty cool pictures and it felt exhilarating to know that we were in such a close vicinity to the biggest predator in the jungle. We saw a bunch of caimans on our way back to camp that night, too. We were in the boat and safe, so don’t worry. Ugh, nature is SO cool!

Alright, I think I’ve exhausted my recollective powers and hope I didn’t leave out anything huge. Just know that I’m seeing some great stuff out here and that I’m having a blast. I was talking with Kelly last night about finding a job for me here—even volunteer work for a summer or something. I’d love to come back. I know I don’t want to be a field researcher, but I wouldn’t mind doing volunteer work for other people who want to do research here. Speaking of that, Peter—the guy from Australia—gave a presentation about his job and then a picture slideshow of his volunteer work on Australia’s Antarctic territory in 1987-88. Pictures of elephant seals and stuff—it was like watching Planet Earth or something, but he was living there with them for 5 months!! So neat.

Missing everyone a lot & craving turkey like it’s no one’s business. xo

Thursdays and Fridays are ‘bat nights’ where we go out and net bats with Jaime. Now let me tell you about Jaime—he’s the assistant professor who doesn’t really do any professor type work like grading, but he’s always with us and he’s a specialist in bats. We’ve netted bats with Jaime almost everywhere we’ve been except Galápagos, because it’s illegal, but here we actually get to handle the bats ourselves. I’m doing a project on bat dentition—SURPRISE! I had to do something with teeth in my time here, so this is it. It’s kind of a morphology and function project. I’m measuring the usual dimensions of the bat that are standard procedure during processing, but I’m also measuring the head, counting the incisors on top and bottom, noting the molars, and measuring the canines if they’re big enough and the bat is cooperative. I expect to find a correlation between the teeth and the type of food the bat eats—like frugivorous vs. insectivorous vs. frog-eating bats. I’ve been reading the literature and there is A LOT about bat dentition—one of the ways to identify a species is by counting its upper and lower incisors. Thursday night we caught 54 bats and last night we caught 37. We visited ‘salt licks’ or mud wallows that are rich in minerals and tend to have a high frequency of pregnant and/or lactating bats visiting them. There are a lot of theories why bats visit these places, and there is a Ph.D. candidate here working on his research with us trying to figure out WHY bats visit these places. It’s pretty cool, and I’m excited for next Thursday’s ‘batting’.

I’m also working on developing a project with buttress roots. There are trees here that are at least 150m tall (almost 500ft) and they have these HUGE roots that are taller than my 6’2” friend, James. There are also a lot of theories about the presence of these roots, but nothing definitive. Some people think that they are for structural support since these trees are emergent and among the first to grow in an open patch of forest, so they have to grow really quickly to out-compete other trees. Another theory is that they protect against epiphytes, or other plants, from growing on the base of the tree—like strangler figs. A third theory is that they keep other trees from growing too close, thus preventing competition for nutrients in the nutrient-poor soil. I’m not sure what my methods for investigating are going to be, but I’ve already noticed some trees with buttresses that have no epiphytes and some that do have vines and epiphytes growing on them. I think it’s just going to be a survey of the buttresses in the area and then investigating the research to draw some conclusions. I think it’s interesting, but I’m still recruiting a partner…

Yet a third project idea that I am working on setting up is with Sean and it’s on butterflies. We were thinking of doing thermoregulation of butterflies out on the river and inside the forest, but I think we just changed our scope to something different. We have 2 canopy towers here and a canopy walkway and we decided that it would be interesting to classify different species at 3 different altitudes on the canopy towers and whether they are more attracted to a sweaty t-shirt or an overripe banana. It’s an observational study to see the diversities of butterflies, which altitudes they prefer, and what they like to eat—sweet or salty? We’ll see what happens, I think we’ll get some definite results and I expect that they will be more attracted to the middle altitude and the sweaty t-shirt than anything else. I’m excited to get started.

Other than that I’ve just been taking advantage of being outside a lot. I went on a hike yesterday with 3 others to Tower 1. We saw some monkeys in the trees, some cool spiders, and a couple neat birds. We were gone for about 2 ½ hours just hiking and enjoying ourselves. It’s hot and sticky, but it’s so worth it to get to be outside literally surrounded by nature. Then yesterday afternoon I napped since we got home at midnight from ‘batting’ then went swimming. There were a bunch of golden mantled tamarins hanging around the camp so we were watching them for a while, too. Then we were off ‘batting’ at 4:30 again until around 10pm.

This morning I went with Mayer, a guide, to the canopy walkway system. That was fun, but the cables are COVERED in army ants, so it was a little less than pleasant. I plan to go back up there, but not anytime too soon.

Keep reading to follow more of my adventures in the Amazon.

Tiputini: Day 2

The rest of my day yesterday was fun. We went on our first group hike and saw some interesting plants and insects. We got back in time for dinner and then after we watched Hocus Pocus—awesome movie! We were in bed by 9:45 eager for today.

Our days will always start with breakfast at 6:30am, this morning they happened to be serving French toast—yum! Immediately after breakfast we met Mayer and Jaime down at the northern dock and took a 5 minute canoe ride to the Anaconda trail. We went to Tower 2—a 35m tall wooden structure that takes you to the top of the canopy—and then we canoed around the Lake for a little while. We didn’t see any wildlife from the Tower, but we did see some cool birds on the lake and some BIG fish jumping. That Lake is home to Sylvia, the largest anaconda in the area—we didn’t see her. Apparently there was a caiman close-by, but we didn’t see it. After our two activities we walked the hour-and-a-half back to camp following some of the marked trails. Basically these first few days we’re just learning how to use the trails and how to get to some of the important places for when we’re on our own.

We got back around lunchtime and then immediately after we went swimming in the Tiputini again. Jumping in that river is such a fabulous feeling when you’re so hot and sweaty. After about an hour of swimming we just hung around a little before our next hike at 3pm. This afternoon we went with Mayer and Jaime again down the Chorongo Trail. We saw some Spider monkeys, identified some medicinal plants, saw some Golden-Mantled Tamarins (little monkeys), and found some Dragon’s Blood—it’s a medicinal plant that cures internal and external infections. Mayer (pronounced “ma-yeah-er”) literally put some on one of Kat’s bug bites and it was gone within 20 minutes! I put some on what’s left of my cuts leftover from my fall, which isn’t much but I thought it couldn’t hurt. We saw lots of animal tracks and animal homes today. A mother and baby Tapir tracks, giant armadillo tracks, giant anteater tracks, and some peccary tracks (small wild pigs). Although we didn’t see the animals, seeing the tracks confirms that they’re there. We saw a bunch of giant armadillo and giant anteater holes and some were pretty close to camp, which means we have a good chance of seeing them behind our houses at night. I can’t wait for my first night hike—tomorrow night we’re going to catch and record bats with Jaime after dinner.

I worked it out with Diego that I will have internet every Thursday for $2/day instead of $30 for the whole month—which I won’t make use of. I think once a week is all that I want to allow myself while I’m here. Don’t worry, I’ll blog regularly—before dinnertime (like now) is a popular time to blog or read or do puzzles. So if you want to send me emails about things, know that I won’t be able to respond until the next Thursday—just a head’s up.

I think the plan for tonight is to have dinner and then watch ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ before bed. Looking forward to another fun day tomorrow! xo from the Amazon.

First Night at Tiputini…

We made it! After our long journey we arrived at camp around 4:30pm. We stopped on the way to collect some river turtle eggs that had been laid the night before. When we arrived at camp there was a brief orientation and then we were shown to our rooms. I’m living with Carina and Caitlin. There are 2 bunk beds per room–I took one of the bottoms. We had until dinnertime to settle in, unpack, and get fitted for boots. It gets dark inside the forest around 5:30pm, but the paths are lighted and we all have flashlights or headlamps. After dinner we hung out in the lab for a little while and then went to bed around 9—plenty of sleeps before our 6:30am breakfast call.

Ok, now that you know WHAT we did, let me tell you how it FELT to be doing all of those things here…

Our journey started in Coca, a 25 minute plane ride from Quito. It’s a small town with bush meat markets and lots of oil workers. Then we got in a boat onto the Napo River for a couple hours where we disembarked at an oil station. There we had to go through security and couldn’t take pictures until the next time we were in a boat. So after about an hour and a half on an amusement park-looking bus we reached the Tiputini River. We were greeted by some of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) staff and went downriver another 2 hours. When we spotted the docks of the station it was a little surreal that we had finally made it, and that we’d be here for an entire month!

It was weird having to go through the oil company to get here, but it makes more sense to cooperate with the “enemy” than make things even worse. A lot of our rules here come from mandates by the oil company. The boat ride to the oil station was interesting because it’s the beginning of the dry season and the Napo River was really low. Our driver knew where all the deep parts were so we had to zig-zag down the river. It was hot, but the wind from the fast moving boat made it bearable. We also got a nice little bag lunch with cheese sandwiches, a mandarin, a banana, water, gum, a juice box, and some Oreos.

The “bus” ride was uncomfortable because it looked like a carnival ride and there wasn’t much leg room. We were also riding behind a tour bus and dust was flying into our eyes, it made trying to see nature difficult. We had 2 ‘outsiders’ traveling with us: Peter from Australia (middle aged with two 19-year-old twin daughters) and Amy a researcher coming from Peru (looks about 30). The driver made a couple wrong turns, so we were prematurely excited about being on the Tiputini. Again, it was hot but we had a breeze.

As we were boarding the boat on the Tiputini, we saw some people washing clothes in the river. There was a dog sleeping on a rock that was about a meter into the water, which was cute. And as we were motoring downriver we passed by a canoe-full of Huarani—the closest indigenous group to camp. A lot of people decided to hang out at the front of the boat and those of us who were at the back of the boat were getting soaked from the weight of everyone up front. I was not happy about that, but eventually Kelly made them all come back to even things out. I found myself feeling really disbelieving that we were in the middle of Amazonia, and at the same time I was frustrated and annoyed with everyone. I think it was mostly the heat and humidity—I’m not in my element in this kind of weather—also we’re all getting on each others’ nerves and our month hasn’t even started. It would be weird if I told you that everything was perfect and we’re all best friends; we are all friends, but we all have our tendencies and sometimes those wear on others in a negative way. One is clingy, another is a princess, others pretend they can sing but can’t really, I’m bluntly honest and the ‘Mom’…we all have our ways. Oh well, we get past it every other time, this time won’t be different.

The camp is very nice and well managed. The dining hall is the first building you see when you come up the stairs from the river—it’s an open hall with a closed in kitchen at the back. The next big building is the Lab where there is a classroom, offices, and a small library with a couple computers (I brought my laptop). Then at the back of the camp are the cabins where we’re staying. There’s a few more buildings, but those 3 are the ones that we frequent the most, those and the second dock a little upriver just beyond the volleyball court. We have electricity twice a day from 10-1pm and 6-930pm. Our rooms have private baths with a shower—the water is pumped from the river and cleaned on the premises, so it’s not hot. We use biodegradable soap and shampoo, so we can bathe in the river if we really want to, but all the water goes there no matter what anyway. There are 40km of trails that we haven’t explored yet, two canopy towers, and a canopy walkway—we’ll get to all these places within the next couple days. The bugs have not been a problem so far, only a couple mosquitoes and I don’t think I have any bites. It IS hot and it IS humid, but I already feel myself getting used to it. It still hasn’t hit me that we’re in the middle of the rainforest in the middle of nowhere, Ecuador. Maybe as we do more things out in the forest it will hit me.

I guess I might as well blog about our morning while I’m at it…

This morning we had a DELICIOUS breakfast of banana pancakes and fresh fruit at 6:30am. Then we got in the boat at 7:30 and headed upriver looking for more river turtles’ nests to dig up. We stopped at two beaches and in total collected 6 nests, which added up to about 170 eggs. There is a program at TBS that collects the eggs, incubates them, and then releases the hatchlings back into the wild. This is to give the eggs a better chance of hatching without risk of unpredictable water levels, predation by animals, or from being dug up by indigenous people to eat. I got to dig out 2 nests today—which just entails digging in a specified location pointed out by the guides and then carefully putting the eggs into a box with sand in the same orientation that they were in the sand. The babies won’t hatch if the eggs get turned over or anything, so it was a little bit nerve-wracking to be the one holding lots of baby turtles’ lives in my hands. Although I was nervous, it was SO COOL!

We also had an AMAZING black caiman sighting, we saw it on the banks on our way upriver and then on our way back downriver we stopped to investigate. We pulled up right next to it and saw this GORGEOUS black caiman with its head sticking out of the water. One of the guides got it to come up out of the water with an oar and we got to see its full body. I would say it was about 2m long (6 feet) and only about 6-8 years old, according to Kelly. I didn’t bring my camera with me, but I know some people got some pictures and I’ll try to steal one. It was really nice being able to get dirty and dig up turtle eggs for a good cause and then to see an animal that many North Americans never get to see.

Back at camp we had to unload the sand we took from the beach for the turtle incubation box, which was pretty sweaty labor. After we were all drenched in sweat we had about an hour before lunch to go swimming in the river. We’re required to wear life vests, but that’s a good thing because the point in the river where we can swim is like a whirlpool so we just float around in circles without having to do anything. The river’s pretty deep where we are and nothing is visible past about 4-5 inches deep. I’m sure that I was swimming with some piranhas and/or anacondas and/or caimans, and who knows what else, but it was so refreshing and they’re more afraid of us than we are of them. 10 minutes before lunch Sean saw a river dolphin while he was sitting on the dock, so I KNOW I was swimming with him/her!

We just had a nice lunch and we’re chilling out a little before our walk at 3 around the camp. We’ll be gone for about 3 hours and then dinner at 7pm. I’m excited to finally get to explore some of the trails around camp and I can’t wait for Friday when we’re on our own for the rest of our stay. We always have to go somewhere in pairs, but that’s WAY better than a group of 11 who cannot be quiet in the least. I hope to work with a couple people I get along with on several projects—Butterflies, buttress roots, and monkeys are some of my interests so far—we’ll see what turns out.

So far everything is going great and I’m enjoying myself. I’ll use the internet once or twice per week for a little while each time, so send emails and be patient. Wish you all could be here experiencing this with me!! xo

Halloween in Ecuador

Happy Halloween!! Although it’s not a big celebration here, we went out and celebrated American style, sort of. I spent the day yesterday with my family; there was kind of a reunion. We made Colada Morada—it’s kind of like warm, thick, sangria that has cinnamon and no alcohol. It is a traditional drink for Dia de los Difuntos—kind of like day of the spirits, not really day of the dead—more like All Soul’s Day or something. But with our homemade Colada Morada we had pan de guagua (wah-wah)—which is bread that’s in the shape of a swaddled baby and filled with marmalade. So we all helped make the Colada Morada, ate lunch, and then a couple hours later all drank our drink with pan de guagua. The Liga game was on, too so we were watching that. Liga (league-a) is one of the country teams from Quito and we’re all about them in this house! The end result was a tied game 0-0, but Liga still got one point for the tie (they would have gotten 3 points if they would have won).

After a nice day with lots of family, I just rested a little, had a light dinner, and got ready to go out. None of us had real costumes, but I managed to throw together an outfit. I wore my black pencil skirt and a black tank top, did my make-up to look like I had cat eyes, and then drew whiskers on my face with eye liner. So I was a black cat! We met downtown at a bar and had one of the Halloween 2×1 special drinks, and it was this weird dark purple color with dry ice! It looked like it was smoking, I was more exited about how it looked than how it tasted. We watched some of the World Series game and then went to our favorite dance club, Bungalow 6.

When we got to the club there were lots of shoddily thrown together costumes, lots of gringos, and surprisingly a lot of Ecuadorians—more than usual. We knew there was free face painting so after a few songs we went upstairs to get that done. When the guy saw me he goes “so you’re supposed to be a cat…let’s see if we can’t make you look more convincing,” and when he was done I was a tiger! After that I really looked like I was in Halloween mode. We danced some more until the club closed at 2:30am and then went home. I was sad to have to wash off my tiger face before bed.

I think I have everything I need for the rainforest. I don’t have to bring too much because there’s a laundry service there once a week. I will have internet access, so I’ll be able to email and keep in touch that way once in a while. I hope to only use the internet once or twice a week for a few minutes each time, so don’t expect a ton of correspondence. I’ll write some blogs, too (of course!). I’ll hope to see lots of cool animals so I can share those experiences with all of you faithful readers. Just remember that “no news is good news,” so not hearing from me means I’m out enjoying the biodiversity of the Ecuadorian jungle.

I’ll write a blog soon! Think of me while I’m on my 6-hour mini-adventure to the jungle by plane, bus, and boat. xo

Today I went with Fanny, Victor, and Matt to Ambato. We drove right past Cotopaxi, the snow-capped volcano, and continued south through Latacunga, Salcedo, and then to Ambato. Basically it was the route I took when I went to Banos that one weekend. We started our day early and left the house at 8am. We drove a couple hours to Latacunta where we had chugchucaras (choo-choo-caras)—a mixed plate with fried pork, pork rinds, little empanadas, maduros (ripe plantains), cangril (popcorn), hominy, and papas (potatoes). Matt and I shared a portion—it was so big, but SO good! It reminded me of Puerto Rico, a lot. That was at 10am this morning—great way to start the day.

After Latacunga we passed through Salcedo where they’re known for their ice cream. So of course, even just having passed through Latacunga, we HAD to get ice cream! I got mora (blackberry) flavor. It was sabrozo (delicious)! We stopped to look at a lake and some of the mountains and then continued on to Ambato.

In Ambato we stopped at the botanical gardens and saw the plantation house of Juan León Mera—the guy who wrote the Ecuadorian National Anthem. In addition, he was a poet and writer. Born in 1832 and married in the 1860’s—that’s pretty much what I remember from the little guided tour of the house. He wrote a book or play (not sure which) about savages that I want to read. Fanny was friends with a girl when she was growing up who was the great-granddaughter of Juan León Mera and she told us she remembered playing at the gardens with little coconuts from the various palm trees. She was describing a game similar to Bocce ball. Fanny went to school in Ambato, that’s why she knows the area pretty well.

After our walk through the plantation house we went down a path to see the “Love Tree”. It’s this big tree that’s on the ground and is HUGE! People stick coins into the bark and make wishes and stuff. It was pretty cool; there was even a couple cuddling on the big trunk—cute!

Then we got back in the car and drove around the city for a little while, took some pictures, then stopped at this restaurant to have lunch. Get ready for this—Matt and I shared half a guinea pig (cuy), Victor had rabbit (conejo), and Fanny had hen soup (gallina). The cuy was DELICIOUS! Albeit small, it was very flavorful and unlike chicken. I couldn’t really put my finger on a comparable flavor, but it was like a cross between eating BBQ chicken and crabs in the US without the BBQ sauce and because it was such a small animal you really had to use your fingers to pull all the meat off. The crunchy skin was also very yummy. I got a picture of their method of cooking—it’s just a big rotisserie with lots of little rodents on it spinning around really fast. So cool and so good! It came with potatoes too, but you know I was all about the cuy. Fanny was so excited that I liked it. And Victor doesn’t eat it—which I don’t get because bunny is practically the same thing as guinea pig, just a little bigger. He’s funny. So that was lunch—yum yum yum!!

On our way home we stopped in a small town at the top of a mountain where there is lots of leather. I didn’t buy anything, but some of the boots were $35—I just didn’t see any that called to me. Then when we were about 45 minutes outside of Ambato we stopped again to buy some cheese and these little savory cookies. The cheese is apparently the best around, it is wrapped in a banana leaf, and you eat it with the little savory cookie.

We got home around 645pm and now I’m just hanging out until school tomorrow. I’ve had this unquenchable thirst since my accident and have been drinking water like no other! I don’t know what it is, but I had 4 bottles of water today and could have had 4 more if they would have let me. It’s weird. I’ve been waking up at 4am to go to the bathroom and to get another glass of water. Clearly by my post above, my appetite is back—I just have to cut everything up into little pieces and chew it with my back teeth. Take note of the semi-Spanish lesson in the parentheses above—there will be a test!

Until the next eventful day…xo.