A Few Pictures From The Tropics

Our dear ranchero, the "bus" that brought us down Via Auca to the Shiripuno. Observe if you will, the many large rocks upon this road. There were also many potholes, all of which we felt acutely since the ranchero lacked any noticeable suspension. But no matter, to the rainforest!

Via Auca, the road we used to reach the Shiripuno River, was built for and by the oil companies. This pumping station, with its plethora of pipes, was another reminder of the presence of oil and of those who wish to extract it in the Ecuadorian rainforest.

A typical colonist's home along Via Auca, on stilts, made of wood and concrete block, surrounded by chickens, dogs, maybe some cows, and small fields where these people attempt to make a living off the nutrient poor soil.

The Shiripuno River Lodge: Our home during our rainforest stay. Thatched palm fronds for a roof, planks for walls and floors, and even indoor plumbing for each triple room! Except when the pump broke and we didn't have running water for three or four days, but no matter, we all smelled anyway from sweat and the mud and a little more mud and sweat didn't make much of a difference.

The rainforest, what a beautifully complex place. Canopy, lianas (woody vines), understory, ferns, palms, all sorts of life!

Rubber boots: man's best friend in the muddy Ecuadorian rainforest.

Have blowgun will hunt, or at least attempt to do so. They are surprisingly heavy and long, easily eight feet. And to think the Huaorani men run, not walk, run, for hours with these blowguns in pursuit of various animals over the course of several days.

Just because I'm close to the equator doesn't guarantee that it's warm. On top of this mountain, I was higher than any point in the Rockies, wow. And it was cool up there, literally and figuratively. As soon as we reached the top, the clouds started to part and we got to see this amazing view of the rugged peaks of the Andes Mountains, stretching before us in all directions.

This forest was unreal. The vegetation, short, gnarled, laden with other plants like ferns and moss, boggled my mind. Complete with a stream cascading from the heights of the nearby Andes, incredible.

Lions and tigers and marine iguanas oh my! Okay, cut the part about the lions and tigers and replace it with lava lizards and frigate birds. So much wildlife and they don't move! They are not scared of people at all, amazing!


Oh the famous blue-footed booby. Yes, that is an actual name for an actual bird. And they were everywhere, including on our trail doing their mating dance, perfect for us observing biologists!

Awww, aren't these guys cute? Wherever we went there were sea lions! So many of them, we had to watch where we stepped so we wouldn't accidentally squash one of the pups (like these) or one of the mothers. They may seem lazy as they nap on the rocks, but when they're in the water, snorkellers watch out for these mammalian torpedoes!

It was fascinating watching these huge male tortoises eat, so slowly, so deliberately. It comes with a slow metabolism and a lifespan of over 150 years!

The vegetation on the Galapagos never ceased to perplex. Prickly pear cactus, okay, I've seen that before, but growing like a tree? Wow. What an adaptation. The other sticks here are living trees, known as palo santo or holy stick, awaiting rain. They flower in the Christmas season, thus earning them their name.

Yee-haw! The largest active caldera in the world! And the second largest in world period! Welcome to Sierra Negra on Isabela, the last eruption here was in October 2005 and believe it or not cacti are thriving just tens of feet from the newest lava flow, amazing.

This boat belongs in a lake, not in the ocean serving as a speedboat to transport tourists across miles of bumpy seas from Isabela to Santa Cruz, but it gets you there in one piece.

Mitad del Mundo: Middle of the Earth, also known as the Equator! However, this monument and this line are actually 240 meters off. Whoops! But a fun representation nonetheless.

On one of our hikes along a ridge in Mindo, we were treated with this stunning view of the valley and the town of Mindo far off. The altitudes of the innumerable hills and mountains never cease to amaze me.

This was our cabin in Mindo, a pretty classy place for the cloud forest!


On left, is me, modelling one of the alpaca sweaters I brought home. Second from the left is Jaimie Didier, one of my housemates and a senior. Third from the left is Pilar, our host mom (a very kind and generous woman, and a great cook). Third from the right is Maria Isabela, Pilar's daughter. Second from the right is Sarah Stevens, my other housemate and also a senior. And on the right is Juan Pablo, Maria Isabela's husband, who had actually lived in St. Cloud for a few years!

The Dangers of Static Electricity

Hopefully this entry will serve as a public service announcement, even though the incident was a freak accident. On Sunday, I walked across our living room carpet, while wearing an alpaca sweater, over to my laptop, which was plugged into the wall and on screensaver at the time. I touched the mouse, transferred a jolt of static electricity to my computer and it promptly shut off! I couldn't get it to turn on again! One call to Dell tech support later, the technician determined that I needed a new motherboard. Oh man. Thank goodness though, the part came today and a local installer came by, replaced it, and my computer was fine! I have seen the guts of my computer, and I am glad that nothing else was zapped. So, lesson learned. Don't wear alpaca sweaters and walk across carpet, either that, or I should ground myself before using electronics!

I'm Back!

After over 15 hours spent in an airport or in a plane, I am back! I had a marvelous time in Ecuador but I am happy to be home. And I'm enjoying the cold! It's so wonderfully refreshing, ahhhhh. I would love to show everyone the things I got in Ecuador along with my pictures, so, either talk to me, visit me, or I'll attempt to post some pictures here. It's great to have returned!

Last Day in Ecuador

Currently, I am sitting in an internet cafe around the corner from my host family´s house, finishing up an essay, hoping that I can print it. These last few days in Ecuador have been jam packed! I am going to miss Ecuador, but maybe not Quito. I am not a big city person I have learned, especially not in a city where jay walking (or sprinting rather) is the rule, car alarms blare day and night, dogs fight and bark constantly, and pollution is rampant. But really, Quito´s a great place! I am a bit sad to leave here, but I am excited to return. And yes, American food would be welcomed! Ice cream, mac and cheese, a big juicy burger, yeah. And being able to flush toilet paper. I am looking forward to many things, some of them more unusual than others. I´ve certainly figured out that some basic things are taken for granted in the United States. I leave in approximately seven hours, see you soon!

Over the Seas, Through the Sky, Across the Mountains (written earlier)

So, the last time I wrote to you, I was in Puerto Ayora, Galapagos. After that, we had a few more days of intense sun and heat, including our final days on our boat, more of a yacht really, pretty sweet I must say. I am also proud that I didn´t really get seasick! In addition to hiking into two different lava tubes on two different islands (lava tubes are amazing, and I am pretty much a dork and thought of the Republic while inside, seeing our flashlights lending scant light to the rocky sides). We landed on Isabela where we stayed in a hotel on the beach. Well actually, the entire village of Puerto Villamil is built on a beach. Sand is absolutely everywhere and gets into everything! It was a decent enough place. The cool thing about Isabela, other than the fact that it is the largest of the Galapagos islands, was that we got to hike up a volcano, Sierra Negra, and hike along the rim of the largest active caldera in the world. It was amazing! At first, we were clambering along in the cool morning mist, without a view of anything more than thirty feet ahead. Slowly though, the sun and wind blew away the fog and we could see down to the caldera floor, some hundred feet below. We worked our way around part of the caldera to see the epicenter, where a lava flow originated in October 2006. Believe it or not, cacti were growing right next to the new flow. Tough little buggers! Adaptations here are incredible. The only part of our brisk hike I did not enjoy was our less than stellar guide, but life goes on right? After that, we had a huge travel day. Speedboat right from Isabela to Santa Cruz (think of a boat that belongs on Lake Minnetonka, a decent size fishing boat, and then put it in the rough ocean). A bus, a ferry, a bus, two planes, and a bus and we were in Cotacachi in the Andes! We stayed with native Quechua families that night (I´m running out of time, more detail to come). They are incredible people and it was great to see how the indigenous people of the area live. The next morning, we worked on a community Quechua farm harvesting potatoes. It was cool to help them out and see their methods, which aren´t too different from ours. After that, we went to a luxurious hacienda (where I got to take a nice hot shower). We went to a local town known for wood carvings (I made a number of purchases), then a weaver´s shop (I got to try using a spinning wheel to wind yarn into a skein, it´s kind of hard!). In the evening, we heard traditional Andean music which was really cool. Those of you in Great Con, remember Lope de Aguirre The Wrath of God? Pan pipes! Oh yeah. It was pretty cool. We tried to dance to the music and failed in a terribly American way. Today, we went to Otavalo where I got far too much stuff. But it is all amazing and it was great to see so many quality goods made by people I now understand a bit better. I should be off, I need to return to my host family in Quito. I am about ready to return home, to the U.S. I have had a great time here, but it is about time.

Galapagos!

I am writing to you all from the island of Santa Cruz. Currently it is raining outside, sort of drizzling but still oppressively hot. After being on a boat for the last few days, I haven´t yet acquired my sea legs but on land I feel like I´m still rocking up and down on a boat. A bit strange, but interesting. On board, we all keep falling into each other, the walls, the railings, yeah. The crew just laughs at us. The islands are incredible. I didn´t quite believe it when people said you could walk right up the animals but it is true. I have taken pictures of animals not more than two feet away. It is amazing here. There is so much to see. The animals are beautiful and they are everywhere! Many a time I have had to watch my step so as to not squash an iguana, a booby, or a tortoise. We have hiked at least twice every day and snorkelled at least once. I am not the strongest swimmer by an stretch but I have had an incredible experience viewing the sea life. Moorish idols, angelish, parrotfish, sea urchins, and more! We´ve snorkelled by beaches, protuding rocks, and in a caldera. I am amazed every day by what I see. Everything here is so beautiful and so fragile. If I so wished, I could decimate booby nests. They´ve even built their nests on tourist trails! I have seen all three types of boobies, the blue footed, the red footed and the Nasca (which were formerly called the masked booby but are officially a new species, cool!) Yes, evolution is most certainly still in effect. The varieties of finches, Scalesia plants, tortoises, and boobies are examples of how selection has worked on different organisms. Oh adaptive radiation and speciation! Sea lions abound, they play with iguanas, I even saw one tug on an iguana´s tail, dragging it under water for a time before letting it escape. Most of the plants we´ve seen are spiky or bare. The landscape is quite rugged and barren in appearance but it supports a huge abundance of life. It has been awesome to see all these things for myself that I have read about it textbooks and National Geographic Magazine. The Charles Darwin Research Station had a nice area explaining the work they do to breed tortoises in captivity and release the offspring back into the wild to repopulate islands where their numbers have been depeleted. I saw the Sirenan, a ship that a foreign conservation organization gave to the station to use fo a number of years, since the station has such a shortage of funds. I supported the station in a small way with the purchase of a tank top with their emblem. Hopefully their good work can continue in the future. Oh the future. And life in general. The other night, just after celebrating our crossing of the equator (I took a sweet picture of our GPS reading "O") I stood on the back deck of the boat and just watched the stars, thinking about how great life truly is. Life indeed is beautiful. Life is beautiful and fragile and we should treasure every moment, even the everyday moments that we take for granted. There are many things that I have missed while here, and there are many experiences that have been amazing and I am glad to have had the opportunity to partake in. And of course experiences here that I would rather not repeat. And believe it or not, I can see the constellation Orion from this far south. So if you´re missing me, just look at the stars, find Orion, and know that I can see the very same stars. This trip has been absolutely incredible and I can´t wait to return home and share my experiences with you all. Tomorrow, we go to Fernandina and Isabela, where we stay in a hotel on shore. After that, we leave the Galapagos and return to the mainland. We´ll be going to Mindo (a cloud forest region) and Otavalo, a very famous market town. My trip is more than halfway over! That means that I will be back before any of us knows it, ready to adjust back to life in good old MN and share more of my stories with you!

Overload, in a great way

I have been to the rainforest and the Andes and back! Oh my goodness, I don´t even know where to begin, there is so much to tell. So much to explain, and I´m not sure how. I know I´m pulling a Dante and saying that there aren´t words to describe everything that happened and I´m going to just go ahead and tell you all anyway. First off, the rainforest, or more properly the tropical moist forest. Moist. All the time. Everything. The plants, the animals, the ground, the buildings, your clothes, your self. Everything. There is no way to get dry. But that is just fine! It was amazing. It was everything I had imagined and more. The levels of complexity just boggle the mind. The interaction of climate, plants, animals, and people is just incredible. I can´t say everything here, I will give you a few bullet points just so you can get an intro to my experience. The trip there was rugged. And this is coming from someone who knows the meaning of roughing it. We rode down Via Auca in a ranchero, an open bus, made of wood, with no suspension on a road that was a cross between cobble stone and gravel with pot holes all along it. But it was fun in a way. Seeing the progression of the rainforest, from significant human impact to less and less was fascinating. Moving along, here´s a short list of somethings I did. I ate ants. Not just one, several. One type was minty, another was slightly lemony, and another was strongly lemony. It was kind of cool actually! Our guide just licked them off a branch, handed the branch to us, and we did the same! I also had some sapote, a type of wild fruit. I saw monkeys, common woolly monkeys, night monkeys, it was so much fun to watch them swinging through the branches, wrestling, calling to each other. The diversity of animals was overwhelming. If I hadn´t written anything down I wouldn´t have remembered anything. We took many hikes, morning, afternoon, evening. Canoe rides to see birds or watch caimans. So cool! Piranha fishing, unfortunately I didn´t catch anything. P.S. You use raw meat as bait, we chose pork. I tried shooting a blow gun dart when we were at a Huaorani village. Two of our guides were Huaorani and it was so great that we got to get to know them better and understand their culture. The way they live with and depend on the forest is amazing. I know I use that word a lot but everything was amazing. I will have much more to tell later after I have had time to process it all. After the tropical moist forest, we went to the Andes. I never thought I would feel altitude the way I did when we hiked to the top of a peak that is higher than any mountain in the Rocky Mountain chain. My head was heavy and light at the same time, it was so odd. But it was breath taking to see the view from the top. The mountains, the clouds, and the odd plants that are part of the paramo ecosystem, think boggy but on a mountain, were all incredible. We worked our way down, hopping on an off our bus, which was much more comfortable than the ranchero, taking numerous hikes at different elevations. Then we went to the thermal baths at Papallacta. Ahh. So nice. Relaxing in warm to hot water after all our hikes was excellent. And then today, we had a morning hike in the a montane forest, I swear, I felt like Gollum hiking through between and undert the gnarled trees. The landscape looked straight out of Lord of the Rings. But muddier. And tropical. But you can envision that until I get to show you my pictures. Tomorrow, we go to the Galapagos! I am so excited for it. We are hiking and snorkeling every day. It should be so interesting and so much fun. I have left out so many details about what I have done so far, and there are so many stories I have yet to tell. I look forward to sharing more with you all later!

Some More Detail...

Let me fill in a bit more about my adventures. So, after lunch yesterday, forgive me if I overlap a bit, we actually we silly Americans and watched Madagascar, the son of Pilar, our house mother, has a bunch of pirated DVD´s, so we watched that since we wanted to chill out and we were a bit bored. Also, we walked to Carolina Park (Parque Carolinea). It´s supposedly dangerous alone but safe it a group. It was really cool to just walk the streets, see all the different people, the different shops (yet some are frighteningly American, like restaurants. Tony Roma, KFC, etc all have a big presence here). The park was especially cool. It was nice to find a spot of green in this city. Unfortunately, there´s a lot of pollution here. The buses and cars nearly make me hack due to all the exhaust fumes. The streets are cleaner than I expected though. They are definitely uneven and I need to watch where I´m stepping, I learned that yesterday by stepping in a big hole in sidewalk just before dashing across the street between cars. Panecilla was so beautiful, I may have to go back there when it is light out, just to see the whole expanse of the city. Quito is a very long city, not very wide, since it is wedged between two mountain ranges. This morning, we got to try out the bus system! It was too difficult but I was a bit paranoid about my backpack when the bus was really packed with people, but we had no problems. It´s amazing how much things cost here. For example, our bus fare was only a quarter, and internet access averages out at one dollar an hour. I appreciate it! It is rather odd that a foreign country uses the US dollar, we talked with our host mother about the switch to the dollar, she said it´s been great because it has lessened the rampant inflation that plagued the country for years when they used the sucre. I am so glad I know some Spanish. If I didn´t, I wouldn´t be able to communicate with our host mother or most people here. It also helps tremendously with customs officials, cafe workers, etc. It´s fun to use it, but I feel so obviously American and ignorant at the same time. There´s so much more I have to learn. Well, I am off. I need to prepare for the rainforest tomorrow. I won´t have any internet access, but I´ll have plenty to say when I get back. We´ll be there for a few days, hiking, doing short projects, piranha fishing, etc. ¡Hasta luego!

Whirlwind Tour of Quito

I have so much to say and only so much time, I need to be back at the Andean Study Center in twelve minutes (by noon) so please forgive any mistakes I make! Yesterday, we had more orientation, which was interesting. Afterwards, our host mother, Pilar picked us up and brought us back to the house. We had an awesome lunch, lunch is the biggest meal of the day here. We´ve had fruit smoothies or juice with every meal, and usually I have no idea what they are, but they´re good! After lunch, we decided to go and explore. We went to Parque Carolinea, a very big central park,very cool, we saw some guys playing soccer, play equipment made out of an airplane and construction equipment. After a light dinner, we went to Panecillo, a mountain in the middle of Quito with a giant statue of La Virgen, surrounded by a lit up nativity set, it was beautiful to see Quito at night, a long strip of lights with mountains on either side. And of course we did some homework. Thank goodness I did some before I got here! We had rainforest orientation today, because we are flying to Coca tomorrow. It should be awesome!

I Have Arrived!

That´s right, I´m in Ecuador! We got in late yesterday after a day full of flights, a bit boring at times, but not bad. The flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta was about 2 hours long, the one from Atlanta to Quito was 5. It was amazing to fly into Quito, we saw the dark outlines of the Andes Mountains as we descended steeply into the inter Andean valley where the city is located. Just seeing the lights in the valley and stretching up the hillside was beautiful. We got to see some of the city on our way to our host family´s home, who we met at the airport. I´m with two seniors, Jamie and Sarah, who are both friendly and cool. Our family consists of a mother and her 28 year old son, who lived in the US from age 5 to 18. He has perfect English, which is nice since my Spanish is a bit rusty. After settling in, it was nice to sleep. Strangely, most things are the same. Of course it will take a little remembering that "C" on the water handles means caliente, or hot, not cold! This morning, we went to the Andean Study Center for orientation and class, now that I have a bit of break, I get to fill you in! There are many internet cafeterias in this part of town, which is commonly referred to as "gringoland" due to the high number of tourists and touristy shops. It is fun to just people watch here. There is a great mix of people, in the span of less than a minute, I passed by a man in a business suit and a woman in traditional native dress. One thing to be careful about is the cars, on our way to the center, we witnessed a near accident between a car and a bus. Our host mother told us that very few people obey the traffic laws here, the only fine is 4 dollars! Yes, things are different, but good. Very good. Or should I say muy bien? I´m having a great time thus far and I look forward to many more adventures. Tomorrow we have orientation for the rainforest. The day after that, we GO to the rainforest. I´m pumped. It´s warm here. The weather is great. I may actually wear shorts! And the rainforest is supposed to even warmer, and humid too. I´m excited. I hope everyone back home is doing well, that interims at Olaf are fun, and that everyone is having a good time. I miss you all.