The Rainforest: Tiputini Biosphere Station

In short, our trip to the rainforest or Oriente as it is called, was awesome. We went to Tiputini Biosphere Station (TBS) situated on the banks of Rio Tiputini, close to the eastern border with Peru. I know exactly where it is on a map but getting there was a little more complicated than taking a taxi. On Monday morning we take a 7:30 am airplane flight to the city of Coca. Upon arrival we board a bus to the nearby Rio Napo. We are all shocked at the sight of endless pure green forest from the view of the airplane windows, and as we exit the airport a blast of warm humidity nearly knocks me down. It is pretty hot. We all get onto a long boat (all 20-some of us) and sit in plastic chairs looking out. The boat has a huge and loud motor at the back, and the river is very wide.I spend most of the ride staring in disbelief at the strange and wonderful vegetation lining the river banks – the trees are ridiculously tall. In fact, I sit with my mouth hanging open for most of the rest of the day. After an hour or two we arrive at "customs" aka petrol control station. The petrol companies all own this area – they are the biggest threat to the rainforest. They own the rights to use the land, they built and own all the roads in the area and they gave permission for the land to be used by TBS as an environmental research station. Nobody but student groups and researchers are allowed at TBS, and it definitely is quite a mission to get there. We finally make it through the petrol station, and board another bus, this time the ride takes an hour and a half or so. We pass thick dense forest and places where the land has obviously been cleared to make villages or farmland. The indigenous tribe of the area, the Huaorani, are the only other people allowed to go in and out as they please. The bus isn't really a bus, its more like a truck with a lot of seats and no side walls so we can see everything as we pass. We stop in front of a bridge, all scramble for backpacks and then board one of two more boats. Our boat is pretty tiny, with no roof and we worry that the lack of sunroof will cause a lot of future discomfort. Happily it also means that we can see above us, and we ride out into Rio Tiputini. This river is much smaller than the Napo, it meanders constantly and is completely lined by trees. Soon enough we see playful Squirrel Monkeys moving through the trees nearby. Scarlet Macaws fly overhead and the boat moves pretty fast. The wind picks up and suddenly it starts drizzeling.
"haha, now we know why it´s called a rainforest", I joke.
Finally we arrive at TBS. We climb up wooden steps and enter the comedor, kind of an open-air dining room, for orientation. TBS is a collection of scattered wooden buildings, cabins, comedor, library and basic research lab facility. We are shown to our mosquito netted cabins – bunk beds, bathroom facilities and little porches. We get an hour free to get settled in and we all pull on swimsuits and dive into the river. The current is pretty strong and the water is coffee with milk coloration. We learn later that this is due to accumulated Andean sediments as opposed to the darker plant-produced chemicals, tannins, that give Rio negro its name (River Black literally).
The night I join the three boys in our group for a little night hike – actually their field investigation project is Night Insects and I am happy to go along with them and look for tarantulas and other cool bugs. The jungle is wet and so strange. At first I don’t really know what to make of it. It´s late at night (haha 9pmish) and pitch dark but the forest is alive with strange new sounds. Apparently the cicadas never sleep, or at least they take turns so that the sound never ends. The next afternoon we all undergo the SIT traditional “drop-of”. This is after we get up at 5:30 in the morning for a long walk, and after botany and the soils interactive lecture where I find myself inside a hole that I helped dig, looking for the B layer of subsoil with a shovel in hand.
On our drop off, we all basically go off on our own into the jungle to learn completely through our own observations and experiences. Before leaving, many of us had agreed on one particular educational experience we planned to test out during this time. Ahem, this involved taking a dump in the woods (a literal drop off) and seeing what cool things would come to our very own supply of nutrients. Unfortunately, I failed. I admit it, I tried to drop a deuce but I just couldn’t relax enough. Basically this is the perfect analogy for how I feel about the rainforest – there is so much going on all the time, there is always another bug biting you or another cool plant to look at or a beautiful morpho butterfly (picture electric blue wings) flapping by or another bird that you cant see screeching from the depths of impenetrable leafy canopy above, so that you cant ever concentrate on one thing. Its like going to the city for the first time after living your whole life in the country. I was really overwhelmed and it put me on edge. It was really cool.
We had a lecture about courtship behavior in Manakins (frugivorous colorful bird inhabitants) by a resident researcher and another one about herpetology eg amphibious and reptilian predators of the leaf litter covering all rainforest ground. We learned about monkey social behaviour, comparing new and old world monkeys – African monkeys are different! We got to know all the little things too – spotting assassin bugs and catching geckos, one night we walked to the comedor and found a huge (and I mean bigger-than-a-grown-up´s-hands huge) toad sitting on the ground next to the path. Traci, who spotted it, picked it up carefully under the encouraging direction of our academic coordinator (Sylvia). She proudly brought it to the resident herpetologist, who promptly declared the species poisonous, at any minute ready to shoot forth yellow toxic liquid at would-be predators and could Traci please take it away from the dinner table.... That was pretty funny. Sylvia will never live it down!
The early mornings were spent in activity rotations – two long walks, and a trip to the tower and a boat float. The morning we went to the tower my group went with a local guide, walking along the lago or lake until a curious wooden structure rose up in front of us. The rickety steps took us upward until we finally could see over the forest canpopy for the first time, a misty sunrise greeting us and as the day began, the louds cleared. It was beautiful and our guide was extremely knowledgeable regarding birdwatching. I was glad also because I spotted King Vultures and a White-collared toucan in the distance, and we enjoyed a Plumbus Kite, Mealy Parrots, blue and gold macaws and others from the view. The foliage just wouldn’t end, stretching out below us a sea of leaves. This was also when, after being forewarned that due to structural weakness we shouldn’t have more than 4 people at the top level of the tower, our guide told all of us (uh 8 total) to come out on top. Luckily the tower didn’t collapse under our feet. On our flotar we drifted along river, looking for birds (hard) and caimans (very hard) though apparently our guide/boat driver Ramiro, saw one, pointed to it and we didn’t see anything. We could hear Howler monkeys in the distance, a haunting sound just like wind blowing. All in all we were pretty lucky, as another group saw a tapir on their boat trip, peccaries, their were two Harpy Eagle sightings, and also Giant River Otters were observed for quite a while. I was happy because I saw lots of monkeys – Squirrel, Wooly, Dusky titi, Spider and Tamarins (adorable) and also because I came across a huge rat snake when a friend and I were trying to conduct a monkey census (no primates, only Mr. Scaley.)
One of my biggest highlights was our night boat ride when we searched for caimans with a gigantic flashlight. Unfortunately, I was the last on the boat meaning I had to sit at the very back far from the light. We soon came upon a black caiman sitting quietly by the river, and of course all 23 of us crowded to the front of the boat for a view. Luckily we didn’t tip it over. Since I couldn’t see that well from the back and it took forever for me to get to the front for a better view, I started talking to Ramiro, who was once again driving the boat. After I started asking about the motor function, Ramiro offered to teach me to drive so I spent the rest of the trip happily learning how to steer, accelerate, reverse, develop a little sense for the current strength and so on. I ran the motor into a tree once when Ramiro was still directing me, but drove all on my own the whole way back to the station without incident. It made me really happy.
We had one more lecture that deserves special mention – it was mainly about the situation of the local Huaorani tribe. Originally hunter-gatherers, we learned that the first contact was made with the Huaorani by missionaries in the 1950s. Since then, their population has grown, they have begun to live much more stationary lifestyles and hunting of animals for foods and illegal trade has increased greatly. Unfortunately, the petrol companies, in order to gain the favor of the Huaorani to use their land, have bought them off in the form of fancy motors for their boats and equipment such as guns. The use of the blowgun has gotten more rare and the threat to local wildlife has really increased. The worry is that, when petrol companies leave the Huaorani will truly be left with nothing because they haven’t been given anything sustainable to work with. They are still largely uneducated and poor. Many don’t speak Spanish and the idea of a bilingual school is very foreign. The researcher giving the lecture has basically said that his research has revolved around investigating population densities of monkeys, who are one of the primary sources of meat for the Huaorani. It is very difficult though, he said, to change attitudes towards hunting and exploiting the wildlife for this purpose, especially when it such an important food source. Culturally, the concept of hunting for food is deeply engrained and indeed the Huaorani word for hunt and the word for jungle is one and the same.
On our last full day we had some free time to get our stuff together and take a little break from lectures, insect collection, monkey tracking etc. I decided to go for a walk and try to do the previously unachievable. I walked up a path for a while and then turned off of it and into a little thicket. After depositing a pile of dung beetle food I headed back to the path to walk a bit more while I waited for the insects to get to work. Soon up ahead I heard some crashing sounds in the distance. Whatever it was, was moving very quietly through the trees, only now and then did I hear noise. I was pretty sure it was monkeys of some kind but I couldn’t see through the foliage. After tracking for a while I was rewarded with a quick view of a Spider monkey, it looked at me, and then disappeared again in the trees. I backtracked listening and then one and then another crossed directly overhead, scampering along a thick branch and pausing to look down at me while pretending to groom itself. Their prehensile tails and efficient movements really separated them from the noisy little Squirrel monkeys and even the wooly´s. These guys hardly made noise and it saddened me to realize that the reason for their stealth was probably related to the fact that these primates were the most sought after as food by the Huaorani. I headed back to check on my insect attractor and realized that I had used a tree as my landmark. Five minutes later found me desperately still searching for a pile of excrement, as thunder rolled overhead and rain suddenly started coming down. Usually the foliage blocks light rain, but this was beginning to feel like quite a storm. I could only laugh at the situation, scrambling from thicket to thicket in the rain, looking for a pile of crap so I could observe the flies and hoping to get back in time for our last lecture. Finally I found it, observed for a moment, took a picture for future reference and raced back to the cabins. I must admit that running through the rainforest, during a rainstorm, in the mud, and with a path visibility factor of -2 (eg decreasing), was a wonderful sensation.
So no worries, I did not get eaten by a caiman, or even chased by a jaguar riding a manatee, and in all seriousness, I managed to avoid getting bitten by a venomous Conga Ant or “Bullet Ant” as it is also called, while trying to catch it in a glass jar so we could look at it better. The trip was amazing, I would love to go back some day. Future research? Who knows.

Homestay Family, Climbing Pichincha

So Intag was great. But there wasn’t much time to digest it all once we came back. The next morning, I found myself standing awkwardly with my fellow students in front of large group of happy looking Ecuadorians. Two guys were playing a guitar and singing, around 50 others were carrying flowers and other little gifts and generally looking quite well groomed. Yes it was that time of the semester – HOMESTAY!!! We all crowded around trying both to find our parents and not step on anybody else in the process. I was a little nervous and more than a little self-conscious though I figured my family probably wouldn’t have a hard time finding my family. I was finally greeted by a rather motherly-looking smiling Ecuadorian woman. My new mother´s name is Ingrid and she pulled me to a corner of the crowd and introduced me to my new father, Ruben. Hugs all around, I presented them with a small cake I had bought that morning, they gave me an Ecuadorian bracelet. We finally left the hotel, and we got into their car (medium-sized, can´t remember the model, well-kept) and drove off to the northern side of Quito. On the way started getting acquainted and talked about Namibia and Intag and then my parents started pointing out roads and landmarks and buses so that I could get easily oriented. I found out that my family was very helpful like that, they always explained where I could get stuff, which bus with which colored letters would get me where, how I could get pirated DVDs for a dollar etc. Basically Quito has a few long main roads and everything else leads from those, so its not difficult to find your way around. My new residency turned out to be right next to the airport in a little complex (complete with gate and guard) and the house itself is small but homey. Nicely decorated, dining room table for Sunday lunch and guests as far as I can tell, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, living room dining room, little garden in front, sweet view of car company office buildings from the roof – which is where they hang their laundry to dry. I have two brothers whom I met shortly before lunch – Sebastian and Ruben (17 and 19 respectively), who I have enjoyed hanging out with a lot so far. They´re very sporty and fun to spend time with in the house. As far as I can tell they are neither terribly studious nor wild party animals, and I´m currently developing a master plan to get them to take me along to the gym and also get a membership. On Sundays my family had a big lunch, and went shopping twice in the afternoon. I went with my parents to the nearby “supermaxi” grocery store and was shocked to find bottles of South African produced Amarula in the liquor section. I explained the origin to Ingrid who then explained to me which liquors she liked best to cook with. Ruben (papa) as we call him is a businessmen who sells seafood and Ingrid works in an office in town but I´m still confused as to what exactly she does. Ruben is currently on vacation from the Catholic University and Sebastian is at a private high school. Apparently in Quito many private schools are cheaper and better than public schools, and only some have basketball teams. At least, this is what Sebastian told me when we went outside and shot hoops for a while before dinner.
We (Ingrid, Sebastian and I) also went to church before dinner (which is usually around 8:00 at night (yay) and not the main meal of the day (aka soup)).
Church was interesting – catholic service, of which I understood was the sermon because the guy spoke pretty clearly, but this comprehension was wasted on my brain that decided to block it out after a while. I couldn’t tell whether we were supposed to stand when we were singing or when we were praying or both, when we were supposed to lift up our hands or not and opted against crossing myself three times in a row at some point. I also managed to accidentally use the kneeling bench (name?) as a foot rest but caught myself before anyone noticed.
Suddenly everyone started getting up and going to the front. I was confused so I asked Ingrid. My conversation with her went somewhat as follows (in spanish.)
Me: where are all the people going?
Ingrid: they´re going to go eat the body…
Me: uh… oh you mean the body of Christ, the blood, they eat those-
Ingrid: yes, they get a wafer
(Silence for a long moment)
Me: why are some of them gong and not others?
Ingrid: well they decided whether they are cleansed enough to do so, if they have gone to confession enough…
Me: how do they know if they have gone enough? How often do you have to go to confession?
Ingrid: well that depends on them, whether they feel they have sinned, if they haven’t then they don’t have to go, the church doesn’t force people to go to confession a certain number of times per month
(ok so I don’t really know anything about Catholicism. It took me ten minutes to figure out what the people in the line next to the little rooms with the priests inside were waiting for. I also haven’t figured out how religious my family really is. They were going to skip church when they found out I was Jewish until I said I wanted to see what it was like.)
So for the last two weeks I´ve gotten into a schedule – classes start at 8 in the morning, so I jump on a bus around 7:30, that goes to Estacion Norte, I grab a free newspaper and take the trolley into the central part of town (this costs me 25 cents total.) I then walk up Mariana de Jesus, after getting off at the stop and go to Spanish class in the Experimento. We usually have lectures from 10:30 onwards and we learned about petrol conflict in the amazon, economics of a waterbasin project in northern Ecuador and botany among others. Around one we are either done for the day or on lunch break, I usually go to an internet café every couple of days and check email. Work has mostly involved readings and one analysis paper as well as group discussions.

On that Friday, we had an excursion to nearby mountain Pasachoa. The drive in traffic took an hour and a half though it was a thirty minute climb. We found ourselves at a clump of buildings which were reception, bathrooms and accommodation, and from which we headed out for an educational walk in the woods complete with guides and our Spanish teachers as well. We learned a lot about the vegetation and medicinal use of some of the plants. The guide gave me a little yellow flower to chew on. It made my tongue go numb for a few seconds and tasted horrible. The woods were similar to those of Intag but dryer and higher up too. At a look out gap in the trees we could see across a valley and to the next row of mountains.
We ate lunch and everyone prepared to go home except for 3 friends and I who ambitiously had decided the day before to stay overnight at Pasachoa and hike the mountain the next day. Sarah, Zab, Christa and I were shown to a nice bare room with mattresses and also were allowed to use the kitchen to boil water. After the others left, we took a little walk of our own, hung out eating chocolate spread and stared at some llamas that passed by our room. The hike we planned to take was estimated at 4-5 hours (depending on sign) and was supposed to take us on a walk along the Pasachoa crater (remember Andes = volcanoes) and hopefully with a look out over the nest of Condors. These amazing birds are 1 m tall and are the national bird of Ecuador, so we really hoped to see one. The next morning we started hiking around 6:15, passing through the forest from before and onwards through bamboo thicket and then paramo. The paramo is a bit like an alpine savannah – take away the acacias, add a very steep slope and lots of pretty flowers and strange bushes. The path led us on and on, from one spectacular view to the next, we walked along the ridge of the mountain. The path was so steep that we were in pain and out of breath most of the time. Our climb was interrupted by gasps of surprise at the view or at a new exotic flower. A couple of great quotes were mentioned including:
Zab: “looking at this scenery I really feel like we should be sprinting after orcs with our longbows”
Sarah: “toilet paper? But we can wipe with melastomataceae”
We were exhausted as we finally started approaching the rock. The mist was thickening around us and soon we couldn’t see into the bowl of the crater. We continued through another forest to avoid rock climbing and found ourselves on something you could hardly call a path, we ducked under branches, used vines and leaves to pull ourselves ever upwards, grateful for a chance to use our arm muscle to help our aching legs out. Finally, we reached the first peak of rock and scrambled up a steep face aided by a tree. The drop was somewhat terrifying and as we looked upwards we saw the top of the peak but nothing else. Cloud had completely covered our view of the crater, so we couldn’t see any condors. It also prevented us from realising that we weren’t at the second peak yet so we never made it that far. However, as we climbed down to try to overlook the crater from the ridge of the mountain we could hear a sound similar to that of an eagle screeching. We listened to them as we snacked and Sarah climbed a tree. This was also after Zab and Christa had to beg me not to attempt to climb all the way to the top of the first peak, the rock so treacherous looking that they thought I wouldn’t be able to make it down. I sort of agreed with them but I wanted to climb it so badly that they had to threaten my physical restraint.
Much laughter accompanied our descent (slide) back through the forest. At some point we found ourselves using vines to rapel down a muddy face. Except for Zab, we all managed to fall in the mud, and since I was in front I got the worst of it. I avoided a rock face that we had climbed on the way up, but while leaning on a branch across the path, my legs slid out from underneath me and I found myself hanging from it by both arms, completely suspended. This was almost as funny as when Zab finally fell into a puddle at the very end of the hike for no apparent reason. The hike took us five hours to ascend and 2.5 to descend. That´s how steep it was. We made it back to Quito eventually, catching a green bus into the old city. We later found out that condors are quiet birds, so we probably hadn’t heard them after all.

Monday was carnaval and Ingrid took me to Mitad del Mundo – the ecuator. It was in a touristy area north of Quito, with some museums and restaurants and clowns whose jokes I didn’t get and tasty mora ice cream. The roads were packed with people trying to go to swiiming pools and spraying each other with water and foam, as is customary for carnival. In the afternoon, my family and I went to visit Ruben (papa)´s mother. I learned to play a card game and then over a very nice dinner, my abuela (grandmother) made me explain why the Jews killed Jesus. We didn’t really resolve the ensuing argument. Oh well.

The next day we had another excursion, this one to the paramo with a local botany expert who was very knowledgeable. Unfortunately the weather was miserable, and midmorning found us frozen to the bone by wind and rain, and me stomping around in wet muddy fields trying to look for insects for our field investigation project, and wondering why no one had told us to bring our botas de caucho (rubber boots.) We stopped to observe a pipeline and a lake that had been polluted by oil. Detergents had been put into it to break down the petroleum but these had other effects on the vegetation. Wasn’t very pretty, especially in the rain. The late afternoon was spent at las agues thermals – hot springs – of Papallacta, where we warmed up in swimming pools full of Ecuadorians.

Yesterday (Saturday) I took a ride on the “Teleferiqo” with 6 friends – basically a ski lift or cable car – up Pichincha, one of the mountains directly overlooking Quito. It was a beautiful view of the city and we soon embarked on another hike up to the top of the mountain. We were in paramo habitat again and we kept pausing to look at cool plants and make silly videos with my digital camera about the vegetation in which I referred to lichen as a plant on accident. I was the only one to actually make it all the way to the top of that mountain partly because the way was brutal near the top and partly because I´m dumb. I chose (badly) to ascend the sandy path instead of the trail. I figured it would be just like a nice shaley dune, and it was, except that I forgot how hard they were to climb. Three steps forward two steps back, I was at least 4000m high, and once I hit the ridge I refused to turn back after all the effort. The view was amazing. Two friends and I made it that far to look out over the other side of the mountain amongst boulders and cliff faces, and then I did some rock climbing. The top was awesome, full 360 view from the top of an Ande, Quito and sky included. Then I ran half way down the mountain to catch up with my friends and fell down a lot.