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.