Last day in Quito for a while

We leave for the Galapagos tomorrow.   We could have very easily spent $6000 on cruises, but we got a last-minute first class boat for 5 days to go to some of the islands and then we'll spend the rest of our time doing land-based excursions or some other small island-hopping.  We start tomorrow with a nice hotel near Puerto Arroyo,  I believe.   Then Friday,  we get picked up to meet the boat, the tip top iii

Galapagos:  we have a 5-day cruise on a 104 foot (22 foot beam) cruiser with two 17 foot zodiac launches, it including snorkeling,  wetsuits and kayaking,  a fullsized bed!, private bathroom and shower, all food and soft drinks (no drinky drinks,  so you know how that can add up, although you do get wine with dinner), a night in a first class hotel and airport transfer.

Not bad, really.  I am pleased and we got about 65% off on a last minute trip.  I am also pleased because it's very water-based and a lot of the  wildlife is in the water, obviously.   Personally,  I will be giddy to swim with any of the following:  hammerhead sharks, sea lions, dolphins, big weird swimming iguanas, nothing at all but the Galapagos waters, 12-15 foot wide manta rays, fish.

Then we'll stomp around the islands on some small independent trips, which I think we'll like.  I have this odd fantasy about drinking rum out of a paper bag, eating some kind of Beast on a Stick and staring at weird wildlife lounging around and not caring whether or not I am there at all.

This is ourblast night staying at a lovely compound in the suburbs of Quito that might be well placed in almost any 80's drug movie.  Gerrit, the expat Dutchman that owns the place, keeps meticulous care of the place (or has his various servants do so), massive gardens, bird life is flush, more hummingbirds and several bird calls I can't readily identify.  It's a good distance out of the city, in a very elite area, behind a guarded gate and then 10 foot high walls.  It's quite secluded and each one way cab ride has cost me more than any of my other hotel stays.  however,  a good excursion to the local shopping mall, which would not be  out of place on the north shore of long island, might be needed to secure a few comforts. 

It's really got to be said, Gerrit's been an amazing host.  I would happily spend more time here, if it fit our budget.

Right now, we're cutting weight as they limit all gear brought over to less than 23 kilos per person.  Massive rain boots and other heavy gear can stay in storage here at the compound.   We'll pick it up on our way back into Quito.

Leaving yanayacu

This place feels like a rainy coastal maine to me, except only rainy.  So maybe Sitting here with my ever-present nescafe, I can and see the endless fighting of the hummingbirds,  the pattering rain coming down, the cool humidity hanging in the air...  I am looking out over very raw land which I have been able to explore in miniature.  It's been utterly fascinating.   I have been so charmed and awed by this place that I have to stop myself from just blathering about it to the people by me.

"Hey!  Look at the hummingbirds!   They're fighting!   ...or flying in little groups!   ...or at the feeders! ..."

"Yes, we know...  we're here.  We've seen your little videos where you get right in their faces, etc...  thanks. "

As i write this, a hummingbird buzzes my morning coffee, attracted to the neon-pink mug, it tears in and out aggressively like a bike gangster in miniature.

My wife asked me yesterday (via email) what I thought about the week and what I had learned.  In short, a lot.  I have been having a bit of a hard time articulating it even to myself.  

I have been reminded,  very intensely,  of my love of nature and the outdoors.   I have indulged in a constant sense of geeky fascination for nature.   This has been really helped by Tom and Andrea here, whose own unconstrained,  rampant love of nature and this place is infectious.

I just saw a medium sized bird scoop up a meandering moth 3 feet away and then light on a branch to finish its meal.

I have begun to think that understanding diversity is a far more interesting question than climate change.   How does nature react?  A big driving idea for the project here is understanding how climate change affects relationships between the caterpillars and their host plants.   Yanayacu is in a unique position:  the temperature here is one of the most consistent jn the world, apparently.   The diversity here is massive,  making it an ideal spot to explore some of these relationships, which, well, might just be disturbed by a bunch of ants coming along and eating the whole experiment,  as can happen in the lowlands.   New animals are discovered here all the time.

I have been impressed to hell by some of my fellow travelers,  as Mary Jo and Guy, aged 70+, have not only kept up, but often led the way, both in difficult hikes and in ideas and creativity.   I may have met another one of my possible futures, I hope.

I feel the need for a shower, but no desire to do anything about it.  We're in open air and then the bus (which has windows) to the locally luxurious Hotel Quito,  where hot showers, a heated pool and a Jacuzzi await.

Cataloguing caterpillars

For the last 2 days, i think I've had one of the more fascinating jobs here at the station:  taking up-close images of each caterpillar that has been collected recently.   There is incredible diversity among them and I must have seen more than 100 varieties.  While I do enjoy stomping around the rainforest,  I've really been fascinated by all of the little differences.

Sunshine day

Today was sunny without rain for the entire day, our meteorological miracle.  We went out along a river trail,  hanging heavy pinkbelly piper plants up in the canopy, in an effort to find the effects of altitude on the plants and the small ecosystems surrounding them.  As small differences here can make a massive difference,  a difference of 15-20 feet can have an entirely different result on the kind of bugs that would colonize them. 

What this involved was having a group of us stomp a mile or so onto the trail and using the ropes that were put up in the previous days and belaying the plants up.  Kind of tricky, actually and it needed the 3 sets of hands yhat we had along to make it happen.  

Later, Andrea, one of the doctoral students running this experiment,   and I went off to the sites to take pictures and document the locations.  It's a beautiful trail and the sun was beaming down through the trees in a way I haven't seen yet.  Curiously,  this could mess up the readings we took as it will usually be cloudy here.   Tomorrow,  we'll take more readings in the hopes of crappier weather...

Tena, Ecuador

As a group, we went down to Tena in the lowlands to get a break from the cold and rainy cloud forest.  Of course, it rained the entire drive through some challenging switchbacks that our drivr handled well, but not without fraying many of his passengers' nerves. 

In tena, the rain continued to hammer down as we went to a local pizza place for dinner.  Really nice, actually.  

Tena is loaded with tourists from all over and the locals are pretty used to gringos stomping about with giant backpacks and the like.   it's the main launching off point for trips into the Amazon and other local trips.   Good for outfitting,  a couple of bars and basic hotels,  etc.  For the overwhelming majority,  South American towns simply haven't been too impressive,  but how many cities really are?   Get done what you need to get done and then get out and see some pretty.

Sasquatch does not exist, by the way.

Just in case you were wondering...  Interestingly enough, our neghbor out here is Jim mcclarin, the man who heavily investigated Sasquatch in the 1960's.  He's now out here hunting beetles,  which seem vastly easier to find.

As he said during breakfast one morning, afrer a long listening-about the subject, "In 9 years of searching,  I have seen no conclusive evidence that Bigfoot exists." 

http://bigfootbooksblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/informal-interview-with-jim-mcclarin.html

Cataloguing caterpillars

For the last 2 days, i think I've had one of the more fascinating jobs here at the station:  taking up-close images of each caterpillar that has been collected recently.   There is incredible diversity among them and I must have seen more than 100 varieties.  While I do enjoy stomping around the rainforest,  I've really been fascinated by all of the little differences.

How climate change affects species and what is the point of looking at caterpillars in the middle of the rainforest on another continent... ?

In very brief,  we've been learning about many of the discoveries and what motivates Tom and Lee and other researchers here at the station in the work at this site and in other places.

So, evolution works slowly, taking millions of years in cases.   Species interactions become highly specialized.  One of the problems with climate change is that it is causing changes more rapidly that species can adaot.  Small changes can make very big differences around the food web that result in imbalances or a loss of species or ecosystems.   We really don't know all of the plants and animals in the world or how they interact with others.  As Lee outs it, "there are books and books that no one has ever read and the library is burning down."

This happens at home, on the eastern seaboard of the United states:  birds migrate north slightly earlier than they had been, perhaps a week of two earlier than they used to, but their traditional food supply, the horseshoe crab eggs,  are not there yet.  The result?   A significant number of birds are underweight,  can't make the flight North to established breeding grounds or can't successfully breed once they get there.   Within a few seasons,  a species can collapse.

Of course, this can happen in many directions.

Caterpillars are very abundant and voracious eaters.  Here in the rainforest,  we might not notice because there's so much growth, but slight changes still make big differences.  Parasites that live off caterpillars are very delicate and can't survive without a host.  If those hosts are moving on a day or two ahead of the parasites' development,  then the parasites won't survive.   Parasites die, caterpillars thrive more than they had, more plants get eaten and the system goes out of balance.

In addition, many crops can have pests controlled through biological control,  by introducing their predators to the crops rather than showering crops with pesticides.   This also helps to preserve pollinators such as bees.

Traveler's "troubles"

Ooh boy, this kind of thing does happen a lot, but I am usually pretty lucky and haven't had to deal with this issue in a while.

of course, my room is the farthest room away from the bathroom,  down an awkward set of stairs and then 50 feet from the main building.   2 days later, it has passed, and I am "farting with confidence, " as an Aussie friend of mine once described it.

Thank goodness for modern meds.

A needle in a haystack, at home in the world

I have been learning so much about these things and generally becoming much more comfortable with bugs in general.   Amazing how it is once you understand a thing a bit more. 

Tomorrow,  I am going to shoot a bunch of the bug in "La machina," or the large garage they have set up to raise caterpillars into moths/butterflies.

One of my friends in Brooklyn had asked me, "what the hell arenyou doing?  You live in an apartment! "  seeming to wonder how I could want to go bug hunting down here.  I often think 2 things when I am in a place :  the first is that people live here, so I can certainly survive.   The second is that  if thus is what there us to do in a place I'm at, then that's what I'll do.

It has been a fascinating few days.  Today was a full day, woke up after a fever ( which I welcomed, usually meaning the end of an illness like the one I had), went caterpillar hunting in the thick of the heavy rainforest and then climbed an incredibly tricky trail to find an elusive plant, one very common, but not at that altitude.  Those knee-high boots were well used today.  What a mess. And yet, there were some moments where I was off on my own, in the middle of nowhere, listening to nature.  We went up very high on this trail, stomping overgrown trails and  slipping in insane mud, but it was fun!  This guy, named Guy, who is 60+, came with us and I knew I had to at least keep up.

But then I was alone for a while, I saw the woods by themselves,  this quiet trail that I had spent 3 hours trying to identify plants on and them different birds started their calls.  It must have been 5pm, it was as if someone told them all to get started.  In the distance,  mist clung to the mountains and it all seemed... normal.  

I was very pleased that we even found one of the plants, but I got very lucky:  I stopped looking for the pink color and started looking for other elements of the plant.  it was literally looking for one small plant in a forest of plants like it.   Amazing that we found one.

Dawn in the forest

The sky begins to merely lighten in the constant overcast view.  Heavy mist clings to the mountains on the other side of the valley,  it shifts slightly as the temperature drops just enough to notice.   A light rain begins to play a light rhythm on the tin roof.  A small bird adds its call to the dawn sound.

Beyoo-BOO!   Beyoo-BOO!

Some small insect joins in with its light percussive sound, uncertain as the triangle player in an orchestra when he only has a few notes to play.   And then becoming too excited in the moment.

CliICK!  Cli-ICK!

clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick click!

And the other dmall birds of the forest join in as the rain slows to a patter and works its way down the drains as the light slowly rises.

Sunny Baeza

This place is just peeing rain.  As it was described to me, it's going to be some kind of meteorological miracle if it does not rain the entire time we're here.  All the locals are stomping around in big yellow boots.  Might not need the sunglasses for the week, but wearing them anyway.   I need to shake off a but if my newyoriqueno qualities.   Calla lillies seem to grow wild and the new roads  are pretty good, except it still feels like an amusement park ride.  I was riding in the back and just kind of dealing with it for a few hours by blasting Link Wray.  Something about the Surf Sound makes for the right feeling on these roads.  

The nice thing is that there are hummingbirds everywhere.

We went on a 3 mile hike today through the nearby oath, a very well maintained trail with plenty of log bridges to cross the 20 or so streams we met.  Tom, who is one of the researchers directing this, introduced us to some of the plants and caterpillars we'll be searching for.  They're very small, for the most part.   Extremely small, with the occasional biggun.   Tom explained that while there  are many very large caterpillars,  the biggest variety are 1 inch and less.  Somehow,  I expected much bigger, but it makes sense. 

That said, one of the research assistants explained how she was alone at the base recently and hadnto kill a black widow in her bedroom with a sandal and a woman accidentally stepped on a 2-inch beetle in the toilet, which made everyone a little unhappy:  the woman,  the researchers,  the big fat beetle,  everyone.   It languished on a table while everyone flopped it around for a bit before being tossed into the scrubby grass to complete its cycle of life. 

Sunny Baeza

This place is just peeing rain.  As it was described to me, it's going to be some kind of meteorological miracle if it does not rain the entire time we're here.  All the locals are stomping around in big yellow boots.  Might not need the sunglasses for the week, but wearing them anyway.   I need to shake off a but if my newyoriqueno qualities.   Calla lillies seem to grow wild and the new roads  are pretty good, except it still feels like a n amusement park ride.

The nice thing is that there are hummingbirds everywhere.

The wrong way to arrive in Quito

After a late flight into Quito,  I met my driver who immediately apologized for not taking me directly into the city.  Quito now has  program of traffic control that is very strongly policed.   My driver had the wrong numbered plate to enter the city during rush hour, so we took a super slow route to get to the hostel.  It was a "bit of tourism" as my driver said, done at less than 50kph.  It took 3 hours to get there, including a prolonged stop on the side of a major highway as we watched locals try their luck running across 6 lanes of otherwise high-speed traffic.

At $100 a ticket,  I really couldn't fault him for waiting.   It would hardly be worth his while.   By comparison,  someone would be quite happy to earn $100 in a week here, if they could.

And so I got to know Omar and the many concerns a man making a living in Quito mighf have.  As with most cabbies, he was happy to talk for the whole ride, a real test of my Spanish first thing.

When I finally arrived at the hostel,  I did everything I could to acclimate badly to the altitude:  I had few beers, avoided water, ate a heavy meal and went to bed late.  My normal program might be utterly the opposite.

And so I am dragging today and can definitely feel the effects of the altitude.   Coming from sea level in Panama,  it's not so surprising.  A slow start and slow moving around is what's in order, I think.

Packing light

I am trying to make some harsh choices between gear that I think I'll need and what I actually will.  It's amazing how much everything adds up and while I am not going to be out in the middle of nowhere too often (there is usually a place to do laundry, for example), I'd rather not be wearing the same shirt every day.

Right now, this is the first pack and I am trying to see where I can lighten my gear, realizing that I am probably going to go more than a week without access to laundry while I am in the forest.

Large backpack - Crestrail 70L (70 liter volume)

smaller pack for traveling around - I am borrowing this from a friend.

headlamp

flask for whiskey 

ear plugs 

bug repellent

bathing suit

camping towel - the poly type, nothing else dries, really

Fleece vest

long sleeved fleece (the blue one)

4 cotton t-shirts

3 poly t-shirts

1 long poly t shirt

8 pairs of underwear

8 pairs of socks, including some hiking types

short sleeve adventure shirt

long sleeve adventure shirt

jeans

rain jacket

short with pockets

tech pants - the one that turn into shorts

waterproof pants (for the rain forest part)

tall wellingtons (for the rain forest part)

chaco sandals

hiking boots (I wish I didn't feel like I need to carry so many kinds of shoes)

solar panel

SLR camera & 2 lenses

tablet and charger stuff

Not sure about phone, but may do for music, etc.

toothbrush

Getting comfortable with the unknown

I think that what I am finding most fascinating about this trip is that this is a part of the world I really have very little understanding of.  This is from a piece by Lee Dyer, the man in charge of our research work in the forest in Ecuador.

I thought of our collective ignorance of the ecosystems that humans are a part of and how my initial fears were driven by an ignorance that no amount of books, lectures, and carefully planned experiments could remove. I realized that, both as a scientist and a naturalist, learning basic natural history in the forest is a hands-on, at times gut-wrenching process. The more I personally experience this forest, the more I love its terrifying complexity and understand how it might be managed-and saved.

The rest of the article is here.

I have lived around Brooklyn for a long time now & I grew up in suburban Long Island, not a deeply-forested place.  We grew up with this odd fear of nature.  I never really appreciated this until I I was on a bus ride in Patagonia ten years ago.  I was watching the countryside go by, the moon rising over the scrubby outback desert and I felt this fear rising in my chest and I grew really anxious as I realized that I was just inside of a bus in the middle of nowhere.  It was a well-traveled road for those parts, nothing more than a day away in any direction.

After about 15 minutes of nameless panic, quiet and internal as I sat in my bus seat, looking out at the world around me with an intense fear of isolation and, well, I had no idea what.  And in that moment, I feel like I started to let myself embrace that kind of uncertainty.  The plain fact is that you'll almost never know what is going to happen to you from day to day, in familiar places or not.

Interesting statistics on Ecuador

• Ecuador covers 0.005 percent of the Earths surface.
• 10 percent of all plant species on earth exist here (more than all of North America).
• 1600 bird species are known to live in or frequent Ecuador, most of them in the Oriente region (east of the Andes into the could forest & down into the Amazon basin).  
• A recent study of the Ecuadorian Amazon basin found 3,000 different types of beetles in a 12-meter square area.
• 12 square meters is about 130 square feet or about 1/2 the size of my bedroom in my apartment in Brooklyn.  If I find one kind of beetle in that whole place, I freak out a little.  

One theory is that the Amazon region had been incredibly unique as far back as the Pleistocene era and with that much time for unique animals to live together, all of them evolved to find their own micro-niches within the ecosystem.

If I ever came home to find 3,000 beetles living together in a space the size of my bedroom, I think I would have to move.  Quickly.

Preparing to get wet

I will be staying at the Yanayacu Biological Station for about 10 days.

After looking at some of their advice on gear and activities, it looks like I am really going to need that second pair of rain pants that I was hoping to leave out of my pack.

From the Yanayacu website section for packing suggestions:

Prepare to get wet. This means bring rain gear. A rain suit is better than a poncho. It also means that you should consider bringing several changes of clothes with the idea of keeping several for "wet" or outdoor activities and several for "dry" or indoor activities. This way, no matter how poorly your rain gear functioned while out in the forest, you have something dry to put on when you return.