Yanayacu

After our Galpageno adventures we all headed off on our own to do internships. I went to the opposite side of the country as everyone in my group and went to Yanayacu Biological Station and Center for Creative Studies --- www.yanayacu.org if you'd like to checker out. While I was there I helped on a project that was started by a man named Lee Dyer about 8 years ago. It is a called: Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes. I helped collect caterpillas essentially with the gusaneros: Wilmer and Lucho. Wilmer has been working on the project for about 5 years I believe. There are about 1,200 species of Caterpillars that they have collected.

oh yes another thing. A parasitod is a organism that spends part of its life on or attached to a host and eventually kills its host.

We'd do transects to find caterpillars or just look for them on the side of the rode OR beat bamboo with sticks. :D

Then we would enter data on the lil buggers and try to make them adults. some made it, some weren't as fortunate (actually if they make it into the lab they all die :( ) then there are some...actually around 60% that are killed by parasitoids

this stuff is way cooler to tell w/pictures and it takes FOREVER to upload them on here so i will eave it at that for now.

Yanayacu was a really beautiful place but I had a difficult itme there because for 90% of the time I was the only English speaker. All of the Ecuadorians (all guys pretty much from ages 18-24 and one women 27 w/ a baby) were already friends and joked around all the time. I tried being apart of this and even though my spanish has improved it is difficult to speak and understand when it is a larger group of people. When it was a smaller group it was usally ok. I also learned how to play rummy and cuarenta. and I got pretty good at rummy and I enjoyed beating the boys everyonce in awhile.

tomorrow morning I'm leaving here at 4:30 am to get to the airport to fly to Lima Peru. i don't think we have time to go to machu pichu (or dinero) this time through but we still might visit cusco. On may 24 my friend jean and i are going to ARGENTINA

mas galapagos

i'll just finish up a little on the Galapagos, but I'll make it shorter and sweeter. After our 8 day cruise we returned to San Cristobal and had to do mini group projects much like we did in the rainforest. I worked with my friends Jean and Dana. We studied schooling behavior over sandy and rocky substrate. We hypothesized that there would be more schools over sandy substrate because it is harder to find food there (less niches because lots of stuff can grow in rocks) and also because there are fewer places to hide over sandy substrate. We did it at two different beaches and there was a signficant different at one beach, but not the other. But we did find a lot of other significant differences like size of schools, and were they were located in the water column . there were bigger schools over sandy and were more often found on the surface (plankton?)

Then we had a test. It was really hard. but it was fun snorkeling for the field exam. My prof kicked me during the exam (on accident when diving down) and there were people wearing thong bikinis on the beach as well and those two things don't happen too often during an exam .

for our fun day we went to isla lobo and leon dormiendo/kicker rock. and isla lobo there were tonssssssssssssss of baby sea lions. it is like a little nursery for them while mama goes and hunts. We got to play with the sea lions which was one of the happiest things in the world. They would twist and twirl around you. Then they would swim rigth at your face and you would be worried they were going to collide into you and then they would take off in another direction. It was soooo cute. I loved every second of it. Then after playing for over an hour we went off to kicker rock. This snorkeling site was really deep so there wasn't too many cool fish stuff, but we did see some sharks and rays. but the walls of the huge rock were magnificent! The walls were covered in christmas tree worms, star fish, sea fans, barnacles and it was every color you could imagine.


also I'm going to take a paragraph or two to rewiiiind back to one of the days on Santa Cruz. Before we got on the boat for santa cruz we went to a farm to look at tortoises and on this da there happened to be a lot of rain. And for once I am not exaddrating ;) . So we took a bus to the farm and it parked while we scurried off to chase some tortoises. We walked adn walked in the rain and then there was more rain and then there were some tortoises. On the way back we had to cross some....streams...no not streams....rivers...no not rivers....more like rapids. Then finally we arrived at the bus..but before arriving to the bus there was a "rapid" right behind it. The bus driver also seemed a little worried...peculiar.... So once we got closer we also noticed there was another raging river in front of us. We were stuck. So while everyone was franticially figuring what to do we were sitting inside dying of hungery (aka really hungry not really dying.) Then Colleen and I decided we were hungry and bored and wanting a good photo opportunity. So we grabbed our snorkel gear and headed off the bus, on the way we came across our professor Cath. Who said we were going to cross the river one by one, and then suitcase by suitcase and that it was getting dark so there was no time to DICK AROUND. let me remind you at this moment I was wearing a mask and a snorkel........but no worries this did not detriment Colleen and I from our wonderful photo op. Then we did exactly what Cath said and crossed the raging rapids one by one and bag by bag. So once we and the bags were across we loaded them up into a gravel truck on the opposite side and then we all hoped in. So all 15 of us are on top of this huge gravel truck filled with gravel and we started bacing up. yup, we were going to back the 15 min drive out of there. Well maybe 3 min into backing up we hear a popping noise and the truck stops. We blew a tire. So we unloaded ourselves. and the bags. The guide said it was a fifteen min walk. We all decided that is a short little jaunt so we grabbed our bags (that were filled with clothes, sun block, snorkel gear to last a month) and started walking up the road. everything this day seem to be "15" min. but this walk was more like over an hour. We were hungry, tired, andddddd a little crabby at this point. To top it off my boats had worn away the skin on my calfs leaving bloody strips. (and I still have marks from them!)

before more galapagos perhaps a little culture overview?

Ok so I guess I never gave the run down on how things happen here. Here are a few little quirks and phrases

1. people are usually late...no suprise we are probably one of the only countries who are on time

2. People use the word America/Americans for people here (naturally) so people could be offended when I say I'm from America or what have you. but i've never ran into this problem

3. There is a lot of soup

4. Sometimes there is meat in the soup but the meat has a bone...I never know the proper way of eating it

5. the meat is very tough...I think Ecuadorians have stronger teeth or something I can never rip it to chew a smaller piece.

6. Catcalling is common and many women whom are not cat called are actually offended. common calls: hola nina, guapa, princessa etc

7. I'm a staggering 5 feet 4 inches and taller than many men here.

8. People point with their lips

9. a finger wag is also a common way to say no

10. they dont' eat peanut butter and jelly. :O.............. and peanut butter is used for sauces (one is on potatos and it is DELICIOUS)

11. Cheese and Jelly is the pb and j equivelent here

12. Common card game: cuarenta.


13. you can make anything with platano (banana thing)

14. Gringo/a/ito/ita can be used as a term of endearment. (gringo is white person or foreigner) gordito/a can also be (more or less means chubby)

15. If you sneeze once you say salud (health), twice it is dinero (money) and third time it is amor (love)

16. they really love salsa de tomate (ketchup) and mayonesa (mayonese). a lot. I have even found bags of potato chips that come with packets!

17. Gordito/a is used for a term of endearment as well (means chubby more or less)

18. Hair Gel is pretty much a must for men

19. Men's jeans often have designs on the backpocket while women's jeans often lack backpockets

20. Lunch is the bigger meal

21. After a big lunch with families or friends they usually drink a little post dinner shot. But they sip the shot.

22. it was hard to find chocolate chips

23. They sell stuff on the street. Anything from fruit to brooms, sunglasses to cellphone charges. There are also a lot of street entertainers that juggle knives, balls, fire or dress up poorly as a robot

24. Rice is served at 90% of the meals. and I'm not even sick of it yet

25. To greet you kiss one time on the cheeck, this is also to say good bye

26. When people arrive somewhere they say hello to everysingle person individually and do the same as they leave. no big GOOD BYE with a wave here

27. Being a gringita the taxi drivers love to try and ripe me off. Unlucky for them I know better than to pay 10 bucks to get home (it should only be about 3 and 5 at the most) I also have improved my arguing skills.

La Costa y Los Galapagos

long time no talk.

soooooo March 6-March14? My familia was here and we all had a swell time in the galapagos and in banos. and My dad bought many many things in Otavalo (suprise suprise) sooo I'm going to fast forward a bit toooooooooo what happened next.

On the 18 of March we arrived at the coast. WE first stopped at a place called Piqueros Patas Azules ( blue footed booby ... well blue feet. and piquero is for the way they dive) and we checked out some of the intertidal life there like limpets and oliva, urchins, vacitas del mar ( super cute slugs, but means little cow of the sea), also saw lots of sea stars and sun stars etc. all that good stuff. All of it was also on very slippery rock. AHHHHHH. no worries. I didn't fall.

We did lots of intertidal jazzy stuff and look at cepholods, more slipper rock . got a little sun burtn and all and all had a good time.

AND THEN (oh man, you better be excitied for this....(my spelling is getting worse (and so is my punctuation use ))))))))))) we went to a FISH MARKET. It smelt bad. There were fish. ze end.
(i'm tired) No actually the fish markte was really cool and interesting because you get to see deep sea fish that you usually odn't get to see. Plus it was a small artesinal business so it is more or less done sustainably although some fish/sharks should not be fished. At the fish market we found some Dorado, all sorts of tuna, sea robin, hammer heads and other sharks. The current president unbanned shark finning (dumby). We also saw a flounder , calamari (at some of this too, but not at the market), swordfish, rays and manta rays, pufferfish .

AND THENNNNNNNNNNN

ze Galapagos!!!!!!

We stayed on San Cristobal and we had families here as well. Once again I had an awesome family. They had a 12 year daugher and a 21 year old son, but the son is in the navy/marines? so he stays in guayquil . They also had another gringa staying with them. She spoke very little spanish which is a shame. they also had a superrrrrr cute dog. We were on San Cristobal for maybe threeish days practicing our snorkeling skills and working on intertidal zones then we whent on an eight day boat trip. vahoohoo boat. and camera two died somewhere in here. i turn out to be a little bit of a butter fingers (or perhaps it was all that sunblock) and dropped the camera...but it was fine....until i brought it into the water. the drop made it the opposite of water proof......my bad. SORRY MOM

The boat venture started on Isla Santa Cruz. We looked at plants etc and then got on the boat. I also told a really funny joke that day about a girl and a swing. If you haven't heard it yet make sure I tell you RIGHT when I get back. It is a good one.

Day two we went to Isla Genovesa. We looked at lots of birdies. Such as boobies ( haha I saw boobies and tities on my study abroad. teheheheheh) there were lots of baby boobies and they were cute and fuzzy. There were also tons of frigate birds , many of the males with their pouches inflated to attract the females. The snorkeling at Genovesa was really awesome. Genovesa is shaped kindo of like a bowl with a bite taken out of it and along the walls were tons of christmas tree worms. Christmas tree worms are these darling lil sea worms that are all brightly colored and come in more colors then a crayola box and they look all spikey. If you wave your hand over them though they suck in their spikey things. While snorkeling we also say blue ching parrotfish, king angel fish, white tip sharks, a lobster, girant damsel, Morish Idol ( who can also be seen in Finding Nemo he is the one with the scar on his face), Blue and yellow snapper, Mexican hogfish, Razor Surgeonfish, bumped head damsel, and a hawksbill turtle (they are a lot harder to find). and yes I can still Id all of these fish. We also saw the Red-billed tropic bird. that more or less doesn't have legs, or legs that function wells so when it langs it just kind of crashes. we didn't get to see it crash though.
We also saw some fur sea lions different then galapagos sea lions, they have more fur and different noses.

Isla Bartolome-Isla Santiago (Sullivan bay) was our next stop.
At sullivan bay we looked at lava formations. There are seven different types I do believe. They are all black and they are all really hot. but Pahoahoa lava was the most common lava formations and it was smooth and kind of looked like ropes. We also "made snorkeling" here and saw a box fish, barber fish, white mouth moray, guenea fowl puffer, flag cabrilla, and a hierooglyphic hawkfish.

Then we were off to Isla Sombrero Chino- Isla Santa Cruz (Cerro Dragon)
At Sombrero Chino we had to do a field activing measuring different types of coral: Pavona, Pocillopora, and Tobastrea. The galapagos doesn't have very much coral and the current was also very strong that day making it difficult to swim in a straight line for transects. But we did get to see a blue starfish which was really pretty. On Santa Cruz we did some bird watching and also saw three land iguanas. They are a lot bigger than I had thought, and more yellow. Two of the iguanas were deep into a dual and one of them was rather bloody and got trapped in the burrow that the guide thought they were fighting for. It was a pretty good show.

Day Five we went to Isabela and visited the Breeding center. There were lots of tortoises and the babies would all climb over eachother to get places. We also checked out some flamingos and some more mangroves. Fun Fact: tortoises have a four month incubation

Day Six: Isla Fernandina and then back to Isla Isabela (Tagus Cove)
On Isla Fernandina we got to check out all of the marine iguanas online and then while we were snorkeling we got to se a few feeding as well. It was weird to see iguanas swim I wanted to be like hey you silly what are you doing in the water? but they can swim and that is where they get there food. While we were iguana watching on Isla Fernandina we also saw some Manta Rays jump out of the water in the distance. Our guide told us that it is though the females do this to try and out run the males during breeding, but my prof told us that it was males displaying. who knows? but they can jump REALLY REALLY REALLY high. you should probably youtube it. WE also saw the flightless cormorant which is a ridiculous looking bird. They just have shorty stubby little wings and they also have very thick feet for swimming. We also did some snorkeling here, but I'll stop listing all the species I see unless it is something super amazing. (which in truth should be everything I saw but this bad boy is getting pretty long)
Then in the afternoon we headed over to Tagus Cover for some more snorkeling ( we decided to skip our second land excursion this day and for a very good reason). One person counted that we saw over 50 pacific green sea turtles here.and I saw a loosetooth parrotfish. which isn't that pretty, just has a fun name. Then we were back on the boat and on a look out for whales and dolphins. What luck we had, becase we saw hundreds of Common Dolphins jumping, playing, frolicking in the beautiful Galapagos sunset.

Day Seven. Santiago Island (Puerto Egas)- Isla Rabida
Puerto Egas used to be a hot spot to find pirates and whalers who were looking for water, instead they found tortoises. So they would gather up as many as they can and just store them on their boats because tortoises can live along time w/out food or water and then once the sailors wanted a tortoise steak they could. Snorkeling here one of the cute things I saw was a barnacle blenny which is a really small fish that lives inside of barnacles and they just peep out. At Rabida we did a snorkeling activity to compare fish diversity and abundance over rocky and sandy substrate. Rocky substrate one by far.

Day eight. we went to a mangrove. we stayed in the lil zippy boats the whole time and looked at stuff from above the water like sharks adn eagle rays etc.


to be continued.....

including cute stories about playing with sea lioooooooons

Tiputini

the cute bat


the blue dye

froggy

monkeys at the hotel

Between the dates of Feb. 12- March 1 I was in Tiputini Station of Biodiversity which is located in Yasuni which is the most biodiverse place en el mundo (en the world).

On Feb 12 we all met at the airport at 7:30, the airplane ride only last 25 min and landed in Coca. After arriving we hung around a hotel called The Mission, sadly this hotel steals animals from the rainforest to create tourist attraction. and of course it works. The hotel had squirrel monkeys, toucans, turtles and kinkajous. It was cool seeing all the animals up close but really sad because the kinkajous and some of the parrots cages were super tiny. The monkeys were free to roam however. We then boarded a boat on the Napo River which lased two hours. We saw some flames from where the oil companies burn of excess gas etc that they don't use. Then we got off the boat and had to go through a secruity check point of one of the oil companies. We were not allowed to take any pictures in this area then we got on a bus down the Maxus road for two hours. Then another boat on the Tiputini river for another two hours. WE spotted some Hoerini on the Tiputini but they pretty much all have been "westernized" by now wearing levi jeans. but they still sometimes cause trouble for gringos and the oil companies. For an example one man walked in to the oil company swinging a chain saw asking for pineapples and mattresses (I was not there for this it was years ago, however my prof. was) this happened to be the man we saw on the river though. I guess he has killed quite a few people.....

My camara broke after the first day...it actually didn't even make it through the first day....But on the first day we did a long hike saw some wooly monkeys. On our hike we ate lemon ants! and they did in fact taste like lemon. Later after lunch we had to split off into groups and find something in the forest and try to identify it. My group caught a butterfly and a cool look grasshopper. Two people got lost in the forest for a bout two hours on this excurision but everyone was all right. While we were waiting for them to return we saw golden mantle tamarins really close, probably 6 feet away. They were very playful and curious.

On Valentines day we got up at 5 am and had a river float. We saw a bunch of birds adn lots and lots of Mealy Parrots. We also saw some red howler monkeys resting in the trees.

The next three days we split up into three groups and either went to the tower, walkway, or the laguna. On my first day I went to the tower, which was another early morning 5 am. The tower is I think about 100 feet and it overlooks the canopy. From the canopy we saw tons of birds my two favorite species that we saw were paradise tanager and scarlet macaws. We also saw some gueons..not that excitng they are EVERYWHERE. well kind of. they are really big birds sort of turkey like. On our way back from the tower we saw some semi active howler monkeys...they only eat leaves so they are a lazier monkey.

The next day we had the canopy walkway which is similar to the tower but not as tall and we didn't have to get up as early. Not getting up early leads to less animal sitings however.... More gueons and I saw a poison dart frog!!!! I was the only one inmy group to see it though (leading to no picture) everyone else was on the other side of the walkway or up higher on the ladder. On our way back from the walkway we saw spider monkeys! and we almost got peed on but luckily the non english speaking guide yelled p p p p p and we all figured we better move. In the evening we did mark and recapture with Bala ants. These ants are HUGE and they bit and sting causing people to swear....... a lot. I avoided getting bit the trip, Steve however did not. For mark and recapture we went to a Bala ant nest and poked around a bit until a bunch of them came out. As they were coming out we had to paint them with nail polish, ours was lime yellow and looked quit nice on the black ants. Colleen did a fabulous job and didn't get bit or stung, Amy was the brave sole who poked and prodded at the nest, I counted the number of ants that were painted, while Sheena kept a look out to make sure no one had ants crawling on them. At night we did a night float and saw some Caimens and a boat billed heroin. Once we got back we did some frogging. Lots of cool lil tree frogs and we saw a huge amazonian bull frog (i think that is the common name...scientific: Leptodacyalus pentadacyalus)

The last day of our group split my group went to the Laguna. We took a boat out to one end of the trail and then walked back and we also went a short little canoe ride where we saw Hoatzins. Hoatzins are a folivirous bird (vegetarian) which is quite strange and their young will also drop down into the water when a predator is near to avoid being eaten. This doesn't always work out because some predators are in the water too like Caymen (little crocodiley guys). Mayor (one of the guides) gave us all a piece of fruit after he cut them and told us to hold them in our hands for ten minutes so we all did and they left really dark blue tattoos. The tattoos lasted quit a few days. Squirrel monkeys were sited on this excurison and they are probably my favorite monkey that I saw. In the afternoon we checked on our ants and counted the number or marked and unmarked ants.

The next morning was our first day of working on our small group projects. My group was Karl, Liz, Kola, and I and we decided to study stratification of butterflies. We wanted to see if there was a difference in abundance, diversity, and coloration between different strata of the rainforest. So we set out to find bat lines which we could hang our nets from. We went out with Jose who was my favorite guide. We saw a yellow billed Jacamar which has a really long beak kind of like a humming bird but it is used for catching butterflies and then shaking them until their wings fall off, then consuming said butterfly. After we found one of the batlines we decided to do a little bit of off roading, and Jose walked a lot faster off the path then on..not sure why perhaps avoiding posinious snakes? We saw tons of tapir trials and foot prings, but not tapirs We followed the tapir trail and it led to a salt like so we sat there for perhaps 15 min hoping someone would come by, but no luck. We thought we heard some pigs however. We finally got back on the trail and found the other bat line. Jose then asked if we knew what Chambir was, lucky for me liz knew. It is a type of palm that is used to make woven goods such as hammocks and BRACLETS...and that is just what we did. After lunch we got our butterfly nets ready and started to hang them up which took a lot longer than I had hoped. We wanted seven sites, but only got 3 full sets up. Each site has three nets one in the upper story, middle, and understory. We had to stop early because we ran out of string...and we were REALLY crabby....

2-21

This was another early morning, we set up mist nests to catch birds. We set them up early enough that we caught some bats as well (on accident but I was still happy) The first bat we caught was a girl and she had a cute little leaf nose. The leaf nose is used to help find insects and other small flying creatures. The wings were membranous and the fur was so soft you could barely feel it. I GOT TO HOLD THE BAT AND IT BITE ME!!! Luckily rabies is not common in Tiputini (and I have my shots) The bite didn't hurt too bad it was more suprising then anything. We also got to hold some birds we caught some mannakins, antbirds, etc. Once I get my field notebook back perhaps I willl give more species names....

The rest of the afternoon we worked on our butterfly project. We baited the nets with rotten fish that we had caught a few days before....probably the worst smell I have ever..smelt... Fishing though was fun we used little wooden blocks for poles and just wrapped fishing line around them. We had used bread for bait.

The next day we went out to collect butterflies adn luckily caught a lot more then I had thought. We also had a cool long horned beetle in one of the nets. It was orange and yellow the antennae were really long and in some spots even looked fury.

2-23

This morning I got up to go Titi chasing with Dan "the monkey man" and Kola. Titis are a type of monkey. There was a lot of running through super dense brush to find them. On this day Dan was trying to habituate (trying to get the group used to people so they don't run away when researachers are trying to observe them) group B. This group is not well habituated because Dan is short staffed and can't follow the monkeys as much as he would like. Group B consisted of Bongo (the male), Banana (the female) and three infants: infant 07, infant 09, and infant 10. After chasing them for atleast an hour the Titis finally came out. They are a little bigger than a tamarin but smaller than a saki. They have ginger fur with a white eye brow. Then we chased them around a little more, they are tricky little guys and I think they know which areas are hard for humans to get through. After lunch we checked on our nets and had a lot less butterflies than the day before. We also ran across the group that came in the day before while they were supposed to be naked in the rainforest so they could become "one with the forest". This does not sound like a good idea to me because a lot of things bit in the rainforest.... this did not seem like a good idea to many of the their students either because when we came across them they were all clothed. whew. Their profs in general just seem crazy....one of the ladies has a rat tail. Went on a night hike and we saw a long horned grass hopper molt which was really cool. She was all white and tenure. Once we got back we also saw the night monkeys by the lab. The guys are super cute they always look like they are smiling and they have huge eyes.

2-27 had our exam and the two days before we finished our projects adn did a lot of studying :(

The field part of the exam went extremely well adn the written part took forever.

AFter the test though i headed straight for the river to do a relaxing swim in the Tiputini river which we did frequently after lunch when the water was high enough. the water would raise and drop rapidly.

2-28

this was our free day wahooo. I went with a small group to do the longest trail but before that we went to the black water river. On our hike we tried some wild Cocoa which was delicious! it is too bad you don't run into that flavor more often. Rimero ( a guide) also caught a piece of plant and the new leaves leave a blue pigment. So we chewed on the leaf and after awhile we all had blue tongues. Rimero also put a little bit on my shirt and it will stay there forever wahoo what a souvenier! We hiked to the pygmy marmoset tree and we saw four pygmies!!! they were really cute they looked like little lions. Pygmy mamosets are the smallest primate I believe. they could easily fit in the palm of my hand :D . While watching the pygmies it started to downpour and I was wet within three min so we started heading back to camp. Once we got back I ran into JOse and he helped me back another and better palm braclet.. then we went fishing Jean caught a cat fish.

March first we took mroe boats, buses, boats, planes and taxis back to Quito.

Lalo Loor, Mangroves, and La PLAYA

cute little guys headed for the ocean!


This is the species of Red Mangrove



A huge fig tree we found while doing our tree analysis. It reminded us of a dinosaur!




A howler monkey just lounging on the branch





A usual day of class for me means my prof using a mechete. We also got to swing from vines!





So last Monday I left for the Coast! It was about six hours in the bus and we drove up the Andes mountains through the cloud forest on very windy roads. I also started the book Three Cups of Tea during this time....so far I would def. recommend it. We stopped in this cute little town sadly I'm horrible with names and at lunch around 1 30 or 2 it was right by the ocean. I ate fish.... this is becoming a common thing here or at least on the coast I made sure to eat it with lots of garlic so it was fine. I got my first glimpse at Frigget birds, but didn't get to see the red pouches.



After lunch we hopped in the bus for about another hour and finally arrived at Lalo Loor sweating from sitting in a hot bus with 15 people and a bunch of fruit. We had to haul all of our gear a little ways to the cabin that we stayed in and we had a very nice welcoming committee of HOWLER MONKEYS. They were just lounging in the trees lazily scratching occasionaly. Later on Monday we had lecture about the Tropical Dry Forest compared to the Wet Tropical Forest (abbreviation WTF?) then we al ate dinner, played cards and later that night we went for a night hike. We saw tarantulas, a corn snake or corn snake wannabe, rat opposum, and a kinkajou but a group of 13 college students isn'tt that quiet so it was only a glimpse of the kinkajou.



Tuesday: At around 6 A.M. we were awakaned by the sound of Howlers, which is somewhat similiar to dogs barking or lions roaring. We hiked around Lalo Loor learning about our plant families (legumes and figs mostly) We spotted some toucans: Choco toucan "croaker" and Chestnut mandibled Toucan "yelper" , more howlers, Rofous headed Chacalaca (endangered). The landowner of Lalo Loor also talked to us about his reserve. Part of his land is used for farm and he makes yogurt. "Yogur" is a little different here it isn't as thick and it is drinkable....I prefere it. He talked about the difficulties preserving the land before when "green" wasn't in, but now other farmers in the area are doing similar things as him. Sometimes there is a threat that the governemtn will take away the land if you are not using it (such as preserving it) but a program called Sociobosque helps protect that from happening. sociobosque was set up by my profs, it is way so private land owners can preserve and keep their land and they get paid by the govt. 3 times a year to do nothing to it. it is kind of like REDD but on a local level . it isn't super efficient right now because the govt is paying with money they don't really have.



Wed: It poured all day and while we were doing some tree sampling. This was also the day I decided to wear my clean pants......they did not stay clean for long let me tell you, everything did remain wet all weekend. joy. We had to make plots and find the density of trees with a diametere less than 10 cm and than trees with a diametere greater than 10 cm. We also calculated the height of one tree which is really hard. In calc they have u do this but you can see the whole tree and it isn't covered up by other plants and trees. We also measured the canopy openess. WEd . night we had a lecture on insects. yay bugs!!!! ps. I corrected a professor for the first time in my life, I felt pretty smart let me tell you. Scarab beetles have lamallete antennae...not clubbed.



Thurs: We were seperated into three groups: pasture, forest, and edge and set off to collect bugs. There were several methods for capturing such as ariel night, hunting for them, baits, and sweeping. Then we went back and counted up the different orders we had. Forest had the most orders, and second most abundance of bugs. I was in the forest group and we also had a not of cooler bugs like a snakefly...not really a fly it is in the order Neuroptera. and another one called an owlfly? it appeared that it had two sets of eyes. COOL!


Friday: We packed everything up and by 830 we were off to see the Mangroves. The mangroves were really cool, we got to see tons of birds: ibis, friggets, little blue hurons, great blue hurons. There are three types of mangroves red, black, and white. After the mangroves we ate lunch and went to the beach!!!!! It was a beautiful hotel area and the beach was pretty much vacant except for our group. AS soon as we set up our tents we all hit the water and played in the waves.


Sat: Saturday around 7:30 am I got up because I had to go potty and one of my fellow classmates was taking pictures of baby sea turtles!!!! There were around 50 baby sea turtles coming out of their nest and making their way to the ocean. cutest thing i have ever seen! The man that had been living/working at the hotel for 14 years had never seen such a thing, so we really did get lucky! The rest of Saturday was spent lounging around on the beach, sadly it was cloudy but probably for the best because I still got burnt.



Sun: we played in the waves until 11 and also dug up the nest to take count of who hatched and who didn't. Back on the bus we went, and later that night we got ot watch the superbowl.

El Paramo

Better late than never huh. So last Friday and Saturday we had two day trips. Friday we went to Cayambe Cocoa which is a Paramo ecosystem it is higher elevation I think we were over 14,000 feet we took the bus up though so there wasn't too much huffing and puffing. Cayambe Cocoa had some really cool plants many were adapted to retain water, or had adaptations to keep them selves from freezing. Some of these adaptations include: fuzzy or furry leaves, gel stuff that works at antifreeze, and then cush plants keep all of their dead leaves inside of them for warmth. We didn't see any cool animals here but this is the llama region and I guess andean tapirs which I also sadly missed :(.

At both of the sites we did a project to compare the diversity between a non human impacted paramo ecosystem to a human impacted paramo ecosystem. We calculated alpha diversity and we created morphospecies. Which just means we got to create fun names for species that we didn't know but kind of looked like the species. My group was all girls (most groups were there are nine girls and three boys in my group), we had a plant named "Princess" and she had very nice flowery looking leaves and was very delicate, reeses peanut butter cup wrapper, lucky (clover), Cuzin it (a type of grass that is really long). In case you were wondering there was in fact more diversity in the non human impact area and had taller plants.

On Saturday we went to Antisana which was pretty much all fields. We did see some lava rock mining because a while ago Antisana burst at the seams and lava flew out of the side. Antisana also had a lot more birds . We saw a black faced Ibis which is critically endangered! We ate lunch by Lake Mica which provides all of the water for Quito. Sometimes durng the day here the lights are shut down because there isn't enough water in the dam to power the city so at certain peridos of the day the lights shut off for a few hours.

Tonight I'm heading to Otavalo so I can get up early go to the animal market and then after buy some Alpaca wear of course and then next week I'm headed to the coast! Howler monkeys here I come!!!

El Pahuma

female masked trogan

Cloud forest!

It is a boy!

This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting El Pahuma, an Orchid Reserve one hour from Quito. El Pahua is a smallish fragment of land and Ceiba (the program which my study abroad is through) backed a family into keeping the land. Usually people sell or exploit the land by Ceiba backed the Lima family into conserving the forest.

El Pahuma is in a Montane Cloud forest it looks like a forest straight of Jurassic park. Even in one of our biology books it said you probably expect a dino to walk out at any time. I arrived Friday around 10 to the reserve and we walked around the Jardin for a little bit learned a lot about plants and caught some lizards. Learning about plants often includes smelling them for an example the family Peperacae smells like......PEPPER or at least has a spicy smell to it. For many familys of plants smelling can aid in identifying the species. We also walked up to one of the waterfalls. After browsing around a bit we had lunch at the Lima family owned restaraunt. and I ate TROUT...I dont' even like trout but it was pretty good, it didn't have a fish flavor Hooray!! After lunch we made the long hike up to the guardaria del oso (bear cave, really it is just a cabin. no bears were sited on my trip). The hike was exhuasting because it was very steep. It was very beautiful though because literally everthing is covered in green. Plants called epiphytes cover all of the trees. The rest of friday we spent kicking around the cabin, ate dinner and had a night hike. There were tons of really cool walking sticks, I found three within probably three hours. If i had been here for my bug collection I would probably only have taken me one day to collect all 75 species.

On Saturday we woke up at 6 am to do a little bit of bird wtching. I didn't really have to much luck because it is hard to get used to bins (short for binoculars). Then we ate breakfast, packed a lunch and did some more hiking. This hike took about two and half hours to reach or destination but there was a lot of stopping, passing back plants and shells etc. for learning purposes. Once we made it farther up the montain we started hiking through an old Inca trail. This was super cool because it was tunnels of vegetation to walk under. We also had a scavenger hunt on the way back down to find htings we learned about. My team did not win, but we found everything except for one thing a type of frut/flower we had learned about for the family Clusiacae. which has oppostie leaves, the leaves come out in different planes. the leaves are also kind of waxyish. sooo now you know the kind of things I'm learning. Saturday night we had Espegetti for dinner ( the put in E in front of words that start with S....for instance my family calls me Estefi). Later a member of the Lima family came and talked to us about the difficulties and process of conservation of private land. We also had a type of drink called canalazo which is cinamon (when something ends in lazo it means it and cana is cinamon) and also a type of fruit called narnajiia and a bit of liquor. idk what though. It was pretty tastey and it is served warm. AFter that we went on a night hike. I saw my first frog...in ecuador. I don't remember the name, but it is a type of frog that doesnt' lay tadpoles.

Sunday once again I got up at six for a little bit of birding. I missed the first toucan which of course was prettier and easier to see the colors (bins are very hard to get used to and when everthing is green it is hard to spot things) however I did see a toucan later (no pics, but i promise I'm not lying). After breakfast we made the hike down and on the way down we go tto play in a waterfall!!!!!!!! It was FREEZING brrr. or as they say in the indigenous ecuadorian language aychichi. I have no pics of the waterfall playing because my camera battery was dead by that point. I hadn't charged it before I left. At the restaraunt for lunch we had some type of pork and potatos.

Nothing else too exciting has happened. Tonight I had llapingachos for dinner which is cheesy mashed potatos. Those are on the top of my list for favorite ingredients and once I have more free time my host mom is going to teach me hw ot make them along with cheese empanadas which are suprisingly good with sugar as well. My spanish is continuing to improve. I had my first exam on Monday which I thought was hard, but we will see how things go.

This weekend I have two day trips both into the paramo area again about an hour from Quito this time I'm going East. And on friday we get to go into thermal springs! Can't Wait!!! I will try and upload pictures on here later, but I was just trying and it failed. Internet is a wee bit slow for uploading pictures here.

love you all!

First Week + a couple days

This is a view from walking back from my friend's house. Very pretty it is cool seeing all of the houses and buildings go up the side of the Mt.

pretty pretty Orchid

My host Mom, Mariana and I in Old Quito.

I safely made it to Ecuador and on Saturday the second my host family picked me up from the hostel and took me to their house. Everything is going very well, and everyone in my family is very nice. They have two daughters but one is married and no longer lives at home and the other left just a few days after I arrived to study in the United States. On Monday the 4 I had orientation, Tuesday I went and finished all my visa doings and Wednesday I finally started classes. I have two classes Biology for three hours and Spanish for three hours. Soo nothing too interesting there.

This past weekend on Friday we all went out for dinner at a Mexican restaruant and then did a lit bit of dancing. The taxi ride only cost three dollars! Que barato! (how cheap!) Saturday I went to the Jardin Botanico in Parque Carolina (botanical garden), then to Crepes and Waffles (which was delicious!), and then I went to one of the artesian markets. I am now a proud owner of a lovely green alpaca sweater, blue heat and gloves with alpaca on them, and a purple scarf. Total spent: $20. I will be returning hopefully soon to buy another alpaca sweater and some hammocks! I took a few pictures at the Botanical garden but my lense and/or the lighting was weird so they weren't very clear. I have since then cleaned my lense so hopefully this weekend when I go to Pahuma I'll have better luck! (El Pahuma is an Orchid Reserve!)

On Sunday I went to the el campo (farm) of my host family's conseguros (inlaws). I held some baby lamb, and let a baby cow eat my hand. :D Everyone there spoke Spanish of course and I had a difficult time conversing because when they talk together it is very very very fast. Other than that though my spanish has improved I think and I'm finding it easier to speak even if there are thousands of errors. \

Also the bus rides here are CRAZY. It costs .25 to ride, but they drive very very fast up and down very very windy roads. A lot of times in the afternoon I don't have room to sit down either so I stand which is super hard! but no worries it is very safe! haha

also one of the pictures is at the Botanical garden and there was a puppy dog school going on!

Safe Travels

hello! I made it safely to Quito, I was picked up and brought to a hostel and spent the night here. My host family should be picking me up around five tonight they are currently at the beach. It is very sunny and warm :D