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| View from the plane |
Coming from Quito, where the air is veryy dry and thinner, getting off the flight in tropical Coca was a shock. SO humid, and the sun is really intense. When we were at the station, we were in the forest most of the time, so the heat really wasn't too bad, other than the one day it got up to 44 degrees C (like 111 F!). With the 90+% humidity though, you sweat ALL the time. Even just sitting you sweat. Not super comfortable, but the rainforest itself and the research station were great! Tiputini is in an area with the highest species diversity in the world. Yasuni National Park, on the other side of the river from the Tiputini Biodiversity Station, has the highest diversity of trees and amphibians in the world. In 1 hectare at Yasuni, there are as many species of trees as in all of North America! So different compared to NH, where you can be in a forest with 3 different tree species. It's the dry season there right now, but it hadn't rained there in over a month! The guides said they had never seen it that dry. The river was extremely low, and the insect population was down. We thought we were going to have a rain-less trip to the rainforest, but on the last night it started pouring and thundering. There's a frog that, if you hear it singing, it is definitely going to rain.
We were divided into 4 groups for the 5:30am sessions. The first day, the group I was in went on a hike with one of the guides, Tomás. One thing I noticed quickly is that it's never quiet in the rainforest. There's always a background level of constant insect noise, then every imaginable type of bird call, and occasional monkeys. There were also fewer flowers and fruits than I expected. Probably like 95% green.
On the hike we heard howler monkeys and saw spider monkeys! A lot of times you can hear this low rumbling noise from far away - that's the howlers. The spider monkeys are great to watch because they jump around in the trees a lot. They're pretty gutsy! Also saw a blue morpho butterfly. Hard to get decent photos in the understory because it's pretty dark.
Then we split into different groups for another hike. Learned lots of trees, some birds, and other plants.
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| Big Kapok tree! They have fruits with a cotton-like filling that covers the ground around the tree |
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| Peine de mono - monkey comb. Seed pod thing that monkeys use to brush their fur!   After the hike, we each had a 'drop off' in the forest...spent a couple hours sitting alone in different spots. I was sitting above a saladero, basically a muddy spot where birds and mammals go to eat mud to get minerals. You have to sit really quietly and wait for a while, because animals are nervous about going to saladeros since they're easier prey there. Didn't see any mammals during my drop off. Lots of insects and heard a lot of different birds and howler monkeys too. Difficult to locate/see what you hear. I did see some woolly monkeys on the walk back! The next day, Wednesday, my group got up early to go to the canopy walkway! So great to watch the sun rise from the canopy. It was nice to get a better perspective of the extent of the rainforest, which you don't really get surrounded by the dense understory. We saw parrots, oropendolas, parakeets, guans, puffbirds, a raptor, a giant cowbird, and a bat falcon. On the walk back, we saw a nest with two baby hummingbirds inside! And a curacao, which looks like a giant turkey. The rest of the day, we had different methods activities, lectures, and time to work on our field methods project. I'm in a group doing a project on trees...very hard to identify trees in such a diverse place! After dinner, we went on a night boat ride on the Tiputini River. Saw lots of caimans!   Thursday morning my group went to the canopy tower, similar to the canopy walkway. Such a nice morning. We saw the paradise tanger, parrots, parakeets, scarlet macaws and yellow macaws, a toucan, and lots of other birds. Heard howler monkeys and titi monkeys. On the way back we saw some woolly monkeys!      Later that day, we helped with a turtle project at the station and had different lectures and activities. During one of the lectures, one of our program directors came in to tell us about what was going on in Quito. President Correa announced that he was taking away the police's 'bono,' kind of like a periodic financial bonus, and the police went on strike throughout Ecuador. The airport, banks, and schools closed; major highways shut down; and there were a lot of bank and store robberies, since the police weren't working. That seems to be the basic event, but then it snowballed when Correa ended up in the police hospital, possibly held captive by police, although that has come into question. There are many different stories floating around. It seems like Correa blew the situation out of proportion, provoked the police at times, and tried to label it a coup attempt, which it really wasn't. The military went in to 'rescue' Correa, leading to fighting between the military and the police, resulting in about 8 deaths and like 300 injured. Very hard to tell what the actual story is. Things seem generally back to normal, although it's hard to say how things will go with the police. Correa seems to have gained popularity within Ecuador, in Latin America, and generally throughout the world as well. Our professors said he now basically has a lot more power to push the mining and petroleum projects he wants, which includes extracting petroleum from Yasuni National Park, right near where we were in the Amazon. We were glad we were in the Amazon during all this, and for a little while we thought we might be stuck there if the airport didn't re-open, but we were able to get back on Monday. Friday morning our last early morning activity was a boat ride on the Tiputini to look at birds. We saw so many, and also saw a tapir! Sort of like a rainforest cow. We spent the afternoon divided into pairs, each going on a different trail to look for monkeys. Rachel and I got a little lost, and we didn't see any monkeys.  We spent Saturday looking at insects and swimming, and Sunday on a long hike. We saw cute pygmy marmosets, a poison dart frog, and lots of ants. I got a few wasp stings but our guide José found a plant & put some of the sap on the stings and it helped! Also tried some lemon ants! Weird eating something still alive and crawling, but it tastes just like lemon!
  
 After all the rain Sunday night, we set off back to Quito Monday morning, after a pancake breakfast! On the bank of the Tiputini, we saw an anaconda!   This is the oil company's station we had to pass through on the way to and from Tiputini Biodiversity Station. The Amazon is divided into 'blocks,' each owned by different oil companies. This one is owned by an Argentinian/Spanish company. TBS is on land that is just on loan from an oil company and the contract is due to run out in 5 years. During the trip to and from TBS you can see the oil pipeline along the road. There has been a lot of controversy as far as petroleum extraction in the Amazon goes for many reasons, including pollution of water which affects ecosystems and causes a lot of health problems (including deaths). Also, deforestation, soil erosion, soil contamination (affecting agriculture), air pollution, loss of biodiversity, and social impacts such as land rights controversies between the companies and the indigenous communities already living there. There are currently lawsuits between indigenous people and Texaco/The state technically has the right to the subsoil, and has been selling that right in these blocks to different companies. There is a proposition to prohibit oil extraction in Yasuni, particularly in 3 blocks called Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini (ITT). Ecuador proposed this, which would be a great international model for promoting more sustainable energy sources, and asked for international support, particularly in the form of economic compensation since the petroleum left in Yasuni represents potential profit. However, the future of the project seems to be up in the air after the events of last week. Correa supports state-ownership of oil companies, rather than the predominance of external corporations, and after the supposed 'coup,' Correa's popularity may enable him to push forward with the oil extraction.  Anddd we ran out of gas and got stuck on the Napo River! There's Coca in the distance, where our flight was leaving in an hour...Luckily a boat came from Coca to give us some gas to get there. Close call!   |
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