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Finally: The Journal. Ecuador trip (pictures inside!)
10 years ago
Fair warning, this will probably be a long one. So obviously I'm back from my trip to Ecuador. For those who didn't know, I went down there as part of a group researching these adorable little birds called white crowned manakins that live in the jungle. It was a crazy trip right from the start with just about the worst flying experience I've ever had. Not worth going into at this point but 2 broken planes and 3 delays later Delta had caused us to be 24 hours behind schedule. We eventually landed in Quito (the capital of Ecuador and also the highest elevated capital in the world) at something like 4am the day after we should have been there. We stayed in a rather nice little hostel and left just a few hours later on like an hour of sleep for the 9 hour drive away from civilization.
The drive was...intense. People in Ecuador drive like maniacs. The roads are tiny and insanely curvy and people just fly around all over the place, risking their lives just to get in front of someone going kind of slow. I couldn't even tell if there was a speed limit between the pickups full of bananas and pigs going 3 mph and the giant buses with curtains in the window going 300 mph. It was nuts but our driver seemed pretty competent so I tried not to let it freak me out. Once we got out into the Andes though it got a bit harrier. The roads turned to mud in places as we were winding our way up hairpin turns waaaaay up in the mountains. Half the time there weren't even guardrails! If you've been up Mount Washington, think of how you can look down at places and see the drop all the way down...now imagine that drop times about 10 times higher on a muddy road with no guardrails. Wheeeeee! I've seriously never seen anything like these mountains though, and I've seen the Rockies. It was just awesome and I mean that as in the actual meaning of the word awesome. It was jaw-dropping. I know people always say "pictures don't do it justice" but in this case the pictures just somehow lose the essence of what this landscape was really like; what it was like to see it in front of you. I don't even have words. The Andes are intense.
Anyway we did eventually survive the trip to the station. On the way up there is a birding lodge that we got to have our first two meals at. Super fancy because it is a bit of an eco-tourism place. God it was nice there. Wood floors and a fireplace with a deck hanging out over a steep drop from which you could see for MILES. A troop of napo tamarins apparently like to hang out near the deck because they feed them bananas. They were really cool and LOUD holy crap. They got to fighting and you couldn't hear yourself think! It was neat, they sound a lot like birds. Very loud birds who crash around and disrupt everything. Also at the lodge they have feeders for the hummingbirds. I believe in the entire United States there might be 5 species of hummingbirds. Ecuador (which is not even that big a country) has 500. Let me tell you my second of many deeply moving experiences I got to have on this trip. These hummingbird feeders are pretty popular. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say at any given time there might be 50 hummingbirds around them, and they don't just sit quietly. Hummingbirds are loud, aggressive, and territorial as hell! They're like tiny flying chihuahuas! Standing next to the feeder is like standing in the middle of a swarm of giant bees screaming chipmunk noises at you. I think I had the biggest, stupidest grin on my face standing in the middle of this cloud of angry hummingbirds. So incredible. (I'll have videos of this posted too)
But I'm never going to finish this journal if I go into so much detail about every little thing. So eventually we got down to our station where we stayed the whole time. It wasn't bad actually. We had power and hot water. The water was 100% rain water so VERY quick showers but they heated it with propane tanks so that was nice. Our rooms were just cement with 2 small tables and 2 bunk beds in them but thats okay, not like we were there much but to sleep. The first 2 days were hell. White crowned manakins form leks which basically means the males stay in the same general area 90% of their lives. We just had to find them. So we pretty much hiked all over creation listening for them. Sometimes we stood for hours just listening when we heard them to pinpoint where they were. We eventually found a few good spots and set up cameras pointing at where we thought the birds would be and left them. Our job was mainly to hike back out twice a day and replace the batteries and card on the cameras. I don't think I've ever been as sore as I was at first, I could barely walk. Honestly with my leg the way it is I probably shouldn't have gone at all but I'm not about to let that make me miss out on something like this. I did kind of wonder if they might think it would be strange to see me crawling from spot to spot the first night though, but I sucked it up and it did eventually get better after a couple days of hiking...constantly. *cries* And this wasn't your normal fun type of hiking either. This was mountain hiking in 4 inches of mud. But I'm complaining too much. After my body got used to it I actually started to enjoy the hikes and I'm looking into places to go hiking locally now.
There were a couple of girls there with us during the first week who were studying the bats. SCORE! I was going to do my own research into the bats while we were there but this was even better. The bats were caught in a mist net, measured, and then involved in a (totally safe and unobtrusive) experiment and released. At one point I was holding this big pile of bats in my lap (In individual little sacks) and they were all squirming and I was just in heaven. I even got to help with holding & releasing them. I love bats so much, this just made my life like you wouldn't believe. They also made a habit of dive bombing us if we were outside at night at any given time during the whole trip. Most things there didn't seem to have the usual fear of people since I doubt they see them all that much.
One of my favorite things to do was to go on night walks. We would put on headlamps and go out into the jungle after dark, that was when you saw the really crazy things! There were bugs out there as big as my face! Really everything is gigantic there. The trees were just massive, you could barely see the tops of some of them, I can't imagine how old they must be. Anyway I don't know much about bugs so I couldn't tell you what any of them were but oh man it was cool! All kinds of different colors and shapes! Giant spikey bugs and walking sticks and leaf bugs just everywhere you looked! It was like the jungle was moving! Tree frogs too, lots of tree frogs. Lots of unidentified noises (Amazonian yeti?????) too. It was pretty easy to get spooked but in a fun way. We even turned off all our lights and stood out there in the pitch black, just listening to everything. OH OH OH and you can TOTALLY see the milky way down there!!! And SO MANY STARSSSS!!!! When I lived way out in the middle of nowhere I thought I could see all the stars but nothing like this. The more you looked the more stars there were. There was more light than darkness in the sky. Oh and this happened to be when that meteor shower was going on too. It was magical. Again...no words.
Lets see what else...Oh...a poison dart frog jumped on me! lol. Yup. We were all watching it and it decided it wanted to be on my arm which wasn't covered. It was only on me for a split second but I ran all the way back up to the station with my arm flailing out in front of me like a cartoon and washed it for like 20 minutes. Obviously I was fine and now it's just a funny story. I asked at supper how long I should wait to see if I start feeling funny and my prof was like "Oh you'd be dead by now." Hahaha, nice. X3
We also got to see toucans and macaws...like IN THE WILD where they live! @.@ Sorry but I was just...WOW real live toucans and macaws!!!! The station had a view of a valley with the volcano behind it. We could just sit out there watching the volcano as MACAWS flew across the sky...like COME ON IS THIS REAL LIFE!? The macaws made the greatest noises when they were perched. They sort of chittered and mumbled to each other and it sounded just like human speech! They were also super loud. You could hear them from at least a mile away when they were flying. Now I'm kind of digressing into random memories but...
We were just miles from the Sumaco volcano which made for a breathtaking view. I've got quite a few pictures of that. It was neat to watch the clouds roll in and then get held up by the volcano like some giant cloud-corral. Also interesting side note, one of the volcanos we drove by on the way to the station is now just shy of erupting! It's spewing out giant clouds of ash that are falling down on the cities around it and they're handing out masks to folks. This began the day after we left! We wouldn't have been able to get out it it happened a day earlier! @.@ But anyway our Sumaco, while technically being active, did not try to kill us. Thanks guy.
There are so many other things to write about but I doubt anybody's even read this far so I should try to cut it short. There was a jaguar there but we didn't actually see it. We saw it's footprints, and trails where it had been walking. We did go out one night to where we thought it had been to try and see it, but we never did. I wouldn't be surprised if it saw us though. That was another time we sat out there with our lights off for a while...just kind of experiencing the place.
fast forward fast forward...lots of awesome thing that I don't feel like writing about...zooooooooom
Okay so on the way home we finally got to spend some time in Quito which was a neat city. It was a bit unnerving to be in a city where everyone speaks Spanish, not gonna lie. We went to a huge market, successfully did not get robbed. Bought me a South American energy drink which was yum! Ummmm...lots of Quito things...I'm getting tired. Idk like...there was just so much that happened. We even went to a natural hot spring bath...oh that was niiiiiiice. My actual journal is 15 pages typed up, 12pt font, single spaced. I just can't even begin to tell all my experiences here. I mean the whole thing was life-changing. It really was.
I have 400 photos. My internet sucks. There is no way I'm gonna upload them all and even what I've been doing has been a nightmare. Nothing is working. Right now I'm struggling with flickr and about to give up honestly.
I think I've FINALLY gotten some semblance of an album up. This isn't everything by far, but I hope you enjoy. (and I hope it works)
TLDR: IT WAS AWESOME HERE'S THE PICS
https://www.flickr.com/photos/13555.....57657456384801
More to come (and some of the best too, plus more with me in them) as my counterparts post theirs.
The drive was...intense. People in Ecuador drive like maniacs. The roads are tiny and insanely curvy and people just fly around all over the place, risking their lives just to get in front of someone going kind of slow. I couldn't even tell if there was a speed limit between the pickups full of bananas and pigs going 3 mph and the giant buses with curtains in the window going 300 mph. It was nuts but our driver seemed pretty competent so I tried not to let it freak me out. Once we got out into the Andes though it got a bit harrier. The roads turned to mud in places as we were winding our way up hairpin turns waaaaay up in the mountains. Half the time there weren't even guardrails! If you've been up Mount Washington, think of how you can look down at places and see the drop all the way down...now imagine that drop times about 10 times higher on a muddy road with no guardrails. Wheeeeee! I've seriously never seen anything like these mountains though, and I've seen the Rockies. It was just awesome and I mean that as in the actual meaning of the word awesome. It was jaw-dropping. I know people always say "pictures don't do it justice" but in this case the pictures just somehow lose the essence of what this landscape was really like; what it was like to see it in front of you. I don't even have words. The Andes are intense.
Anyway we did eventually survive the trip to the station. On the way up there is a birding lodge that we got to have our first two meals at. Super fancy because it is a bit of an eco-tourism place. God it was nice there. Wood floors and a fireplace with a deck hanging out over a steep drop from which you could see for MILES. A troop of napo tamarins apparently like to hang out near the deck because they feed them bananas. They were really cool and LOUD holy crap. They got to fighting and you couldn't hear yourself think! It was neat, they sound a lot like birds. Very loud birds who crash around and disrupt everything. Also at the lodge they have feeders for the hummingbirds. I believe in the entire United States there might be 5 species of hummingbirds. Ecuador (which is not even that big a country) has 500. Let me tell you my second of many deeply moving experiences I got to have on this trip. These hummingbird feeders are pretty popular. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say at any given time there might be 50 hummingbirds around them, and they don't just sit quietly. Hummingbirds are loud, aggressive, and territorial as hell! They're like tiny flying chihuahuas! Standing next to the feeder is like standing in the middle of a swarm of giant bees screaming chipmunk noises at you. I think I had the biggest, stupidest grin on my face standing in the middle of this cloud of angry hummingbirds. So incredible. (I'll have videos of this posted too)
But I'm never going to finish this journal if I go into so much detail about every little thing. So eventually we got down to our station where we stayed the whole time. It wasn't bad actually. We had power and hot water. The water was 100% rain water so VERY quick showers but they heated it with propane tanks so that was nice. Our rooms were just cement with 2 small tables and 2 bunk beds in them but thats okay, not like we were there much but to sleep. The first 2 days were hell. White crowned manakins form leks which basically means the males stay in the same general area 90% of their lives. We just had to find them. So we pretty much hiked all over creation listening for them. Sometimes we stood for hours just listening when we heard them to pinpoint where they were. We eventually found a few good spots and set up cameras pointing at where we thought the birds would be and left them. Our job was mainly to hike back out twice a day and replace the batteries and card on the cameras. I don't think I've ever been as sore as I was at first, I could barely walk. Honestly with my leg the way it is I probably shouldn't have gone at all but I'm not about to let that make me miss out on something like this. I did kind of wonder if they might think it would be strange to see me crawling from spot to spot the first night though, but I sucked it up and it did eventually get better after a couple days of hiking...constantly. *cries* And this wasn't your normal fun type of hiking either. This was mountain hiking in 4 inches of mud. But I'm complaining too much. After my body got used to it I actually started to enjoy the hikes and I'm looking into places to go hiking locally now.
There were a couple of girls there with us during the first week who were studying the bats. SCORE! I was going to do my own research into the bats while we were there but this was even better. The bats were caught in a mist net, measured, and then involved in a (totally safe and unobtrusive) experiment and released. At one point I was holding this big pile of bats in my lap (In individual little sacks) and they were all squirming and I was just in heaven. I even got to help with holding & releasing them. I love bats so much, this just made my life like you wouldn't believe. They also made a habit of dive bombing us if we were outside at night at any given time during the whole trip. Most things there didn't seem to have the usual fear of people since I doubt they see them all that much.
One of my favorite things to do was to go on night walks. We would put on headlamps and go out into the jungle after dark, that was when you saw the really crazy things! There were bugs out there as big as my face! Really everything is gigantic there. The trees were just massive, you could barely see the tops of some of them, I can't imagine how old they must be. Anyway I don't know much about bugs so I couldn't tell you what any of them were but oh man it was cool! All kinds of different colors and shapes! Giant spikey bugs and walking sticks and leaf bugs just everywhere you looked! It was like the jungle was moving! Tree frogs too, lots of tree frogs. Lots of unidentified noises (Amazonian yeti?????) too. It was pretty easy to get spooked but in a fun way. We even turned off all our lights and stood out there in the pitch black, just listening to everything. OH OH OH and you can TOTALLY see the milky way down there!!! And SO MANY STARSSSS!!!! When I lived way out in the middle of nowhere I thought I could see all the stars but nothing like this. The more you looked the more stars there were. There was more light than darkness in the sky. Oh and this happened to be when that meteor shower was going on too. It was magical. Again...no words.
Lets see what else...Oh...a poison dart frog jumped on me! lol. Yup. We were all watching it and it decided it wanted to be on my arm which wasn't covered. It was only on me for a split second but I ran all the way back up to the station with my arm flailing out in front of me like a cartoon and washed it for like 20 minutes. Obviously I was fine and now it's just a funny story. I asked at supper how long I should wait to see if I start feeling funny and my prof was like "Oh you'd be dead by now." Hahaha, nice. X3
We also got to see toucans and macaws...like IN THE WILD where they live! @.@ Sorry but I was just...WOW real live toucans and macaws!!!! The station had a view of a valley with the volcano behind it. We could just sit out there watching the volcano as MACAWS flew across the sky...like COME ON IS THIS REAL LIFE!? The macaws made the greatest noises when they were perched. They sort of chittered and mumbled to each other and it sounded just like human speech! They were also super loud. You could hear them from at least a mile away when they were flying. Now I'm kind of digressing into random memories but...
We were just miles from the Sumaco volcano which made for a breathtaking view. I've got quite a few pictures of that. It was neat to watch the clouds roll in and then get held up by the volcano like some giant cloud-corral. Also interesting side note, one of the volcanos we drove by on the way to the station is now just shy of erupting! It's spewing out giant clouds of ash that are falling down on the cities around it and they're handing out masks to folks. This began the day after we left! We wouldn't have been able to get out it it happened a day earlier! @.@ But anyway our Sumaco, while technically being active, did not try to kill us. Thanks guy.
There are so many other things to write about but I doubt anybody's even read this far so I should try to cut it short. There was a jaguar there but we didn't actually see it. We saw it's footprints, and trails where it had been walking. We did go out one night to where we thought it had been to try and see it, but we never did. I wouldn't be surprised if it saw us though. That was another time we sat out there with our lights off for a while...just kind of experiencing the place.
fast forward fast forward...lots of awesome thing that I don't feel like writing about...zooooooooom
Okay so on the way home we finally got to spend some time in Quito which was a neat city. It was a bit unnerving to be in a city where everyone speaks Spanish, not gonna lie. We went to a huge market, successfully did not get robbed. Bought me a South American energy drink which was yum! Ummmm...lots of Quito things...I'm getting tired. Idk like...there was just so much that happened. We even went to a natural hot spring bath...oh that was niiiiiiice. My actual journal is 15 pages typed up, 12pt font, single spaced. I just can't even begin to tell all my experiences here. I mean the whole thing was life-changing. It really was.
I have 400 photos. My internet sucks. There is no way I'm gonna upload them all and even what I've been doing has been a nightmare. Nothing is working. Right now I'm struggling with flickr and about to give up honestly.
I think I've FINALLY gotten some semblance of an album up. This isn't everything by far, but I hope you enjoy. (and I hope it works)
TLDR: IT WAS AWESOME HERE'S THE PICS
https://www.flickr.com/photos/13555.....57657456384801
More to come (and some of the best too, plus more with me in them) as my counterparts post theirs.
I am glad you got to experience it down there. I know it changes your outlook on things.