My Last Week in the Amazon

Happy Spring Equinox to those in the Northern Hemisphere, whereas today marks the beginning of 'winter', or the rainy season in Ecuador.  Today I write from Tena, Ecuador, as I wait for the bus to take me south to Ambato and on to Cuenca where I will spend the weekend with friends before taking the plunge into Peru on Tuesday.  I had a great last week at Jatun Sacha, made all the more special by the arrival of some new volunteers from Germany and South Africa.  Our first act as new friends last weekend was to go in search of the Cascadas de Latas, a nice sized waterfall outside the nearby town of Misahuallí.  After a 40 minute walk, we were the first ones to arrive at the falls, and got to rinse off the sweat we made on the way to the falls.  On the way back, it was as if the falls were following us, as the rain came fast and hard, not stopping until after we made it back to the reserve.

On one of the many rainy days this week, we took on the project of preparing cacao beans to make chocolate!  The beans had been drying for a couple weeks (slightly neglected, but plenty dry), and the first step is to toast the beans so that the outer shell is easier to remove.  After peeling all the beans, we fastened a grinder to one of the dining tables and passed the beans through three times to make a fine powder.  Then we were ready to make chocolate!  At this point there is plenty of room for experimentation, in terms of how much milk or sugar you want, and if you'd like to add anything extra, such as essence of cinnamon or ginger. After heating the mixture on a stove, we poured it into a baking pan and put it in the fridge to cool and solidify.  Though we had plenty of room for improvement, it's hard to go wrong with chocolate!

On Wednesday, we were fortunate to spend the first half of the day walking through the reserve with 'Gato', a staff member of Jatun Sacha.  We saw all sorts of birds and insects, as well as a vine that when properly prepared provides a potent poison for deadly darts.  Above, a giant complex home to leaf-cutter ants spreads out beneath a tree.  The ants bring leaves to their palace to use to cultivate mushrooms - their main source of food.  When areas of the structure become abandoned, bees or rainbow boas are known to take advantage and move in.  

For the second half of the day on Wednesday, we took a bus and then a motorized canoe to visit a nearby animal rehabilitation center.  The center receives injured or 'problem' animals from the government, and will either give them enough care to release them into the wild, or if they are too acclimated to humans to survive in the wild, the center provides them with a more natural habitat and incorporates them into tours to educate locals and tourists on the dangers of taking in wild animals as exotic pets.  The pictures you see here are spider monkey, macaw parrot, caiman (related to alligators and crocodiles), capybara (the world's largest rodent), toucan, ocelot, and tapir.  

 Twice this week, volunteers wanted to take a sunrise trip to our observation tower, and I tagged along both times.  It is an amazing feeling to look over the top of the canopy of the Amazon, and even better to share it with friends!

 The last two work days were spent doing some cleaning in and around the botanical garden, interspersed with plenty of breaks due to downpours.  Today we found the perfect tree to take a break, it was practically begging for us to nap on it!

 I have had a wonderful month working at Jatun Sacha, but am looking forward to my next adventure to get to Cuzco.  I will be on the road pretty much every day for the next week, hopefully making it to Cuzco around April 1st.  From there I will drop back down into the Amazon basin for 2.5 weeks volunteering on a family farm with similar crops to what I have seen so far in Ecuador.  Next time you hear from me will be from Cuzco!

Crop Planting/Harvests and Animal Sightings

Week 3 at Jatun Sacha has proved to be just as diverse and exciting as the other two weeks.  After spending some more time clearing the cacao grove, we actually got to plant something!  In the sunny spots of the cacao grove, new plátano plants are in the ground, and after one year of rain and sunshine they will be 15 feet tall and top-heavy with fruit.  It was so nice to bring some life to an area after having to cut down nearly everything in sight.  In addition to planting plátano, we got to harvest some to take back to the station and incorporate into our daily meals.  Harvesting involves delicate cutting of the main trunk so that the large bunch falls to the ground, where it can then be removed from the rest of the plant.

'Colines', or plátano shoots, taken from the bottom of mature plants.

A patch of plátano.

The bunch is ready for harvest when the plátanos are green.

One bunch is plenty for one person to carry around!

In addition to plátano, we harvested yuca, a starchy staple of the Ecuadorian diet.  The yuca roots grow underground like a potato, and it takes some finesse to pull out the whole plant without breaking off any of the roots.  The branchy top of the plant is cut to leave about a foot of stem above the ground, and to replant, you just stick the recently chopped off top of the plant back into the ground, and new roots begin to grow.  To prepare, the root is washed and peeled, and usually boiled.  We have had it served plain, and it is a great addition to soups!

Mature yuca plants in the background with cut plants ready to harvest closer to the camera.

This week we have been lucky to see lots of animals in the forest and around the station.  Here are a few of the best shots.

Tarantula found in the plátano grove, all the species in this area are docile, non-venomous, and do not bite.

Mett from Luxumbourg enjoying the company of a new friend!

Blistered hands and the frog from our Jatun Sacha t-shirts.

This little guy hopped onto a half-cut palm tree that I was in the process of chopping down.

One of two species of leaf-frogs in the world, the other lives in Costa Rica.

Our resident tarantula right outside the station office makes an appearance from the nest.

There's a toucan in that tree!  We saw them when we were walking along the road, what a treat!

This meter-long, non-venomous vine snake jumped about 40ft from a palm tree, and gave one volunteer a couple shallow puncture wounds before we grabbed it properly to take some photos.  We released her shortly after.

Carnaval, Cacao, and Cuenca

This week was full of fun, and I am glad I have some time to write it down before I have even more to write about!  We had a short work week at the reserve, as the Carnaval / pre-Lent holiday lasted from March 1-4, so the volunteers had two days at the beginning of the week to enjoy the festivities.  In the each Ecuadorian province, the big celebrations of Carnaval with big name entertainers are divided between different communities, and we went to the party in nearby Misahuallí on Sunday the 2nd.  There were thousands of people on the beach, and besides drinking and dancing, typical activities included throwing water, shooting soapy foam, and smearing paint on anyone nearby.  It was a blast and the weather was great!  As you can see, I was a target for the festivities.

Back to work on Wednesday, the three volunteers and the maintenance staff went back to the cacao grove.  We are done clearing the underbrush, and have commenced pruning the cacao trees and have started taking down some of the bigger non-cacao trees in the area.  Cacao is what is used to make chocolate, and it is a funny plant.  The flowers (small white dot to the left of the pod, below) grow out of the bark on the branches and trunk of the tree.  Once pollinated, they grow into pods, which contain fleshy cacao beans that are then dried in the sun and sent off to chocolate processing factories.  Our job this week was to cut off all of the small branches growing at the base of the big cacao trees, to focus the plant´s energy on producing flowers on only the largest branches, which can produce more pods.  Lots of hacking with a machete has given me plenty of blisters, but I should have skin like letter by the time I leave the reserve.

 I mentioned we had a short work week due to Carnaval, but we cut it even shorter by working only a half day on Thursday to then set out on a 11-hour bus trip to arrive in Cuenca by Friday morning.  Other than to visit another part of Ecuador, we had made friends with a group of university students from Cuenca that had stayed at the reserve as part of their tourism degree, and they offered to host us and show us around.  Cuenca is a wonderful, colonial style city in the mountains, with 600,000 people and an altitude of around 7,000ft.  There are 42 churches in the city, and the one below was at a high point where we could see the whole city lit up at night.  On Friday we went to a museum, walked around the colonial city center, strolled along the river Tomebamba, and went to some thermal pools with refreshing volcanic mineral water.

On Saturday, we ventured higher into the mountains, above 12,000ft, to visit Cajas National Park - the source of Cuenca´s rivers and clean water.  We lucked out with the weather, which is usually pretty foggy, and we could see the myriad of lakes and rocky outcroppings that offered stunning vistas.  The ecosystem of Cajas is dominated by tufty grassland, making it home to lots of llamas and vicuñas.  Thankfully we could get pretty close without getting a wad of spit shot in our eyes!  I felt at home again in the mountains, but I am ready to return to the humid jungle for two more weeks of service and education.

After returning from Cajas and regrouping in Cuenca, one of our hosts was nice enough to offer his Quinta up in the hills above Cuenca for a barbecue and a night away from the city.  Ten of us all chipped in to help make salad, potatoes, rice, chicken, pork, and cuy - guinea pig!  Though not a particularly unique flavor, it was nice to see how a typical ecuatorian dish is prepared, roasted on a stick above a bed of charcoal.  Erika, the cuy connosieur, was very particular about how to tell when it was done just right.  A great night with a great group of friends!

This morning we got the Quinta ready for Esteban´s family to come later in the day, and we set out for Ingapirca.  About an hour north of Cuenca, Ingapirca is the second largest, intact Incan archaeoligical site, after Machu Picchu of course.  Centered around the temple of the sun, ruins include areas used to make flour and chaff grain, ceremonial bathing stations, a residential zone, and a tomb where a female priest was buried with 10 servants to aid her in the afterlife.  I could imagine the priests standing in the temple, watching the sun change position as the seasons changed, followed by grand celebrations corresponding with the spring and fall equinox and the summer and winter solstices.  This wetted my appetite to get to Machu Picchu later in my trip, and to really earn the view by hiking into the ruins.  I head back to the jungle with another all night bus trip tonight, getting us back the reserve by 10am tomorrow morning.  I had an amazing time in Cuenca, and with such hospitality I am most likely going to return here en route to Peru in just two weeks time.  The time is flying by, but my days are so full of adventure that it´s hard to believe I have only been in Ecuador for two weeks!  The journal I brought is already a quarter full, as you can tell by my lengthy blog entries there is so much to share and remember.  Hoping everyone is happy and healthy, and I anticipate I will update again next weekend.

March 1: First week in the Amazon

Greetings from Tena, Ecuador!

I can´t believe a whole week has gone by already!  I am happy that every day I get to walk to work in the Amazon, and don´t know where to begin to update everyone. Jatun Sacha ("big forest" in the native language of Kichwa) is a 2200 hectare (100m x 100m, mostly contiguous reserve on the edge of the Amazon basin, not far from the feet of the Andes mountains.  On a recent survey of the reserve shortly after its conception, over 20 new species of trees were discovered!  I have seen more different kinds of butterflys, grasshoppers, moths, flys, ants, and frogs than ever before.  The frogs really come out on wet nights, and I ventured out with some others on a night hike this week to find some and listen to their deafening chorus.  This area is overwhelmingly diverse, and extremely worthy of protection, especially since there is a highway that runs right through it.  Yes, along with the incessant sounds of birds, insects, and monkeys, I also get to listen to trucks whiz by in the middle of the night.  Not exactly what I was expecting when deciding to volunteer in the Amazon, but it makes me want to conserve the area even more vigorously.

Oddly enough, if I had left after only one week of work at Jatun Sacha, I would have destroyed more than conserved after this week.  I spent four out of five days with the seasoned trail maintenance workers using machetes to cut down anything we could in a hectare of the forest with big old cacao trees.  With less competition from nearby plants, the trees will have more energy to put into pod production, and the reserve can use that to promote sustainable cultivation practices.  There are also avocado trees interspersed already, and banana trees will eventually be planted to add to the productivity of the zone. 

As expected, it rains almost everyday, but this week it thankfully hasn´t done so during our working hours so much.  During the downpours we can only seek shelter, as working while drenched is not only slightly uncomfortable, but dangerous, as a newly sharpened machete could slip out of your hand.  The last two days the sun has come out, and our proximity to the equator is immediately evident.  Sunny days are best to work in the full cover of the forest if possible.

For those of you who didn´t hear already, I had a small incident with a chainsaw just days before leaving for Quito.  In a moment of carelessness, I had the saw at a bad angle and it kicked back into my left thigh, leaving me with a 3-inch gash that thankfully didn´t make it into my muscle tissue.  I got stitches right away, and last night pulled them out myself without the slightest sign of infection.  Moral of the story- don´t be careless with a chainsaw and invest in a pair of chaps!

Tomorrow begins the festival of Carnaval the world over, and in the nearby community of Misahualli the party is as big as it gets.  In Ecuador, celebrations are highlighted with throwing water and flour all over the place, and everyone is wet and dirty by the end of the day.  Tomorrow we head into Misahualli to see what the hype is all about.  The holiday period lasts until Tuesday, so we won´t work at the station until Wednesday.  Then on Thursday, two other volunteers and myself will travel to Cuenca to meet up with a group of students that up until yesterday were doing some service work at the reserve.  They are a great group, and I am excited to see another part of Ecuador.

Looking even further ahead, I have confirmed a place to volunteer outside of Cuzco, Peru between April 1-18, and once I have an idea of how long I want to stay in Chile, there is a place for me to go in Argentina near Epuyen.  As for the World Cup, my second ticket application was unsuccessful.  I haven´t given up on seeing a game, any game, and will try to get into a stadium once I am in Brazil. 

Peace and love to all of you!  If there are any specific questions, feel free to ask and I can address them in my next email.  Also I can only send about 5 photos, so these are some representative pics from the last week!

Love,  Mark

Feb 20: Quito and Trip Beginnings

Hello friends and family!

I am nearing the end of my first and final full day in Quito before heading into the Amazon.  Today I navigated public transportation around the city to meet my volunteer coordinator, buy rubber boots, a couple other last minute purchases.  Part of me wants to stick around Quito to explore a bit more, but I didn't really enjoy having my head on a swivel all day, and this trip isn't about city trekking anyway.

Quito sits at about 9,000ft, and maybe by escaping to the Amazon I will avoid the ill-effects of altitude sickness. I am at least a head taller than just about everyone on the bus, and with my hiking boots, zip-off pants, and camo-brimmed baseball cap I stand out much like the huge cathedral I visited today.  Today I also began my three-month malaria pill regimen, I'll be sure to write down any lucid dreams that tend to come with it.

Tomorrow morning I take a bus to Tena, Ecuador, before getting on another bus that will take me to the reserve.  I won't have internet access at the reserve, but I will try to send updates when I get out on the weekends.  That being said, snail mail is still an option.  I have family addresses, but for those friends who are moving around all the time, much like myself, if you want some mail from South America send me your address.  Since I will be moving around pretty frequently, just email me if you want to give me your own update.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy, and I will touch base at my next opportunity!