Tiputini, Ecuador (Rainforest) 2006 TR, Part 4

[backpack]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

April 5: This morning I got up earlier than usual and went to the lab before 8. Guacamayo at 10:15 with Alex. It was a nice walk; we got to the broken bridge and decided to turn around. I didn’t see much other than a pretty cool stick grasshopper, and on the way back it started to rain so we picked up the pace and arrived at our cabin at 11:20.



Lunch was a tasty vegetable bean soup and plain cheese pizza that was a lot better than their usual pizza. I had seconds on the pizza before they brought out more cookies… I would have skipped the second slice had I known about the dessert. Hopefully we’ll get burritos for dinner tonight and this will be a good day for food.

At 2:20 I decided I was ridiculously cold from sitting under the air conditioner and I also needed to pee like a racehorse. I ended up napping in my room to warm up and then came down to the lab at 3 for the float which ended up being postponed until the rain stopped. We left on the float at 3:30, headed upriver until 5:20 or so, and were back in camp at 5:55. There wasn’t a whole lot of exciting stuff to see other than the scenery, which was beautiful as it stopped raining and the sun came out. We did see several groups of wooly monkeys and a bunch of birds (mostly raptors) perched high in riverside trees. It was mostly just a relaxing afternoon on the boat so no one felt bad about being unproductive.



April 6: I didn’t leave until 10:30 after pooping and helping Shawn identify a few colonies, and thus didn’t arrive at the tower until 11:30. There wasn’t much on the way there, so I only stopped once or twice to look at bugs. The tower was supposedly fixed, but they hadn’t done much to the cracked steps on the way up other than to replace two of them with pretty thin planks that I don’t think will last very long. The top platform, however, has a completely new deck, and most of the lateral support beams were replaced as well. They did a very nice job and I really like how it looks. I sat up there for an hour and a half and didn’t really see anything, though I did hear parrots and crashing in the trees below that might have been monkeys. At 12:45 I started to hear thunder coming from the approaching clouds and decided I should leave soon to avoid both rain and possible lightning. The sweat bees were starting to get a bit annoying as well.



I left the tower at 1:15 and made it back to camp by 2:30. Along the way I saw some cool bugs and towards the end I ran into a group of squirrel monkeys in the trees above Lago 250 or so. They were so close I could almost have reached up and grabbed one, and they weren’t scared by my walking by.



I caught a green beetle that posed nicely for a while before I put it back in its bag to show to Kelly.




Nir also mentioned that we would be having burritos for dinner, and sure enough, after lecture we all ran down to the kitchen to find a burrito bar set up where we usually grab our plated dinners. Nir and Noah were ahead of me along with Mike, the squirrel monkey guy, and they really took their time making burritos. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was about to jump in and grab some stuff, but I kept it together and piled the tomatoes, black beans, guacamole, onions, rice and cheese on two tortillas until I felt guilty putting so much stuff on top. I ate quickly so I could get in line for seconds, and ended up in line after everyone from the researcher table. I had one more burrito and then for dessert we had half a canned peach each. It was pretty good, but not that amazing after the burritos.

April 7: Woke up thinking that I’d have to get up at 7:15 to do the blackwater float, but it had been raining for a while and Kelly decided to cancel it.



I missed a walk with some of the students on Chorongo, and planned to do Matapalo myself but my right calf was sore for some reason so I took an hour nap and then did Matapalo before class with Nir, Noah, and Beth. We didn’t see a whole lot until the last bridge where there were some Howler monkeys feeding. One female in particular was hanging upside down with a baby on her back eating leaves on a tree next to the trail; we all took a bunch of pictures of her and then moved on as it was getting dark. Nir and I got a bunch of pictures of the evening light filtering through the trees, then got back to the lab for class. Kelly talked about snakes for the hour and a half lecture, and almost got to antivenin (which everyone has been waiting a few days for) but not quite. When we got back from the walk the weekend group had moved in and the students were wandering around camp.



Dinner was red beans and rice – one of my favorite dinners after burritos and barbeque chicken. For dessert we had a lemon cornbread cake that was really tasty, but after seeing how many beans were left over I should have had seconds on that instead of cake.

April 8: Woke up this morning at 6:30 when the weekenders went to breakfast and I couldn’t really go back to sleep. I got up at 7:30 when everyone else went to breakfast, came to the lab and got my crap together for the float, then met everyone at the service dock to get a tow up to the black water stream.

We saw a small toucan almost immediately, which was really cool because I’ve never seen one of the small species before. Along the way we also saw a couple of kingfishers, one of which dove and caught a fish in front of our boat. Other than the few birds, though, it was mostly just a relaxing float through the forest. When we got back to the Tiputini we saw a huge heron that Kelly was pretty excited about, it perched and sat there as we floated by.



As we pulled up to the dock it started to rain – perfect timing. I did have everything in a waterproof bag so it didn’t really matter, but it’s nice not to be in your rain gear the whole time. My butt was asleep from sitting on a board for three hours, and I was kind of glad to be back. We went back to the lab and found out that the rodent group had finally caught something. They had taken it out of the trap and were looking at it when I got back; it was an introduced species of house mouse, the first confirmed sighting at Tiputini. On the one hand it was kind of cool to be able to confirm a “new” species, but at the same time it’s sad that it had to be an introduced mouse and not something native that they hadn’t seen here before.



Lunch was a not so great soup followed by llapangacha, pork, and a fried egg. They made homemade aji for the lunch, and that made it all much better. It really helps to have good hot sauce.

[backpack]

As I was finishing lunch, I overheard Alex asking Kelly about the canopy walkways, and I jumped on it as soon as I heard they were open. We left quickly since there are only three harnesses and I didn’t want to compete with everyone for access, and Nicole joined us when she heard about it back at the cabins. We headed out quickly, and got to the tower in about 15 minutes. The tower is a bit unnerving because the scaffolding and stairs weren’t made for each other and though they’re all welded together the tower is not quite straight and everything gets less aligned as you get higher. We got to the top of the tower just fine, though it is a lot higher than I thought it would be.



The primary walkways themselves are in good shape, but once you get past the first platform the next two are a little bit sketchy. Also, getting on and off the platforms from the walkways feels a bit insecure because you have to clip off the safety line and move it somewhere else just as you are in the most exposed and unstable spot. Plus, the little ladders and other stuff they have for you to climb off the walkways weren’t very easy to deal with and they were mostly covered in ants.



I made it all the way out to the last platform, which doesn’t have a ladder off the walkway and you have to climb down through the tree branches to the platform without any real safety line.



Alex was way up high on the tiny platform out on a branch that you have to climb a rickety aluminum ladder to get to.



Noah and I checked out the tents while Nir was showering to make sure everything was there, and apparently the current tents don’t have poles so we’ll just have to tie them to the tower. Of course, Alex clogged the toilet with a massive shit log, and I had to use someone else’s bathroom to drop my bomb.

Apparently there wasn’t anyone at the boat and they didn’t know anything about picking up students at the tower, but Kelly said we could get a ride anyway and Noah brought someone from the worker’s cabin to drive the boat. It took him a while to get the engines connected to the fuel lines and start them, but he managed it and soon we were off with both engines running full speed. We passed by the landing spot and if it weren’t for the students there shining flashlights we would have missed it. Apparently there were two groups at the tower thinking they’d be picked up, so it was a good thing we’d come. With all the delays, though, we didn’t make it to the top of the tower until after sunset; we could still see some dark red clouds near the horizon but it was clear that the main event had past.

We set up the tents while there was still a bit of natural light, putting them next to each other on the second platform so one had to push them aside to walk between them. Then we hung a rain fly above the two, tilted so any water would fall off the far side onto the stairs. It didn’t take us too long to set everything up, and afterward we went up to the top platform and ate our dinners to go. I had already eaten one of my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while we waited for someone to drive the boat, so I ate my second sandwich, Oreos, festival cookies, and drank my orange juice and mora yogurt boxes.

[Tippster]

[backpack]

First/Last bump... next installment in a few weeks.

Edit: What would make these better? The options are really only: more/less photos, more/less text, since everything is being taken from my journal and the photos I've already selected it's easy to increase/decrease either one. I've gone back and forth in the various parts and left in some random journal stuff this time that I left out of other ones (like lots of stuff about food... I swear half my journal is about what I ate).

[meatdrink9]

Ridiculously cool. Great images. You've had some pretty damn cool experiences.

[Odin]

Backpack, these are awesome.

Entomology?

What are ye doing thar?

[klar]

great reports, keep them coming.

amazing pictures too.

[truth]

Radness. Keep em coming mang.

[FreakofSnow]

Nice pics man. My wife has a masters in Entomology and spent some time doing research/working in the cloud forest in Ecuador. I can't remember the lodge she worked out of, but they did eco tourism and raised butterflies....

[backpack]

Backpack, these are awesome.

Entomology?

What are ye doing thar?

This time I was a TF for an ecology study abroad program through BU. There are lots of insect pictures because, well, there are lots of insects in the rainforest.

Nice pics man. My wife has a masters in Entomology and spent some time doing research/working in the cloud forest in Ecuador. I can't remember the lodge she worked out of, but they did eco tourism and raised butterflies....

Did she live near Mindo? That's the big cloud forest tourist place in Ecuador.

...working on part 5 now...

[summit]

awesome bug pix! i need to get my galapagos pix up