Maquipucuna: The Cloud Forest

Hola everyone! Sorry for the delay in my posts...the last week and a half I've been traveling like a crazy woman. I don't have the time right now to talk about everything at once, but I've been writing down notes while running around so I don't forget anything! A week and a half ago, our class took a trip to this place called Maquipucuna, which is a cloud forest research station/ ecotourism spot on the northwestern slopes of the Andes. Now when you hear the name "cloud forest" I bet you are all thinking it looked like Avalon or something, but actually its really just a higher altitude rainforest. At the higher altitude, the clouds settle in lower over mountains, surrounding the forests in a sometimes thick mist/rain. While we were there it was absolutely gorgeous weather for the whole time. Honestly, this place looked more like somewhere to go for a honeymoon rather than a field trip for class! Everything (the walls, beds, tables, chairs) were made from bamboo harvested around the forest preserve, the food was absolutely unreal, and they made their own coffee from coffee trees in the surrounding community. The entire station is run as a cooperative by several local families, and its possible to volunteer there anytime for room and board. I definitely might think of coming back someday! Also, there were hummingbirds flying all over the place. I found out that hummingbirds are actually vicious, territorial creatures...one almost took my head off while I was sitting in the lounge outside of our rooms.

When we went out into the trails surrounding the station, I was blown away by the shear density of the plant life. Up until this point I had never seen so many plants not only living so close to each other, but living literally on top of each other. I was put in a group that had to record the quantity and variety of epiphytes living on the trunks of large, standing trees (if you don't know what those are just check out the picture below!). There were so many of them on some of the trees that it was absolutely impossible to count. There were also these gorgeous lianas that grow on tree branches that send long root strands down until they reach the forest floor. Some of the oldest trees we saw (roughly 150 years old) had maybe 50 of these liana roots surrounding its base, creating almost a fence around it. It was so cool!

We also had this amazing guide who told us some of the indigenous tales surrounding the wildlife. One of which was the myth of the "Whistling Murder Bird." According to this tale, there was once this man who lived in this area with his wife. Everyday he would leave his wife at home while he went about hunting and doing other manly things. One day his good friend came up to him looking very concerned. He told the man that he walked past his wife's house and heard the sound of a man whistling at his wife, which suggested that she might be cheating on him. The man was so enraged that he went home and killed his wife by cutting her head off, only to realize that the whistling sound (which sounds like a cat call) was being made by a bird that was outside of his house. The bird was therefore called the Whistling Murder Bird. Our guide was so excited to tell us this story (in Spanish...and I understood it completely!) after he heard the bird call in the distance.

Another story that our guide told us was about a Spectacled Bear (a smaller bear that lives in the Andes...and is endangered) that he once saw while giving a tour. These bears feed on the fruits of this one tree that is crazy high up...maybe 70-90 feet in the air. One day he saw a bear sitting up in the top of one of these trees, snacking on some of the fruits. The bear went to reach for another fruit on a different branch, but completely misjudged the weight of his movements and came crashing down through the forest canopy onto the floor. The guide and his tour group of gringos watched as this bear, which just fell about 80 feet onto the ground, stood back up, shook off the dirt from his fall, and began walking toward the group. Obviously, they began walking back towards the station without attracting the attention of the bear, who followed them all the way back to the station (no worries though...they aren't that dangerous).

After dinner we were able to go on this awesome night hike of one of the trails. We got to ford this one pretty fast river wearing these big rubber boots, it was so much fun. While we were walking we saw bunches of cool spiders and frogs. At one point some of the girls saw some "floating eyes" that freaked everyone out because we thought it was a puma or something...but it turned out to be just a cow from a local field that we were passing by. We nicknamed the animal a pumacow in honor of the discovery. After coming back to the station everyone in our group stayed up pretty late to chat with each other (it was the first time we all got to spend time together without worrying about using public transit to get home). It was one of the first times that I was able to really geek out with all the other cool enviro-types in our group! There was a book of local frogs that we were looking through and everyone was telling stories about the different things they learned about different types of animals in other classes. Then when we all finally went to bed, we had a bit of a close encounter with one member of the local wildlife. One guy in the group named Ed pulled back the sheets of his bed before getting into it and found a snake coiled perfectly under the covers. We all started freaking out because it looked very similar to a coral snake, which is an incredibly poisonous snake. We got our professor and some of the workers to take a look at it and they couldn't tell if it was a coral or a copy-cat. We didn't find out till the next morning that it was not a coral (thank god). Still, it's definitely a good story :) Now we all check our beds throughly before going to bed.

The next day we got up early to do some bird watching (at 6:00am). I saw my first toucan on this hike! It was so beautiful...and reminded me a lot of Fruit Loops. The mountains were even more gorgeous with the rising sunlight, and the clouds were still pretty low around the forest. We could hear thousands of bird calls throughout the forest, but they were difficult to see because of how dense the trees were. Because of the dew on the trees, everything glistened like crystal when the sun hit it. After breakfast we went on potentially the most difficult hike I've ever done before. It was uphill for a good portion of the way and was mostly alongside this very steep cliff that bordered a valley with a river running through it. The trail was so rugged that we needed a guide with a machete up front to help us carve our way through the forest. At one point me and a few other people accidentally stepped on this colony of biting ants that started crawling up our bodies and had to stomp them off of our clothes before they bit us! At the end of the hike we got to go swimming in the river (which was very fast and cold) and made our way over to this gorgeous waterfall...which we all had a blast playing in. Unfortunately, after we got all wet we had to hike another 2 hours back to the station.

So those are the highlights from this trip! I need to write again about my camping trip to Cotopaxi, my trip to the Amazon rainforest, and my trip to this other town called Banos! I'll update with more soon :)