Tiputini: My real-life version of Amazon Trail

So I know everyone remembers those incredibly fun computer "trail" games of the 1990s. My sisters and I practically grew up playing Yukon Trail, Oregon Trail, and Amazon Trail. I loved playing them because I felt like I was really floating down the Amazon River or panning for gold in Alaska. After going to the Amazon, I've realized that the Amazon Trail video game totally formed my entire view of Amazon. Although its been my dream to go to the Amazon since my elementary school did a presentation on it when I was like seven, I kept thinking about the scary Amazonian animals like barracudas, piranhas, boa constrictors and pumas that are in that game. Even while I was stepping onto the canoe that would take us down the Napo River, one of the largest rivers in the Ecuadorian Amazon, I couldn’t help shake the feeling that somehow a huge piranha would jump out of the water and bite me in the face, which would force me to take a chance with the jungle herbs that I happened to pick up at the last trading post.



But really, that canoe trip was one of the most unreal experiences I've had in Ecuador. It blew my mind to think of how much life was teeming in the forest beyond the bank of the river...or even within the river itself. The river itself was actually pretty murky...not from pollution but because it has a ton of inorganic material from erosion of the forest floor. The trees along the river were so dense that they often looked like they were falling in. One type of tree literally grows sideways out of a bank over the river. It developed roots on the bottom part of its trunk to take up water from the river. I loved sitting and listening to the sound of the forest as well. You could hear thousands of birds, bugs, and monkeys (especially howler monkeys) all within a mile of our camp. Ecosystems like this one are incredible not just because they have lots of cool plants and animals though. They are amazing (to me at least...) because they are made up of so many different parts that are seamlessly woven together.

The first experiment we performed while we were there was with (and I know this is disgusting) some dog poop that our professor brought with him from Quito. We were all totally grossed out by the smell at first (and for good reason), and a lot of us were confused about what he was expecting us to see when we put it down on the forest floor. The group I was with divided it up in two spots about 5 meters from each other...one in the sunlight and the other in the shade. We took observations every ten minutes for about an hour...and came up with some crazy results. Within seconds of putting this stuff on the floor, tons of insects started flocking to it. There were dung beetles with incredibly colorful metallic exoskeletons and gigantic flying ants that were fighting for a piece of the stuff. By the end of our observations, the poop was completely gone in both sections. Once we collaborated our data, we found that there were seven species of bugs at the sunlit section and seven completely different species of bugs at the other section. Within 5 meters of each other! I don't think I've seen fourteen different species of insects in all of Chicago let alone within 5 square meters. Things like that just blow my mind about the rainforest. I wish that everyone in the world could come down for just a day and physically see what it is we are destroying. The section of rainforest I was in is one of the most biodiverse in the world. Its part of a very famous national park in Ecuador called Yasuni National Park. Recently, there has been a great deal of press because Ecuador (i.e. Rafael Correa)  is trying to protect it from oil interests while continuing to sell it to oil companies. He's quite a sly politician...I should probably write an entire post about how crazy he is.

(This is a crazy bird that we saw while we were canoeing in this small lagoon in the forest. You can't see its wings right now, but they have small hooks so the birds can grab onto branches. Evolutionarily, they are closely related to a particular prehistoric reptile with a similar adaptation) 

Whenever our group went out into the forest, we were required to have one of the National Park guides with us. The guides were some of the most incredible people I have ever met. Like ever. One of the guides was an indigenous man named Meyer, and he was the guide with us during the dung experiment. His knowledge of the rainforest was astounding...it made me feel self-concious about my vision, because he (like a 65 year old man) could see a pointed arrow frog in the underbrush from like 3 meters away, while I tripped over tree roots for half the hike. Once, he looked at a grasshopper on a large leaf about a meter away and knew not only its age and sex, but also where it made its home. I was also honored when he made these beautiful bracelets for me and my friend Daniela from palm tree threads located nearby. It was amazing to even watch him work on them! His hands moved so quickly and he was done within a few minutes. Seeing how much he loved the forests and all the stories it has within it was so refreshing. He had a story or legend to go along with almost everything we passed throughout our hike. We saw community spiders (who team up to make gigantic webs), ants that tasted like lemon, and these gigantic army ants that can take down almost any predator that messes with them. All of these things were particularly startling for me, considering I've lived most of my life in a place where often my closest interaction with nature is seeing a flock of pigeons battling for a scrap of bread in a parking lot.

Another thing I noticed while walking through the forest was how lethal most things in the forest really are. There were strangling vines (that choke the trees they grow on), gigantic, poisonous spiders (just look up a picture of the Banana Spider, we ran into that one) , bullet ants (they are named that way because their bite literally feels like a bullet), and large cats (pumas and jaguars) that can tear their prey to pieces. Even the harmless looking lemon ants eliminated trees that competed with "their" trees by secreting this crazy acid into the soil. There have been millennia of natural pressures placed on these plants and animals that forced them to become excellent competitors. These conditions reinforce the idea that every decomposing leaf, every drop of water, every pile of dung is a precious resource that is worth fighting for. The plants and animals that waste these resources end up losing in the evolutionary battle. I really wonder how our society came to forget that we are also part of this interconnected cycle. Dung, which is seen as such an incredibly precious resource here, is seen as a dangerous waste that we want to keep as far away from us as possible. The resources we are abusing right now are intrinsically tied to our own survival as a species.

Anywho, back to some more specifics about the trip. There were several particularly cool things that we did during out time in Tiputini that I want to cover. The first of which is the night hike that we went on with our professors through the forest. The second is the awesome hike where I saw a tapir and had my eardrums blasted out by a howler monkey. The third is when a herd of like 23 woolly monkeys descended on this one tree by our campsite. The forth is our flotada down the Tiputini River. And finally, the caiman watching nighttime canoe trip. I'll most likely break this up into another blog as well, because I'm tired of people making fun of me for being so behind...

The night hike was so ridiculously cool. I was absolutely terrified at first because I know that there are so many scary animals that come out to play during the nighttime. Actually, just a few seconds after we started walking, my friend Julia yelled and swiped something off my back really quickly...and I'm glad she did because it was a bullet ant. These things have such a potent venom that the most effective way to save yourself from a bite is to have someone give you an electric shock. So obviously I was a bit wary of the situation from the get go. It was so amazing to walk around there at night though. The darkness is so thick that without a flashlight I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. The trees are all so close together that its impossible for much starlight or moonlight to get in. There was so much noise though! The bugs and birds were almost deafening because we were trying to be as silent as possible. We saw so many amazing bugs during that night hike though. I thought that I would be super freaked out about the spiders here because I've had some serious arachnophobia issues for most of my life...but these things were so big that I didn't even think of them as spiders anymore. Most of the ones we saw were about the size of my face, super hairy, and had really vivid warning colors (which I paid attention to...). Once we saw one literally come out of this cave it had burrowed into the ground just to check us out. We saw scorpions, lizards with incredible camouflage skills, snakes, and (my favorite) a butterfly with spots that looked like owl eyes.

Super cool hidden lizard! 

Ok, so I think I'm going to finish this blog post for now...but I will definitely continue with the rest of my stories in my next blog! 

Number One GAIAS Accomplishment: Learning to Survive Rip Currents

         I know that I still need to finish my epic blog post about the Amazon Rainforest and Tiputini, but this really crazy story happened to me last week and I knew I needed to share it. I want to tell this story not just to help myself kind of accept what happened, but to also let people know what to do if they get into a situation similar to this one. It was terrifying...but also something I'm proud of accomplishing. 

        




So it was the second day of our third GAIAS module…a class called Natural Resource Management and Communities. We were all really excited because this professor seemed so much cooler than the professor we had for our previous module. He decided that we should use our class time to go snorkeling at this place called La Loberia, which is this gorgeous, sandy beach with a tide pool area that’s perfect for snorkeling. When we all put our stuff down at the beach, our professor pointed out a line of boulders at the mouth of the tidal pool. He made sure we knew that going out past that pile of rocks was dangerous because the tide got very strong past that point. The water was so crystal clear and cool I had no trouble at all jumping in with my snorkel gear. There were so many beautiful fish hovering around the algae covered rocks…I loved seeing them float up and down with each wave. I went to catch up with the group that was swimming farther out because it looked like they had found something interesting. I figured that by staying close to our trusty professor I would avoid being tossed out past the line of rocks.

Wrong. Very wrong.

            The other group had found this enormous school of fish…like I’m talking thousands of these gorgeous, big fish with black stripes on their sides. I started to notice that these fish were moving back and forth about 5 feet with each new wave that came in. Suddenly, I heard some panicked yelling above water so I pulled my head up and whipped off my snorkel mask. As I was treading water and looking towards the shore, I saw my professor screaming the sentence that I never wanted to hear him yell, “We are too far out!!! WE NEED TO GET BACK TO SHORE!” As he was saying this I realized how dangerous this situation was. It was as if my time in the Galapagos was just the beginning of a super dramatic horror movie, and this was the part where the scary music came in and there’s a lot of close-ups on the main character’s panic-stricken face.

             While we were looking at fish a few minutes ago, we were oblivious to how strong the current that had pushed us toward the school of fish. Every wave that came hurtling towards us picked us up about 6 feet in the air as it passed. Some of the waves crested and broke right on our heads, dragging us under the water. One of these waves crashed down on me so hard that I flipped over at least three times underwater. I was so dizzy and exhausted that I couldn’t remember which way was up. I floated to the surface just in time for another wave to pick me up and drag me under again. Each time I tried to swim towards the shore, I would feel pull of the next wave dragging me back out again. One of the girls in the program had bought a boogie board along with her for snorkeling, and two other girls who were caught further out from me were holding onto it for dear life. One boy in my program had an asthma attack after about 10 minutes of struggling against the waves, and was fighting as hard as he could to stay above the waves. It was the worst feeling in the world to see how hard we all were swimming and to not see any progress at all. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.

            Looking back on it, I suppose it was a real lesson in control. Like sometimes there really is nothing you can do to physically change the situation you are in, but you can work within the situation to make your life a bit easier. Calming down, for one thing, was the most important thing for us all to do in this situation. Luckily, one boy in my group was experienced with rip currents, and he tried to show us how to swim parallel to the shore to escape the worst of its pull. It was way too difficult for me to understand while we were out in the middle of those big waves, however. He eventually just swam to a part of the shore that had a ton of huge black boulders and was waving directions at us. Once I saw that he had made it to shore, I finally was able to calm down and follow his directions. Up until that point though, I honestly thought I wasn’t going to make it. I was loosing so much of my strength so quickly and the whole situation seemed so futile that I didn’t think I would be able to make it to shore. As I finally began to make progress toward the shore, I started calling out directions to my friends in the waves as well. That’s the point when I saw one of my girl friends floating on her back in the water, not even trying to swim (or, as she would like to say, "gave up on life"). I started freaking out again, calling her name to see if she was conscious. Finally we saw a surfer come up and pull her onto his surfboard, making sure she was all right.

            As we got really close to shore, the situation became a bit scary again. The entire shore was encircled with gigantic boulders. The black rocks were especially intimidating for someone who was being tossed around in the ocean for the last 40 minutes like a rag doll. As I was swimming, I watched the waves before me crash up onto the rocks at was seemed like a solid 15-20 miles per hour, sending spray up about 4 feet in the air. I was so scared of getting caught in a wave at the wrong time and slamming into the rocks. Then I thought to myself, “I would much rather die on those rocks than drown in the ocean,” so I kept booking it towards the shore. Luckily, the wave that brought me to a place I could stand wasn’t that strong, and I was able to clamber around the rocks to get into a good position to face the next wave. I was with my friend Taylor at this point, and when we both saw the next wave crashing toward us, she yelled,” DUCK!” We both plunged our heads underwater, gripping the rocks for dear life as the wave threatened to dislodge us. After it past, we finally scrambled up to the top of the rocks where the rest of our class was waiting for us.

            After this experience, I really wonder how I am going to live in the future. My favorite English teacher in high school always used to call moments like these “falling beam moments” (from the book The Maltese Falcon). These are the moments in life when people are forced to see everything in a drastically different light than they had before. For the hour that I was fighting against those waves, I was forced to prioritize my energies in ways I never thought I would have to. I had to accept the fact that I could not do anything to save my friends. I had to accept that the only person I could really save was myself, and that I almost wasn’t able to do that. I had to accept that there was no easy solution for my situation, and I had to resign myself to using every ounce of strength I had to survive. Seeing my problem (the waves) as an adversary, however, was a bad idea. If I had not fought so hard against the current, I would have kept my strength way longer. I feel like this has always been my survival strategy with the problems in my life. I demonize my problems and turn them into something I have to fight against rather than just accept them as being a part of my life. Honestly, after an experience like this, I really should take everything else in my life with a grain of salt. I know I get frustrated here all the time because of the asshole guys that creep on me and my friends, but honestly 1) I’m living in the Galapagos Islands and 2) I’m ALIVE in general. While I was in that water, I finally realized what it felt like to be completely mortal. I knew that my skin, bones, and intellect were the only resources I had to keep me alive. So many young people have never been in situations like that, and they don’t realize how much they have to loose. While I certainly don’t advocate forcing people to have these experiences, I am glad that I have been through something like this. And I do always enjoy having new stories to tell :) 

Camping in Cotopaxi

So I know its been like a month since my last entry...the last course module I had (Political Ecology) was super time consuming, so I haven't had much time to sit down and write out everything thats happened so far. I've actually been living in the Galapagos for three weeks now! I'm writing this entry from the second floor of the GAIAS building on San Cristobal, where I can see Blue-Footed Boobies and gigantic Frigate Birds circling over the crystal clear, blue water in the bay that borders our town. Even though I'm sweating like crazy and recovering from a terrible sunburn right now, I see things like a baby sea lion rolling around in the waves as they crash into the shore and I'm reminded of how lucky we all are to be here. I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing that.

Butttt, I can't quite get into all of that right now. This entry is actually going to be about the  camping trip I went on to this volcano named Cotopaxi last month. I've done so many amazing things since I've been here...so please bear with me while I catch up!

So prior to coming to Ecuador I had never gone on a camping trip. Honestly...the closest I had come to actually camping was in some cabins with this father/daughter group called Indian Princesses when I was eight years old. I know how crazy it is that an Environmental Studies major hasn't really hung out much with nature, but for most of my life nature wasn't close at hand. I have always wanted to try camping, though. So after coming to Ecuador and realizing my group is full of super-camper types, I knew I had to try.

We had all been chatting about going to this one mountain called Cotopaxi, which is an extremely tall, active volcano a bit further south from Quito. Its in this section of Ecuador known as the Avenue of the Volcanoes...and it is incredibly gorgeous. Cotopaxi looks like the perfect image of a mountain...pyramid shaped, surrounded by rolling hills at its base, and with a snow-capped peak that glistens in the sunlight. We talked with the director of international students at USFQ about the trip and he decided to come with us to show us a place to camp. So the day after we came back from the Cloud Forest, we packed ourselves into a van and drove up into the paramos that surround Cotopaxi. It was a bit cloudy for the first day we were there, so we were bummed that Cotopaxi was completely covered...but we did get to see a herd of wild horses during our 3 hour hike to a cave we could make camp in. The paramos around Cotopaxi were just as beautiful as the other we had seen a few days before. Almost immediately after making camp, however, it started pouring down rain.

The view from our campsite (the next day)!

Our nook of the cave... (mine was the pink sleeping bag)

 After the sun went down, it got incredibly cold. Now I know many of you are struggling through the depths of winter right now and are probably thinking, "ya sure, Colleen...you are still on the equator." To that I would have to say yes, its not like 10 degrees or anything, but it was definitely hovering around freezing. Anyone who has been camping in freezing temperatures would attest to how cold that really feels when you are trying to sleep. Also, the sleeping bags we rented from this sketchy outfitter in Quito were for above like 50 degree weather. I'm sure they never would imagine a situation were a bunch of gringos would want to go camping in anything less that that. One of the sleeping bags even had dog hair in it...we tried to think of it as extra insulation.

Unfortunately, I was the only person on the trip that had altitude sickness. Really bad altitude sickness. I ended up not being able to eat anything all night...and on top of that we couldn't get the fire started because all the wood was damp. We did have a good time listening to music and telling really freaky ghost stories though. A thick fog infiltrated our cave after the rain stopped, which only made the stories more effective.

When we woke up the next morning, the Daniel (the director) was setting up repelling equipment for us to repel off the side of the cliff that overlooked our cave. While we were climbing up to the repelling spot, two gigantic, black birds started hovering overhead. Daniel started freaking out when he saw them because they were Andean Condors...one of the rarest bird species in Ecuador. If you look at the Ecuadorian crest, you will see what these guys look like. I told my host mom about seeing them when I got home and she told me that she had never seen one in her entire life! I was so jealous of how graceful they looked flying around the cliff we were climbing up...mostly because I was struggling so much. Once we got to the top, Daniel hooked up my friend Taylor to the repelling equipment (she's a super experienced climber) to show us how repelling works. I was kinda freaking out a bit when I looked over the edge and realized how badly hurt I could get if I let go of the rope. Because I probably looked like translucent with fear, Daniel made me go down next...and it ended up being one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life. It was so difficult to put all of my trust in the strength of my hands and a piece of rope that was tied up between a few gnarly paramo trees. To help me get over this fear, Daniel literally pushed me off the cliff. Halfway down the cliff, the clouds that were obscuring Cotopaxi opened up so I could see the entire mountain. After seeing that, my fear was completely gone.

So, in one weekend I had my first camping trip in a cave, my first bout with altitude sickness, and my first repelling experience! After getting back home Sunday afternoon, we all crashed with exhaustion...and to get ready for our trip to the Amazon Rainforest the next day. Yes, that will be my next entry...which I will be getting around to very soon.