Ok, so this weekend was our first weekend away from Quito since we arrived, and it was definitely a welcome change. While Quito is a bustling, interesting, and historically important city, the real reason that everyone in my program came to Ecuador is the natural side of the country. So Friday morning at 8, everyone excitedly piled into our bus and headed east out of the city. The ride itself was interesting, seeing as it took us through parts of Quito and the outer towns that I had never seen before. Quito has been growing so rapidly in recent years that it takes nearly 40 minutes to really feel like you have gotten outside of it. Near the edge of the urban sprawl is a monument called "El Mitad del Mundo," which means the middle of the earth. This is supposedly where the Equator runs through Ecuador. However, there are two monuments that claim this right, and the smaller, less touristy one is supposidly the most geographically correct, and so we stopped there.
Next to the Monument
The Town on the Equator
After this little detour, we hopped back into the bus and continued to make our way towards El Pahuma. We eventually made it across the valley bottom and began to re-enter the mountains.
Cloud-shrouded Andes
At this point, everyone on the bus was getting pretty excited, and the fact that we were winding down these hair-raising Andean roads and everyone was standing on one side of the bus trying to take pictures was a little disconcerting. We continued in this way for about 15 minutes until we finally reached our destination, El Pahuma Orchid Reserve.
First, a little background on the reserve. It was founded about 15 years ago by our profesors Jim Meisel and Catherine Woodward, and the way it came to be is actually a crazy story. Joe and Kath were driving through the mountains one day and decided that the plot of land Pahuma is now located on would be a good place to hike to a waterfall. As they were hiking, they ran into the now-eldest member of the Lima family, who owned/still owns the property. He was collecting wood, which was the family business at the time. They got to talking, and the conversation came around to how the Lima family was interested in starting a biological reserve and orchid garden, but did not have the money. Longer story short, Joe and Cath funded the conversion of the land to a biological reserve through the use of easements. After initail doubts, the family is now making more money from tourism than it was from wood, and has become a leading example for at least 70 other families in the area, all of which are looking to change their land use to ecotourism after the success of the Lima's. Pretty incredible.
Anyway, upon arriving, we were greeted warmly by the family, shown to our lodge, and then came back up to the roadside hut that the family opperates out of, where we were given a delicious lunch of chicken and rice. The second youngest kid in the family, Reneito (Rene Jr.), was probably among the cutest kids i've seen recently, and later in the weekends we became friends through a game he came up with called "Donde esta mi mano," in which either him or I would put our hand up our sleave and make the other find it.
Our lodge
The younger Rene
Also, basically Rene got to run around the forest all day and play with visitors. Pretty good life I´d say! But to continue, after lunch, we began our ascent of 400 vertical meters to the top of the mountain, where we were to spend the night. When we left, it was not yet raining, but by the time we reached the top, we were soaked in both sweat and water, and glad for a break. Me and my classmate Paul were the first to the top, and it took about 50 minutes for us to get there. The cabin was small and rustic, with only one room for 10 students to sleep in. There was also a small hut that served as our classroom/dining room/fireplace. All in all, it was a lovely little spot.
The Cabin
Our Classroom Hut
After everyone arrived at the cabin, we had about an hour to explore before Catherine gave a lecture on birds and proper birding techniques. This lecture was useful in part because there is a beautiful toucan that is endemic to these mountains called the Plate-billed Mountain Toucan, which we were hoping to see. After about two hours of lecture, dinner was cooked by two helpers who had been hired to cook for our group at the cabin. Dinner consisted of spagetti and sauce, a salid, popcorn, and a traditional alcoholic Ecaudorian mountain drink called canelazo, which is served warm, made of a popular fruit here called naranjilla, and is delicious. After dinner, we went on a night walk along some of the mountain trails, where we found some interesting insects and frogs, and then went to bed.
Cool Bug Found on Mountain
The Sleeping Arrangements
The following morning we got up at about 6 (sunrise) to go birdwatching. Unfortunately, we didn´t get to see much more than a couple tanagers, which were extremely colorful but relatively common. We then had breakfast and prepared to go to the very top of the mountain, which was perhaps another 400 vertical meters. Right as we were about to leave was when the action, or as our instructors put it, "birdgasm", began. We finally got to see the Plate Billed Mountain Toucan! It was absolutely incredible to see this bird, and it was unlike any bird I have every seen, captured or in the wild. Unfortunately, I wasn´t able to get a great picture of it with my little point-and-shoot, but this link should suffice. Definitely check this out:
And it didn´t stop there. We also were able to see the Powerful Woodpecker, a woodpecker very similar to the temperate Pileated, and the Turqoise Jay, also highly endemic to the part of the Andes we were in. After this excitement, we finally started toward the top of the mountain. Every once in a while, Catherine would stop us and tell us about some plant/lichen of particular importance, which we would then have to record in our feild notebooks. In essence, this was kind of like a lecture on the move. After making it to the top and eating PB and J sandwhiches for lunch under our ponchos in the pouring rain, we went a short distance down "El Sendero de los Yumbos," which is an experience I will not soon forget. This trail had been used first by the indigenous Yumbos, a Quichua speaking tribe, and during and after colonialism was used by the Spanish and bandits. Basically, this trail had been used so much that it had worn down more than 8 feet into the ground in some places, thus creating large walls that surround you as you walk through it. It was incredible to see such clear evidence of use that spanned centuries back.
El Sendero de los Yumbos
Sangre de Drago
Also, the tree in the picture above is worth mentioning. Its sap cures literally almost everything, as it serves as a coagulant, anti-diaretic, hand-cleanser, and just about anything else you could imagine. For instance, there was a girl in our group who had a rock fall onto her while she was climbing under a waterfall, and the way our professors treated her wound was putting this sap on it. It is also quite impressive to look at because it looks like the tree is actually bleeding.
Anyway, after seeing the Sendero trail, it was essentially downhill from there (literally yuk yuk). It started pouring and we had to go down what essentially amounted to 2 hour long mudslide. However, we were fortunate enough not to be the group going up that day, who had to climb that same mudslide. Once we got to the bottom, we hung up our muddy, wet clothes and situated ourselves in the lodge. After this, we had an informal Q and A session about the goals of the property and how it came to be, and then were served a delicious dinner by the Lima family, although what exactly it was unfortunately escapes me. During the Q and A session, it came up that the family was considering doing an Andean Bear survey with trail cameras, which I would love to be a part of and is basically what I am hoping to do for my required internship here. They said to keep in touch, so I may be able to do it there, which would be an incredible experience.
After that, not much happened that night. People were pretty beat from decending/the early morning and everyone went to bed at around 9. However, we got up the next morning around 6 in hope of seeing the same diversity of birds we had seen the morning before. During this morning bird-watching session, we didn´t see much more than a couple of warblers, which was disappointing. However, after we returned from the walk, we immediatedly saw the Beautiful Jay, a jay endemic to the area. After seeing this, we went and had a good breakfest at the "visitor´s center" of El Pahuma.
After breakfest, we had a big flurry of bird sightings, similar to what had happened the previous morning, and almost exactly at the same time. However, this time we say the Toucan Barbet, which is very similar to a toucan in color, but with a smaller bill and body, and also the Crimson-Mantled Woodpecker. Neither bird was like anything I had seen before, and posted below are links to their pictures.
After this rush of excitement, we went back to the lodge and had what was probably the most boring lectures of the trip. It was about epiphytic plants, and I really was just not feeling it. However, at the end of the lecture, we got the chance to go collect and press some of our own plants from the forest. Initially, I was not so excited about doing this, since I just finished a stressful project last semester that entailed a lot of this. However, I went out and picked out two flowers that I found interesting, and brought them back to identify and press. One of these flowers was quite common and I quickly identified it, but the other one was a little more tricky. I asked Cath for help, and even she, as a seasoned professional botanist, could not identify it. So it is highly unlikely, but there is the possibility that I discovered a new flower! Cath told me she was going to take it to the herbarium and see if she could identify it their, so I am anxiously awaiting to see what they have to say. Its a long shot, but still!
Being done with this, we had a delicious pork lunch and waited for the other group to decend from the mountain. After they came, we headed up to see the waterfall that had initially enticed Joe and Cath to the property. It was absolutely huge and powerful, and the velocity of the water falling created a wind similar to that one might encounter during a storm. After seeing this, we did a little swimming under a smaller waterfall, took some pictures, and then made the hike back to the lodge, where we had a snack, packed up our things, and got on the bus. As we headed towards Quito, everyone seemed reluctant to go back after such a great weekend. I know I was!
So yeah! Basically that is everything of note about my weekend in the El Pahuma montane forest. Though short, it was really the experience of a lifetime, and I really can't wait to see what the rest of the semester has in store. This weekend, we are going to the Páramo ecosystem, which is an Andean highland ecosystem similar to that of the American tundra, except more extreme. Daily temperatures can range from below freezing to 70 degrees F depending on the day, and the adaptations that result from living in these extremes should be very interesting to study. I am sure I will have a lot more to say about this shortly!
Also, if anyone is interested, here are the links to the blogs of a couple of other students on the trip. They have been taking better pictures, so if you are interested, check'em out!
Thanks for reading!
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