Baños/Lalo Loor

Hey everyone!  Sorry it's been a long time since I have been able to update, but this is probably going to be an increasing trend as we start traveling more and more.  Anyway, though, I will start about two weeks back and see what I can recall.  Basically, I left off right before my group and I headed to Baños, which is a small but very touristy town about 4 hours east of Quito.

On friday afternoon, everyone assembled at USFQ, and the fact that we had finally completed our intensive Spanish courses for the semester had everyone in a great mood.  Several of the people in our group had organized a chartered bus to take us to Baños, which amazingly only ended up costing $10 a person.  It was also nice because since it was a bus full of students, we didn't have to keep such a close watch on our belongings and were just able to enjoy ourselves.

We arrived at Baños at around 8 or 9 at night and got dropped off right at our hostel.  The hostel was very nice; comfortable beds, pretty, and also contained a pool and a breakfeast place, all for a price of 8 dollars a night.  Also, this was my first time staying at a hostel, and I think it is neat how they create a setting in which you can easily meet different young people from all over the world.

Upon chosing our rooms, our group proceed to head to the bars.  In Baños, there are basically two or three bars that it seems like nearly everyone wants to go to, and they are directly across the street from each other so it was really easy to bounce back and forth between them, depending upon how you were feeling about the one you were currently in.  The coolest one was call Leprechaun, which had a really cool outdoor patio with a bonfire and garden, as well as a dancefloor inside, and this is probably where I spent most of my 2 nights there.  Again, the atmosphere was very international, and I met some really great people.  For instance, I spent about three hours talking to an Ecuadorian girl who was really into my favorite band, Trampled by Turtles.  They are a band based out of Duluth, Minnesota, and while they definitely have a name within MN, the chances of finding someone in Ecuador who listene to them had to be a million to one.

However, the main reason that we had come to Baños was to go whitewater rafting.  Hence, we all got up early on Saturday morning and proceeded to take a bus about an hour downstream to where the rapids began.  While the ride was slightly longer than anticipated, it was cool to see the scenery, tropical birds, and villages along the way.  Once we got there, we met our guides, went over a few guidelines, and got on the river.

The rapids started out pretty small, but got bigger as we went.  Also, although I don't remember my previous whitewater experience all that well, it seemed like the guides on this trip were a lot more relaxed than on my previous one.  For example, there were times when they would try to flip the boat or let us jump out and swim around a bit.  Also, we hit one rapid and I got ejected off the other side of the boat.  However, I felt completely safe the whole time, and it was only a class III rapid, so the guides were extremely comfortable with it. 

After about 2 or 3 hours of rafting, it was over and we piled into the bus for the ride back to Baños.  Along the way, we stopped in a town for lunch.  Once we got back, we explored town a little more, tried to figure out what we wanted to do the next day, and when night fell, headed to the bars.  This was fun, but relatively uneventful, and I returned to my room at around 2, talked with my roommates, and then went to sleep.

The next morning, my high school friend Emeline, her friend Sam, and I went to a hip little breakfast place that we had scoped out the day before.  It was called Posada del Arte, for all those reading that would consider vacationing in Ecuador on more than a student's budget, this is the place for you to stay.  It is supposedly a hostel, but in reality is more like a sheik (sorry about the spelling) 5 star hotel.  It is filled with art, extremely well decorated, and in part run by guy from Chicago so you wouldn't have to speak Spanish. 

Anyway, breakfest was excellent.  It was 6 dollars, which is a little pricey for any meal here, but the amount and quality of foold was well worth it.  Sam and I got huevos rancheros with freshly made strawberry juice, and Emeline got one of the fattest pancakes I have ever seen.  After this hearty breakfast, we returned to an ally where we had talked to a guy about riding horses for a price of $5 an hour up to a nearby active volcano the previous day. Unfortunately, he was not there, and we figured someone probably beat us to it.  So a little discouraged and without any true plans, we returned to the hostel.

Some of the other actvities that you can do in Baños are bungee jump, repel up a waterfall, or go mountain biking. However, the safety of doing some of these things in the extremely unregulated way that Ecuadorians do it seemed a little suspect.  For instance, all we had to do to go whitewater rafting was write down our name and make up a passport number. So yeah... not exactly official.  As a safer (and free!) option, we decided to hike up some of the surrounding mountains and get a better look at the town. In doing this, we saw that there was pretty town square that we had somehow not seen yet, so we decended and sat there for half an hour.  After this, we grabed a quick lunch, packed up, and took a bus back to Quito.

This bus ride itself was actaully quite eventful.  The primary road between Quito and Baños ended up being closed, so we literaly went offroading in the bus for about an hour or so.  Also, they played the movie "Fast Five" on the way home, which contained my favorite song I had heard in the clubs that weekend and allowed me to figure it out when I got home (Danza Kudero for anyone interested...so good!).  Finally, upon arriving in Quito, my space cadet friend Lauren realized that her bag had been stolen during the course of the trip, and hence we have our first major theft from anyone in the program.  As a side note, I feel like it is a gross misconception that Latin America is more dangerous than the United States.  Obviously there are places that you just shouldn't go, but usually people only want to steal things, not hurt you, and as long as you are smart and alert, you should not have many problems.

So after the whole bag fiasco and another hour on local buses to get back to my apartment, I quickly had to pack up for my big trip to Lalo Loor, which was to commence at 8 the next morning.  Lalo Loor is a tropical dry forest reserve that my professors started in a very similar way to El Pahuma; that is, working with landowners to create easements which set aside a certain plot of there land with the landowner's property that they are to preserve according to the guidelines of the easement.  But more about that in a bit.

The next morning, I headed to our usual bus stop near Estadio Olímpico.  After everyone was assembled, we headed out of town towards the province of Manabí, which is known primarily for its intensive agriculture, top knotch sea food, and beautiful beaches.  As we got further and further from Quito, it was really interesting to see the land uses that we went through.  We started by going through the cloud and montane forest that contain El Pahuma, bus as we worked west, mountains became shorter and the amount of visible human influence.  We passed many plantations, containing rubber trees, pineapples, cacao, and bananas.  We also got the chance to stop at a fruit stand pick out some fruit to eat that week.  My professor Joe also bought be a "coco frío," which is essentially a coconut that is put in the fridge until you ask for it, after which they hack off the top with a machete and stick a straw in it so you can drink the coconut milk.  As a bonus, at a later stop, I found a rock and crushed the coconut to get at the meat.  So it was a drink and a meal all in one!

The rest of the ride passed relatively uneventfully, although I did see a Jesus lizard, one of those lizards that you have probably seen on nature shows walking on water.  Unfortunately, it was just sitting on a tree, so not all that exciting besides knowing that it COULD walk on water if it wanted to.  Anyways, we arrived at Lalo Loor Reserve around 3 in the afternoon, and were greeted by several of the workers there, who turned out to be quite the characters.  The first one, named Maximo, was a young, energetic and funny Quichua man, who has run the reserve for the last six years, and before that, was born and raised in the rainforests of the Oriente region of Ecuador.  He didn't speak English (although he was prolific in Spanish, Quichua, and German), so communicating with him throughout the week also provided everyone with some much needed Spanish practice. Perhaps one of the more frustrating things about this trip has been that everytime it seems like I am getting good at Spanish, we go on an isolated trip where we speak English amongst eachother, and then my Spanish regresses.

The other person we met right away was James, who was from very proudly from Brooklyn, and seemed like the most unlikely person to be into conservation.  Its not very often  that I see a guy who is super jacked and had a thick NYC accent decide to spend 4 years in the forest.  However, he was very enthusiastic and knowledgable, which made him a decent teacher and fun to be around.

After making an extremely muddy ten minute hike, in which we got our first real glimpse of the dry forest ecosystem, we arrived at the hut that we were to spend most of the next five days in.  It was lifted off the ground to keep snakes from getting in and made almost completely of bamboo.  Inside, there were dining tables, a fully functional and staffed kitchen, and about 8 rooms housing 4 people each.  After choosing a room and bed, which came complete with a mosquito net, we had the rest of the day to relax (I think).  That night, we played chess, cards, and other games, read, and listened to two very talented singers/guitar players that we are lucky enough to have on our trip. This was basically what we did everynight in the hut.  At times took night walks to a nearby palm that had a bunch of ripe fruits, so was a likely place to see mammals such as the agouti or kinkajoo.

Outside our hut, there was a set of outhouses, a shower (which I proudly did not use the whole trip), a sink for brushing teeth, and a little pavilion with a set of hammoks to hang out in.  Also nearby was a small water fall and pool, where we could bathe in and sometimes see howler monkeys above us.

The next morning, we went on a walk to see more of the reserve and try to do a little bird watching.  As far as birds go, we were rewarded by seeing a pale mantled araçari, which is very similar to a toucan, a green honey creeper, and a white bearded manakin, all very striking birds.  The forest itself was very different than other tropical forests because it has a unique, long dry season that can last anywhere from 3 to 7 months.  For this reason, many of the plants there have adaptations that allow them to survive without much water.  For instance, there is a tree called the Psuedobombax thats truck actually expands and bulges to allow it to store water.  There are also numerous epiphytic cacti and other succulent plants.

Throughout the rest of our stay, we did projects on nearby streams concerning water quality, collected insects, and visited a mangrove and shrimp pond.  And then we hit the beach for the weekend to laze around, which was much fun and beautiful.