8/27/12 -- The week of Maquipucuna, part of a story of failed blogging.

Jackclyn, are you serious? You said you were keeping a blog and then you disappeared for three weeks. What in the world have you been doing?!

Well, the last time I updated was three Sundays ago and I have since then been to the Maquipucuna Reserve cloud forest, to Tiputini Biodiversity Station, and to final projects and exam land with my Tropical Ecology class. I will probably not have enough pictures to satisfy curious minds, and I apologize for that. Once I get my classmates’ high-res pictures of the cool things we saw, I will have them up. 

As a quick recap of the first week I missed: I successfully registered my student visa with the Ecuadorian government, we had some really cool class lectures about cloud forests and tropical rain forests, and Maquipucuna was beautiful.

More detailed: 

Monday I went with Kari and Savannah back to Quito to get our visas. There was no hiccup and we got back in time for pastries (Croissant nutelas at the school bakery para morirse!) and studying. Tuesday seems to have been unremarkable. Wednesday, Chelsea and I went on a bus adventure to the edge of Quito for an outdoor store called Tatoo, which is the Ecuadorian equivalent to REI, except their store brand clothing is much more affordable. I purchased my first pair of hiking pants (very useful things, they are! Durable, light, quick-drying, and protective!) and wandered the store as Chelsea climbed on their rock wall for fun. 

Thursday we left at 8 am from USFQ for our 2-hour bus ride to Maquipucuna Nature Reserve, which is in a cloud forest or montane forest ecosystem. 

This journey involved the entire class’s discovery of the joys of Kiwa All-Natural Vegetable Chips (a company run by none other than my host sister Natalie and her husband!) and some complications with motion sickness for a few of my classmates, but all in all, I think we did well in transit. I have no pictures from the bus, so this chip bag shall suffice. 

A cloud forest is at just the right altitude between the lower and upper alpine latitudes that a unique band of specific vegetation and life forms thrive at just about the cloud level in the atmosphere. 

To illustrate how closeby Mindo and Maquipucuna are to each other (just a turn off the main road and a few windy paths down the mountain away!), here is a picture of the stream right by our cabins in Maquipucuna. 

I had to look back at pictures to make sure I didn’t repeat my Mindo hostel stream picture. Maquipucuna is by a much larger and faster stream. 

Mindo has a slow trickle. In the distance a few minutes after I took this picture, some people came by to do their laundry in the water. MOSQUITOES GALORE. 

The path to our Maquipucuna cabins and - most importantly - the eating area. 

At the eating area, our first lunch awaited us. I’m not entirely sure what is in this red chicken sauce, but it is really delicious. The yellow patch is a type of banana that has the exact same taste as dry potatoes. The drink, covered by a napkin to keep out curious wasps, is some sort of sweet tea. Hummingbirds kept us company at the feeders around the dining tables. 

This first day, the class was split into 3 groups to conduct “field work” with either Esteban, Carlos (one of the reserve’s resident naturalists), or by themselves. The 3 groups were responsible for taking data about the forests’ tree properties (canopy coverage, tree density, canopy height), soil properties, or life forms. I was in the tree property group, and Carlos was our guide. He is really cool! I know because I spent most of our walking time chatting with him and asking him my and others’ questions about the forest and its plants and animals. I was somehow designated translator for the group today.

Succession is the process undergone by an ecosystem as organisms colonize it. The two types of succession are primary and secondary. For a quick ecology lesson on succession, please view this short video: 

That shows the basics of primary succession, which occurs where there isn't existing soil. Secondary succession usually happens after a large disturbance to the ecosystem that still leaves most of the soil intact, such as a fire, cattle grazing, or flood. The idea is that each form of succession brings with it different plant forms. A little more information is on this web page by Penn State. 

Note: there is a school of thought that wants people to rethink the very cut-and-dry way of considering succession. Especially when it applies to more diverse ecosystems that aren't temperate forests, it is not really possible to predict what species will take up residence in a ecosystem that has opportunity for colonization. 

During our field work, we confirmed that secondary forests have lower canopy heights, more trees that are a similar species with thin trunks, and less canopy coverage than primary forest overall. I was meticulously writing data and chatting with Carlos and thus did not take pictures during this portion of our trip. But here are pictures from Google that kind of show the differences between these two types of forests in the montane ecosystem. 

The primary forest was much darker due to higher canopy coverage, with larger and more majestic trees.

Secondary forest with wimpy skinny trees. They seem tall, but they actually were not when compared with the primary forest trees.

The disturbance in the area around Maquipucuna was the act of grazing by subsistence farmers’ cattle. Now, the area is kept by 11 farmers of cocoa and coffee who work with the reserve and live harmoniously with the land. 

Picture I've pirated from Nick (more of his work very shortly!) featuring our group sans photographer trying to figure out how to measure forest properties in the secondary forest part of the hike.

We returned from our hike, prepared a snappy skit (complete with a Call Me Maybe spoof with dance moves) to present our data, presented data with the other groups, ate a nice dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce with a tub of cheese in the middle of the tables, and played Telephone Pictionary until it was time for bed. Which was about 10:00 pm, since we were to wake by 6:15 am the next morning for an “optional” birdwatching journey in the trails. I wasn’t going to miss out. 

Our nature guides and professors have an incredible ability to spot animals from impossible distances and unlikely angles at all points on a trail. They also have really powerful telescopes that do not match the puniness of our binoculars. I’m not sure how many types of birds we saw that morning, but it was over 2 dozen and I was happy to have gotten this picture through the eye of one of their strong telescopes. 

At one point there were 5 birds perched on this tree, but two of them flew away by the time I was able to focus the iPhone camera (I take pictures on my iPhone. It’s fine.). Can you spot them? The other class, which traveled with us to Maquipucuna, had a bird cataloguing assignment, so they are more likely to know the species and names of these birds than I am. Their class and also Kari, who loves birds. 

We returned to have breakfast - by the way, fresh warm Ecuadorian sweet breakfast bread is comparable to fresh warm Chinese sweet bread, and that’s saying a lot - and then set off on a hike deep through the mountain and to a waterfall. 

We started through this field, where we could see the expanse of what was ahead of us. 

After the field, we came across an enormous snail (caracola in Spanish, which also translates as "face tail" hehe!) greeting us to the treacherous forest, and Nick put his hand by it for comparison. Savannah’s water bottle is also featured. Caracola had moved about a foot further when we came back 5 hours later. 

We hiked through the mountain on steep and winding trails cut through the earth by soldiers of the Incan empire, and well traveled in the later 1800s by illegal liquor traders.  I don’t know how people managed to transport cargo through those trails, because I sure had a hard enough time just staying upright with a bookbag on my back! This picture doesn't depict the very steep dusty slopes that we conquered. 

There were scenic waterscapes. 

And I thought enough to take a picture with a leaf of my favorite plant in the ecosystem - the cecropia tree. 

Me with a cecropia leaf.

The cecropia tree is one of the pioneer species of many mountain ecosystems. Whenever there is a new plot of land to be conquered or somewhere that had a disturbance that wiped out its old tree growth, cecropia trees willingly take on the challenge. They reach maximum height relatively quickly, but they are also expending so much energy to grow tall that they have sacrificed strength in their wood and chemical defenses in their leaves. As a result, they surrender to infestations by bugs and other plants and fall to make room for secondary succession plants at a young age of about 35 years. The wood is a similar lightness to balsa wood, which is also a pioneer species tree. One of my favorite features of it are the humongous leaves it holds up, and how small I felt standing amidst hundreds of fallen leaves on the forest floor. 

Also please note: IT IS A TREESTAR. 

This is still me with a cecropia leaf. 

Since I don’t have waterproof visual equipment, I don’t have any pictures of our arrival, wading, and plunge into the stream by the waterfall. The water was extremely cold and there was a giant rock under the waterfall that people used as a slide (parents, no I didn’t participate because it looked like it hurt. Also the water is freezing.). 

After a quick dip and some pictures in the water, we hiked back warped speed - I figured out that trotting down a steep and dusty slope instead of trying to gingerly balance works a lot better - and had a marvelous lunch of fresh fried tilapia (there is a farm about 10 minutes outside of the reserve), rice, onion salad, and soup. After that we cleaned up ourselves and our cabins and left for Cumbaya. 

Saturday was the International Students Welcome Party, which I had paid for but sold my spot to Ian because my independent research paper was still needing some edits. So I woke up at 7 to have breakfast with Savannah before she left for the day-long affair, and I stayed in Cumbaya to tidy up some charts, figures, and research write-ups. 

In the process, I had a tamale and an empanada at an ice cream shop. They were very tasty, and the shop had good ahí (Ecuadorian hot sauce, which is the only spicy thing they have in their cuisine). 

 I then strolled to El Español, an upscale 2-story cafe that sells fancy chocolate, cheese, nuts, and wine and has wifi. I went because of the wifi and partook also in a frozen coffee-less Twix drink. Savannah returned for dinner and I kept working afterward.

Maybe I secretly want to be keeping a food blog?

Sunday, Savannah, Chelsea, Joe (someone they met at Saturday’s day party) and I went to a rock climbing wall. Savannah taught me how to boulder, I made it halfway up one of the climbing routes (my arms just could not handle any more after I’d bouldered for a while), and I played around on the slackline. We, sans Joe, then took the bus to the Quito artisan market aka the perfect place for souvenirs and came back in time for Chelsea to land a free dinner with our host mom and a ride with Jose Antonio back home since the taxi companies weren’t answering Natacha’s call. 

We packed for Tiputini and went to bed, not sure of the adventure ahead. 

And tonight (September 16) I head to bed also, because I have the adventure of my first day of Mountain Geology class tomorrow. I must face this before I update you on the rain forest. There are lots of pictures from the rain forest, and I'm not yet sure how to share them without creating an overwhelming entry.

Pues.... 

Buenas noches, y hasta mañana!