GIANT TIPUTINI POST - Week of 9/3/12

Have you noticed I'm about a month behind in my posts? Yeah this blogging thing is going just fine... sorry ya’ll. Today I'll be all caught up! 

The rain forest was absolutely amazing. Some of these pictures are not in chronological order of when I saw them, but they are placed within the same day's description. 

So Monday, September 3rd, we got to the USFQ campus at 5 am to catch a 7 am flight. Everything started out great, and I even had on my glasses instead of my contacts since I anticipated sleeping during the 30-minute bus ride to Quito and the 30 minute plane ride to Coca. 

Here was the planned schedule of activities:

• 5 am - arrive at USFQ for the bus to Quito airport
• 7 am - flight takes off to Coca 
• 7:30 am - flight arrives at Coca 
• 8:00 am - boat leaves from Coca to supersecret oil company land 
• 10:00 am - boat arrives at supersecret oil company land and we board the truck-bus to the Tiputini River
• 12:00 pm - truck-bus arrives at Tiputini River embarkation point and we take a quick bathroom break before taking the boat to the station. 
• 2:00 pm - our class arrives at Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazon basin, home of the highest concentration of biodiversity of amphibians, birds, insects, and mammals in the whole world. We would then begin our unbelievable week in perfectly preserved tropical rain forest. 

But none of that happened on Monday because at 7:00 we were standing next to an impossibly contorted bundle of Ecuadorians arranged in Ecuadorian-style lines (read: no line, just bundles of people) in the airplane terminal watching Esteban, distressed, bleary-eyed, and frustrated, arguing with the airport security personnel about letting our group through on passport copies. Half of our group was able to get through the ID checking line with copies of their passports, and the other half - who happened to step into the line of a different security official - was kept stranded in the terminal, clinging onto Esteban’s pant legs for help. Not literally. But we were soon sitting on the ground in the terminal in a pow-wow circle, pant-leg-level, playing cards and trying not to freak out. 

After a few rounds of cards, a very dramatic event of Esteban barging onto the plane to get the half of the class that was there and then barging onto the cargo truck to get all of our checked bags, we were reunited as a group and waited some more for Esteban and the GAIAS office to sort things out. It turns out that the university had grown used to lax and improper airport security management, and when the rules changed so that documentations were more strongly enforced, they weren’t prepared and had told all of us students only to bring a copy of our passports. Whoops! 

So we then rode the swanky charter bus back to Cumbaya, where we stowed our bags in the school office, I went and got my passport, took a nap, and came back to USFQ at 2 pm for the 4 pm flight, which happened without a hitch. 

Article in the in-flight magazine about the Yasuní national forest, where Tuputini is located. And complimentary chocolate milk from the airline Tame. 

At 4:30 we arrived in Coca, a town experiencing recent booming growth because of the oil interests that have strong influences in the area. Instead of moving forward with our various travel mediums that day, we were to stay the night at “La Mision” hotel, where the boat would come to pick us up the next morning. 

This is the street outside of the tiny airport in Coca. 

La Mision is a fascinating and sad place at the same time. For one, they have a water slide and several pools in the back. 

A few of us went swimming/sliding before dinner. In the background is the Golden Gate Bridge-inspired Coca Bridge that Jose Antonio, my host brother, designed as a civil engineer for the national government. (photo by Chelsea)

For another, they also have quite a few exotic animals that they’ve stolen from the wilderness, including a few spider monkeys, a few squirrel monkeys, several peacocks, a pair of parrots, and a tortoise. And a few fluffy white bunnies. 

One of the hotel peacocks (photo by Ian)

One of the hotel squirrel monkeys eating jam and fruit set out by the hotel staff (photo by Ian)

So I shared a room with Mary for the night, went swimming briefly, had a pretty yummy dinner (but no match with Tiputini catered dinners!), chatted with a room of 7 classmates for a bit, and slept.

The motelo tortoise wandering the hotel, near the housekeeping laundry area. Featuring Mary's hand for scale and because she was coaxing it. 

These stairs make no sense.  

The bunnies.

Tuesday morning’s travels went smoothly. Here are a few pictures. We saw river dolphins dipping in and out of the water surface on the Tiputini River, but I wasn't able to get any pictures (it was only a small sliver of their backs, and they are quick!). 

This is what they look like, and this image is from googling "Tiputini river dolphin".

One of the drivers of the boat from Coca to gas station land. Esteban on the left, Savannah's elbow also.  

Us on the boat from Coca. 

The process of trees falling into the river is actually ecologically important, because they provide habitats for small fish to burrow for protection against predators. 

One of the bridges we crossed in the truck-bus leaving from supersecret oil company land.

Unloading the truck-bus at the bridge where the Tiputini boat picked us up.  

Us on the boat to Tiputini.  

Tanning turtles on the Tiputini River! A little hard to see...

Upon arrival, Diego the station director gave us a short orientation (no boots in the cabins, no electricity except for 11 am to 2 pm and 6 pm to 9 pm, keep noise to a minimum, dry boxes are in the lab/library, meals are 6:30 am, 12 pm, and 7 pm, etc) and we set down our things in our cabins. We then split into small groups for our first introduction to the rainforest around the biodiversity station. 

Us assembling amidst a bathroom break before our orientation. This is the eating area. God bless free snacks. 

This is a terrible photo of the lab room/library, the only room with air conditioning at the station so it can keep the books and electronic equipment in good condition. 

The two dry boxes with turtle shells on top of them. The boxes have light bulbs to keep personal electronics dry. 

My hiking group for the week consisted of Ashley, Lorraine, and Nick, and we got to have Esteban as our guide for the first hike. We went along the “Lagos” trail, which leads to the lake, as its name suggests. The lake used to be part of the Tiputini River but was cut off by land movement and has now become a lagoon that is the only place with the risk of being attacked by big caimans late at night. They only come out at night. 

Can you see the frog? If not, it's either really well camouflaged or I took this picture as an illustration of the dense ground cover...

I'm a big fan of leaf frogs. Especially little baby ones. (photo by Nick)

Tiny dart frog! (photo by Nick)

The roots of a walking palm - certain stalks of the root will die as the plant sends down other roots. The plant is seen to  move horizontally towards some sort of desired resource over time!

Roots of the fig tree outside of our cabins. If you look closely in the crevice formed by the leftmost root in the picture, you can see the specks that are bats living there!

A fig tree during our hike on Lagos trail, and me in one of my customarily unflattering hiking outfits and boots borrowed from the station. My pants STILL smell like the insides of those boots... 

A poor quality video of leaf cutter ants and Esteban explaining some of their movement. They arbitrarily take chunks of leaves from plants to bring back to their colony, which is usually at the roots of a big tree. The leaves are used to build a giant compost pile for growing fungus to feed their colony. This is called a mutualistic symbiotic relationship between the ants and the fungus, because they both benefit from the interaction - the fungus gets grown, and the ants get fed. They're farmers! 

Tapir tracks!  

The successful growth of a strangler fig - the host tree is seen inside the netting pattern of the fig tree, which has reached the ground after beginning growth as a vine from the TOP of the host tree. The seed was most likely deposited by an animal such as a bird or monkey. Once the vine (also called a bejuco) reaches the ground it starts to grow thicker and to strangle the host tree. Instead of needing to build its own structure, the strangler fig tree uses the shape of its host and retains the shape after the host dies and decomposes. Pretty cool! 

A type of beetle lays its eggs under the first layer of these leaves - when the egg hatches, the larvae will eat through the leaf in the light-colored pattern that we can see, and then break out of the leaf once it is big enough. 

Us in the canoe with Esteban paddling at the back, looking to see what we can see on the lake. 

These are hoatzin birds (photos by Nick! Incredible photography!), which retain the prehistoric characteristic of claws as hatchlings. These allow for their young to claw back up a tree if they accidentally fall out of their nests into the water. Their calls sound like asthmatic coughing. Apparently their meat tastes like rotten poultry, so native people have given them the name "stinky turkey". 

As cool as the hoatzin birds are, I think my favorite animal on the lake was these bats.
They freaked out and flew away to another post when we paddled by them. (Photo by Nick, of course.) 

Some of the trees lining the lake. I think there was a tiny yellow toucan here, but you can't really see it. 

Following the hike, we went back to the station for a dinner of beef, rice, salad, and apple cake. Before bed, Diego gave us a short presentation about the camera trap project, which has set up many cameras through the area at places known to have high animal traffic. The cameras are meant to capture pictures of animals difficult for researchers to see, such as black jaguars, giant armadillos, and tapirs. Here’s an interview with the camera trap researchers, featuring some of the same pictures they showed us on a slideshow! My favorite picture was definitely what Diego has dubbed “kung fu armadillo” because it features a small armadillo that looks like it jumped two feet into the air - legs extended straight out, its belly tilted towards the camera - because something (probably the camera flash) scared it. I can’t find a version of that fantastic picture though, unfortunately. =( 

I slept really well - a lot better than I thought I would, and than I normally do - during our nights there. The cabin “windows” are actually mesh wire nets and we slept in bunk beds to the serenade of insect chatter, frog songs, and monkey calls. Theory: sleeping in silence actually isn't good for you; the hum of nature nurtures your brain during your resting hours. 

The cabin I shared was with Kari, Louise, and Laleña. 

Wednesday we took the woolly monkey (Chamborago) trail with Santiago, and after lunch we went to the observation tower (Torre) and the observation bridges (Puentes) with Myer. These latter two things challenged my trust of long-standing manmade features, my mild fear of heights, and my more than mild fear of swinging bridges. 

Our guide Santiago explaining something about this tree seed. Monkeys eat it, and I think it has some sort of medicinal property that natives use. 

Bug with a crazy-looking design on its back armor!  

Jaguar tracks with Nick's hand for scale. 

Nick demonstrating the proper usage of the "peine de mono" or monkey brush seed, which is round with pointy prickles on the outside and is hardly visible in the picture. Monkeys actually use it as a brush for their fur or for scratching! 

Wow I look so good when I hike! This is a very old tree.  However, the oldest trees in the rainforest only are up to 250 years, because there is such fierce competition for resources and so many forces at work trying to create canopy gaps for plants to receive light. 

I don't remember why I took this photo, but it shows the diversity of plants in the rainforest. 

These are "lemon ants" that make "Devil's gardens" in the rain forest by excreting an acid in the area around their trees so that it prevents other plants from growing around them. The acid is all over their bodies, so these ants taste like lemons and Santiago told us that he's spent many a tired afternoon putting these into a bottle of water for a refreshing drink. We each ate some, and they are indeed lemony.

Dung beetles help the decomposition process of the rainforest. (photo by Nick)

Lorraine holds the dung beetle, who seemed very petrified. 

Cool spider that we saw (photo by Nick) 

Pretty lizard. (photo by Nick)

View from one of the bridges of the forest 45 meters below us. (photo by Nick) 

View on the way climbing up the observation tower. Got vertigo yet?

Here we are atop the observation tower. Epiphytes grow on all but one species of tree in the rainforest, and even at this height. 

It's neither windy, cold, nor raining. I have my coat on as a bug shield after being traumatized with a wasp bite. Luckily, the wasp didn't have a chance to inject venom because Myer ripped its body from its stinger on my arm. 

The observation tower is set in a Ceiba tree, which is the main species of emergent trees that reach beyond the height of the canopy. 

The branches above us. 

Parrots (photo by Nick)

More views from the top of the rainforest.

This is the inside of a massive strangler fig that is right next to the observation tower. The host tree has already died and completely decomposed in this case, and I am standing inside of the tree. 

Hey look, a monkey! Just kidding. At this point we hadn't seen that many monkeys, but I really wanted to. 

Apparently Lorraine made it higher than anyone else Myer had seen before. 

Stairs up to the bridges. Gulp. (photo by Nick)

The bridges. AGH. We were safely clipped in by a harness to a steel line though, thankfully. (photo by Nick)

Ashley on top of the ladder at the bridges. I was content watching her from the platform below, which was already 45 meters above ground and after a swinging bridge from the steel stairs.   

Birds!

Nick and Lorraine saw howler monkeys while Ashley and I were on the other side of the bridges. (Photo by Nick, duh)

Birds and the canopy view from the the bridges. We got here around 3 pm, when most of the animals are napping because it's too hot and sunny, so we didn't see as many birds and other creatures as the groups before us did.

Chatting with Ashley, a little sad that the animals weren't out. (Photo by Nick)

That night, we had a wonderful dinner of creamy linguini with veggies and went out on the motorboat at 8 pm to see caimans along the river. I didn’t bother to take my iPhone, of course, but here are more of Nick’s amazing photographs! 

We went on the boat in perfect silence, and Myer shone a giant light into their eyes to temporarily confuse them so we could take a good gawk at the caiman nightlife. 

Caimans sleep on the bottom of the river and lakes during the day and only come out at night to feed and socialize. 

This one was there for a while posing for us. 

Thursday we took field data in groups, this time with Santiago again along the Harpia trail. I'm pretty sure this is the point when we finally got to see more monkeys. These are all Nick's pictures, once again. 

A "blackboard" fungus that people of the rainforest use to leave messages for each other. This one says "We are on the Harpia Trail", which Santiago wrote. 

Woolly monkey! 

We finally got to see a woolly monkey! He was just hanging out.   

This woolly monkey got mad and was screeching at us for being in his space. They usually live in a community of 50 or more monkeys, with one male as the head of the group and responsible for defending it.  

A squirrel monkey that isn't a hotel pet! Wow! 

A scarlet macaw that isn't a housepet! Wow!

A scarlet macaw and a piping guan in the same tree! I called it a pooping guan when recounting to the other groups later that day, because after this picture it moved to the branches right above us and pooped. 

Our data was a little faulty as a congregate with the class. We were trying to prove (which has been proven in other cases, but our rough field work that morning didn’t quite do the trick) that the number of canopy gaps in an area does not depend on whether it is flooded or undisturbed land (terra firma), and the canopy cover and tree density are both higher in rainforest that is terra firma. 

Following our data presentation, we had lunch (veggie pizza, which I ate while chatting about mosquito bites with the Oregon State professors who had brought a group of students) and took a short break that included Esteban and some classmates playing a game of pick-up soccer with the guides and station staff before embarking on the flotada and fishing session down the Tiputini River. 

The idea behind the flotada is to quietly immerse oneself with the river and the forest, and to enjoy some time just floating with the current like so many other organisms, to see the river’s features closer than we get to on a boat. However, this ended up being a very noisy session of people panicking about possible caiman or piranha attacks, making loud jokes, and scaring away all dolphins or otters - animals that have swam with some of Esteban’s previous groups of students. But it was still enjoyable. 

Myer and Esteban at the front of the boat on our way out to do the flotada. 

Savannah, Mary, and I jumping into the river from the boat. (photo by Ian)

After about 40 minutes floating downstream, the boat came back to pick us up and parked us at a mini archipelago beach, where we attempted to catch piranhas with chunks of beef attached to fishing wire on a wooden card-sized tool. Lauren successfully caught a tiny fish that the guides told us is from the same family as piranha. No one actually got anything else.

Myer and Lauren in the foreground, Kari and Anna looking from the left. I think this is shortly before Lauren got her fish. (photo by Ian)

Group shot after no fish! (photo by Ian)

Sunset as we head back from our Thursday river antics. (photo by Nick)

After dinner that night, we went on a night hike to see what the late evening could offer us. I was in a group with Savannah, Louise, Laleña, and Mary D with Myer as our guide. It was our ultimate dream and goal to see a jaguar or puma or some other exciting large mammal, but we ended up seeing lots of cool bugs and fungi instead. Here are some pictures from Louise’s camera. 

BOCA LOCA! This grasshopper has the craziest mouth I have ever seen on an insect. 

I said it had a boca loca, and then Myer made fun of me. "Boca loca loca boca boca loca loca".  

Before we see the next photos, I want you to watch this informative and really amazing Planet Earth video clip about cordyceps: 

So cordyceps are one of my favorite things I've seen in the Amazon rain forest. And I was responsible for spotting this first one that night!

ZOMBIE GRASSHOPPER. But now it is dead and spreading the fungus spores. 

Cordyceps on a big moth! 

One of two or three different types of tarantulas we saw that night. 

Hands down, my favorite discovery this night was the headlight bug, called the Pyrophorus click beetle - Myer found him on a tree and proceeded to prance through the trees and pluck him off to show us that he looks like a little car when he crawls in the dark.

When we shined our headlamps on him, he flipped over with a loud click, almost like he was panicking and crying, "I DON'T HAVE HEADLIGHTS. I really don't. You've got the wrong bug. Please, I'm just a regular beetle."  

We also saw a bioluminescent fungus on the forest floor, something that would not have revealed itself to us in the daylight. Apparently with more rain, fungus proliferates and sometimes the forest floor is all aglow. 

Friday morning, we awoke to breakfast and left Tiputini promptly after. 

Last shot of the river from the Station steps. 

Awaiting the boat to depart. 

The concept of the rainforest was always exotic and farfetched to me; I never imagined I would be able to visit and have an opportunity to learn about it from guides who intimately know and love the forest. The biggest threat to the South American rain forests right now are deforestation due to development, especially for crude oil, agriculture, and wood harvesting. All signs point to the need for renewable energy and better education so that it is possible to create, install, and support.