Todo lo Demás...

A lot has happened since I last left an entry. I would have done a better job but Blogger failed me and because of a login issue I could not access the site. I will try to summarize what has happened since Galapagos in this update. As many of you know, I leave for Karukinka in a few days and I will be away from any internet connection until late February, so this is probably the last entry for a while. Here goes...

My time on the Galapagos was unforgettable. The friends and good memories I made will stay with me always. I feel like I am pretty familiar with the Islands' flora and fauna now after having spent so much time living in and studying the environment. I would surely like to go back sometime, at least to San Cristobal Island, now that I feel comfortable running around on my own. I left a few days after my birthday, where I turned 21! At first I was sad that I wouldn't be able to spend the day with my family and friends back in the US, but it turned out to be one of the best birthdays so far. And anyways, how many people can say they spent their 21st birthday on the Galapagos!? I was lucky to have made such good friends at the station that made my experience cheerful all the while.

I arrived in Quito in the afternoon and checked into a recommended hostel. A friend from San Cristobal who had left weeks earlier had a room for me there and we had planned to meet up and travel together to the next station I was going to, Bilsa. The next few days were spent running around, worrying about my VISA expiring and gathering extra gear for Bilsa's mountainous cloud forest environment.

The day after Halloween, Saturday, we took the afternoon bus to Esmeraldas province, on the northwest side of Ecuador. We stopped at a city called Quinindé and spent the night at a hotel. The next day we found the truck that would take us to La Yé de la Laguna, the nearest town to Bilsa. We hauled onto the truck first our bags and then ourselves and became more and more crammed as people arrived for the same trip. It was crazy, by the time we departed we only had our standing space to ourselves. Others had brought jugs and boxes and even a dog as their luggage so the ride was quite uncomfortable and I was sore from having stayed in the same uncomfortable position the whole time. Finally, after an hour or two and a cross to a dirt road, we made it to la Yé. It was not my idea of a traditional town, really. It is basically a town square, with shops and some dwellings piled along the sides, all mud everywhere. There were trucks coming and going, mules tied to posts, and a little chaos amongst the relaxed atmosphere. People sitting around sort of stared at us as we arrived, seeing as the incoming vehicles offered something new to the lazy town.

We met some of the staff from Bilsa and after lunch and loading up the mules with our packs, we set off down the muddy road. It took us about 5 hours to get to Bilsa from la Yé, on the way passing other small communities and La Yecita right before the station. The road was muddy but not as bad as when it rained hard. We took our time walking, stopping to photograph insects and watch birds. Finally we made it, just me and Brian (friend from Galapagos). We were the only volunteers there for a entire week.

We met the 4 staff members then at the station, unpacked our bags and took a quick look around. Bilsa is literally submerged in dense foggy clouds, especially in the mornings, and the high humidity allows for the incredible biodiversity found in the zone. There was no electricity because the generator was being repaired, and even when it was around they only used it a few hours after dark.

Over the weeks more and more volunteers arrived, and left, like at San Cristobal. However, unlike Galapagos, there was just so much more to see in terms of flora and fauna. Every hike through the many trails in Bilsa's terrain brought new findings. There were colorfully patterned insects everywhere, lizards, frogs, snakes, birds, and though I didn't get to see many personally, the occasional mammal. At night sometimes we would go out on frog hunts. Wearing our thick rubber boots and bearing our flashlights we would wade through the streams, using them as trails from which to spotlight frogs, snakes and lots of insects. The forest became alive at night with many different sounds, and a lot of creatures came out of hiding to do their mating calls or hunt their prey.

The work at Bilsa was more diverse than at San Cristobal. Work days varied from fixing a broken wire fence one day to trekking 2 hours down the marshy muddy main road to a reforestation site, where we would spend the day planting seedlings and then hike back in the afternoon. Occasionally we would haul up bananas from the lower down plantation, a dirty and strenuous ordeal. But then we would have bananas available all day to us, hanging from a beam for us to pick and peel as we pleased!

On some nights we would head out to the bar at La Yecita, the small community on the way up to Bilsa, only a 10 minute walk from the station. There we played pool or chatted and listened to music before heading back for bed.

At lunch once, one of the other volunteers brought me back a huge dead grasshopper, with all of these strange protuberances around it sides. I only realized what it was when I got to see it up close: cordyceps fungi. This is a fungus that attacks specific insect hosts, killing them and using the body to manifest its fruiting form. the protuberances I saw were mushrooms, each containing thousands of spores that might someday infect another insect.

In the mornings, especially during my first week, I would wake up to a terrifying roar, really close by to the main house. The howler monkey troops tended to be common around the station and often spent the night in the nearby trees. I came to get used to the sound after a couple of weeks, but it was always fun hearing the newcomers tell of waking up to the scary sounds. There was a tower on the main house too, and if it wasn't too foggy out you could spot the dark figures of the monkeys moving slowly through the foliage. Then there were also the Long-Wattled Umbrella Birds. Bilsa is fairly famous for its birds and in particular this endangered native. Large and completely black, they produce haunting and resonant cooing sounds early in the morning, in conjunction with the roar of the howlers.

A group of scientists came to continue an ongoing study of the Umbrella Birds and other tropical bird species as well. Their leader was a guy from UCLA (!) and then there were students from Quito and other assistants from Ecuador. One of the students was working on his thesis, doing a study on Green Manakins (small green birds famous for the rattling noise they make with their wings when displaying). Another one was doing a long-term project on bird diversity at the station. They worked in conjunction, capturing birds to band them and taking different measurements of each individual. I got to work with these guys for the majority of the time they were at Bilsa, a good week at least. We would go out early in the morning and set up mist nets (really fine black mesh nets that the birds would get tangled in) along a specific trail, then collect whatever flew into them at regular intervals. We got loads of hummingbirds, some so tiny I was afraid they would be crushed when held to do measurements. Occasionally we would get scarab beetles caught in the nets too, really colorful green and red ones. With the birds, I was in charge of writing down the data onto the little handheld computer they had, so by the end I was pretty good at recognizing the bird species and knowing which measurements were being made. When we caught a Green Manakin we would take a blood sample as well as the routine process. This part of Bilsa, working with the ornithologists, was probably my favorite job, and I made good friends with the student researchers.

While one group worked on the smaller species, the head researcher was focused on the Umbrella Birds. Over the years of studying this species at Bilsa, the team had found a bunch of leks, basically mating grounds, where the birds would congregate. They were doing an experiment with palm trees, to see if the Umbrella Birds played an important role in palm seed dispersal because there seemed to be more palms than usual at the bird's leks. I got to go out with the team to a nearby lek when they were trying to capture a bird for professional photographs. We left at 4:30 a.m. with our flashlights and the camera equipment, arriving at the spot just before dawn. We stood around in silence, listening to the soft forest sounds until the howlers started in the distance. Then quite soon after we heard the hooting of male Umbrella Birds. One after the other, with increasing frequency, all around us—it was so surreal. As the team focused on getting their pictures and capturing one in the mist nets, I tried to spot the birds. I saw back shapes darting from one branch to another every once in a while. The males beat their wings against their body repeatedly as part of their display, creating a muffled rapping sound. Much later on, after visiting the lek without the researchers, I got to see the displays close up. The male's long wattles puff up as they emit their hooting noise, and then they swing it back and forth in a circle. The birds hop and face the other way on the branch they're on. Really impressive and magical when seen from up close. I was maybe 4-5 meters away from one in a nearby tree once. But the fog and low light in the morning prevented any pictures from coming out well, so I just have a lot of silhouettes. Still, it's good enough for me, and it would have been hard to capture the moment in a photo anyways.

Towards the end of my time at Bilsa we got another scientist. She was doing a study on dung beetles, like the scarabs that we sometimes caught in the mist nets before, and this would be the last survey for her project. I got to help her out, doing the dirty work of assembling the dung traps (we didn't use animal dung...) and then putting them out in the forest in specified locations. After a day or two we went out and collected what had fallen into the little containers. There were a lot of beetles, but most of the were just little black and brown ones, not the colorful flashy ones I had seen with the ornithologists. Still it was a good experience, and now I know how to set up my own traps for future reference.

What was cool about Bilsa, like Galapagos, was that by the end I could recognize a lot of plants and animals. At Bilsa I guess it was harder because there was just so much stuff, but I could at least get the major plant families right—one step in the right direction.

I left Bilsa after 5 weeks and by then the main road had been flattened, so a truck was able to come pick us up to go back to La Yé. Apparently this only happens during the dry season and only for about a week max. because then it starts raining again and the road becomes 'undrivable'. I scheduled my leave with a friend from there so that I could have some company, and in one tiring day mad it back all the way to Quito.