Yanayacu

Last post here goes, I'm back in the USA after an incredible gap year but let me fill you in on my last experience:

Caterpillars, caterpillars, everywhere, but none enough to eat... Actually you probably wouldn't want to try, a lot for them are poisonous or have stinging hairs. At Yanayacu I spent my first couple of weeks learning how to collect and rear countless caterpillars from the area. There is a rearing station set up in the back of Yanayacu called "La Maquina" because it churns out a lot of adult moths and butterflies. Caterpillars are collected along the roads, in designated plots, and on the trails. We bring them along with their host plant food to La Maquina and each is bagged, ID-ed and photographed. I originally worked on the main rearing project but eventually began to focus on one plant genus: the Passiflora, or Passionfruits/flowers. This genus became the focus for my research project funded by the Ecological Society of America's SEEDS program over the summer.

Early on I had to get used to the Yanayacu routine, independently working and/or collaborating with the other scientists and staff. This was true both in the lab and in the kitchen, as everyone cooked for themselves. At first I was intimidated at not having much real cooking experience. I either mooched off of someone else's meal or prepared easy and meager things for myself, like grated carrot salad. Eventually, having some time to look up recipes on the station's wireless internet, I started delving into basic baking, using the ingredients found at the station as keywords. I found recipes for popcorn biscotti, cookies, pizza dough, cakes, even bread. Slowly but surely recipes began turning out better, I learned the moods of the oven, and I began spending more time in the kitchen. One of the staff at La Maquina nicknamed me "El Panadero". I got used to making bread dough the night before or early in the morning, then leaving the dough to rise under a cloth or in the oven for hours because the room temperature was so cold (it's surprisingly chilly up in the highlands!). Then one day I tried my hand at roasted vegetables, a real dish, not just baking but actually cooking this time. They turned out and I got over my self confidence problem in the kitchen.

One day one of the employees digging a trench for a sewer pipe hit what he recognized as a snake, and called everyone over to see. I came out to look and recognized the blueish wormy creature as a Caecilian, an amphibian I had really hoped to see in my time in the tropics! Unfortunately, Ivan had discovered the caecilian by accidentally chopping its head off with the shovel, but he had also uncovered a small burrow containing a mass of wriggling caecilian babies, literally looking like a ball of tangled earthworms. Apparently not much is known about these organisms in the wild, as I later was told. It was interesting to see the babies up close and to learn from Ivan that there had been another adult with the nest, one that escaped the shovel when Ivan uncovered the clutch. Parental care of offspring? The picture on the left is of an adult caecilian I found later in my time at Yanayacu.

The number of bugs one sees at Yanayacu is really astounding. This is true especially when the light trap is turned on at night to attract moths: the area is literally swarming with noise and movement with everything from gnats to beetles to katydids to giant Silk Moths. In the morning after the mayhem you can usually find insect corpses on the ground or watch the flycatchers swooping down from the rafters to pick off moths that have lingered around for too long.

I went out once accompanying Esther on her frog transects. Esther is a herpetologist from UC Davis who coincidentally happens to be the sister of a good friend back from school. Every night she ventures out on one of her marked paths, looking for and recording what frogs she finds to get a sense of population sizes. One needs a lot of focus and patience to sweep the transects efficiently, and I admire Esther for being so dedicated as to do that work every night! Once a frog was found she would clip its toes in a specific pattern to "mark" it in case she finds it in future, so as not to double-count it.

As I got used to Yanayacu and the surrounding mountain cloud forest, I began to notice more and more the diversity of life hidden under every leaf, up in the tree canopies, and growing green all around me. In wandering along the main road by the station I found a bunch of different species of Passiflora growing, with caterpillars feeding on them! Specifically I found a lot of 2 families of Lepidoptera, Nymphalidae (Heliconiine) and Notodontidae (Dipotinae). In rearing these guys I learned more about how caterpillars go from little grubs into butterflies and moths, knowledge that became very useful later on when working on my project for SEEDS. Here on the left is one of the Passionflowers I worked with at Yanayacu, in flower.

I made a lot of good friends at Yanayacu, I guess because everyone has similar interests there, but also because everyone shares a passion for the tropics :)

Two days before I was scheduled to leave the country and head back to the US, we took a trip to Tena, the capital city of the Napo Province in Ecuador. It was a going-away party beginning that night in the city and ending in a mini trip to a Hoatzin's nest that one of the ornithologist staff, Jose, wanted to see. Of course when we were in the middle of a remote village 45 minutes past Tena, in the blazing morning heat of the lowlands, the car wouldn't start. We were literally stranded with our broken-down pickup, without water. Jose and Drew (the station manager for the year) began breaking down the car, trying to identify the problem, while the rest of us pitched in where we were needed and took off with friendly locals to try and get tools and water. When night fell we had removed the entire backside of the pickup truck, checked the gas tank, gathered a crowd of loyal neighbors and eventually figured out the problem. We slept that night with a friend who worked at the Jatun Sacha reserve, and the next day walked back to the dismantled car then drove half of it up to Tena to put it back together. Although the situation was desperate at times, I learned so much about cars, I felt empowered at the fact that I could help out in this situation and I was proud that together our little crew was able to solve the problem: even without the right tools and methods we solved the puzzle in the end. I made it back to Yanayacu in time to prepare for my leave.

I got back to the USA in mid-May after an incredible time abroad. This time in my life has been a turning point for me. I feel I have matured, am more confident in myself and I am able to live independently in the world. There were rough times, uncomfortable situations, and bold challenges I had to surpass but in the end I pushed through and have come out all the better because of it. This experience has given me a motivation and context for my studies back in school. It has definitely been valuable in that it changed my perspective on life, that I am in charge of who I am, and that I always have a choice in whatever I choose to do. I look forward to returning to school now that I am more aware of the world and of what life is all about. Thanks for reading and sorry again for the delays in posting, I encourage everyone to take time to explore the unfamiliar when you get the chance. If you go at it with the right mindset I guarantee it will be an inspiring experience! Until the next adventure... :)