Maquipucuna Cloud Forest

I am back in civilization after 9 days of wearing the same pair of quick-dry pants and going from 3,000 meters above sea level to 1,300 meters (Maquipucuna cloud forest) to about 4,000 meters (Cotopaxi national park) to roughly 0 meters above sea level (Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Amazonian rain forest) and back up here to Cumbayá, which is roughly 3,000 meters above sea level. Now I am back in my home away from home for roughly a week before I fly over 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) of the Pacific Ocean to reach the Enchanted Islands, the Galápagos Islands. But before that adventure begins, let me tell you about the trips I have already been through and returned from safely.

Maquipucuna Cloud Forest Reserve and Ecolodge is about a 2-hour bus ride north of Quito (and thus north of the equator) up and down and through the mountains. The bus rides themselves are amazing in Ecuador because of how drastic the change of the landscape can be and how green everything is (until you get up into the páramo, which is beautiful in its own way). Before we arrived at the actual ecolodge, we stopped at a landing where there was a myriad of species of orchids. Orchids, which we in the United States mainly know as very beautiful, expensive flowers that are difficult to keep alive, actually come in a variety of types of plants.  

Up on this ledge was also a beautiful view of the forests that we were headed into and other interesting specimens. We saw a few birds from up there. Attached to the trees were epiphytes upon epiphytes, including a type of plant that is called a bromeliad. I still cannot get over the diversity of the flowers and everything that exists in such a small land area. The flowers are different shapes, sizes, colors, probably smells, and they all manage to stay alive in climates that can sometimes be forgiving. The cloud forest is one of the less brutal climates that I have encountered in Ecuador, but there is often little sunlight there.

After that pit stop we continued on our way for some time and after bumps and turns, we made it to the Maquipucuna lodge. On that section of the bus ride, I was lucky enough to see 3 toucans and 1 monkey. We were all amazed by the accommodations that the Maquipucuna lodge had to offer. Somehow we manage to go on these trips knowing very little of what we are getting ourselves into. We just know to bring a water bottle, a rain jacket, a headlamp, some bug spray, some sun block, and often a bathing suit.  So when we arrived at Maquipucuna and were led up the stone path and up the stairs to our bunks, we were pretty excited. 

The lodge has 6 to 8 bedrooms, maybe more, which hold 2 bunks each and look out onto the most spectacular views. There is a balcony sort of area outside of the bedrooms, which includes a hammock and a bar. The lodge offers chocolate massages and all of the food there is organic grown a couple of kilometers away from the lodge itself. Even the coffee there is freshly grown right nearby. There are flushing toilets and cold showers in a bathroom area and a small dining area that fit the members of my program well.

Around the lodge there are hummingbird feeders, which are constantly being dive-bombed by the various species of hummingbirds that are around. I had never seen blue hummingbirds until Maquipucuna and they are very pretty with little white fluff around their feet. There were also at least 2 types of green hummingbirds. The birds are not afraid of the humans that are around and even flew into a few people while we were there.

 

We arrived at Maquipucuna a little before lunchtime so most of us went on a 10-minute walk to the waterfall that is nearby. On the way we saw different kinds of butterflies and many different plants that I had never seen before. In the tropics, everything is fighting for sunlight and a space to survive, so there are a lot of epiphytes on top of the trees and on top of other epiphytes. An epiphyte is pretty much a plant that grows upon another plant but is not parasitic so both plants are able to stay alive. Below is a short video of the waterfall and the beautiful area around it. Oh, and there are some big leaves in the tropical region, as shown by this leaf that is about half of my size.

For the afternoon we split off into groups that looked at different aspects of the forest. My group looked at the soil, but we were often distracted by birds, frogs (see the frog in the picture on the right?), leaf cutter ants, and other more interesting organisms. We did learn about the soil and how there is very little topsoil on the slopes because of the rain that washes away the nutrients. At one point I thought I was walking on rock but it was actually a very compact clay and sand mix. If you go into the forest then you start encountering top layers that are a few centimeters full of organic matter and sandy dirt beneath the roots if you can ever get there. During our short evening adventure, one of my program-mates almost got killed by a squirrel that was eating a fruit and was spooked when we walked by it. It dropped the fruit and made a dive for the bushes and the fruit came very close to her head. Luckily no one has been life-threateningly injured or sick yet.

The food in Maquipucuna was fairly interesting. We had pasta with vegetables and meat substitutes, breakfast tamales that actually have another name, delicious brownie dessert, some yucca with cabbage and rice, and ever-present tea. As I have mentioned before, I will go into greater detail about the food in Ecuador in a separate post because I have definitely had some new and interesting meals here.

Friday morning (January 21), we got up a little early and went bird watching before breakfast (there's a bird near the center of the picture to the left). My group saw a hawk, many smaller birds, toucans, some parrots, and probably more that I cannot remember. Being up early in the cloud forest is pretty awesome because the day is still cool (the nights are actually quite cold) and life is making the switch from the nocturnal schedule to the diurnal schedule. Speaking of nocturnal schedules, Thursday night another one of my program-mates had a snake in his bed. Luckily he was smart enough to check under the covers before hopping in as many of us had done. We found out the next day that the snake is non-venomous, but at the time it was a little terrifying.

Friday for much of the day we went on a hike. The hike probably took around 6 hours round trip and led us across fields, through forests, across parts of the path that had had landslides, across waterfalls, and essentially to a waterfall at the end where we swam in the cool waters of the Andes. On this trip we saw a cock of the rock, which is a brilliant red bird that makes an interesting call, a snake, some creepy spiders, and there was a section of the path that was covered in ants (luckily we were given rubber boots for these trips). Our guide was up ahead of us sometimes literally carving out a path for us where a tree had fallen or the vines had overgrown. The waterfall was amazing, although we had to wade upstream to it, which was a bit difficult and, as I said, cold.


The river was made a little more difficult to swim in by the rain that occurred while we were there and made the current very strong. This same current also took away one of my program-mates boots (the same one who had a snake in his bed). Towards the end of the hike, one of my program-mates (the same one who was almost killed by the squirrel) grabbed onto a tree to sturdy herself. The tree happened to have a nest of wasps inside. Luckily the wasps did not chase us very far and everyone managed to get out without any stings.

So I survived the cloud forest with all of my limbs in tact, a few bug bites and some scratches from razor-sharp grass. It was an absolutely beautiful trip with some of the nicest staff I have ever met. If you ever have any wish to hang out at an ecolodge and maybe go hiking with some guides in the cloud forest of Ecuador, Maquipucuna would definitely be a place to consider. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up back there volunteering some day.

Here are some pictures from my various adventures in the cloud forest. Enjoy! Also, I don't know if I've mentioned that you can make the pictures bigger by clicking on them, that way you can truly see the birds, frogs, etc. that are sometimes hidden in these pictures!