Tiputini Part 1: The Rainless Rain Forest Adventure Begins

I have been living amongst the Galápageños for about 3 weeks now and it is certainly an interesting experience.  The island is still beautiful, despite the exchange between large amounts of rain and very hot sun. I think bad weather is something I can deal with when I am living on the Enchanted Islands. Last week was exciting as it involved fiestas for the whole week in order to celebrate the Galápagos. It included the crowning of la reina de San Cristóbal (the Queen of San Cristóbal), a beach fashion/talent show, a music festival, and a lot of performers and partying at the town center to end the week. By a lot of partying, I mean some of my classmates stayed out until 6 in the morning because the town was still celebrating.

Last week I also started volunteering at CIMEI. I don’t really know what CIMEI stands for, but it is a program to take care of the animals on the island and to try to get the domestic and wild animals to live in harmony. Nothing in Ecuador seems to ever make sense and so most of the time I am at CIMEI I have no idea what is going on. I know that they will be doing surgery to remove a tumor from a tortoise but they won’t help an abandoned sea lion pup because that would be going against nature. There also isn’t a humane society on the islands so unless the stray dogs are adopted by people on the island, they are put down. A vet comes from the mainland in varying intervals to volunteer with Darwin Animal Doctors although the one vet that actually lives on the island also works there. There are also other volunteers at CIMEI and no one seems to ever understand what is going on there. It is a confusing place, but I’m hoping it will become a fulfilling experience. I will certainly enjoy understanding the workings of the humane society and the aquarium at home.

Here I am going to go back in time to quite a few weeks ago in order to write about my experiences at the Estacion de Bioversidad Tiputini or the Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS). The strangest thing about visiting the Amazon Rainforest for 5 days was that it didn’t rain the entire time we were there. On the plus side of it not raining meant there were very little mosquitoes to deal with, but the dry weather also meant the animals were less active. (The mosquitoes actually aren’t that big of a problem in the section of the Amazon that we were in because malaria does not exist there.) First, let me give a little background of the TBS. Bare with me if I have already mentioned this information in a previous entry.

The Tiputini Biodiversity Station is in a part of the Ecuadorian Amazon that is the Yasuní National Park. The Yasuní is made up of 1 million hectares of land yet there are only 7 park rangers for the entire area. As you may imagine, this creates problems with regulating the park. Currently a major portion of that regulation is done by the oil companies who are extracting oil within the park under the legalities that say extraction is in the interest of the public. There are 2 roads that run through the Yasuní, one that is so highly regulated that we had to go through a security checkpoint on our way into the rainforest, and one that is not really regulated. There is a large amount of oil that has been found in another part of the Yasuní (the ITT). Ecuador is currently asking for money from other nations that sums to half of the amount that they believe they would make from that oil. Although this may seem like a good idea at the present time, if that oil is ever extracted then Ecuador must pay that money back. For a country that is not wealthy and is in debt, this plan could become a disaster very quickly. Also, once the oil companies leave Ecuador, they are going to move on to mining. Environmentalists, ecologists, etc. are trying to find alternatives to these destructive economies. 

One thing I find very impressive about Ecuador is that they have some of the best indigenous rights in the world. There are untouched tribes left in the Ecuadorian Amazon that live in other sections of the rainforest. There is a tribe, the Waorani, who live within the Yasuní. The culture of these peoples is changing as they adjust to the contact with the modernized society. They now live around the roads that have been built, which allow them to switch from nomadic to sedentary. They are also hunting bush meat for their food as well as to sell on the black market. One of our assignments while we were in Tiputini was to vie for $1 million as non-governmental organizations and to keep in mind the different people that are involved with the Yasuní National Park. All 3 of the groups focused their proposals on making the Waorani more sustainable through education and, in my group’s case, by helping them to set up an artisan market.

As I may have mentioned before, during my 5-day-stay at Tiputini I saw over 65 species of reptiles, mammals, birds, insects, and plants. The mammals were very limited and the insects/other bugs were very plentiful. They included such wonderful creatures as tarantulas, scorpions, pseudo-scorpions, and poisonous snakes. My adventures also involved me seeing capybaras, caiman (which are related to crocodiles), scarlet and blue macaws, red macaws, parrots, and blue morpho butterflies. I have never seen such an array of wildlife in such a short amount of time in my life.

The journey to TBS was an interesting experience by itself as it involved quite literally a 20-minute bus ride, a 20-minute plane ride, a 2-hour boat ride, a 2-hour “bus” ride, and another 2-hour boat ride. I cannot remember when we left school, although it was probably around 7 in the morning in order to take a bus to the airport in Quito. The international airport at Quito is actually quite small considering it is the capital’s airport although they are building a new one some ways outside of Quito. The flight to Coca literally took 20 minutes. It was possible to see some of the massive rivers and the small town that is Coca as we flew into the tiny landing strip. As soon as we landed we were dealing with the heat and humidity that is the rainforest, not to mention the blaring sun. From the airport we drove over the Napo River where we began real Amazon adventure.

At the dock of the Napo River there were small monkeys running around that were probably someone’s pets. At the dock we were loaded onto a canoe-type boat along with 20-something other students from Saint Olaf in Minnesota. They were in Ecuador for the January term checking out the three different ecosystems of the Galápagos, the cloud forest, and the rain forest. It was pleasant to have other people to interact with after being with the same 20 people for the past couple of weeks; however, there were conflicts with having so many people at the station such as tour guides being in short supply and observation towers being sort of small. The trip there was full of everyone taking pictures and (hopefully) enjoying the amazing new experience.

After navigating the Napo River, we arrived at the check station by the oil company that I mentioned earlier. We stayed here for a bit before we went through security and climbed aboard various vehicles to be taken to the Tiputini River. On the “truck” ride there, we saw beautiful butterflies and the various flora that make up the rain forest. Our truck also worked as a sort of bus ride for kids going home from school for lunch as well as a transportation device for supplies that were brought to TBS. These supplies included large amounts of bananas (or some variation), water, and other food. We climbed onto the boat along with the supplies and our luggage and took off for another 2 hours to go down the Tiputini River.

The Napo River is wide and open. On it we saw tour boats, the police patrolling, and fisher boats or rafts. There were solitary standing large trees and an oil refinery that we were able to see from the boat. The Tiputini River is narrower and the banks are covered in forest. There were also large trees standing, but more of them and with more epiphytes hanging from them. There were turtles jumping off of logs and a beautiful white bird (possibly an egret) that stayed in front of our boat for a large portion of the ride. When we finally arrived at TBS, we discovered some steps that led up to what would be our dining room for the next 4 days. We were greeted by one of the managers of the station and led to our cabins, that not only included flushing toilets, but cold water showers as well. The station includes a lab area where the researchers work, a library with dry boxes for electronic equipment, separate cabins for the researchers, and trails that lead to a myriad of places. The food at the station was also delicious and included this fruit called granadilla that you make a whole in and suck the seeds out. The seeds are crunchy and covered with a juicy, slimy coating. They look like tadpoles but taste wonderful.

Our first full day at the Tiputini station included an experiment with feces, climbing a 150 foot tower, swimming in the Tiputini River, playing equaball and soccer, and a night hike. Although all of the trips for my course on tropical ecology were more like vacations, there was some schoolwork involved. My professor brought with him feces from his dog that we used to set up experiments based on biodiversity, interspecies interactions, and others. Therefore, for about an hour or an hour and a half, we stood in the Amazonian Rainforest watching fecal matter and the bugs that were attracted to it. My group’s experiment actually included a nest of ants that were relentless against anything that came near their mound and chased off several large dung beetles. The experiment did not take as long as it may have, which meant that we had time to explore more. This is what brought us to the observatory tower.

45 meters tall roughly translates into 150 feet tall. The observatory tower is made of very strong steel and includes a platform that is at the top of a kapok tree that is just as tall. The kapok tree is magnificent enough that there is a children’s book written about it. Climbing that tower is one of the hardest things I have done in my life because I have a fear of heights that I never realized is quite so paralyzing. I did make it to the top and would do so twice more during our stay. From the top there is an amazing view because the kapok tree is an emergent tree, which means it has grown taller than most of the surrounding canopy. You can see far and hear far as well if you are there for long enough and stay quiet enough.

After lunch we were given a free day to do as we pleased, partially because sharing the station with the other group meant we did not have any guides with whom we could wander into the forest. Our professors did offer to take us on a hike to a lake, but we all chose to go swimming in the tributary of the Amazon and have a relaxing afternoon. Swimming in the river was a lot of fun and we all walked away without our urethras being parasitized by a fish that is attracted to the ammonia in urine. There are actually very few cases of this fish parasitizing humans, but when it does it is absolutely necessary to have surgery to remove it, no small feat when you are in the middle of the Ecuadorian rainforest.

Down by the place where we are allowed to go swimming there is an Ecuaball net. Ecuaball is like volleyball but it is played with a soccer ball and the net is higher than a volleyball net. Also, Ecuadorians are on average shorter than Americans so it is very difficult for one to spike over the net. Because of these differences, it is possible to catch the ball in your hands for a short amount of time and push it over the net rather than set it by flicking it with your fingers. When we got tired of playing Ecuaball, we moved on to playing barefoot soccer and using chairs as goal posts. I am terrible at soccer, but this was also a lot of fun and we managed to rope some of the staff of the station into playing with us.

An interesting point about being at a research station in the middle of relative nowhere is the amount of supplies that they have. They had plenty of food and water for us, but things such as books were short-handed and the electricity was only on at a point in the beginning of the day and another few hours at night. This means charging camera batteries can be difficult and sometimes taking showers by headlamp. The lack of electricity plus the amount of activities that we did meant we had no problem going to bed at a reasonable hour, especially when we had to be at breakfast at 6:30 every morning.

By a reasonable hour to sleep I mean around 10 or 11 at night. Since dinner was at 7 in the evening, we had plenty of time to wander around in the dark, which our professors gladly let us do near the station and into the forest with them. On this night hike we wandered into part of the forest and searched for any kinds of life we could see. The differences between the night and day sounds and activities are immense. It is always possible to hear more than you can see in the forest. At night the noises are almost deafening. Outside of our cabins we could hear what sounded like a young monkey calling out to its fellows. In the forest we were also able to see large bugs that looked exactly like leaves, the blue morpho butteflies resting underneath a leaf and relying on its mimicry to keep it safe, and an iguana. The iguana I found by staying a bit farther behind everyone and looking straight at the reptile on the path. Do you see the frog in the picture below the iguana picture?

 Although I may be leaving out some details and could probably write twice as much as this, I do not want you, reader, to get tired as you may already be from this entry. It is also not as easy to upload posts and pictures here as the Internet is slower and much more sporadic here than on the mainland of Ecuador. The fact that I still have decent access to Internet is still astounding to me. My parents pointed out that the video of our communication via Skype was clearer on the islands than it was on the mainland. These Enchanted Islands are still enthralling and I hope to come back one day and visit this land. I also hope that they do not change much more than they already have, although I believe that more human migration here is inevitable. 

As always, I hope all is well at home, wherever that may be for you and that you are enjoying these blog entries. I will do my best to upload several more before I am gone for a couple of weeks, once again hopping from adventure to adventure. (I'm sorry that this formatting is a little off, but don't forget to enlarge the pictures by clicking on them!) Here is a sunset picture on the Tiputini River.