Agua Blanca

And so we return to stories from the coast...

On our Wednesday at the coast, we visited Agua Blanca, a small community within the National Park. Its name comes from the fact that the river dried up during an El Nino one year, so there is now just sand in the riverbed. Our guide, Eddie, lived there and took us on a hike through the dry forest into lower elevation cloud forest.

The hike started at 6:45am in Agua Blanca, which is completely surrounded by dry forest. It was odd to see such a different ecosystem, since where we spend our time receives so much rain. Also, it was now the dry season, so all of the leaves had fallen from the trees, though I had trouble picturing them with leaves, since the ground was like the desert. One species of tree, the ceiba has evolved to have chlorophyll in its trunk, so that it can still photosynthesize during the dry season. It was rather awesome to see these giant green tree trunks.

There were also tons of birds. Every time we saw one, we’d stop and look through our binoculars and then identify it with Eddie’s book. It was great!

The transition from dry to cloud forest was incredible. One minute, everything is brown and dry, and then, the ground is muddy and the plants are green. We saw a number of tagua trees. Tagua, also known as vegetable ivory, is used for all sorts of crafts in Ecuador, so we were already familiar with it from artesian markets.

The most exciting part was at the top of the mountain, we heard howler monkeys! We hiked down in a new direction for a bit, but sadly didn’t see them, though we did hear them once more. After hiking for a bit, Eddie suddenly stopped me and pointed straight up. There was a howler on the branch directly above me! Actually, there were a total of three howlers: a male and two females. We watched them for half an hour before deciding that we really need to continue on with our hike.

When we returned, we got to swim in a sulfur pool. It was fun and relaxing to be in the water. We were told that the water had healing properties and would be great for our hair. (Actually, all of our hair was awful and didn’t get better until we returned to Cuenca and could shampoo it. It felt like it was turning into dreadlocks. We could pull it straight out and it would stay!) Also, we were instructed to take mud from the bottom of the pool, rub it all over our skin and sit out. It was rather hilarious being covered in mud. Such a spa day!