Adios Field Camps

Sadly, yesterday was our last day in the field. I still can’t believe that I might not see paramo again, or that was my last time climbing through the moss jungle.

Anyways, this trip to the field, we split our time between Rumi Loma and La Libertad. It was odd to see Rumi Loma after the burn. Although the fire had ended two weeks before, the cabin that had burned was still smoldering, and clearly nothing was salvageable. I’m grateful for the trails through camp. They seem to have been what stopped the fire. There was one place where the fire had gotten to within a foot of another cabin. It is miraculous that it didn’t go up in flames as well. (FYI the photo of the burned lizard really is black and white.)

After relaxing at Rumi Loma, on Friday we hiked from Rumi Loma down to La Libertad. The hike was only about four hours, and it ended up taking Jesse the same amount of time to drive Big Blue down. The hike was fun because we started playing mind games for the first time this term. None of them knew the “53 bicycles” one, so that took awhile. Also on the hike, we found a cacique nest and could hear chicks inside of it! An adult kept flying back and forth, probably feeding them.

This was definitely the week that we started playing games. Besides mind games, we began playing telephone pictionary and mafia in the evenings. We ended up with some crazy things with telephone pictionary. I mean, it’s hard not to when the first sentence is “I’m so rich, I use mahogany toothpicks.”

On Saturday, Catherine came up to camp for our last class. She also brought Josue, our vegetation expert for the transects, and surprisingly Hannah. Hannah was a RRCS student two years ago. Additionally, she’s a Carl who happened to be in my problem-solving group for E&A. (So I’m pretty sure there are more Carls in Ecuador than SC. So far, I’ve run into a peace corp member, another Carl on study abroad, and Hannah, and I have plans to see two more. Seriously, I haven’t seen that many Carls in SC, despite having two others in my immediate family.) It was hilarious hearing her stories and seeing similarities between different RR semesters.

On Sunday and Monday, we took Josue out to our two plots and went over the transects with him. Monday especially was a lot of work. The hike just to get to the moss jungle plot is fairly significant, and then we had to make both of the transects, one of which had a 30 foot drop in the middle. It is still such an odd feeling to be supported just by branches and vines so far above the ground.

Now, I have just under two weeks left in the program. Hopefully, they’ll go smoothly.

Crashing Through the Forest

We just returned from another week at La Libertad.

This week was a bit more intensive as far as working on Elizabeth and Tim’s transect project. On Tuesday, we hiked to Plot A, which was made last term and did two mammal sign transects with Don Jose, a local of Colipato, the closest town. We found bear sign, agouti holes, deer sign, and what may have been tapir tracks, but he wasn’t certain.

We then had to make another quadrant. However, our new location was at the top of a steep trail, which rises 600m. We hiked up on Thursday and split into two groups. Coral, Alex, and I went one direction, attempting to make a 100-m side. This part was actually kind of fun. The vegetation was quite mossy, and many times, you were standing on branches and moss 10 feet above the ground, hoping that it would support your wait. We became pretty good at climbing around in such a matrix. Also, two Glowing Puffleg Hummingbirds came within a couple of meters of us and flitted around for a minute. That was awesome!

During lunch, it began to rain. This was good because all of Ecuador is very dry right now, and the dam which provides both water and electricity to Cuenca is at a 20 year low. However, Coral and I then had to make another side through denser vegetation of ferns which were laden with rain. Soon, our legs were soaked. Also, the cloud cover greatly reduced the visibility, so that we could barely see in front of us. Then, after 40 m, our side ran off a cliff. We had already climbed down things which we weren’t entirely certain of how we would climb back up, but we were not about to try climbing down a cliff, especially with bad visibility, so we ended up cold, wet, tired, and without a complete side. And of course, a hike back down to camp was left.

We then returned on Friday. I was so tired from the day before. In fact, all of us were. So although we got some more work down, the quadrant is still not complete. Oh well.

In other news from the week, we heard that half of Rumi Loma burned down. As I mentioned earlier, it has been quite dry. Thus, when Rumi Loma sparked, it continued to burn for three days. Amazingly enough, only one of our cabins burned down, and the kitchen is fine, too. Our plan is still to return to Rumi Loma and see the damage ourselves.

All Roads Lead to Rumi Loma

Wow, it has been quite a week. I am sure that I’ve forgotten a lot of the good stories, but here goes my attempt to recount the week.

On Saturday, we woke early to finish packing by 9, when Stu and his family were supposed to arrive. Stu is an American who bought a fair amount of paramo and cloud forest land in the 70s and has since expanded. In 2001, he invited Round River to work on conservation there, so our home for the week was on his land. We had been warned that when Stu is with his family, they are never on time, so we weren’t surprised when they didn’t arrive until 9:30.

Stu’s family is so cute! His wife Patricia is Ecuadorian and they have three wonderful children. Peter is the oldest at 6 and is hardcore. He mountain bikes and has gone on zip lines through cloud forest. Jacob is 4 and always wears his batman cape. I have no idea how it is not in shreds. Jacob and he did bike part of the way to camp, so he is following in his brother’s footsteps. They both have so much energy! Nadine is only 2 ½ and loves horses, as in her first word in the morning was “caballo.” Despite her age, she already helps set up tents by staking them. She calls her brothers na-no, Quechua for brother, and they call her na-na.

Part of the adventure of getting to Rumi Loma, our camp, was Big Blue, our Toyota Sienna that doesn’t even have power steering and regularly breaks down. Also, one thing that you quickly learn in Ecuador (or slowly, since it is instinctive) is not to check for seat belts. The driver probably has one, but no one else will. Combine this with a very, very bumpy, curvy road, and we started planning on selling our trip to an amusement park to be a roller coaster. Big Blue started having trouble near the edge of Stu’s land, and eventually the accelerator stopped working at the bottom of a large hill about a mile and a half from Stu’s house, which is about half a mile from our camp. Thankfully, Stu had his truck, so we all piled onto the back. I had to hold onto a very squirmy Peter who really wanted to jump out of the truck. Then, we carried our stuff to Rumi Loma, which we would have had to do no matter what. Thankfully, Raoul, an Ecuadorian who works for Stu, carried most of our food there by horse, so we had less to carry.

Rumi Loma, our camp, has four main buildings and a small bathroom. The first is the kitchen and dining/communal area where we spent much of our time inside. Then, the other three had beds and desks for all of us. All of the buildings were made out of pines and bunch grass.

On Sunday, we went on a hike with Stu, Peter and Jacob. We started in the paramo next to Rumi Loma. Paramo is an interesting landscape. As Alex said, it looks dry despite being incredibly damp. Bunch grass, the dominant species in the paramo, is always about 60-70% dead to facilitate fire, so it looks dry although it isn’t. Puya is another of the dominant species and is harder to describe, but it flowers once in its life, at the very end. It is also one of the Andean bears’ primary food sources. The huge stalk in the middle of the photo is a puya in flower and is just to the left of a puya yet to bloom, which is to the left of a dead puya. Lots and lots of puya!

From the paramo, we hiked down to a pine forest. In the 80s, the Ecuadorian government gave away a lot of pines, although they aren’t native. Stu planted some but spaced them far enough a part to allow native species to grow in the undergrowth. Now, he wants to get rid of the pines let the other forest take over.

Then, we hiked down through the cloud forest. This part was an adventure. It involved bushwhacking our way through nachran (a grass that is twice as tall as me) and duda (a type of bamboo, and bamboo is difficult to push your way through). At other points, we had to crawl through animal trails. It completely fit my vision of a jungle, except for the temperature, which was only in the high 60s. There were tall trees that harbored other plants, including orchids.

It was quite a long day before we returned to camp. That night, we began our pattern of doing our homework and readings at the dinner table using candles for light, while Jesse and Coral read as well. We also fell into the habit of playing with the wax and watching the poor moths fly into the flames. It was quite ironic that we were using candles in a building made of grass but can’t have candles in most college dorms, which are resistant to fire.

The next morning, it was pouring rain, so we spent the majority of it indoors having class, except for an hour hike up the mountain to practice taking notes for our Grinnell journals. It continued to pour for the next couple of days, and we became quite good friends with our rain boots and rain gear.

On Tuesday afternoon, to practice our GPS and compass skills, we had a treasure hunt. I found the prize first! Chocolate and a geography question! (more about the geography later…) But the real fun began when we got back to camp because we had to draw pirate maps of our path to the treasure. We got pretty creative adding in monsters, alliterative names, and burning the edges of our maps.

Also on Tuesday, Coral hiked back to Big Blue and got help from Patricio, a local who used to be a mechanic, and they got Big Blue back running, but it was still too muddy to get Big Blue back up the hill.

We had hoped to go on a full day hike on Thursday, but it was still misting and visibility was way down when we woke up. Thankfully, it cleared up by lunch, and in the afternoon, we explored the pines and the cloud forest some more, collecting the mushrooms that we knew weren’t poisonous for dinner. We saw a number of frogs, mainly Pristimantis riveti. Also, the rain had brought out more growth, and we saw three wild orchids in blossom.


On Friday, we were able to go on a 6 mile hike to see a Canari burial ground. In fact, about half the hike followed an ancient Canari road across the ridges. At one point in the hike, we saw a Great Horned Owl, a Shining Sunbeam hummingbird and six parrots within 25 m of each other. They were beautiful!

On the way back, Jesse, Coral, Tim and Elizabeth went to try to get Big Blue up the hill while Alex and I prepared dinner. They had to use chains, plywood, a shovel, and lots of pushing to get Big Blue up. Unfortunately, it meant that we had even farther to carry all of our stuff on Saturday, since Stu and his truck had already left. And although we had packed lightly, we hadn´t packed for backpacking.

Thankfully, the way home involved no breaking down, just a number of wrong turns and once ending up the wrong way on a one way street. Oops!

Since getting back, we´ve mainly been occupied with laundry and doing the readings for our class at 4 today. What a difference it is to have clean clothes! We haven´t done our grocery shopping for the week yet, but we picked up the three necessities we go through the fastest: guava jam, green olives, and chocolate. Elizabeth and I are now tackling our huge numbers of emails before heading to class.