Mi Último Viaje con la Universidad, Tiputini

After a school week of working quite hard all week, I finally got to go on our last field trip with the university to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station where the university researches plant and animal life in an untouched area of the Amazon rainforest. The reason it is untouched from, for instance oil companies or settlers, is because an indigenous community has and continues to guard it for hundreds and hundreds of years – I think part of that protection was by killing people, but cannot remember for sure. Here are some interesting facts about the area that I want to tell you before I tell you about my adventures:

• The climate there has temperatures in the 80´s during the day and 70´s and night with a amount of humidity in the air that only God could manage to put in the air.
• In one hectare (100m by 100m -- which is about the size of a football field including the sidelines and end zones) of land at Tiputini you can encounter:

1. 300 species of trees. And with each new hectare, you will find 60% different species of trees thus bringing a total of about 2200 species of trees. Consider this when walking through MI you can probably find about 10 different species if you are lucky.
2. 1000 different plant species
3. Hundreds of thousands of different insect species
4. 530 species of birds (actually in a few square miles … a bit larger). Just Ecuador has 2x the amount of species of bird than the US has.
5. 10 species of monkey
6. 2 species of wild pig
7. 6 types of cat including jaguars( the biggest cat in the Americas), ocelots, and pumas
8. 105 species of frog. There are only 90 species of frog in all of US and Canada.
9. Deer(they are actually there too), anacondas (one that was spotted there was 25 foot long. When the person showed us how wide the snake was, I could not help but thing that the width was sufficient to fit 4 of me in that space.), electric eel, sting rays which can sting you all the way through your whole leg (yep, through your bone too), caimans, and of course piranhas

So we left Friday morning for Tiputini. Getting there would prove to be a bit challenging since another characteristic of any untouched land is that it has to be hard to get to. We began by going by plane for only a half hour to a city in the east called Coca (However, because of the mountainous region the area around Quito is, the 30 min plane ride saved us 10 hours of bus riding) (Also while at the airport, after waiting for about a half hour after our plane should have taken off, we hear overhead that the plane is going to be another hour late – this seemed somewhat typical of a thing to happen but then literally 2 minutes later, they announced the plane was ready and we boarded the plane. We were pretty happy for the mistake.) From Coca, we went by boat on the Napo River for 2 hours or more until we reach a check point to enter into land controlled and patrolled by an oil company. After getting through without problems and being reminded than we could not take any pictures while traveling through the area, we boarded a bus with out walls. (only a ceiling and a floor with Church pews for seats which were squeezed really close together – the ride was really uncomfortable for me and for everyone else. I think the seating on the bus was suitable only for preschoolers.) After 2 hours of that in which I tried to sleep to forget that I was being squished, we arrived at the next river, the Tiputini where we traveled another 2 hours to the research station, of course though after waiting an hour for a person just to begin to start cruising down the river. (By the time I got on the Tiputini, I was definitely not looking forward to the return trip because we were going down stream both ways to get to the station and the rivers were moving quite fast.) So by the time we got there, it was approaching dusk (about 6:30 --- it is the same every day since we are on the equator), we had dinner, and just rested from a very tiring and hot traveling experience.

The next day we did 2 four-hour hikes through the jungle in which our group saw so many unique and interesting plants and animals. In between the hikes we had lunch and also there was the option to go swimming in the river to cool off. I was a little hesitant since well the river was flowing quite fast (we later would find out that the river was actually really high at that time since from that time to when we would leave on Monday, the river would drop about 15 feet!) and since there were piranhas and electric eels and sting rays and who knows what else type of animal or bacteria or virus. But after the first hike, which would be the hardest of them all, I needed to cool off. All those that wanted to swim went upstream to another dock to jump in the water. Unlike some who went directly for the strong current in center (some got pushed along quite a bit past the dock downstream), I decided to swim more toward shore toward some submerged trees as a midpoint. It all worked out, but because the river was so high, there were lots of weird currents and actually I ended up swimming against the current for part of the time while swimming downstream. The water cooled me off, but after working so hard to swim, I still ended up heating up and getting more tired. Thus by the end of the day at dusk, I was utterly exhausted. We took a night boat right along the river to see what we could see, but I can barely remember a thing because I was so tired. Unfortunately, we did not see too much that night anyway.

The next day we did another hike and then after lunch took a boat ride down the Tiputini in which we got to float in the river for a while. Then that night we looked at pictures of the animals taken at Tiputini for National Geographic --- the station set up cameras that detect heat and motion through the area to get the shots.

On Monday, we began our return in the morning at 7:30 and as I already said the river went way down so the return trip was not as long as it could have been. I managed all the time on the boats by sleeping on the boards that made the boat have a level floor (the boat was probably only 30 feet long) and made it back to Quito at 6:00.

On a side note, the food there was kind of interesting because there is no supermarket nearby to buy food. We brought a lot of food, but still, some of the meals were all vegetarian. I ate it all, but not without having some side effects.

About the pictures below, I just was not able to upload very many. I had the writing part down for some time but just could not manage to put on any pictures over the last week. Then as a last resort, I decided to pay a dollar to use the fastest internet connection I could find. In an hour, I could only upload the tiny amount of pictures that I had taken while in Tiputini.

Also, I finally took pictures of my university the last day of my classes on Thursday after I finished presenting my final portfolio to my art teacher. I will just have to show you all when I get back since I am having so many picture problems.

In this picture are red columns that worms build to live in. We did not have too much courage to look into the columns that had the top closed, meaning the worms were there, because the size of the worms were more like snakes --- 2-3 feet.
First view of the river Tiputini in the morning. As I said, the river lowered a lot over our last night there. If you look, you can see the branch I swam to when swimming in the river. By Monday morning, the branch was about 15 feet abover the surface of the water.
Looking up inside a tree that grows around another tree and eventually kills the other tree leaving for the time being a hollow center.
Me inside the tree killer
An ant I found walking around the research station
An Indiana Jones bridge we had to cross

A monkey, in case you could not tell.

Lesson 7 --- How to Build a Wall that Surrounds your Property

Well the first part is the same. Just get some fencing or more often some cement or bricks and build a tall wall. However, after that, you need to do more. I have rarely seen walls solely only being a wall. Once you have the wall, you need to add sharp things on the top of the wall either attached to the metal or planted into the cement of wall. This includes nails or other sharp, pointy metal objects, barbed wire, broken shards of glass, or both. And then if you are really into securing you wall, you grow thorny bushes or grow huge trees behind the tall wall.

Also, window sills and entry ways of shops especially have sharp metal objects before the window and door respectively.