10 days in

As of a few days ago it has been ten days in Ecuador. We begin our field season this week after a week spent in prep. Sorry for the grammatical errors in the last post didn't have a lot of time to complete it. So what's new from the last week. First, yesterday we visited Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is famous for it's older citizens and is supposed to be the site of some of the oldest people in the world. There is supposed to be something in the water - the fountain of youth if you will. So we journeyed to the fountain of youth and guess what we found - a utopic scene of crashing waterfalls and gold plated everything? Well... Not quite. More like a small moss covered cave with an empty tire and two by fours strewn all over the place. So not the utopic scene but I still touched the water so will now live a longer and healthier life. Hippies, expatriots, and bohemians have now invaded the town and it is now more touristy than ever. What else is new. If you know me well, you would know that I could live off of fruit and nothing else. One of the best parts of being here is all of the amazing fruit and food. Passionfruit, tree tomatoes, guava, and juices of all kinds are ever-present and it's great! Also the horchata here is made of fruit and is locally specific to loja. It's much different and much better than the Mexican version of horchata made of rice milk stuff. That's all for now but much to come soon.

Quito y Loja

Bienvenidos de Loja,

Where to begin...our group has done so many things and have been so busy that it's hard to believe we've been here for less than a week. Our first stop included 1 day and 2 nights in Quito, a city with twice the population of Idaho. What a change a real city is from the country life! Our first day included a tour of the city including a few of some astounding churches and basilicas in the city, as well as a trip to the Ecuador. I can now say I've had one leg in the northern hemisphere an done in the southern hemisphere. We also visited the downtown sections of town and the local markets among other places. Quito is amazingly dense with millions of people crowded within a small valley, and on a clear day three large volcanoes can be seen from the city - we could only see 1 (forget the name but it started with a P) while we were there. There are literally NO RULES while driving. You can do whatever you want -speed, cut people off, honk excessively, try and run pedestrians over -it's a wild experience. The flight from Quito to Loja was the best flight I've ever been on because you fly directly over the Andes and some of the local volcanoes. One of which was in the process of smoking. After one day of seeing Loja we traveled to see the study sites of our group. A few people will be doing social science stuff which includes mostly interviewing officials and giving surveys, a few more are doing water quality and stream morphology stuff, and the rest of us are focusing on biodiversity related things. Loja is known as the gateway to Amazon and was used back in the day by Humboldt and other famous explorers. We journeyed into the jungle and saw some amazing waterfalls, local people (Saraguro and Shuar) and tropical rainforest. We also rode in the back of pickup trucks because the road was to rough for our bus. So many things already experienced here and less than a week in. Hope to post some pictures soon.

Luego

Hola todos

Here is my blog for all that are interested or those who are bored and want to check out some cool pics. Hope to keep it recent and exciting!