To the sea

About half way into our stay in Quito, the Marine Ecology group which was in the middle of their Techniques of Marine Research class took a ten day trip to the coast of Ecuador. It started with 13 person, 7 hour half-full bus ride to Muisne in the province of Emeraldas. We were headed to the Congal Marine Biological research station and our rag-tag group was made of Luis, our professor, the Ecuadorian with the driest sense of humor I’ve met yet, Juan de Dios one of his students from USFQ, Juan Carlos, the bus driver, and the ten of us.

                That long of a bus ride can get pretty crazy with that many people in that small of space, but our descent to the coast was a sleepy one until we had a traffic collision on an unfinished highway going through Esmeraldas. The bus was fine but the car was pretty busted, No one got hurt though. Congal was a small building in the midst of shrimp farms, coastal jungle, beach, mangroves, and the two “towns” of Nuevo Muisne and Bunche. We arrived Sunday and stayed there until Thursday. While there we did research on the restored and old mangroves and also learned about the history and effects of shrimp farming and concha (a big clam used for ceviche) harvesting on the local environment and communities. The director of the station is a Swiss-Ecuadorian named Andres. He is very knowledgeable of the whole community and its history with the mangroves and a strange but interesting mix of cultures.

                While there are 7 wonders of the world, I personally believe there are certain things in nature that should be experience. One of course is the ocean with its vastness and powerful still mesmerizes me every time I see it. Mangroves are now on that list, and I think you have to get in them to actually “see” them. They look like alien tree spiders, more likely to turn out to be ents and start walking than to stay swaying contently rooted in the wind and changing tides. You can’t walk through it. At low tide you can see the ground, but that is just soft mud that looks like porous, black, volcanic basalt that you immediately sink 5 inches into as soon as you step on it. You can’t climb over it. The distance between the highest prop roots and lowest branches is more than twenty meters in the older mangroves, not to mention the termites and hornets that love to live in that region. You gotta go through it. It’s like a living jungle gym and a muddy adventure at every step.

                Until we got to the beach at Congal, which has blacker and softer sands than I’m used to, I didn’t realize just how much I missed the ocean. The altitude in Quito had been getting to me and I needed to see the sea. It was the second time I’ve been in the Pacific and it was superb, the water is a perfect temperature in Esmeraldas, still fairly warm from the Panamic current but chilled to a good temperature by the Humboldt. The people of the province we’re unique too. The look more African and this because of a slave ship that ran aground in the 16^th century (I think). They started to live with the coastal tribes and created a unique population in this province. After this we were off to Manta then Puerto Lopez!

I almost forgot Caimito and  San Francisco! In Caimito we hiked to a green house on a hill overlooking a jungled terrain and the sea. We had organically farmed shrimp, and learned from an old Argentine named Raul who had been a proponent of overfishing in Ecuador years before and now spent his time protecting the marine reserve saying it was his love and karma. He took us on a hike to an awesome secluded beach showing us cacao and mango trees on the way. There, we swam, had coconut from a guy name ChuChu and saw a mother humpbakc whale and her calf.

In San Francisco, we met a group of lobster fishermen who had made a coop to protect their exploited lobster fishery in partnership with NAZCA. They did their own policing and patrolling and were super excited about owning their own fishery.

Middle Earth

Through many conversations it seems that for most of us, Quito was simply a short stop before we got to the Galápagos in September. It became something a lot more. For me the sheer diversity in biology and ecology you could find just traveling through and slightly outside the city was mind-boggling. The highlands of Quito quickly transform into alpine, or cloud forests, or rainforests, or dry forests, one thing for sure though there’s a whole lot of trees no matter where you go. Some of us learned about the drastic weather changes the “dramatic” landscapes (as Chancey, the Kiwi, says) could produce the hard way. Our marine ecology class traveled to the thermal springs after Friday class wearing bathing suits and everything else you need to swim in Quito weather. Long story short, we got there in the back of a Toyota truck driven by Carlos and quickly climbed in elevation, dropped in ambient temperature, passed some llamas, and arrived in a landscape with more New England fall weather with some llamas on the side.  But the Kiwi is right, it really is dramatic. A 30 minute camioneta drive had me thinking of having to figure out an elfish riddle to enter a dwarf mine, or encounter a band of Rohirrim.

That Sunday my family took me in another direction out of Quito to Mindo. In between more butterflies and hummingbirds than I’ve ever seen in my life you can go tubing down real jungle rapids and flying on a web of ziplines in the forest canopy. Afterwards we had tilapia and trout raised in pools right next to the various bamboo hosterías lining the dirt road through town.  

Even just a few more miles down the road is the Rivendell-esque cloud forest reserve of Maquipucuna where we saw a plethora of toucans, parakeets, but unfortunately not a spectacled bear that seem to climb avocado trees and eat until their heart is content or they fall out. While looking for all these amazing creatures we hiked 2 hours to and under a hidden waterfall of love. I’m thinking now the whole country of Ecuador is enchanted not just the Galapagos Islands.

The Republic of the Equator

Aside from sounding like a waypoint on a slightly comical global trek, there is not too much to the English version of Ecuador. It is also a horribly inadequate name for this country that is unrivaled in diversity, of the bio-ilk and otherwise. Quito (which comes from the word Quitus in the original Quiteño language meaning middle of the world), is by itself immensely unique. It is 3000m in elevation and sits right on the equator letting you get sunburned within 20 minutes in 70 degrees F weather during the day and need a jacket at night because it drops to 40 degrees. I can’t complain though, it’s a city full of life, friendliness, and intrigue and empty of mosquitoes. 

While it is inexorably distinct, it also follows the columbian pattern of old hero worship engrained into the urban landscape (lady of victory, Mary looking over the city, Spanish old town filled with gothic cathedrals, soccer stadiums named after Inca emperors, etc) except here the standard Simon Bolivar has been replaced with Mariscal Sucre. It seems that ol’ Simon couldn’t make here so he sent his right-hand man Mariscal. But for all the Bolivar fans out there don’t worry he still has a pretty impressive monument of his own

Paradoxes seem to be a norm here and the rhythm of life isn’t an exception. The night most of us all arrived there was a huge hail storm that delayed some of our flights. Then the first conversation most of us had with our host families was how it never rains in August. It usually is sunny and dry all morning until 3:30p.m. when clouds roll over Pichincha and dump rain in the city for 10-30 minutes. Academic and family lives are the same way. We had a project and final due within the first 2 weeks here and sometimes my family would get home a lot later than me, and sometimes I’d get home and there’d already be a party going on. My classmates and I acclimated well I think. From bus workers yelling destinations and, “¡¡¡SUBA, SUBA, SUBA!!!” as the driver slows down enough for you to jump on as others jump off to wandering around packs of other gringos in the Mariscal at night, I believe we found a nice equilibrium even though we were here for such a short time.