Reflections in Tiputini

Arriving in Tiputini

 

On Monday, October 12, I left Quito for the Tiputini Biodiversity Reserve in Amazonian Ecuador.  Simply traveling was an adventure in itself.  I flew from Quito to Coca, a trip that took all of 25 minutes that would have been all day by bus.  It was like being transported to another planet in this short time going from mountains to rainforest in less than a half hour.  Next, I took a boat down the Napo River for about two hours.  The jungle seemed to become denser the further down the river the boat traveled.  At some points along the way, the water would become too shallow to pass on one side, so the boat would make sudden zig zags across the river, sometimes bank to bank. 

 

After two hours of merrily zig zagging, we arrived at a bus station.  There we left the boat to board a truck, which traversed us through the forest to the Tiputini River about another two hours away.  By the time we reached the next river, we were quite off the beaten path. 

 

The next boat ride was deep into the heart of the jungle.  Every hundred meters or so, there would be a group of butterflies sunning themselves on the ground.  When the boat passed, they would all suddenly fly up in a swarm together, revealing greens, yellows and whites in a beautiful blend.  Turtles sat drying on logs, while more butterflies hovered around them.  Even a river dolphin swam by the boat. 

 

After about another two hours along the Tiputini River, we arrived at the Biodiversity Station.  I am now hundreds of miles from civilization, exploring the most biodiverse spot on earth. 

 

My Project

 

At least ten years ago, although probably more, two sites in TBS were cleared for helicopter landing.  Since then, the forest has made a valiant attempt at recovery, in a geological time scale sense anyway.  Trees have regrown, and the understory has thickened.  However, to the trained eye it is clear that these spots represent young primary growth.  Most of the trees that have reached the canopy are the same species.  My project is to compare the species richness and sheer amount of baby trees in these two plots to the mature, pristine forest that surrounds them. 

 

Working in the forest has been a very humbling experience.  I feel so lucky to be here in such an incredible place.  This rainforest has been alive and well, and evolving and thriving for millions of years, and for one moment in the great span of time I have the honor so share a glimpse of this natural masterpiece.  There are some trees here that are over six hundred years old, and tower over even the canopy of the smaller giants below.  To stand next to such a giant can make one feel quite insignificant.  After all, these trees have lived through quite a lot.  Have you ever stopped to imagine that those living beings were alive during the Age Of Exploration, The Spanish Conquest, The American Revolution, The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, man walking on the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall and now myself passing through the woods.  Living in this beautiful untainted wilderness is both enriching and refreshing.  It helps put the essentials in life into perspective.  Living well with the few essential items I packed into my backpack is proof of how little one really needs to be happy, and being able to take delight of a perfectly starry sky and the sighting of a beautiful animal are proof of the pleasures that exist in nature without the need for flipping a switch; if one could take a moment to notice…

Que Lindo el Mindo

This weekend the other students and I went to Mindo, a little town nestled in the cloud forest.  It is a relaxing and sleepy place, with a warm and welcoming charm.  There is something distinctly Latin American about it: the children playing the streets, a little central park in the town square, dimly lit dirt roads.  

Shortly after arriving, we rode the zip lines.  13 cables criss-crossing a deep valley.  It was such a rush to jump off a cliff to what would otherwise be to the death and then to soar across the valley suspended by a cable.  Later we hiked down to the river and jumped off a 36 foot cliff into a waterfall.  Now with a bad jump or landing this actually could have been to the death, but we all lived to tell the tale.  

Early the next morning, my friend and I woke up very early to go birdwatching with a guide.  It was unbelievable just how teeming with life the canopy of the forest is, but without the guide, I would never have appreciated it as much.  Every few seconds, the guide would stop, and say "look, a beautiful bird over there!"  Then he would quickly find the bird in the telescope and we could see.  We saw many toucans and all kinds of colorful birds.

 

Simply passing through the town was an unforgettable experience in itself.  We ate delicious pizza made of pan de yuca, (yuca bread) and the world's greatest brownies.  Seriously, this brownie was freaking amazing.