Blogs from Ecuador, South America - page 635

The first week has been amazing... It´s a thousand times more beautiful than I imagined it would be. I´m in the capital now (Quito), which lies in a valley with 5000m high mountains and volcanoes surrounding it. The city is filled with amazing parks, churches and plazas. It´s so easy to just spend the days wandering this place. The weather is a perpetually spring like climate, always 20c and sunny with some rain. The food is great, and everything is, relatively, very cheap. Fresh fruit from the jungle is amazing and costs only pennies, so for me it´s paradise! Beer is the same price as water here (65 cents for a 1L bottle), and authentic soccer jerseys cost $6. (E-mail me the team and size if you want one!) Most of time so far I´ve ... read more

Time for another update! Things are going well here. I am doing well. I have found one nest so far (blue gray tanagers), and I am learning a lot. From the quetzal tapes we are going to get feeding rates and other data. They are cavity nesters so I basically watch video of birds going in and out of a hole for a good portion of the day. They are really beautiful birds. Yesterday I got the chick out of the cavity to measure and take pictures of it. Later, I will write a paper on our observations and submit it for publication. Today, the station manager, Jose, needed the camera I use to watch video to tape a nest he found in order to determine the species. So, I have a lot of free time! ... read more

Studying Amazon Butterflies in Ecuador (Part I) The Shiripuno Research Center started with the odyssey of Fernando Vaca (ECUADOR) and Rodney Guerra (U.S.A) in march 2002, the goal was to help with ideas to our friend Eugenia Nieto Sevilla who begun to built a campsite for an ecotourism project in the Shiripuno River, which is inside the Anthropological Huaorani Reserve and she had been helping them to develop different ideas in the forest management. We want to taste, explore and enjoy different forest in a different region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. We had the experience of the Napo River forest experience which is still good forest, but the scenery that we were having was an indescribable forest experience. Our first night was in a comforting motorized canoe (it was leaking!) without a roof, there was a ... read more

Wow, what a... week? Haven't really been keeping track, but whatever it has been it has been great. First of all, there are some pics online from my jungle trip. You can find them here. If anyone can figure out how to get the pics off of there please let me know! The first thing to report is a second (less dangerous) biking trip to Cotopaxi, the world's highest active valcano. After some amazing views of the glaciated valcano we finished our two hour drive at the Refugio (a shack marking the basecamp of all mountains down here) at an astonishing 4865 meters. Breathing at this altitude is not easy: it feels as though you are reaching for something you just can't grasp. After the usual pep talk and gearing up, our crew began the descent ... read more

Mom says "You have gotten big." We are off to the Galapagos tomorrow. We miss Rebecca. -Aaron ... read more