Wednesday, October 5, 2011

after the Amazon

Well, back in the city of Quito, honestly it's kind of a let down after being in the Amazon for a week, but it is wonderful to be reunited with my host family and also some sense of normality. Though I cannot possibly convey the experience of the Amazon as truly and meaningfully as I would want I am going to try.

First of all we took a plane, a boat on the Napo River, a Chiva through the forest, and another boat along the Tiputini River to get the Tiputini Estación de Biodiversidad. Needless to say it was just the anacondas and us out there.

Anyhow, we started every morning early (but not yet bright) at 5:30 with either a canopy bridge, a 40 meter bird watching tower, a float down the Tiputini or a Caminata (aka really long, slow hike to see sweet forest animals). We had breakfast at 8 so of course my stomach was eating itself by then, but we had peanut butter (!) which was a major plus.
For animals we saw:
Toucans
Macaws
many other amazing birds...
Capybaras (the world's largest rodent)
Tapirs (look these guys up, wow)
an anaconda strangling a caiman (this is not a lie, and a caiman is a crocodile type thing)
MONKEYS!
butterflies of all colors
and much more tat I am probably forgetting

so yea, we had electricity from 10:30am-12:00pm and 7pm-9:30pm. otherwise we had candles which actually give off a fair bit of light :)
We were at least a little bit damp ALL THE TIME because everything there is incredibly humid. There is no escaping being wet all the time, not my fav.
Also chiggers-the most annoying, tiniest bugs in the world that prefer to bite areas the sun never shines on, great.

It was an incredible experience full of ecology, lectures on everything from deforestation, soil types, army ants and carnivorous bats! I doubt I will have another chance in my lifetime to visit the Amazon and immerse myself as I did last week so I feel extremely lucky to have had the opportunity. Now we get to look forward to the Galapagos! I am seriously the luckiest person ever.

ciao,

Katí (my name here)

1 comment:

  1. What a fantastic opportunity for you, Kate. You get to see the Amazon and still have the chance to learn about it's eco-system. It sounds like so much fun.

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