Volunteership - Day Two and Digging In to Research!

Today, we started off by meeting with our research teams. The Bird Team and the Ant Team went off to collect data, and the Moth Team (my team) met to go over the data we collected last night, and upload pictures to iNaturalist. Then, we had a delicious breakfast here at EcoArraza, featuring fresh fruit, cheese bread, eggs, and Renee’s favorite: tomate de árbol. 

After breakfast, Abbie sighted a rare male umbrella bird! It was so close that she didn’t even need her binoculars. 

On our walk over to our volunteership, we were greeted by a very playful puppy! Once we got there, we were able to pick up all of the projects that we started yesterday, and get a lot more done. I helped with the gardening today, where we were planting kale, cucumbers, and lemon, lime, and naranjilla trees. (If you’ve never had naranjilla juice, you’re really missing out). We finished our volunteership with time to spare and were able to poke around in the woods, looking for critters. 

We arrived back at EcoArraza just in time to see a blue-headed parrot perched on a palm frond. It was so beautiful! Then we got to clean up and relax in the pools and the steam room. 

It was very satisfying to see our hard work pay off with the volunteership, as all the projects came to a close. I look forward to all that Ecuador has in store for us next!

Number of dogs I’ve spotted today: 11

Esther F - Hollins ES Sophomore

Butterfly Museum, Sweet Market, Birding Tower, Conservation Forest, & Connecting to Indigenous Community

The day began dark and quiet, as I originally woke up around 2am, a quiet ambiance of occasional bird and insect calls, as well as the sound of breathing from my roommate at Ecoarrazza. As the morning progressed, the rare moment of peace allowed me to observe the way the world comes to life as the sun rises, no matter where you are on Earth.

Our first destination of the day: the butterfly museum in Mera. A small, family-run outdoor observation garden filled with of course, multiple species of tropical butterflies: blue morphos, clear wings, mimic butterflies and moths (often as dead leaves).

Education is the ultimate goal of this place, teaching about the conservation of butterfly species that are essential to humans through their interactions with plants, often ones we can eat. Similarly, they have various large insects like Hercules beetles and tarantulas, to help show that there is no need to destroy animals due to human fears.

Continuing with conservation, we ended up at Jardín Botánico las Orquídeas, an effort to help restore the jungle started by one man 40 years ago. It began as a large cow pasture, cows and other non-native livestock often decimating the endemic ecosystem quite literally at the roots. 

The impact a single person can have on the world around them is immense, the man who began this project now hosting a vibrant ecosystem of hundreds of species: canela (cinnamon) trees, curare (used to create toxic blow darts), white cacao (not what we know as “white chocolate”), and rare species such as guayacan (a very sought after hardwood tree species, but it grows incredibly slowly). 

After these activities, we finally make our way to the indigenous community, Guayusa Runa, where we will be staying for the next few nights. At 7pm, we participated in a welcoming ceremony where together women (warme) dance by showing off their hair, and men (runa) bang drums as we all chant together around the grandfather fire (abuelo fuego).

The rest of the night passed by quickly, mostly because we were told that tomorrow we will be receiving our Quechua names, which will be given to us during the morning Guayusa tea ceremony at 5am.

Grace - Hollins Biology Junior

A Day of Glorious Community - Quechua Naming, Rain, Dream Catchers, Fishing, Medicinal Plants, and Blessings of the Toucans

Quechua Names, Indigenous “Games”, and an All Around Good Time -  Hola from Guayusa (Why-yusa) Runa! 

Today, we had the absolute honor to join Papa Haimei and his family in their early morning guayusa tea ritual. Guayusa is a very important plant spiritually for the Quechua, and it is treated with a lot of respect. 

During this ritual, everyone went around and shared their dreams, and the dreams were used to interpret a message (or warning) meant for the person sharing. I learned through sharing my dream that there may be a spirit attached to me, but the power of the guayusa can be used to drive it away. As we shared our dreams, we were all given Quechua names surrounding our closeness with different elements of the natural world! I was given the name Uaswarme; the Uas is a water spirit that moves fish depending on water levels in the river, and warme means woman in the Quechua language. When we were all named, we had the opportunity to partake in a spiritual cleansing using a form of tobacco. Though it burned your nostrils, the liquid tobacco opened your sinuses, and, personally, it felt like my lungs grew two sizes. 

After a lovely breakfast and a small break, we made dreamcatchers with the help of Seesa. Though some were nicer than others, it was awesome to learn about the natural materials traditionally used to craft different objects. The chambira, a stringy material gathered from the inner leafs of local palms, was used to weave our designs onto a piece waska, a sacred vine that is strong and flexible enough for a number of jobs. It was especially nice because the pouring rain provided a nice, calming atmosphere to craft too. 

When the rain cleared up in the afternoon, the group split into two for a couple hours. While one group enjoyed more rest (I read a book in a very comfy hammock), the other’s mission was to fish for everyone’s dinner! Many people deeper in the Amazon jungle rely on fish like tilapia that are easy to raise and cultivate, allowing for an easy protein source.; Guayusa Runa has a small pond of tilapia they regularly fish from. Thankfully, they were able to catch ~20 fish, so everyone could eat. On the way back from their successful fishing trip, they were able to learn about different medicinal plants around the property. This included a fruit used to determine the sex of an unborn baby and a leaf used to make a tea that can help with period cramps. 

When everyone returned, we were able to peruse a small market of jewelry and other products handmade by our hosts; this is one of the ways we are able to give back as thanks for allowing us to stay with them. Our lovely professor Renee had the awesome idea to give all of us $10 to buy something for a randomly assigned person in the group! However, we’re all forced to wait to give and receive gifts until our final dinner in Ecuador.  

After we all stepped out from the market, we were all chitchatting with when another when one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen happened. For what felt like an hour but was maybe 15 minutes, we were able to witness a group of 10-12 toucans perch clearly in nearby trees or fly over head close enough to see the bright yellows and reds on their bodies. We would think that the group had moved on, but they would quickly came back, with the help of Papa Haimai using grass to make a bird call, to let us gawk and exclaim at them more and more. Our guides and our hosts described this as an incredibly special occurrence, and nobody had seen a group quite that large. I truly cannot do justice in writing as to how freakin’ cool it was to witness that in person, and it makes it even better that we are the only Hollins group that has witnessed something like that. Though the toucans did move out eventually, none of us will EVER forget that experience. 

With this great energy that filled everyone, we moved on to learning how to use a blowgun and spear. Though described as games now, these weapons were used in the past to provide food for the Quechua, and proficiency was key for survival. Almost all of us hit the target when using the blowgun, but there were only a few select “providers”, as they were deemed, that were able to use the spear enough that if we were hunting actual animals, it could’ve gotten a kill. 

When we were finished with our “games”, we had time to sit around the fire or spend time to ourselves before dinner. During this intermission, we can were able to check off another first on the list; we have been the first group to ever try chicha. Chicha is a fermented yucca drink made traditionally by the woman of a community, and it reaches back far into the history of the Quechua people. The drink we tried was made with hand-mashed yucca, but the yucca would typically be chewed by the woman making it as a way to share a microbiome, boosting the health of those who drank it. We passed a bowl of the drink around the fire, and I can only describe the taste as almost fermented rice water. 

This day truly could not have gone any better :)

Giana - Hollins Biology Sophomore

A Day of Transition to a Biological Ecolodge on the Edge of the Andes

Hola again bloggers! Today we joined Papa Jamie and his family for guayusa tea and talk of dreams around the fire. We ate breakfast and showed everyone our journals, drawings, and paintings until it was time to say goodbye and carry on to our next destination. The generosity of this community was felt deeply by all.

We then traveled to Tamandua where we hiked into the ecolodge and became immersed into the jungle with an amazing view of Volcán Antisana through the clear skies. 

Anna, Ester, and I decided to use our downtime to explore some of the various trails nearby and all to scout out leaf cutter ant trails for later surveys. On our way back we had our Merlin app open listening to surrounding bird calls, one of which we were hearing but Merlin wasn’t identifying the bird. That’s when I saw it, a monkey, later we identified as a Tamarin! The three of us were overjoyed at the first monkey sighting in the group and that we had found muiltiple including a juvenile! After confirming that we couldn’t see the family again we rushed back to the rest of the group to share our lucky news. 

After lunch we had time for the whole group to hike more trails, we found bugs, ants, and  giant leafs for umbrellas when it started to rain. 

All the research projects are going strong - with moth and ant surveys tonight.

After we finished the night with a night hike in search for frogs and other critters.

Another great day in the jungle!

Holly (Kawsay Warme - "Good-living Woman) - Hollins ES Senior

Birds, moths and ant research, incrdible vistas night hikes, bathing in 300 ft waterfall, and on and on and on. 

We have had a fantastic two days at Tamandua Ecolodge - a new ecological research site that has been unbelievable for the biodiversity and the incredible beauty at 1000m above sea level - perched at the top of the Amazon rainforest. We left community yesterday with soulful goodbyes and took a bright yellow school bus down some a curvy gravel road to the end where we found the sign to Tamandua Ecolodge. A new place for me for my group and a fantastic find. We hiked in less than a half mile through dense tropical rainforest filled with colorful birds and so much green. Perched on the edge of a large ravine the ecolodge looks onto the eastern slopes of the Andes!  An absolutely stunning view with incredible platforms for viewing wildlife. 

We settled in and the moth and ant team began their data gathering for this location. The ant team gathered activity patterns on 8 leaf cutter ant trails in the day and have 5 night surveys to date.  They have data from 10 day and 7 night ant trails in the more urban environment of Mera.  The data from here and from deeper in the rainforest - Cuyabeno is going to be very interesting.

The moth team did 4 light traps in Mera and found 57 species with an average of 6 moths per 5 minutes.  After our first night of light trapping (two traps) we have have found over 70 species. This morning, the bird team found 45 bird species in their 30 min survey a record for any survey!  Simply startling diversity. All three teams spent this morning uploading images to iNaturalist and excel giving us the afternoon to take an adventure hike to a 300 foot waterfall. We hiked down a slippery path weaving through dense tropical rainforest. Challenging footing in our rubber boots but incredible plant life at every turn. Eventually we heard the thundering vibrating the forest and we were all simply stunned by the intense energy and beauty of this 300 foot waterfall that fell straight down. Brought tears to my eyes. The beauty, the power and the essential spirt of this gift of a planet. 

We bathed in the waters, were blown away by the wind generated by the falling waterfall and were deeply grateful for our time in this beautiful place. 

We will collect more moth data tonight if the drenching rains end. And hopefully do another night hike. Tomorrow more adventures await at tamandua.

Another great day in the jungle!

Renee - Chicguan warme - Woman of the squirrel cuckoo

 The day started in the wee hours of very very early in the morning, rain pounding on the roof. In the stupor of sleep, I briefly thought that the roof might split open and I'd have a very wet surprise, but remembered that was an unlikely occurrence, given that the roof is made of metal. When I woke again, it was time to (attempt) some birding. The rain was persistent, and Renee decided it would be best to start after a delicious breakfast of eggs, toast, and a peach yogurt drink, served by the incredible Tamandua ecolodge staff. 

The rain relented to a soft drizzle, inviting the hummingbirds to resume their frantic dance around the purple and orange flowers. Holly spotted the tiniest bird which I assumed was a bumble bee, but was really a Woodstar. The brilliant green and tawny orange bird flew methodically from one flower to the next, wings beating so rapidly they were invisible. 

As the drizzle of rain continued, moth, bird and ant research projects were wrapped up at Tamandua. On my journey to retrieve the various flags marking ant trails, I spotted the rapid marching of army ants, a gigantic globular termite nest, and a stray Pilsener beer bottle. 

After a lunch of pork chops, a green bean salad, fries, and rice, a gang of five students, Alex, Kristin, Renee, and the ecolodge owner Jorge set out on a jungle hike. Our venture into the diverse greenery was slow, and as Renee so aptly describes: “like fishing”. By playing recorded bird sounds, Jorge lured birds in the forest towards our view. Like fishing, we were rewarded for our patience and were able to spot birds including a Scythebill, whose spindly curved bill resembles its namesake. 

After dinner, we set out for a night hike, traversing the same waterfall trail lit only by our headlamps. The trees looked taller in the darkness, bending towards us with hanging vines like long, spindly fingers. During our adventure, we found glass frogs, a shoestring snake, many spiders, and a tiny salamander. While washing out boots, we spotted a pygmy possum crouching in the green fronds of a plant, watching our every move. ¡Otro gran día! 

Anna S - Charapa warme - Woman of turtle, always able to go with the flow and stay strong!

 Today began earlier than ever before, we were up at EcoLodge Tamandua at around 3:15am to embark on a (possibly) 8 hour van ride to Cuyabeno River Lodge. So, in true travel fashion, most of today’s blog is going to be about the van ride! Or at least the parts of it I managed to stay awake for. 

We tredged along the path from EcoLodge Tamandua at 3:45am sharp. We had a strict leave deadline of 4:00am which we made with perfect timing. Loaded the van with our bags, with our people, did a very sleepy count-off, and then we were on our way.

I next woke up around 7:30am, though I’m aware not many of us were as lucky in their return to slumber. Rocky roads, getting launched in our seats sometimes, and it progressively getting so much hotter since we’re packed in like a can of sardines. 

We had a few breaks along our van trek, bathroom, gas, snacks, which were quite helpful to get out of the tight packed van.

Arriving at Cuyobeno River Lodge was well worth the (what ended up being 11 hours) wait, as the only way to make it to the riverside cabins is on the river itself. A small group of pioneers, two teachers, five students, set off into the bayou-like wilderness.

Eventually arriving at the lodge, we find ourselves surrounded by no sounds of civilization, just birds, bugs, the quiet undertone of the river pretty much underfoot. We eat a very late lunch (our first proper meal of the day) at a ripe time of 4:00pm.

After our delectable lunch, we had a short break to prepare ourselves for a short river ride, where we of course saw a bunch of birds, some new species every day. We ended up half-swimming, half-floating down the river back to the lodge, where the rest of the evening was spent relaxing, eating dinner at 8:00pm, continuing some of our research programs, and falling asleep surrounded by our buggy (literal bugs) neighbors and housemates (the outside is inside)

Grace - Hollins junior biology