30 min by plane from Quito to Coca, 2 hours by boat on the Napo River, 2 hours by bus, and 2 more hours by boat on the Tiputini River brought us to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in the Yasuni National Park within Ecuador’s Amazon Rainforest!
If we had decided to take a bus instead of a plane, it would have taken 8 hours to get to Coca. The Coca airport reminded me a lot of the Binghamton Airport, expect the radio tower at Coca was only 2 stories tall and the whole airport was essentially 4 rooms and a runway.
After the first boat ride, we had to pass through a security checkpoint controlled by Repsol, the Italian oil company that control the sector of the Yasuni National Park that the research station resides in. We asked our professor why the research station, who’s research is in the name of environmental conservation, had an agreement with the oil company to pass through the sector. His answer was that it would take five times as long to get to the research station in alternative routes, which was deemed to be inefficient, so it’s a necessary evil that the station complies with.
On the bus ride, the sides were open which allowed for a nice breeze and break from the humidity. We utilized a bus from Repsol and drove on the Maxus Road, a road that an American company origonally built in the 1990s. We passed many homes of the native Huaorani people, whose homes and appearances seemed really Westernized. We learned that roads like the Maxus Road make way for increased colonization, deforestation, illegal poaching, and acculturation of the native populace. Also, the majority of habitat destruction in terms of illegal logging and poaching mainly stem from indigenous communities traditional tendencies being amplified by modern technologies. Many local communities view the animals of the forest as unlimited and there for consumption. Their hunting was mainly restricted based on rivers and manual hunting techniques, but now with the addition of roads, bridges, and firearms, the local people have been able to kill off exponentially more wildlife than before they were contacted by the Ecuadorian government and oil companies.
During our last boat ride, we discovered that we had a hitchhiker on board-a juvenile tarantula!
The fuzzy thing on the side of the metal support beam of the main library and lab spaces is a caterpillar, and I’m not sure what type of bird is in the other photo.
We arrived, settled into our cabins, and had dinner. We were the only group present at the station besides the researchers and volunteers working there. During our stay, we ate lunch with world-famous entomologist, Terry Erwin, as well as famous scientists studying primate behavior. One of the undergraduate students who had been doing Woolly Monkey research gave us a lecture on her research and what primate species live in the region of the station. I found the Saki Monkeys to be really fascinating, though we did not see any during our stay.
We were really astounded by just how loud the rainforest was all the time. With 50% of the world’s species being found in Ecuador’s Rainforests, I guess it made sense! So many different chirps, wails, buzzes, and calls rang at all hours. It sounded a lot like white noise machines that people may listen to back in the States.
I definitely bathed more in bug spray than I actually bathed, which is a good thing on account of the literal thousands of species of insects everywhere and the fact that if we showered too much the station would run out of clean water reserves (this did not happen, the station can support roughly 40 people at a time, and there were probably 1/2 that number while we were there).
We also had electricity twice a day, from 10-2 and 6-9:30. Internet was for emergencies only, so our phones were used as cameras for the week. There were dry boxes located in the library/lab spaces building where people stored their sensitive electronics from the humidity. The humidity felt a lot like Columbia, SC, and it persisted the entire time we stayed until we got back to Coca at the end of the week. No clothes would dry, so we were mostly sticky with sweat and bug spray for most of the time, but it was so worth it to hike, observe, and even swim with the wildlife! More details to come about the rest of the week tomorrow, for now I should rest up for classes in the morning.
