Jan 16--Bus to Loma Alta

Monday, January 16, 2006
Valdivia Eco Lodge to Loma Alta to El Suspiro

After a breakfast of coffee, eggs, juice, and fruit, we dragged our bags to the courtyard where the bus was to come at 7 am to pick us up for our ride to Loma Alta, the start of our hike to the El Suspiro and Cloud Forest. But the bus didn't come . . . and didn't come. Eventually, Evelyng got on her cell phone and managed to get ahold of the driver’s wife. He'd left his village an hour ago.  Susan was contemplating hiring another bus when ours finally showed up, laboring up the hill to the Eco Lodge.

Loading the gear atop the bus, Susan Evelyng and Carlos pose before the bus, the fake-fur-trimmed mirror and the great bumped noses of the Ecuadorian Indians who helped load the bus

What a bus—the driver sits on the floor like a go-cart, and the bus is decorated inside with pictures of Jesus interspersed between stickers of Tweety Bird, Goofy, and other oddities. Hanging across the front window is a tasseled curtain, and hanging off the front fake-fur-framed mirror are religious medals, children’s sandals, stuffed toys, etc. The drivers—two men with the great bumped noses of ancient Ecuadorian Indians—piled our bags on top of the bus, we all crammed in, and off we went at breakneck speed, honking the horn often and loudly at vehicles, animals, and persons in our way. Soon we were on a dirt road and then a narrower dirt road full of river crossings (no bridges) and potholes. Whenever we passed through a village we encountered “sleeping policemen” (speed humps) every 100 feet. It says something about our bus to note that it got hung up on one of these and had to try several times to get the rear wheels over it.

Finally the bus entered the village of Loma Alta (“High Hill”) and pulled up in front of the Loma Alta Ecological building.

Signing in at Loma Alta Ecological Reserve headquarters-Alejandro in white shirt

The Loma Alta Ecological Reserve (LAER) is a community owned forest. Our Earthwatch project is a biodiversity and ecosystem conservation effort involving the community of Loma Alta, Guayas, Ecuador. The project compares the sociology of the conservation & ecology of avian communities in the Loma Alta & Dos Mangas watersheds of western Ecuador.

Originally our PI was to be Dusti Becker, founder of the LAER & co-director of PAN (People Allied for Nature), but Dr. Susan Wethington, from Patagonia, AZ, founder of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network (HMN), became our PI instead. Susan  is especially interested in mapping and studying the habitat needs of the tiny Esmeraldas Woodstar, an endangered hummingbird that she suspects breeds in the Colonche Hills. Susan and Dusti have also tried to unite ecosystem and wildlife conservation with the needs of local people to make a living. Ecotourism has good potential in the Colonche Hills, and hummingbirds should be an attractive focus for nature-sensitive tourism.

Cathy's photo of a beautiful iguana seen as we were leaving Loma Alta

Cathy's close-up of an iguana

We spend only a brief time in Loma Alta. Carlos asks to hire Alejandro, a LAER Ranger who hunts down poachers and keeps tabs of the wildlife in the Reserve. Carlos wants Alejandro to help him find some good sites for frogs and snakes. Susan gives her permission, and Alejandro is set to meet us at La Mono (“The Monkey”), our first camp, in two days. After these arrangements are made and after we have each signed-in at the Center that we are entering the Reserve, we began our hike along the La Mono River from Loma Alta to El Suspiro ("suspiro" means "sigh" in Spanish).

The dirtt road out of town; mango trees; just outside of Loma Alta we come upon a tree farm that is growing trees for reforestation of areas within the Reserve--some of their beds above

Family that runs the tree farm

This is a leisurely hike with much stopping to bird and observe. The river is pretty low to dry in places but we manage to spot the following birds along the way: Snowy Egret, Croaking Dove, Golden-olive Woodpecker, Spotted Sandpiper, Cattle Egret, Blue-crowned Motmot, Southern Yellow Grosbeak, Striated Heron, Parrot-billed Seedeater, Blue-gray Tanager, Black-cheeked Woodpecker, Ecuadorian Cacique (a blackbird with blue-gray bill and eye), Smooth-billed Ani, as well as blue damselflies, baby cane toads, many pollywogs, all sorts of tick-ridden cattle, donkeys, and mules; leaf cutter ants crossing the path, and giant Blue Morpho and other butterflies.

Blue-crowned Motmot (it was in a tree at the tree farm), Blue Morpho butterfly, the underside of its blue wings  to the left of it, and leaf cutter ants. This is the first time I have seen them and they fascinate me.

Evelyng & Carlos

After about three hours, we reach El Suspiro, a very poor village of about 50 people, all descended from the 5 who settled it. Because of this there is a lot of inbreeding which has produced midgets. Pigs, mules, donkeys, chickens, and children are everywhere underfoot. One has to be careful where one steps in the muddy, completely bare dirt streets and yards because of the excrement from these animals as well.

Carlos at our hostesses luncheon table

It has been arranged for us to each pair off and eat lunch at different villagers' huts. I pair off with Carlos and we eat in what I will later learn is a very well-to-do family hut. We climb the outside stairs and find ourselves in a largish bamboo-sided room with a rough platform bed in one corner, a gas stove, and a refrigerator on raised blocks. Our hostess, whose name I cannot remember, tells us (through Carlos) that her daughter works as a waitress in Guayaquil and sends home money. Also at one end of the table on a shelf below photos of children, grandchildren, and ornately framed pictures of Jesus sits an incongruous CD player. Our hostess has a CD playing that amuses Carlos, who says it was a popular group in Costa Rica about 15 years ago.

As soon as we enter the room, our hostess takes one look at me (red faced and panting from the exertion and the heat) and pulls from the refrigerator’s freezer two small fruit juice popsicles in little plastic bags. You can tell that this woman has had experience with previous Earthwatch volunteers. Also, she is dressed in an "I [Heart] NY" tee, the logo outlined in rhinestones, obviously a gift from a former Earthwatcher and one of her dressier pieces of attire.

Driving pigs. . .I hope driving them home rather than to
 slaughter. They were squealing their heads off.

She has killed a chicken, and so serves us a traditional lunch of hot, brothy soup—this with a chicken leg and a piece of corn-on-the-cob in it—followed by a plate of rice and chicken and thinly sliced onions and tomatoes. Such a big hot lunch is not my heart’s desire, but I eat as much as I can so as not to offend our hostess. While in the cloud forest we are to be served a variation of this lunch every day, seldom with chicken which is special, but always with huge amounts of rice.  Eventually we decide that these diminutive natives see us huge Americans and Europeans as needing equally huge plates of food!

While walking to El Suspiro we also see many butterflies. The photos of the scarlet peacock and red cracker below are mine but the rest were pulled from the Internet. My favorites are the Esmeralda and Oleria glasswing. The stunning blue butterfly, bottom right, is is the red cracker (it has red on the edge of its underwing) because the male makes a cracking sound to attract a mate.

After lunch we continued on into the village proper and collected our bags, which had been bused in and dropped off at the village bakery. The bakery is operated by Mauricio’s wife and some of his children. (Mauricio is a LAER naturalist who is joining our group for the two weeks we are in the cloud forest.) His son, Andreas (a midget and one of Mauricio’s 10 children), and the son’s wife, run the bakery and send us bread and rolls when water is sent up to the campsite.

Andreas carves birds and monkeys and other wildlife into tagua nuts and also makes jewelry from the nuts, which harden and are sometimes called “vegetable ivory.”  Above  is a photo of  some of the nuts I purchased from Andreas. The one in the back is the way the nut looks uncarved. Some natural nuts, like this one, contain beautiful designs.

After getting our gear, we lugged it to a room in the schoolhouse which had been cleared for our tents. The room is cinderblock and cement and has only two windows. It is so hot that some (including me!) want to set up their tents outside, but we are cautioned about doing so by Tanner, an expat who has become the village’s English teacher. He tells us that the pigs and animals bed down for the night in the area and it would not be wise to put our tents there. He did open the village teacher’s house for us as it has a shower of sorts, a flush toilet, and a sink, from which we finally coaxed a few dribbles of water.

Our tents set up inside the school room

Me taking a photo of a darling little girl in front of the school; Susan and Tanner to the left 

A happy Donna in her tent. This was the first time she had camped and she was loving it

Erica setting up her tent in the schoolroom; my tent the black mesh one at wall

This  cinderblock house was built for the village teacher to encourage him to stay the week, but according to Tanner, he is rarely there, perhaps coming once or twice a week to hold lackluster classes from 8 until 1. (We all wondered what on earth attracted Tanner to such a poor and godforsaken place. A good looking guy in his mid to late twenties, he had been living in the village for the past 2 years. He seemed to do nothing much during the day, had no passions either scientific or human to keep him occupied--was he hiding from something?)

All my little friends. Top right the child whose photo I was taking in the before-the-schoolhouse picture. This was a very exciting day for them when the gringos arrive in their tiny village. The little girl in orange and the one in pink became my good buddies and followed me wherever I went. They were in a near frenzy of excitement.

Marlene's lunch family and some of the village urchins; they gathered in Tanner's house and watched television

That evening after a casual birding hike along the river, we went to the dark, mud floored bakery where our bus had dropped off not only our luggage but the provisions for our dinner, which was to be pizza. All of the villagers gathered—including my two little girlfriends who were giddy with excitement—and intently observed our every move, laughing , smiling, and pointing.

Making enough pizza for all of us and the village too

Evelyng and Susan were negotiating with the townspeople for our next day’s pack mules and muleteers when we started this task, so we operated by guess and by gosh, requesting needed bowls, knives, and warm water in basic sign language... until Tanner and Susan arrived on the scene. Tanner was recruited by the villagers to translate the recipe into Spanish.  Susan knew how to make pizza dough. We had fresh peppers and tomatoes, and I cut up the tomatoes. When Susan arrived, she asked if I had washed them first. I had not. Susan said to give them to the pigs and start fresh with tomatoes washed in hand soap and cold water. After we had done this, Carlos reminded us that the tomatoes would be cooked in a 500-degree oven for 30 minutes.

Eventually we assembled two very large pizzas. Andreas and his wife baked them in the large bread ovens they had in the back. While the pizzas were baking, the table we had been using was placed in the courtyard as were various benches. We had enough pizza for us and for each of the villagers, who, if their smiles were any indication, enjoyed the treat.  They will be able to recreate it as one of the women wrote down Tanner’s recipe. 

After dinner we took turns taking showers in the school teacher’s house. Cathy and Ricardo and I were the last three, and by the time we were ready, there was no more water available . . . so we went to bed dirty . .  and hot.