Last week rewind--Our first field trip!

I've been slacking off when it comes to updating this blog, in part because I've been out of town a lot recently, but I thought I should write about our first field trip with the Tropical Ecology class.

For the trip, we went up to about 4200 meters elevation and the paramo landscape, which consists of the super-páramo, grassland páramo, and sub-páramo. Our hike started on top of a mountain in the fiercely cold and windy super-páramo. Literally inside a cloud, the landscape consisted of low vegetation, a few birds, and a muddy trail heading off into the white distance.

I had brought my dSLR with me since we were on a university-sponsored bus and I wasn't worried about it getting swiped, but of course since I haven't been using it I didn't realize how low it was on batteries and it died pretty soon into the hike.

I did get a few photos of the first section, though.

We stepped off the bus into a blast of cold weather, 3.5 degrees C with 60-70 kph winds, light rain and muddy slopes. Our professor had mentioned that there might be a little mud, but we had no idea what we were getting into. The path was muck almost all the way and going downhill was incredibly slippery... I must have fallen twenty times by the end of the day and most other people were also covered in mud from their own falls.

The super-páramo is fascinating, and not just because of its misty-and-mysterious atmosphere. All of the vegetation grows incredibly low to the ground to avoid the wind and the cold, and some of the plants are quite interesting.

This is our professor, Esteban, with a "cushion plant." The cushion plants grow like coral, with a layer of living rosettes growing on top of the skeletons of their dead counterparts.

Later on in the hike, we passed by gorgeous alpine lakes, rolling grassy hills, and even some small forests towards the bottom of the mountain. We also saw several deer and tracks belonging to skunks, mountain lions, and deer. At the end of the day, we stopped off at a hot springs in a little town lower on the mountain we had just hiked down, which was a welcome relief after the bitter cold and wind from the morning. Overall, a fascinating day!