Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Maquipucuna Rewind

For our first class (the one in Quito) we took three field trips, one to the paramo by Papallacta, one to the Maquipucuna eco-lodge, run by the Maquipucuna conservation organization, and one to the Tiputini Biodiversity station in the Amazon rainforest. For now, I'll just put up some photos of Maquipucuna since I haven't got time for much more and (at 9:30) am about to pass out from tiredness. (We have a different sleep schedule here in the Galapagos.)

Our first stop on this trip was at a mirador (viewing area) on the side of the road on the way to Maquipucuna. At the time, we were still in the cloud forest, a specific type of upper montane forest, and being literally inside a cloud, it was drizzling and misty. Fascinating, but not good camera weather. We later descended the mountain into the lower montane forest to get to the Maquipucuna lodge itself. You can see clearly where the cloud forest starts:


At Maquipucuna, the first thing we did was eat. Apparently it's fairly common to put popcorn in your soup in Ecuador.


One of our other meals, whole tilapia with palm hearts and some sort of cole slaw equivalent:


If there's one thing I really suck at, it's eating fish meat straight off the skeleton. No matter how hard I try, I just can't find a graceful way to do it...

Anyway, the area around the lodge was loaded with hummingbirds (because there were feeders set up) and exotic tropical flowers. There were also some nifty spiders pretty close to the main building that we wasted no time finding and photographing.




A type of heliconia:


A leaf cutter ant, part of a procession that wound its way through camp and over one of the hiking trails:


A decent-size beetle found during the night:


Flora and fauna discovered during the second day's hike:



A bromeliad flower:


That's it for now, I suppose. I'll try to post some stuff from Tiputini soon!

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