In which Victor and Alison have an adventure

Whoa, it’s been a long time. I can’t believe it’s September already! I’m long overdue for a blog post or three. Well, I’ll start where I left off…

On August 5th, Ursula, Gabe and I arrived in Cusco! After a month in the rainforest we were so very, very excited to see a city (and readily available food) that I think we visited four different restaurants that day. We managed this despite the fact that we arrived in the afternoon and we also took several-hour-long naps to fight off the effects of the altitude. Cusco is located high in the Andes (elevation: 3,300 meters), and it’s a beautiful city with cobbled streets and Spanish architecture. The Plaza de Armas, the main square, has a fountain and a cathedral. It’s a bit of a shock when you’re used to Puerto Maldonado’s baking, dusty red-dirt streets and CICRA’s cold streamwater showers and open-air wooden buildings.

The next morning Gabe and I decided to go exploring. On the spur of the moment, we ended up riding horses to an Incan ruin in the hills outside the city. Pretty good exploring for one morning, eh? (Lefthand photo brought to you by Gabe.)

Then it was time for me to sally forth on my own and pick up Victor at the airport. By that time my Peruvian friends had warned me about the hefty “gringo tax” levied on naïve tourists (taxi drivers and street salesmen often triple their prices) and about “bridgeros,” locals whose goal is to marry a foreigner in order to obtain citizenship in the States, England, etc. I was also already familiar enough with Cusco to understand that blond-haired, blue-eyed females are prime targets for every street vendor, taxi driver, and bridgero in the city. So, suffice it to say that as I was standing in the middle of the airport lobby, completely alone in Peru for my very first time, I was just a little bit wary. When I heard a male voice say from startlingly close behind me “¡Hola chica!” (which, with this intonation, definitely translated as “Why hello there, little lady!”), I turned my most gruff, don’t-you-dare-try-to-sell-me-something, no-I-don’t-want-to-marry-a-stranger, yes-I-speak-Spanish-well-enough-to-handle-the-likes-of-you facial expression on one very surprised and confused Victor. :) There we are in the Plaza de Armas! (Thanks for the photo, Gabe!)


After some plotting, we decided that Ausangate, while doable, probably wouldn’t be a very fun trip for me due to the elevation—hiking at 4500-5000 meters can give you a nasty headache if you’re not ready for it. Victor was already acclimated since he’d been hiking in the Andes for a week, but I’d just come up from the Amazon basin. Thus, Ausangate became my new, Peruvian Chocurua (sorry folks, HOC reference there) and it was time for a new plan! We went to the clubhouse of the South American Explorers Club, which is awesome: it’s like an HOC for all the outdoorsy folk of South America. I felt an involuntary urge to call a meeting to order and start typing minutes. We got some great (free!) advice and decided to do a three-day hike between two Andean villages called Urubamba and Lares, followed by two days of mountain biking.

Next, we went to procure some mountain bikes. It’s not hard to find outdoor guiding companies in Cusco (although we discovered that finding any specific company mentioned in the guidebook is nigh impossible), so a few hours later we had arranged for two mountain biking guides to meet us in the main square of Lares at 10 AM on Tuesday morning. We shopped for comestibles at a gringo-style supermarket (it was called MegaMart), returned to the hostel, and packed everything for the hike.

We began hiking on Saturday. We trekked up a valley for a few hours, following a lovely stream and passing a tiny mountain village.
Then we stopped in a ruin. It was only supposed to be a lunch break, but the threat of rain was enough to convince us to pitch our tent for the night. It was the kind of rain Peruvians call “miedo del perezoso”—terror of the lazy man—because the lazy workers run from the fields the moment they feel a spatter of rain. (On the subject of Victor’s and my laziness… no comment.) Peruvians from the lowland rainforests have many colorful and often mischievous nicknames for subtle gradations of rain quality; another good one is “orina del borracho”—drunkard’s piss—which is slightly stronger than miedo del perezoso, and comes in spurts.








Anyways… the next day Victor and I woke up, ate breakfast, and started climbing. And we kept climbing for a long, long time. Each time we reached to top of one beautiful valley, we found ourselves at the bottom of another. We passed several Quechua people traveling the road with their horses and burros; many were wearing traditional, brilliantly-colored alpaca-wool shawls.






After many gorgeous views, some snow, and some hellos from Quechua travelers, we reached the pass at last! (Elevation: 4800 meters.) It snowed pretty hard for a while as we began to descended the other side, enough to cover the trail (and ourselves) with a layer of fresh snow. Then, Victor and I reached the breathtaking top of the Lares Valley. Gorgeous, no? Shortly thereafter, the trail disappeared. It was getting late in the day and I was exhausted and feeling the altitude, so Victor led a daring bushwhacking expedition straight down a gully towards lower ground. We didn't make it all the way down, so we camped for the night above the village of Cuncani.
The next day we descended the rest of the way to the valley floor and hiked past small villages, farms, and herds of sheep and llamas (llamas! so many llamas!) to Lares, where we checked into a hostel for the night.







On Tuesday morning we arrived in the main square early to wait for our guides. Eventually they appeared, jumping off one of the public trucks (similar to the one in the photo). We were a bit surprised to see them leap out of the back along with our bikes and gear, but these trucks seem to be one of the main forms of transportation for locals in the area.


Jon, our biking guide, strapped our bikes to the top of a combi (public van) and we took it to the top of the Lares Pass. From there, we flew back down the valley along the road to Lares, passing streams, farms, more llamas (!), and beautiful views.

Our guides had arranged for us to stay in a hostel near Lares’ hot springs. Here, I must pause and describe the unique charm of our room. It was tiny, low-ceilinged, and completely filled by two beds… so much so that Victor and I didn’t realize the floor was made of dirt for some time. To block water and wind from the gaps between the wooden boards, the ceiling was lined with a tarp and the walls were wallpapered with an assortment of plastic sheets, which included tablecloths and even (my favorite) Fanta bottle labels. Needless to say, Victor and I were highly amused by the decor.

We dropped off our stuff and headed to the hot springs. The entrance fee was one of the best 10 soles I’ve yet spent in Peru—there was genuinely HOT water, and sooo much of it! I was in heaven. Victor (and the rest of the bathers) patiently endured my gleeful swimming and splashing around in the middle of the largest pool.

The next day, our guides drove us back to the top of the pass and we biked down in the opposite direction to the town of Calca. We got to ride off-road for about half of the trip, which was exhilarating and, for me, a bit terrifying. But let it be known that Victor has sweet mountain biking skillz—I walked down the gnarly bits, but he rode almost all of them.

We finished our ride in Calca, ate lunch in the main square, and then headed back to Cusco for one more night of cool mountain air, delicious city food and hot showers. Then it was time to say goodbye… for the moment. Next adventure: Patagonia?

(By the way, I shamelessly stole the format of this post’s title from Leslie and Daniel’s blog. What can I say? I couldn’t help but plagiarize some of their wittiness.)

Pre-hike update

¡Hola a todos! I’m writing a quick post before I take off early tomorrow morning for Victor's and my Ausangate hike! It’s going to be awesome. For a sweet preview of the hike, check out these folks’ trip report: http://www.gang-gang.net/nomad/andes/andes11a.htm It turns out that Gabe, Ursula and I are all flying together to Cusco. Yay!

Research is going well! All of our saplings are happy, mosquito-net covered, and the appropriate half of them have now been successfully colonized by ants. Last week we collected 26 wild ant colonies, chilled them, photographed them, counted them (poor Gabe got that exciting task), and transferred them to our saplings. Also, Patricia came back to the station for a few days to help us sort through our fungal cultures. She showed us our first successful endophyte culture! This photo might not look particularly exciting to you all, but it was the cause of much cheering and celebration when we saw this through our microscope. :)

photo: endophyte!

(Sorry you have to click the links to see the photos; I'm having a terrible time uploading them to the blog.)

Last Friday I took a half-day off from ant research to join Claire and the antbird team. We woke up at 5:30 in the morning (which was late for them and early for me), and I got to help them set up mist nets to catch antbirds. Claire is researching how habitat fragmentation affects different bird species, depending on whether the species are habitat generalists or whether they prefer specific habitats. We caught an antbird, took samples, and then attached a radio tracking beacon to the bird. The species we caught is a bamboo specialist, so we took it to a different patch of bamboo (outside of it’s territory) and released it. The goal is to track the path of the bird as it flies back to its own territory—Claire wants to see whether it will hesitate to cross patches of forest that don’t have any bamboo. I stayed with Claire’s field assistants, Luis and Randi, for a couple hours so they could show me how to radio track the bird. Now when Claire needs an extra assistant, I’ll get to help track her birds!

photo: tagged antbird

For the past few days I’ve also been collecting specimens of the little dewdrop spiders which we’ve found living along with Allomerus ants on many of the wild Cordia trees here. I’m going to do a side project on them and try to figure out whether they’re ant mutualists. We’re pretty excited about them at the moment because we think they come from a genus of spiders which normally parasitizes other spiders’ webs and steals their food. When Megan, Antonio and Gabe fly to Lima on the 20th, I’m coming with them (yay!) and Megan is going to take me to the museum in Lima to get the spiders identified.

Other random news…
Peru’s independence day was on July 28th! In the afternoon, almost everyone at the station took a few hours off and hopped on the boat to Boca Amigo, where we had a few beers to celebrate.

Megan and Gabe discovered that I don’t know any Aerosmith and have decided that my education is seriously lacking in the music and pop culture departments.* Never fear, I am getting music injections from Gabe’s vast collection. ;)

I found a HUGE caterpillar a few days ago! It was black with green stripes and a red head, and it was longer than my index finger and fatter than my thumb. I was very excited and brought it back to the station, but for some reason everyone else was mostly just creeped out by my gigantic caterpillar. Hah. :P It’s turned into a gigantic pupa now (see photo!), and we’re all waiting to see what hatches out of it.

photo: pupa

That’s all for now, folks! Tune in again in a week or two for stories and photos from Cusco and Mt. Ausangate!

*However, they did not know Golddigger. I played it for them... and sang along. Somewhere in a dorm room in Cambridge, Raquel is reading this and smiling.

Rainy day = time for an update!

It’s been a busy week! Megan and Antonio got back to the station on Tuesday (the 14th). On Friday we started hanging mosquito nets and brought our first ten saplings out to the research site in a wheelbarrow. Our site is on trail #6, about 2.2 km from the station if you take the most direct route along the trail system. The forest on either side of trail 6 now looks a bit eerie with 52 gauzy white mosquito nets draped between the trees.

On Sunday we loaded the remaining 42 saplings onto a trailer and hauled them all out to the site. At first when they said we were going to use the trailer, I was confused. The station only has one “tractor” (the lawn mower), and none of the staff members certified to drive it were around. Antonio also laughed and mentioned something about a “burro” (donkey) in Spanish, but I couldn’t follow the joke. Then I saw the trailer. It was about three times as big as I’d expected, and neither lawn mower nor burro were anywhere in sight. Turns out it’s a human-powered trailer. Here it is in action …Gabe and I are pushing, but one of the staff members, Leonardo, is providing about 90% of the power. :)




In the past few days, we've planted all the rest of the trees, finally figured out how to secure the bottoms of the mosquito nets to the ground (harder than it sounds, but wire hoops and stakes can work miracles), and tried to “infect” a couple saplings with ant colonies. The first two colonies weren’t very enthusiastic about moving from their old homes into their new ones. We took them off of their old host plants by cutting off the domatia (hollow stems) they live in, opening up the domatia, and leaving those tied to the new saplings. So far not much luck, but tomorrow we’ll head out to check how they’re doing.

We’ve also started culturing our first set of fungal leaf symbionts. Theoretically, in a few days we should have 21 petri dishes full of nice, fuzzy little leaf endophytes.

There’s so much to do here during free time! “Training” for Victor’s and my Ausangate hike continues! I’ve been running the station’s trails and infamous 250 stairs, playing volleyball and futbol (soccer), and I’ve even had a few yoga lessons. A yoga teacher stayed at the station for a few days as a field assistant and offered a couple beginner classes for everyone. It inspired Gabe to lead his own (sweet!) class after he left.

On Monday we finished up our field work early, so Antonio took several of us to one of the oxbow lakes near the station to see if we could find the anacondas that live there. The lake has a viewing platform built on top of two canoes. We bailed out the canoes and paddled over to the other side of the lake. Not only did Antonio find one of the anacondas, but we got really close before we scared it into the water. It was thicker than a car tire! We couldn’t see how long it was since it was all curled up, but Antonio said it’s about 25 feet long.


I’ve climbed the station’s radio tower twice now. It’s about 210 feet tall, so it completely clears the canopy. There’s a really sweet view from the top, although I’ve yet to really see it. First Gabe and I went out to try and catch the sunset, but we didn’t budget enough time for the hike out and the climb up. It was almost completely dark by the time we reached the top. I tried again this morning with Gabe and Ursula, a Peruvian who’s living at the station for a few weeks while working to enhance locals’ connection to the environment. (She’s my roomie at the moment!) We woke up at 4:00 AM. Even though it was misty and rain was in the forecast, we decided to make a try for sunrise. I was hoping we could clear the mist, but no luck—the top of the tower was in the clouds. We had fun anyway, and I’ll get that that view eventually.

On our way back to the station we ran into Claire and her birding team. Claire is a student working on her PhD and she’ll be staying here at the station with me for several months. (Yay!) She’s studying the genetic variation in several antbird species in the area. We got to see her mist net but it was too windy for them to catch any birds, so we all headed back to the station for a very late (8:00 AM) breakfast.

All of us researchers and staff have spent the rest of the day relaxing and hanging in the common room, watching the rainstorm, playing guitar, and trying to stay warm! It’s 60 degrees here, which is COLD when it’s raining and you live in open-air buildings. People’s conception of the seasons here is awesome. Although it’s technically winter here, locals call any warm day “summer,” and any cold day “winter.” Today it’s most definitely winter.

This afternoon I baked Jay’s wickedly gooey and delicious brownie recipe for everyone. The brownies are cooling in the kitchen right now… I can’t wait for dessert!

Let’s see, what else… oh, Heather! you’ll be excited—we all wash our laundry in buckets here. I think of you and smile every time. :)

I’m almost afraid to post this last picture, based on my parents’ reaction to my last bat encounter… but I pet a bat last night! Actually, I pet three. Adrian, the science director of the station, mist-netted the bats to show them to some VIP visitors. Well Mom and Dad, aren’t you glad I’m putting those rabies shots to good use? ;)

Stings

This is stolen (I mean, borrowed), but I'm posting it anyways. ;)

"Justin O. Schmidt is an entomologist who has created an index of the pain one experiences when being stung by a variety of wasps, bees, and ants. He claims to have been stung by the majority of all three.

His descriptions sound almost like someone commenting on wine.

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier dropped into your bubble bath.
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel."

Erp! We've seen bunches of bullet ants...

Contact info and some pictures

I just realized I should let y’all know my contact info. I have reasonable internet access while I’m at the station, so email and text chatting work pretty well. (Sometimes I get spontaneously disconnected during text chats, but I try to log right back in afterwards.) Voice or video chatting is discouraged because it slows down the connection for everyone else. I’m having a lot of trouble viewing and sending photos, but with patience and good weather I am usually able to send/receive a few small ones.

The internet is only turned on here when we have sufficient power. It’s on almost every night from 5:00ish to 9:30, when it runs off generator power. If we have enough solar power, sometimes it’s on during the day, too. So, look for me online at night before 10:30 Boston time! Or you can always email me. :)

If you are even braver and more patient, you can try snail-mailing me things. I do not actually advise this, since shipping costs are astronomical. But postcards are always great, and if you give me your return address I'll send you one back! After my name, write:

ATTN: Giovanna Linares
Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuenca Amazónica (ACCA)
Jr. Cusco 499,
Puerto Maldonado, Peru

Also! After several days of patient uploads, I managed to get the pictures which Mariluz and Joyce, the little girls at the mosquito net shop, took (and the ones we took of them) uploaded onto a Picasa album so I could send it to them. If y'all would like to see them too, click here! The last 8 photos are Gabe's, so I can't take credit for the really awesome ones. :)

Adventuras de la primera semana

Well it’s been an eventful first week! I’ve seen my first agouti and my first bullet ant, and gotten bitten by my first army ant. (No worries, they just pinch. Nowhere near as vicious as in “Leningen Versus the Ants.”) I’ve also eaten my first fresh passionfruit. I had eaten passionfruit-flavored things before and really liked them, but the whole fruit is awesome. It looks kind of like an orange, and I mistook it for one when I grabbed it from the fruit basket at the station. But when you peel it, the inside is a translucent mass of sweet, pulpy globs surrounding crunchy, tangy seeds. It’s really messy and yummy.

Last Monday a group of artists came to the station. They were traveling with an organization called Cape Farewell which sends artists on expeditions to witness the effects of climate change firsthand. The artists aren’t obligated to create anything directly related to climate change. The hope is that the experience will work its way into their art naturally, and gradually encourage a cultural change in how global warming is perceived. Cool idea, no? Apparently many of the artists were pretty well known. One was Yann Martell, the author of “Life of Pi.” I’ve read his book! I was pretty excited he just happened to turn up in the Peruvian rainforest at the same field station I’m working at. Not only did I get to meet him, I got semi-lost in the rainforest with him. I went hiking with the artists to an oxbow lake where we paddled around in canoes. On the way back, Martell and I were hiking fast and lost the rest of the group, so I ended up navigating for a while down a flooded, slightly unclear trail. While we were sloshing around I got to talk to him what it was like to write a novel. I guess he was slightly impressed we found our way home, because later when I walked into the dining hall he called me his “intrepid jungle rat.” I think that’s one of my favorite compliments ever. :)

That afternoon, a group of VIPs arrived at the station. The group included Bruce Babbitt, the former Secretary of the Interior, and Adrian Forsyth, Famous Biologist. After dinner, some of the scientists and artists delivered presentations about their work. Since I still had my thesis talk on my computer pretty much ready to go, I gave it. Definitely one of the more unusual (and awesome) audiences I’ve had.

We had planned to take the boat into town on Wednesday to buy supplies, but on Tuesday morning I woke up to a knock at my door. I thought I’d overslept, but it was only 5:45 in the morning. (Breakfast starts at the late hour of 6:00 AM.) Megan had come to say that Antonio had a high fever and she was taking him into town to see the doctor. She and Antonio were going to catch the boat at 6:30 that morning. Gabe (a postdoc also working on the project) and I decided to scramble and catch the boat with them. Antonio tested positive for giardia and an intestinal parasite, and the doctors think he may have a third infection. Poor Antonio! He’s unbelievably tough. He was tired but in good spirits, and he seemed busier than the rest of us the whole time we were in town.

We ended up staying in town several days. We bought supplies, including 60 anti-mosquito bed nets to exclude herbivores from our experimental saplings. While we were waiting, I got to play with the daughters of the shop owner, who were 5 and 7 years old. They loved my camera and ran around taking pictures of everything with it. That's them in the first photo.

It turns out we picked a great time to come to town, because Antonio’s son Dennis was performing in a dance show at his elementary school and we all got to go watch him. The kids at the school performed traditional Peruvian dances in beautiful costumes. (Photo below!)

After we’d bought supplies, Gabe and I didn’t have any responsibilities while we were in town. Antonio and Megan were stuck in multiple doctor’s appointments, but we were free to explore. The next night happened to be the anniversary of Puerto Maldonado, so we got to see a parade in the town square. The best dancers from the school were in the procession, as well as the band. There were also a bunch of motorcycle carts decorated as floats.

Then we decided that we needed a guitar. It was 8:30 at night, but they stay out late here, so we walked into the nearest shop and asked the lady there where to find a guitar in Puerto Maldonado. Not only did she tell us where to go, she drew us a map, then walked outside and flagged down the nearest motocar (motorcycle-powered taxi cart) and gave the driver detailed directions. Peruvians are super-helpful and wonderful like that. The motocar driver dropped us off on a dark corner. We found the shop, but it was closed. The lady had told us, though, that in that case we should knock at the house next door where the shop owner lived. So we did. The owner was eating dinner, but when we told him we were leaving town early the next morning he opened up his shop for us. (Like I said, super-helpful and wonderful.) So, we succeeded! We returned to the hotel with our prize and Gabe played and I sang until Megan and Antonio came home. Gabe is going to teach me to play!

On Friday we both caught the boat to the station. (Megan and Antonio are staying in town a few more days so that Antonio can recuperate a bit.) Since then we’ve gotten some more preliminary work done. We just finished tagging, measuring, and counting the leaves of our saplings. In total, I think I counted about 2000 leaves.

Well, I’ve gone and written you a novel, and now I’ve got to go! We’re headed out to scout the trails for good places to plant our saplings. ¡Ciao!

Bienvenidos de Los Amigos!

Happy 4^th of July! No fireworks for me tonight; my celebrations will have to wait until the 28^th, which is Peru’s indepedence day. This is my second night at Los Amigos! Travel to the station went well. It took two cars, three planes, and a boat to get here—I read several hundred pages of my book along the way. :) We flew first to Lima, spent the night, then flew to Puerto Maldonado, a regional capital and the largest city (relatively) close to the field station. If I need anything besides basic necessities while I’m at Los Amigos, Puerto Maldonado is where I’ll be headed. We spent the day there buying supplies. The market has lots of stalls packed together, stuffed with pretty much everything you can imagine except for the brand names you find everywhere in the US. It’s busy and colorful and alive. Almost everyone uses scooters and motorcycles for transportation; we took several motorcycle-powered carts to get around. We ate lunch in a open air restaurant which had a cinnamon tree and a fruiting starfruit tree growing in the courtyard.

We spent the night in Puerto Maldonado, then drove to Laberinto where we caught the boat to the station. The ride upriver took about five and a half hours; I spent the time reading, napping, and enjoying the views of the rainforest. Antonio (Megan’s husband) pointed out toucans and macaws flying overhead, as well as a few monkeys in the trees. People travel on the river using large, motorized canoes. A few boats heaped with plantains passed us on their way downriver.

We arrived at the station around 4:30, at which point we all got to carry our gear and the food for the station up 250 stairs. I made two trips with big loads and then watched in rather exhausted awe as the station’s staff carried the rest of the supplies up. When the boat arrives, everyone at the station is expected to help carry the week’s supplies up the steps. I plan to increase my number of trips next week! The staff thinks I’m funny. :)

We started preparations for our field and lab work today. We went to see how our tree sapplings are doing. Unfortunately many of them aren’t quite as mature as we hoped, but we’ll make do. We also hiked some of the station’s trails to check out a few reasearch sites. I got to meet my ant subjects for the first time. Antonio convinced me to test out their bites and stings—better an expected bite now than a surprise later! They weren't bad, although Allomerus ants pack a bit of a punch for such a tiny insect. We also started organizing the laboratory, and Patricia, a Peruvian reseacher who styudies endophytic fungi, advised us on how to culture endophytes.

The field station is awesome—or rather, “¡chévere!” It’s wet, green, and surrounded by rainforest. As I type I can hear insects, night birds, and the occasional monkey through the screen windows. The people here—researchers, volunteers, and staff alike—are all friendly and fascinating. They have great stories to tell about their research, mishaps and adventures (biologists and nature lovers always do.) I’ll have to tell you all some of them later, but this post is getting too long already! I’ve had lots of opportunities to practice my Spanish, and I’m doing better than I thought I would. Sometimes the Peruvians lose me with vocabulary I don’t know, but I can usually follow the conversation and respond.

Well, I’ve got to go! There’s a fiesta starting soon in one of the cabañas. ¡Buenas noches!