Quito and Sacha Lodge

QUITO, Thursday

It had been raining daily for five weeks straight, so we were warned that rain was inevitable on our Quito tour and to be well prepared.  Instead, we had bright sun and perfect temperatures all day for our walk in the historic center of the city.  The bus picked us up on time after a breakfest of fruit, breads, and eggs and we headed off to the center of the city.  The colonial center is regarded as the best preserved example in South America.  We saw the beautiful white colonial style built upon the irregular dark stones of the Incan and pre-Incan peoples.  This style is known as the Quito School, and can be found both in Quito and the surrounding historical cities.  Our tour took us to La Compañia, a church that is covered with gold from the floor to the very tops of the cupolas. We also visited the San Francisco square, where we did a little shopping and tasted a unique fruit from giant green seed pods known locally as Guaba.  These pods are harvested from trees during a short period in the early winter - so we were lucky to taste the sweet white meat covering the 2 inch long brown seeds.

Speaking of eating - we had lunch at the most amazing restaurant in Quito on the corner of the Plaza Grande. Its worthy of mention at least because the desserts were steaming from dry ice hidden inside the dish. The food was fabulous, and we had a nice opportunity to get to know each other better.

More activities, and back to the Hotel Sierra Madre for our dinner and lecture.  Our lecturer was Santiago Burneo, a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador, which is just up the street from our hotel. Santiago directs the mammal and avian collections at the museum there (QCAZ, for museum buffs) and is an expert in bat biodiversity.  His lecture was about the Sixth Extinction... which is happening right now.  He tried to keep a positive outlook and a positive attitude towards this horribly depressing subject. Nice lecture, lots of good discussion.

QUITO - SACHA LODGE, Friday

Today we departed the hotel at the downright luxurious hour of 9am for our 15 minute drive to the airport. I was annoyed when a few students decided that they needed to buy more memory chips for their cameras, so we stopped a couple of times at stores and malls to find what everyone needed.  Alas, we made it to the airport with time to spare, and besides, it was hardly possible that the plane would leave without about 1/2 of the passengers.

We flew past Antisana volcano and glided down into the rainforest, following the Coca river to our destination of Puerto San Francisco de Orellana, which is simply known as El Coca. One of our favorite guides flew with us - Jorge 'Mono' Fabre... He is a fantatic guide, has worked with USAID and other conservation and sustainable development projects throughout South America, and has had perhaps too many adventures with the Huoarani.

After our flight we had the short bus ride through Coca to the river, and our 2.5 hour motorized canoe adventure down the Napo river.  For the first time in the many years that I have been with the course, and also in Jorge's experience, we had to pull over the canoe to allow two nameless students to pee.  Somehow bodily functions are being more prominantly featured in this year's course than ever before... and I wonder what it means about young people today.

All joking aside, we made it to the Sacha Lodge dock on the Napo. Fromt here we had a 40 minute hike in a stunning rainforest trail to a landing where small canoes were waiting to take us on the last step in our journey. We saw Hoatzin and black tamarin monkeys and Oropendulas and squirrel monkeys and caiman and... and... and so on.  Quite fantastic for less than a few hours at the lodge.  But the best fun today was the swim in the lake at the Balsa. Especially since one of the Alumni schooled the students in fearless deep diving... the challenge was to bring up a handful of mud from the bottom of this dark amazonian lake.  It is much less than 20 feet deep, but fear keeps most people from the reaching deeper limits.Our students tried their best for more than 20 minutes, but our Alumnus took the honors in his first attempt.

It seems that everyone has passed out while I am writing this at the lone internet connected computer at Sacha... connected via a private radio system to the civilized world 80 kilometers to the west in Coca.  It is LOUD here at night - millions of bugs, frogs, birds, owls, and other creatures making their presence known.  Still a fantastic nights sleep.

And with that. I too am off to bed.  Our day starts at 5:30am.