Toucans. Enough Said.

The house I live in sits on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the cordillera toward the eastern Andes. My host mom, Monica, is a self-employed travel agent. My host sister, Maria Jose, is 20 and studying medicine. My host brother, Juan Francisco, is 28, an artist, a slight bit insane, lives in his workshop, and loves weed. Monica has one other daughter who is married, lives nearby, and has a two-year-old daughter Isabella. There is a cleaning woman, Marie, who lives in a room off of the kitchen with her son, Daniel, as well.

Last saturday, we took a class jaunt up to Palugillo, a páramo reserve on the eastern branch of the Andes. The bus dropped us off at the divide bewteen the watersheds in which rainwater drains toward the Amazon or toward the Pacific, at ~4200 m (13,800’). For all you Oregonians, that’s 2500’ higher than our dear Mt. Hood. Although it was right around 50°, it was a horrible saturating cold– I had more clothing on than I have ever worn to ski. For the next 5.5 hours, we proceeded to hike ~4.5 miles down a semi-existent, muddy, boggy, rocky path, around numerous lakes, through alternating rain and mist, in the direction of the amazon basin. Terrain shifted gradually from bare land punctuated with low-lying vegetation with small, waxy leaves to tall, broad-leafed shrubs and trees at lower elevations. Highlights included cushion plants, pretty meadows, lakes, hills, hummingbirds, and hot springs waiting for us at the end. I do not remember ever being so exhausted in my life... damn elevation. By the time we finished I had taken off three layers; My Aussie housemate, however, still had on six layers including my heavy down vest and two sets of gloves and remained miserably cold.

Thursday we headed in the other direction, west and down to the cloud forest reserve of Maquipucuna on the western side of the Andes, at ~2200 m (7200’), right at the elevation where the clouds hit the mountains. The dirt road into the reserve was twistier, narrower, and bumpier than I would be willing to take anything other than my AWD Honda on, but our tour bus driver navigated the hairpin turns and ditches with absolutely no reservation. (Then again, he regularly passes semi trucks and other tour busses as we speed around blind corners. Moving on.) In Maquipucuna, we were greeted by more giant, vibrant flowers, vines, insects, bromeliads, and hummingbirds than I have ever seen in my life. Sorry Belize, you just got booted. We spent the aftrnoon searching for invertebrates in the river that ran alongside our hostel and later hiking through the forest. In the morning, those of us who were motivated were supposed to go hiking and search for birds and see the sun rise at 6:00. Unfortunately, in the process of setting my alarm the night before my watch managed to fast forward an hour, so I woke up bright and early and got myself all ready to go before realizing it was just hitting 5:00 in the morning. But, we still saw awesome birds and a sweet sunrise over forrested mountains shrouded in clouds.

Later Friday morning we were supposed to go on a hike up the river, through the cloud forest, and to a waterfall with a cave behind it. Unfortunately, less than a mile in, some unfamiliar bacteria in my stomach decided to make itself known and strongly demand that I return to the hostel. So much for the waterfall. However, all said and done, highlights included a bright blue-purple and yellow butterfly with a wingspan of ~12”, tree ferns, toucans, orchids, leaf insects, a booted racket-tail, being able to breathe as we hiked uphill, and hot showers.

Yesterday we took a day trip up to the village of Otovalo, next to a volcano, where an indigenous artisan market is held every Saturday. After hitting up the market we visited el Parque Condor (the Condor Park), a raptor rehabilitation center near Otovalo, where we saw a lot of familiar raptors and a few new ones, including the Andean Condor, the male of who proceeded to repeatedly flap and run noisily back and forth along the edge of his enclosure while one of our posse did his own personal best interpretation in tandem from our side of the fence.

In other news: So far, two of our group have had cameras stolen and at least two have been pickpocketed. It’s still warm and sunny, I’m not sunburned yet, after I get home I will never eat stale white bread for breakfast again, and our classmate who managed to contact meningitis on her first day here is out of the hospital and again contributing to the collective awesome.