I'd forgotten (or maybe I never realized) how many butterflies exist in the world. They are everywhere- giant, tiny, irridescent, transparent, white, yellow, black, lime green, turquoise, colbalt, deep forest green, hot pink, orange, speckled, splotched, striped, banded, polka-dotted... They headed up my welcoming committee to the Tiputini River, which also included a pink river dolphin, macaws, anhingas, egrets, squirrel monkeys, several turtles surrounded by white butterflies, and an additional mezcla of vibrant birds.
There are three things we as volunteers must do every day: Check the river's level, feed the turtles, and teach English. The river is fascinating: it has gone down by almost three meters since we arrived. The turtles reside in a chickenwire pen complete with pond and muddy, grassy bank. Taken as eggs from one of the rivers to be raised at the station, most are released in their first year. About a tenth are kept to compare their growth to the next year's, and so on. Currently there are 21 turtles: 18 from this year, two from last year, and one from 2008. Wednesday we spent the morning measuring the lot: length and width of carapace (top and bottom), height, eye color, weight and head width, before bestowing upon each individual a hot pink nail polish number. We were lucky: a month ago there were 150. As for food, they get the royal treatment of rotten lettuce and carrots from the kitchen.
Which brings me to teaching English. One of the activities I have always avoided at any cost whatsoever. Because it was terrifying. And I had no idea what to do. So when dear Juan Pablo informed me (on site) that I would be imparting my vast knowledge upon the staff, a little part of me died and I filled with foreboding and dread. I soon realized, however, that since it's optional, only two or three or four people come. And they come with questions, and things they want to learn, and they actually tell each other to shut up (quite the opposite of the 6-11 year olds I play with all summer long) when it looks like I want to say something. And they laugh at me, and I laugh at them, and we all laugh together for an hour after dinner as I stumble through my terrible Spanish grammar and spelling and they attempt to pronounce the parts of trees.
There are a couple other ongoing projects we're helping out with. The camera-trapping project, in place for several years now, consists of cameras placed at intervals along the trails set with heat and movement sensors. A slideshow of the awesome includes macaws, ocelots, short-eared dogs (mating), sloths, bats, and a black jaguar. Due to inhumane humidity the cameras are checked every week or so, as well as changed every so often to collect the photos; that's my job. The animal track project is also ongoing: whenever anyone finds a track, we take a photo, note where it was, and bring it back to stick in a database. These both contribute to understanding of diversity present in the area.
Speaking of location. Every trail is marked every 50 m with flagging and a metal disc, sharpied with the trail name and distance. I collect cans from the kitchen, cut out the top and bottom with the sharpest knife I can find, and paint the ones that aren't already white. I then hike systematically through the jungle with a hammer, discs, sharpie, flagging tape, nails, and a 50-m measuring tape, replacing tape and metal markers where they've ceased to exist.
There is no silence in the jungle. We wake to the sound of howling wind: the far-off territorial calls of red howlers. Throughout the day cicadas buzz, insects whine, and birds send up a racket. Night is louder, filled with more constant lulling rasps and trills of crickets, flapping of bats, and high chirps and low grunts of frogs and toads of all kinds and sizes. And at any given time, from the heavy air, downpours announce themselves in a deafening, rushing roar, drowning out the person shouting next to you and turning dry creekbeds into rushing rivers in a matter of minutes, eventually leaving behind the patter and splat of water drops crashing down from millions of leaves.
Everything looks the same. No, seriously. Step two meters off the trail and we may never find our way back. Even when we have the on-site director with us, as we discovered on Saturday in the process of making our way around a fallen palm as we changed cameras on one of the outer trails.
There is too much to describe: the senses are assulted from every direction at every moment with the mysterious and previously unknown. Instead, here are some highlights:
-Our first night, three of us headed to the canopy tower, from which the stars shown brilliantly out of the deep blue sky around the pitch black silhouette of the Ceiba tree's branches and the bromeliads adorning them. We lay on our backs counting shooting stars, contemplating the meaning of the universe in utter peace as frogs and crickets filled the night with sound from the branches around us.
-Speaking of which. The 45 m (~145') canopy tower. From which we have seen green tanagers and jays, and found the nest of a pygmy wren. Along with spider monkeys in the highest dead branches of an emerging tree, silhouetted against the sunset. And a white-necked puffbird sitting in the top of the tree, who darted off and came back with a giant green and yellow praying mantis and proceeded to whack it against the branch, attempting to kill it in vain for a full five minutes before losing its grip and dropping it into the leafy void below.
-The river float. Graced by three pink river dolphins spouting simultaneously as they surfaced next to the boat. And a caiman. In addition: a spectacled owl, black hawk, broadside hawk, scarlet macaws lit by the sinking sun as they flew over the river... oh yeah, and an anaconda thrashing in the water as it swallowed its dinner before proceeding to watch us from the river bank.
-Poison dart frogs, seven of them, of two species. 1: nondescript brown all over, brown-yellow speckled legs, and two bright yellow strips running down either side from the nose.2: ruby back, bright turquoise on the belly, and brilliant yellow on the elbows and knees. Carrying tadpoles on their backs.
-Lizards sunning themselves on the station walkways at noon, jet black with brilliant green-yellow heads that fade into stripes down their backs. Bright red lizards with spotted backs. Tree lizards, with smooth skin that for all intents and purposes appears to be folded and crinkled in geometric patterns, shadows and all, as the blend in perfectly among dead leaves. Black lizards adorned with bright blue, forest green, and yellow. Lime green lizards with black bodies and tails.
-Salamanders that bite when you pick them up. Massive frogs and toads that squirt blinding liquid when you get too close. Giant yellow and black beetles.
-Night walks. Complete with tarantulas, wolf spiders, banana spiders, army ants eating monolithic worms, poison dart frogs, scorpion spiders, tree frogs, crickets, cockroaches (ew), the world's smallest frog, three species of scorpion, and a snail-eating tree snake consuming a lizard head-first in the spaces of a minute.
-Paddling around the lagoon in the morning sun, while huatzins rasp and butterflies land on me and black caimans lurk in the shadows below overhanging branches. Curassows in the undergrowth on the trail back.
-Tracks from agouti, peccari, tapir, ocelot, and opossum... that I've identified. And here is where I hit myself repeatedly over the head for not bringing plaster.
-The trees next to our room, which appear to be a primate highway. So far: a group of squirrel monkeys and a family of golden-mantled tamarins.
I love my life.
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