Back to Work

After arriving in Cuenca and checking into our oh-so-nice little apartment, we wasted little time in getting back to business. This was, of course, after we enjoyed a lazy Sunday morning. We spent 7.5 hours of our Saturday afternoon and evening driving from Toachi to Cuenca, and it’s not exactly as straightforward as driving from Columbus to St. Louis (for example). Several of the towns we passed through aren’t really into the road sign thing, so we had to do a bit of guessing at certain points. While making our way through the town of Quevedo, a friendly couple on a motorcycle gave us a helping hand. Chelsea hates asking for directions in Spanish, but I made her do it this time! As we continued on, day turned into night to make things a little more fun than they already were. We went through about 15 minutes of pouring rain at 25 mph, and then we enjoyed some thick fog as we started to climb up the western slopes of the Andes. Thankfully the towns closer to Cuenca had good signs, so we made it without too much fuss.

After getting some much-needed rest, we picked up some groceries from Supermaxi to stock the new apartment. Ernesto mentioned that we are close to a co-op market, so we walked over and found that easily (it’s about two minutes away). There we found a paradise of fresh fruits and vegetables at very low prices. Chelsea is really excited about this. We then continued the day’s awesomeness by capitalizing on being able to see at night and to use electronic devices. Our homemade dinner was quite tasty, and the country songs playing from our iPod gave us a little feeling of home.

On Monday morning, we went back to Mazan to visit the frogs. They weren’t, however, quite as excited to see us. We put in a nice solid search, but we didn’t find anything but spiders, lizards, and bugs. I suppose that’s how things go when you’re studying a critically endangered species whose individuals are never longer than 2 inches and live underneath rocks and razor-sharp plants. When we got back to the house, we set about removing things from our room there to bring down to the apartment. We pretty much filled the car, and we still had more things to bring down. For you ladies, I will say that we enjoyed Valentine’s Day with our favorite chocolate cake and a little bit of dancing to Josh Turner (including our wedding song).

Speaking of the car, we decided to give it some attention on Tuesday. Some nice person decided to right “Lavame” (wash me) on it during its stay in Toachi, so we thought we’d grant their request. There just so happens to be a car wash right down the street from us, so we left them the car and made the waiting room our home. Ninety minutes and 8 dollars later, we had a clean car inside and out. Given its two month hibernation while we were in the US, we also figured the car could use a little electrical check-up. The new battery that we bought after the old one died with the car at the top of the road to Mazan during the biggest holiday of the year happened to come with a one year guarantee. This guarantee includes quarterly check-ups. Good for us. So, we pulled into the electromechanic’s (as they’re known here) shop, and a boy who, Chelsea remarked, didn’t even look old enough to drive a car tended to our battery. He also tightened the clamp on one of our radiator hoses because, apparently, we were slowly losing coolant. I’m glad he caught that. I’m also glad that I now know what a radiator hose is thanks to watching Chelsea’s dad replace the radiator on my Accord from approximately 8-11:30 PM on New Year’s Eve.

But back to Ecuador, you say. The aforementioned services would have been free, but Chelsea reminded me to ask if they could replace our burned-out tail light. Sure, they could. In fact, they went ahead and replaced both even though the right one was working. This made Chelsea feel much better. Burned-out headlights and tail lights aren’t really a big deal to Ecuadorians (Ernesto’s tail light has been out since September) because safety isn’t really a big deal to them. I hope Dr. Smith from the Center for Injury Research at Children’s Hospital in Columbus never visits here. Ever. If he does, I’m pretty sure he will be struck deaf and mute for the remainder of his life at what he sees. The police don’t really do anything, either (except take bribes like pros). They just ride around in trucks and on motorcycles all day long, and I’m not sure if anyone really knows where they’re going. In any case, they don’t give people tickets for having burned out lights on their cars.

We spent Tuesday afternoon working on the internet, and we enjoyed another delightful evening in Cuenca. We returned to Mazan the next day, and Chelsea found a little Atelopus exiguus. That always makes it a good day of work for us. We transported down the rest of our things from the research house, and then we walked into the center of town to meet with Ernesto. We all had a good opportunity to catch up on goings on over the past few months. One key development is that Ernesto installed wi-fi in the zoo office, and we are welcome to use it as we like. One piece of bad news is that German stopped collecting data in El Tiink (the rainforest) at the end of January. Using her grant money, Chelsea left enough funds with Ernesto to pay German to gather data on the as yet undescribed Atelopus species during January and February. Because we had to stay for my interview in Richmond, we arrived to Cuenca in the middle of February. In typical Ecuador style, nobody asked us if we had money to keep the project going (which we do), and they just stopped. German will have recommenced the field studies by the time this is published, but we still lost 20 days of data during a time when the frogs should be breeding. Oh well, that’s life down here.

We were tired on Thursday, so it ended up being a rest/computer day. We went back to Mazan on Friday to check on some tadpoles that we are experimenting with in the lab. While Chelsea was in Cuenca this time last year, a momma frog just hopped right into the research house at Mazan. Carlos grabbed her up and gave her a new home in the lab. These tadpoles we are working with are her children. We’re trying to get them to develop and metamorphose into frogs, and they seem to be advancing well in their new conditions. Saturday ended up being a relaxation day, and Sunday we went into Cajas park itself in order to find tadpoles and download information from a data logger that Chelsea left in a pool up there. She commented that this is why she needs a ToughBook laptop, but unfortunately our friend Mohammed bin Zayed’s grant isn’t quite big enough for us to afford one.

We had more luck again in Mazan on Monday: Chelsea found an exiguus frog that is older and more mature than any of the ones we found during the fall. He still isn’t a full grown adult, but we were able to tell that he is a “macho,” as they say here. Good news! We got some unexpected news, however, while checking our email later that day. Apparently, Ernesto was able to work out our next trip to Patul (the tiny little mountain village). He didn’t have any balance left to call us, though, so we found out Monday night that we will be making this 3 day trip on Wednesday morning. Great. So much for our schedule this week.