Froggies and Friends

Tour guides in training

href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3woAPhjWkuJtRH-sRKwrmH_NQkezAd1bOZ0bzHPvnXCCkQO2TPNloRpLw3rGv9T6fT8x4gWHTidlFiWpf5zE2TaRLem73lQeL674PbiBg3VHm_qiv2BLNbrkmZtC4U5TgmVpbduUCg/s1600/P3191055.JPG">

Well, it appears that the title to my last post was oddly prophetic. As many of you have certainly heard, Chelsea and I found out on Match Day that we’ll be spending the next five years in Little Rock, AR. We’ve already been told by a friend who recently spent four years in Alabama, “Congratulations on moving north to the Deep South.” Maybe the next blog will have to be called “Brad and Chelsea’s Arkansan Adventure.”

Following the excitement of Match Day, we received our friend, Amanda, for a visit from Columbus. We were hoping to provide her with a very authentic Ecuadorian experience, but the airlines took care of getting that effort started for us. Apparently Amanda’s flight was delayed out of Chicago and then again out of Miami, causing the flight from Miami to Guayaquil to be on a different plane than was originally planned. The stellar ground crew at Miami, however, put Amanda’s bag on the original plane which ended up heading to Lima, Peru. This probably happened because she was kind enough to bring down our replacement camera, and of course we should be made to worry about the new one being lost, too. So, after only a few hours of sleep, Amanda returned to the Guayaquil airport for the short flight to Cuenca. She took the opportunity to get some rest during the flight, but then, like the rest of the passengers on board, was surprised to find the plane landing not at the Cuenca airport, but in Guayaquil. In admirably Ecuadorian style, the flight crew made no announcement explaining why they had just flown in a 30 minute circle. So the passengers sat and waited, and eventually the crew decided to say that the plane had landed to refuel. Apparently their instruments aren’t good enough to keep them from flying into the mountains when it’s cloudy and rainy. (Upon hearing this story, Fausto told us that a plane crashed into the mountain right by his house in the late 70’s. They still have one of the doors to prove it. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.) Eventually, the rain let up and the plane did arrive in Cuenca two hours late.

We left the airport, and Amanda requested quesadillas for lunch. Well, we don’t know where to get quesadillas here, so she has to settle for empanadas. Our friends at Puro Chile, our new favorite snack (or meal if we order 2-3) served up some great cheese empanadas and immediately earned Amanda’s loyalty. She insisted that she needed to eat them ATLEAST once more before she left Cuenca. After lunch, we did a walking tour of Cuenca. We went to the flower market and the fruit market, and pointed out some of the churches before Amanda decided she needed a nap.

We had planned to go to Cuenca’s best restaurant, Tiestos, for dinner but when our friend Jose informed us that Deportivo Cuenca would be playing soccer that evening we changed our plans. Amanda had picked up a $5 knock-off jersey on the street earlier in the day, and she was excited to support the local team. We enjoyed the game, even though our team didn’t win, and following the game we went to Jose’s apartment to help celebrate a birthday. We arrived there 30 min before Jose, and about an hour before any other guests but we waited patiently and enjoyed ourselves once the other guests arrived. Amanda had a bad headache, and left early. Too bad she didn’t get to enjoy her Ecuadorian Pilsner that night.

The next day we let Amanda sleep in while we did some field work. We picked her up in the afternoon, and went to Tiestos to enjoy lunch since we missed dinner the night before. Despite the rain, Brad played a game of soccer with the boys. Sundays are pretty dull here, so there wasn’t a whole lot of things to see and do.

Monday we went to an orchid garden, and unfortunately got paired up with a group of real enthusianists from Poland. The people were really nice, but their private guide kept talking over the orchid garden guide to translate the Spanish to Polish while Brad was trying to translate to English for Amanda. It just got to be too much! We did get to see some pretty flowers, and afterward we shopped for silver filigree jewelry in Chordeleg. For lunch, we shared a delicious pizza at our favorite restaurant in Gualaceo. It was a nice day, and by the time we got back to Cuenca we were all pretty tired!

Amanda’s last day in Cuenca, we took her to see the frogs at Mazan. She got to see the tadpole project, but we didn’t have any luck finding Atelopus in the field. We had a traditional Andean lunch of pork and a corn called mote, then headed on to the hot springs. We relaxed for a couple of hours, did a little more shopping, then got her to the airport just in time for her flight.

We had a nice visit, and enjoyed being tourists for a couple of days. Now we need to get back to work and catch up on things in the field!

Southern Living

Following the excitement of Carnaval, we decided to go on another field trip in search of frogs and tadpoles. This time we decided to explore along the southern border of Cajas National Park. It takes awhile to get out to the sites of interest; not because it’s a long drive, but because it’s a slow drive. After you turn off the highway running through the suburb of San Joaquin, the road to the town of Soldados (and beyond) is nicely paved . . . for about one kilometer. Just as you go past the entrance of Cuenca’s golf and tennis club, the road turns into dirt. What a coincidence. But, it must be said, the drive is absolutely beautiful.



The road runs through the valley of the Yanuncay River, and the mountains on either side are green and gorgeous. About an hour from Cuenca, the road passes through Soldados and then climbs up to the north as it enters Cajas. Up in this region around 13,000 feet above sea level, there are several pristine lakes. Crossing the continental divide, the road then heads out of the park and descends the valley of the Angas River which runs west towards the Pacific Ocean. About two and a half hours from Cuenca, there is a lovely 350 ft waterfall right next to the road. We spent some time searching along the stream below the waterfall, but we didn’t find any frogs. Chelsea spent a good deal of time trying to figure out if we were hearing a frog or a bird calling, but the noise of the stream made that a very difficult and somewhat frustrating task.



We then spent the afternoon searching for the black harlequin toad in a different, top secret, “G-14 classified” (ask Parker for the movie I’m quoting) location. This location must remain secret because we are supposed to be getting paid for our work on this trip and others like it. If we don’t get paid, then everyone else can find out where we made our find by reading the journal that publishes Chelsea’s article. In any case, we found two tiny little juveniles that, interestingly, are more of a brown color than black. That is all I’m at liberty to say about that exciting afternoon. We returned to the waterfall and set up camp in a nice, flat spot just a little ways off the road. Our new JetBoil camp stove finally saw its first action, whipping up some Asian noodles with chili and wonderfully hot tea to help protect us from the dropping temperature. We then climbed inside our amazingly warm sleeping bags and enjoyed a reasonably comfortable night. I will note that Chelsea stole my pillow out from under my head, but she claims that I pushed her over to the cold side of the sleeping bag just before that happened.



Our camp stove was again our best friend in the morning, allowing us to enjoy warm oatmeal and more hot tea for breakfast. The sun popped over the mountains to warm us up, and we packed everything back into our car. We then set off towards the coast to look for more rivers and streams and to ask the local people if they have seen Atelopus onorei (one of the world’s most strikingly beautiful frogs). We kind of forgot that we’d be talking to some country folk, and we really couldn’t understand 90% of what a couple of them said. But a few people we talked to actually spoke Spanish words that we’ve heard before, so all was not lost. Most people told us that the “colored frogs” were farther down towards the coast, but one lady told us that you might be able to find them if you look along the streams. We had to get back to Cuenca by the end of the day, so we turned around to head back up the road.



We devoted the rest of our time in the field to searching for tadpoles of what is locally known as the “green toad.” With this project, Chelsea is trying to collect data from all over the park and its surrounding areas regarding the presence of the evil chytrid fungus. Once she processes the samples from the tadpoles, Chelsea will be able to help the park and the Amphibian Conservation Center in Mazan more accurately direct their efforts to save frogs. We think. So, we worked until the weather turned nasty on us (which invariably seems to happen in the afternoon when we’re at high elevations). We left our car under clear skies, but just a few hours later a fog had set in that was so thick we couldn’t see more than 20 meters in any direction. Ah, just another day in paramo paradise. We found the car without too much trouble, and we got back to Cuenca to find it basking in the late afternoon sunshine. At Chelsea’s insistence, we stopped to pick up some Chilean empanadas as a post-field work snack. She has had many great ideas, but few better than this one. Those things were delicious, and I assure you we’ll be returning soon.



In other news, I received the news that I have matched to an ENT program. So, I will not have to change plans and do colonoscopies or any thing like that. We’re both waiting expectantly for Thursday to find out where I will be for the next five years.

Photos for an upcoming post

Carnaval

Due to unforeseen circumstances, our trip to El Tiink in the rainforest has been cancelled. Really, “unforeseen circumstances” just means normal, everyday affairs. Apparently, everyone in the village is sick with some sort of viral illness, and our local field technician / host said that he’ll call when it’s a safe time for us to come. With that trip cancelled, we developed a plan B for the second half of our week. It actually turned out quite well. We also realized that this weekend is that crazy time of the year known as Carnaval.


Looking back over the past week, we had six encounters with green harlequin toads (Atelopus exiguus). That’s more than half the number of encounters that we had during the whole three months we spent searching in the fall. We had very good luck during February and March last year, and we’re very excited to be having similar results during this year’s rainy season. As a replacement for our rainforest trip, we designed one heck of a Friday for ourselves. Essentially, we went into Cajas and did about half of the hike to Patul in order to search for the frogs that live under rocks at more than 13,000 feet above sea level. Both times now that we’ve been in this area without an Ecuadorian companion, we’ve had to field questions from several different people about where we’re going and what we’re doing turning over rocks. Chelsea really freaked one lady out when she showed her the frog that we’re studying while we were explaining ourselves to her. All in all, we had a successful day.


We would have spent another hour or so in our search, but we had to get back down to the park office for a meeting with Jose. We had planned on discussing the trout removal project in Mazan as well as his schedule of field trips to monitor amphibians all over the park. These are important topics to us, so we made sure to hustle our way back to the car. After a quick hike and a purposeful drive, we arrived at the park office to find it empty and locked. Chelsea gave Jose a call, and he told her that the office closed at 2 PM (our meeting was supposed to be at 3). Upon asking if he could do the meeting down in Cuenca, she was informed that, no, he was busy with other things. Given that we had a professional meeting scheduled, you would think that Jose would’ve informed us of the early office closure in advance. Nope, that’s just not the way things work here. Instead, we’ll have the meeting sometime next week once Carnaval is over. Sorry that you cut short your scientifically important research and made your hike even more grueling in order to make this meeting-that-didn’t-happen? Not mentioned (things don’t really work that way here, either).


As for Carnaval, it appears that all of Latin America has a big celebration before the start of Lent. Brazil’s festivities and parades are famous the world over, but the holiday is very big here in Ecuador as well. I haven’t been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but I would imagine that the party encompasses more than just Tuesday. Down here they celebrate Saturday through Tuesday, and nobody works on Monday and Tuesday except for the people who make money from the tourism (restaurants, hotels, etc.) There is a big parade of flowers in Ambato, but the main activity of Carnaval in Ecuador is simply throwing water and spraying foam on other people. Interestingly, the people who live on the coast tend to come up to the mountain cities to enjoy the traditional celebrations. The people who live in the mountains, on the other hand, take off and enjoy a long weekend on the beach.


After working at Mazan on Saturday, Chelsea and I decided to head to Yunguilla Valley, a sunny location where many Cuencanos have country houses. Although it’s only just an hour drive from Cuenca, Yunguilla is about 800 meters lower in elevation and the temperatures are usually in the 80’s. We stayed at a hotel here back in the fall, and we planned on visiting for the day to use the very nice pool. Yunguilla is a huge valley, and we enjoyed the views on our drive down. Until I realized that I forgot my swim trunks. Sitting out in the sun in jeans wouldn’t have been fun for very long, so that pretty much destroyed the swimming pool plans. Chelsea was very nice in the face of my stupidity, and we decided just to drive farther down the road towards the coast. Not too far down the road, however, the highway was closed and we had to take a detour around the construction. This was a detour unlike any the two of us had ever seen before.


Basically, we had to go uphill on a dirt road and snake our way around the hillside. The direction signs were, typically, very poor, and we were definitely not the only people who got lost. We ended up deciding just to enjoy the views and drive around for awhile. After about an hour, we ended up back on the highway and drove down towards the coast a bit more, enjoying the changing landscape as we went. Chelsea wanted to go all the way to Machala, the banana capital of the world, but I really didn’t want to go that far as it was already past noon. I was feeling less than adventurous, we turned around, and Chelsea was justified in being displeased with my wussy behavior. So we went back through the detour of all detours, although a bit more directly this time. Still, it was confusing enough for an Ecuadorian to stop and ask us for directions. The organizational abilities of this race of people are simply legendary. We stopped at a pig roast for lunch, and we finally learned how they prepare the crispy pork skin. From what we saw, they baste it in fat and then blow torch it (and repeat several times). Then they use a knife to scrape off the char, leaving the crispy skin.


On Monday we decided to get into the Carnaval action. On our way to use the internet at the zoo office, we picked up some water balloons from ladies who were selling them on the street. Just one dollar for three shopping bags full of already-filled balloons. We decided to start right away by launching a few out the car windows at people walking along the street. While amusing, this backfired on us when two boys were waiting with a bucket full of water. Seeing our window down, they hurled the water through it and got me so good that I couldn’t see through my sunglasses. With that lesson learned, we took cover in the 2nd story office and utilized the window for our attacks. Some of the balloons broke before we got the chance to throw them, but we were able to get a few people wet as they came walking along the street. Well, at least we had a little fun with the local holiday!

There and Back Again

Whew! That was quite a trip. Two weeks is not quite enough time to acclimatize for big gains in altitude, but when our guide is ready to go with us . . . well, we have to go. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that our guide is actually going to show up. Daniel didn’t leave us completely out to dry, though. What he did is tell his father-in-law, Don Gerardo, to come meet us in his place. We hadn’t met Don Gerardo before, so we had no idea who this guy was who said he was going to take our stuff to Patul. Wishing to avoid the disaster of our November trip, we asked if he knew Dona Maximina and if she happened to be at home this time. His response was something along the lines of, “Yeah, she’s home, and I’m her husband.”

So Don Gerardo loaded our stuff onto a horse and we started our hike. Even needing to take stops every 10 minutes or so, Chelsea and I still kept a pretty good pace. Unlike Daniel, however, Don Gerardo had no intentions of being a guide for us. His plan was to cart our stuff over to his house and then take care of normal business over there. After following us for about 30 minutes, he got bored with us and decided to ride on ahead. The whole purpose of the trip is to gather data along the way, so we had no chance of even staying close to him. We just had to hope that he was who he said he was and not somebody who was going to ride to Guayaquil and sell our things there. We had a fairly successful day of collecting tadpoles and finding Pristimantis frogs underneath rocks, but the cold weather and mix of rain and hail kept us from doing as much searching as we would have liked.

When we arrived to the house in Patul, we were grateful to see Don Gerardo there to greet us with his two boys, Hector and Eduardo. He invited us into the kitchen for some hot cinnamon tea. It had continued to rain all afternoon, so our jackets and rain pants were pretty wet. We took some time to rest and warm up, but then we had to head back out and use the remaining daylight to look for the main attraction, the black harlequin frog. We spent another hour getting rained on, but we were able to find an adult male in the same exact spot where we had found males during our two previous trips. Encouragingly, we also found the two data loggers that we placed back in November (one in the river, one in a plant). Even though the river recently swelled up pretty big with the onset of the rainy season, we secured our loggers well enough that they stayed right in place. They will give us important information that has never been collected before about the temperature of the water in the river where these critically endangered frogs are breeding.

Once we returned to the house, things really got interesting. She mentioned it in passing a bit earlier in the afternoon, but at this time Chelsea’s headache and nausea were getting worse. Not hungry for dinner, she went into our room to lie down. I gave her an anti-nausea pill, but she threw it up about two minutes later. Perfect. Headache, nausea, and vomiting. Three symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness. Exactly what we hoped wouldn’t happen. The best treatment for AMS is simple: descend to a lower elevation. With it being dark already, that simply wasn’t possible. You also have to go up nearly 2000 feet before you can start going back down to Cuenca. Dona Maximina graciously offered Chelsea chamomile tea and a mint balm to rub on her forehead, but those really weren’t going to help anything.

I ate a quick dinner and went back to join Chelsea. We were both in our sleeping bags with the light out at 8:00. But the fun didn’t stop there. Do you remember the last time you woke up in the middle of the night for a number 2? I hope not, because they taught me in medical school that this is not a normal thing. I battled some pretty wicked gas until about 1:30, at which point there was no longer any stopping that train. Mercifully, the rain had finally stopped by that time, so I was able go out and do the business without getting my sleeping clothes soaked. The remainder of the night passed by uneventfully. But the fun still hadn’t stopped.

The room where we sleep also functions as the family’s closet. They have about a hundred different shirts, pants, and jackets hanging from the beams so they stay dry. The boys needed some fresh clothes before they went to school, so they bounced in to wish us good morning while fighting over who got which pair of pants. We got up a little while later, and Chelsea was able to eat some breakfast. She told me that her nausea wasn’t gone, though, so we made the decision to return to Cuenca that day. Don Gerardo said that he would go look for horses and that we could leave around 1:00 when the boys were back from school. Chelsea was going to rest and pack, and I was going to go out to do some more field work. Before I could do that, however, nature decided to call again. Urgently. Due to the high level of the river, I essentially had to complete a mini Presidential Fitness Test in order to get to the clump of trees on the other side that functions as the bathroom during the day.

I went and did some field work, Chelsea rested and packed, and Don Gerardo found about 15 horses (all of which he brought to his yard). We waited until the boys got home from school, and then Hector rode with us back into the park. While he stayed with us longer than his dad did, Hector also got tired of going slow. Once we started climbing and the temperature started dropping, he kicked the horses ahead and was out of sight within 10 minutes. We were a little annoyed at having all our stuff take off ahead of us again, but we were pretty sure that he would wait for us by the road. Despite not feeling well, Chelsea was able to make pretty good time and really didn’t have any problems on the hike back. Once we got down to our apartment in Cuenca, we enjoyed being able to take nice, hot showers. After having breakfast for dinner (my favorite), we tucked in for some much needed rest. We awoke on Friday morning feeling much better, and we set about making it a day of recovery.

We also gave our car a long overdue rejuvenation. It had been struggling to go uphill since we got back, and we do a lot of going uphill. We dropped it off at the mechanic so he could do an “ABC” tune-up. An oil change, new spark plugs, a fuel injector cleaning, and $208 later, our car was back to its best. We enjoyed gliding easily up the mountain to Mazan for some field work that afternoon. Our good luck with exiguus continued as we recaptured the little “macho” underneath the same plant. We also found just our 2nd Pristimantis criophilus hanging out under a rock. We then capped off the day by celebrating our 7 year / 9 month anniversary combo with a dinner at Tiestos, our favorite restaurant in Cuenca. After enjoying bread with a range of salsas including a delicious eggplant concoction, we ordered steak in a mushroom and bacon sauce. Incredible! This was probably one of the best two or three meals I’ve ever eaten. And all for just under $30 for the two of us. That’s hard to beat.

We went for more excitement on Sunday by attending the big Deportivo Cuenca vs. Barcelona soccer match. No, this is not Barcelona from Spain. This Barcelona does, however, have the most fans and the most Ecuadorian championships of any team in the country. Since Cuenca and Guayaquil are only about 4 hours apart, there is quite a rivalry between the two clubs. Cuenca’s stadium is pretty small, but it was packed almost full with over 15,000 fans in attendance. At Diego’s invitation, Chelsea and I sat with him in the general section during this game last season. The line to get in was about an hour long, we had to sit in the bottom row, and I had a little Ecuadorian man’s shoulder pushing into my ribs for the entire match. To make the fun complete, they only let the Cuenca fans leave through 1 door in order to prevent clashes with the Barcelona people. The ancient Romans would probably pee their pants from laughing so hard if they saw how inefficiently this little stadium empties. Basically, 7000 people going through one gate leads to a mosh pit which Chelsea did not at all enjoy.

This time we sprang for the slightly more expensive mid-level seats. This side of the stadium is covered by a roof, and the people there were civil enough not to sit on top of me. It was a pretty cagey match, made even worse early in the 2nd half by a red card for one of Cuenca’s defenders. Rivalry games in soccer, kind of like distance races in the Olympics, can often be boring because the players don’t want to take the risk of making a mistake that may cost their team the game. The game ended in a 1-1 draw, with Cuenca scoring on a penalty kick late in the 1st half and Barcelona forcing in a header which bounced off a Cuenca player (after they had the advantage of playing 11 vs. 10). I think Chelsea and I agree that the most entertaining moment came early in the 1st half when Barcelona thought they had scored on a header from a free kick. Their fans started going crazy, but the referee called a foul on one of their players which ruled out the goal. Once the Barcelona fans sat back down, several Cuenca fans behind us got up and started dancing in celebration of their opponent’s false excitement. Hilarious.

We found two tiny, new little exiguus frogs on Monday. This is excellent news, because it is a sign that the population is still reproducing. Chelsea’s main objective is trying to convince Jose and the national park to make an effort to get the trout out of the river where these endangered frogs are breeding. These trout were introduced by the Peace Corps in the 1960’s without the knowledge that they can be very harmful to frog eggs and tadpoles. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the park to respond and make an effort to conserve this incredible piece of diversity which they’re responsible for protecting. Our next trip is coming soon, as we’re planning on going to check on our harlequin frogs (and deliver vitamins and toothbrushes) in the rainforest this Thursday. Chelsea has recently been working hard on several grant applications and presentation submissions, so that’s why I’ve been doing all the writing. You should get to hear from her soon.