I spent the second half of May in Ecuador leading a class of VT students. I co-taught the course with Bill Hopkins, another prof at VT. We had 9 students and visited 4 distinct sites in Ecuador. We started in the lowlands and then worked our way up in elevation. For this pot I have pics from the Amazon basin. One thing that amazes me is that we were at about 1000ft ASL and this river only looses that much elevation over the net few thousand miles as these revers drain into the Amazon.
Overall the trip was amazing and we had lots of amazing moments. Here are a few.
From Quito we flew ~30min to Coca which is in the Amazon basin. From there we loaded into this 'bus' and drove 2 hours south on the Auca highway. From there we boarded a motorized canoe and went downstream 4+ hours on the Shiripuno river to our lodge. This lodge is run by the Waorani indians and its super isolated and amazing.
Giant Katydid we found on a night hike. Bigger than my hand!
Stick bug that was killed by a zombie fungus. The fungal spores are you see coming out of the insect.
Giant beetle! This thing looks like it could do some damage.
Perhaps the best frog we caught on this trip, Pipa pipa. The female incubates her eggs on her back (this is a male). After the eggs are laid they are inbedded in her skin where they develop until they hatch out as little frogs.
Cool toad!
Paw print from a jaguar. For size, the hand is Rudy's, our guide, who is 6'8".
Caiman seen on a night float down the river. The eye shine is amazing.
Phyllamedusa frog. These are sooooo coooool!
Amazonia tree boa. One of the guides spotted this by eye shine. It was in a tree and we were on the canoe... at night.
Cute little tree frog.
Cute little snake. We found a few of these, I suspect they had just hatched.
Beautiful little racer lizard.
Emerald tree boa! The local lodge guy has been working there for 7 years and had never seen one. We saw 2 in one day! This one was just hanging out on a branch. The other we saw at night and he was cruising around. Typically these guys are up in the canopy so they are not seen.
Fer-de-lance, Bothrops atrox. We stumbled upon this guy at night.
Velvety lancehead, Bothrops brazilii. We saw this guy the same night. If we had been tagged by either one, it would have been VERY bad. Luckily we are professionals.
Wooly monkey hanging upside down. They seemed as curious of us as we were of them.
Hoatzin! This is the only bird in the world that exclusively eats leaves. Yes, its a leaf eater.
This is a big tree... sort of. See below.
This is our group in front of our canoe on the Shiripuno river. Second from the left is Juane, the head of his tribe. This guy is a real waorani with 3 wives and 15 kids. I wouldn't mess with him.
Blue ringed cecilian! What a cool amphibian. We have him in a ziplock because he was impossible to hold. Slimiest creature I have ever tried to hold.
Here are some pics of the lodge. These were the rooms, dorm style.
This is the main building used for hanging out, eating, cooking, lectures, etc. Very pleasant with hammocks.
Now this is a big tree! Its a Ceiba and from this angle you can get an idea how big it is. No idea how tall or old it is but its substantial.
On the way back to civilization, we stopped in on a Waorani village. Amazing experience. This is one of the elders. Supposedly her has been tagged by hot snakes 4 times and robbed 3 babies from Harpy eagle nests. Yes, he's a bad man.
Here is his last kill, a peccary. It was in a basket above the fire.
and here is how he puts a blow dart through an orange he set out 10m away. The darts were tipped with curary, so I handled them carefully.
I tried and failed. The blow gun is heavy!
Waorani kids.
Anaconda! This guy was in some branches in the river. It was between 2-3m, probably.
River turtles.
And this is how we got around on the river. Notice the two local guys giving hand signals to the driver who is at the back. There is lots of debris in the river so we had to avoid it which is not easy when you are steering a 25ft long boat from the rear.
