I work in the AndesMountains in Peru, from the high elevation
cloud forests to the lowland Amazon rain forests. The field work is tough,
but the land is amazing. I first went to Peru in April 2007, followed up
by another trip in October 2007, and again in July 2008. The photographs are
divided into 6 sections—the journey to the sites, and the 5 field sites
that I’ve worked at: Wayqecha
(cloud forest), San Pedro (cloud transition), The Trocha Union, Tono (Andes
lowlands/Amazon foothills) and Tambopata
(Amazon). Thanks to Yadvinder, Su-Yin, Katja,
Cecile, Jose, and Kate for contributing photos.
3 PHOTOGRAPH SUMMARY:
There
are 3 words to describe my work in the Andes:
1) Derrumbe (landslide)
2) Mujado (wet)
3) Poder (to be able)
THE JOURNEY TO THE SITES
If life is seen on a movie screen, then the Andes
can only be seen on the IMAX. When you see a regular mountain, it rises above
the plain with its peak cutting into the sky. But, the Andes
are different. If you hold your hand out in front of you pointing straight up
and you look at the back of your hand in profile, that's what the Andes look like. They rise into the clouds so you
cannot see them in whole.
The Andes were created tectonically, but
remain striking and jagged due to lack of weathering on the west side by a
rain shadow (all the rain is on the eastern Amazon side, and they somehow
manage to have some agriculture on these steep slopes). The Andes
take up your entire view--you can't see the top, bottom nor
the sides.
When you drive along the face, you dare not look down because you'd have to
get over the edge to see the bottom.
On the way up to our first field site, we saw these by the side of the road.
Apparently, they are burial tombs designed to give the dead a nice view of
the valley.
Cecile checks in to her 1 bedroom studio apartment.
They even have a jacuzzi.I later found out that this was a pig
sty.
The nearest town to our first site is Paucartambo.
Cecile and I are waaay happier than Katja and Viki.
Just after Paucartambo, on our first visit, we were
stopped on the road by a derrumbe. This was not to
be our last. The main road, which was unstable, collapsed onto the bottom
road below.
The bulldozer that was clearing it out almost went off the cliff so we had to
wait a few hours while they frantically dug it out.
We found beer to pass the time.
And watched the kids run around and play with their toys.
They
finally cleared the derrumbe by nightfall, but the
road wasn't suitable for passing. We decided to go for it anyway, which, in
hindsight, was incredibly stupid. Our driver requested that we remain in the
vehicle to weigh it down, rather than walk behind it across the derrumbe. As we crawled slowly in the darkness over the
rubble, we hit the last remaining pile that had yet to be cleared. Our van tipped
30 degrees so that we could see the bottom of the Andes
miles below us. Instinctively, we pressed against the opposite side of the
van and we were able to (poder) make it across
safely with our hearts racing.
In July 2008, we were stopped by something else. We passed through Paucartambo on the Dia de
Carmen, which is the festival of the town’s patron saint.
I really wanted to buy one of these masks, sneak up on Luiz
in the middle of the jungle and scare the living bajeezus
out of him.
In July ’08 I brought my masters student Su-Yin.
Under the bridge downtown.
Another cool Paucartambo bridge.
We bought our spoons, which Su-Yin felt the need to take a picture of, and
got out of there.
Wayqecha field station is situated 2900 m in the
clouds.
We study the cloud-forest that is dependent on these unusual moisture
dynamics.
This explains everything.
The field station itself is wonderful--hot water, toilets, beds and even a gourmet
chef who baked me a chocolate cake for my birthday!
Our dining hall / laboratory.
And Olympic ping pong training ground.
Ken was building a greenhouse in July ’08.
Our view is like nothing else.
Our view is the Andean valley that looks out onto the Amazon in the distance.
Here I have Su-Yin take a photo of the valley every 15 minutes all day long.
Alfonso, Israel and I go to work in the
field…with a bottle of beer?
Cloud watcher.
At night, we can see the cloud electrical field dancing around us. When
lightning forms, the thunder is so deafening that it shakes everything. The
ultimate sub-woofer if you will.
Other nights, the sky is perfectly clear.
Our field site is a beautiful 45 minute walk over waterfalls…
…around the face of the Andes…
…and into the slanted cloud forest. The work is difficult especially
traversing across tough topography--I literally hang on to the side of the Andes by swinging from trees and lianas.
Yadvinder looks down at his notebook while Norma looks up to the canopy.
Some of our soil and leaf measurements.
I include this picture from Cuzco
before our field work, because this may be the last time we saw Luiz’s and Yadvinder’s
hands clean.
Hands are clean no more.
Helping Israel
put the loot into the bags near lucky tree #8, which has on it lianas with
giant nodules full of yummy nitrogen.
An instrument attached to our weather station (left) and the essentials
(right): our super heavy-duty field laptop, satellite phone, pocket knife,
and field notebook.
Our team measured everything from up in the sky to down in the roots.
Our gadgets range from inexpensive to expensive.
Our experiment is neatly lined with blue tape.
Group photo (clockwise from left): Our driver Eric, our tree climber Roger
(El Trepedor), Josh (Dr Josh), Fernando (Fernandino), Jose, Norma, Katja,
Javier (Dendrometerer Extraordinaire), Yadvinder
(El Jefe), Luiz (Luizao), and our chef Panchito
who, sadly, couldn’t come with us to our other field sites.
Eric is a great driver, unlike Alfonso who lost control of his car, almost
drove us off the face of the mountains, then
regained traction only to have us slam into the cliff. If you are reading
this and are a university official or parent, then, uh, just kidding.
Katja, who stayed behind at Wayqecha,
says goodbye to Luiz and Josh.
Oh wait, Luiz is still finishing his cigarette on
his precious chair by a bottle of whiskey.
Our field site at San Pedro was difficult to get to. Basically, you walk
along the road for a while, crossing beautiful waterfall outlets and the
remnants of past derrumbes. Suddenly, you come to a
stop at one of the waterfall outlets. "It is here," says one of the
Peruvian student helpers. Confused, I follow him as he walks INTO the
waterfall. We climb up it for a grueling 25 minutes until we finally come to
a path that takes us up to the forest plot.
Entrance to the plot—much drier at the end of the dry season.
Hiking up the temporarily dry waterfall.
Working again on steep slopes.
Alfonso checks out the leaves above.
Here is our fearless tree climber, Sven, who climbs up enormously tall and
unstable trees to collect the leaves for us.He uses only a rope (no cleats, no
special belt, nothing else).
Sometimes the monkeys swing over, curious, to check out our tree
climber.“Is he one of
us?” asks the monkey, “Because he looks kind of funny!”
During my 2nd visit a group of 7 very territorial monkeys attacked
us.
They lunged from tree to tree, screeched and shook branches violently. But
they’re so cute!I took
photos in between dodging sticks that were thrown at us.
I fired my tree climber and hired this guy instead.
This guy applied for the job, but was a bit pudgy.
What are you lookin’ at!
Also up in the trees is a bird foraging for berries.
Su-Yin is thrilled with her daily lunch of bread and week-old unrefrigerated
cheese.
Emerging fruit.
The butterflies like to lick the salt off your skin.
Translucent butterfly by the side of the road.
Leaf bug.
In April ’07 we stayed at the house of a trout farmer, Don Dimitrio.
Another make-shift lab.
Dimitrio’s hidden beer and Coke (soda)
cellar.
Here, I cook up some fresh trout by candlelight.
A well-deserved meal at the end of a hard day.
Last of the whiskey!
In October ’07 during a rain delay, everyone was bored and listless, so
I made a ball out of string and tape, mounted an old tire to the wall (barely
seen above the window), and taught the Peruvians how to play mini-hoop
basketball, which they loved. After I kicked their butts, we set up a ground
goal for mini-futbol, in which they kicked my butt.
Rain outside.
Listo and listless, waiting for the rain to stop.
More rain!
Finally starting to clear.
In July ’08 we camped on this platform near to our site.
Working on my harmonica.
We saw Kate Halladay, who is a graduate student in
our lab. Kate releases these balloons every day to measure the vertical
profile of the atmosphere.
More derrumbes in April ‘07. At this time
there were 5 derrumbes between San Pedro and Wayqecha. One of them was breathtakingly enormous. An
entire mountain peak gave way and was now a valley.
One derrumbe, which was stopping supplies (and
tourists) from migrating, I had to hike over for 40 minutes. When I got to
the other side, I was able to hitch a ride on the back of a tomato truck
along with 30 other people. As we set out in the truck, the people around me
began crossing themselves, asking for the Lord to take their soul if they
should die.
Our group before we hit The Trocha, which actually
was an old Inca trail to the primary Inca agricultural center. Now, it's used
by ecologists like us, hard-core tourist backpackers, and coca leaf
smugglers.
Actually, it wasn´t so bad at first. We did
the first 16 km to our plat in record time. What normally takes 3 hours we
did in 1.5 by maintaining a hurried pace over the rough terrain. Our speed
was instinctive--shortly after we arrived and set up camp, it started to
rain. The rain finally broke with a couple hours of sunlight left and we were
able to get some work done.
We
made dinner and called it an early night at 8 pm. That night a torrential
downpour hit. And it continued all morning so that our campsite began to
flood. We dug out a rather primitive but extensive canal drainage system and
spent the afternoon beneath a tarp anxiously watching the successfully drainage
system. The rain broke in the afternoon again with a few hours of daylight
left. We hurriedly did our work, not wanting to spend another day in The Trocha. We used up most of the rest of our food for
dinner and hit the sack.
Our slumber was interrupted in the middle of the night be an attack on our
campsite by a pair of Osos--bears endemic to the
area. We cautiously emerged from our tents, unsure if we were being visited
by some aggressive squirrels, large cats, or the legendary "Chuyanchakee" known to haunt The Trocha.
The Osos ran off before we were able to get a
decent look, but the evidence was in their footprints and the large bite they
took out of one of our food storage containers, plus pots and things knocked
over.
THE
“TASTE OF HELL” (NO PHOTOS ALLOWED IN HELL SO USE YOUR
IMAGINATION):
The
next day we packed up camp and prepared to go our separate ways--the rest of
the Oxford
crew back up The Trocha and me with the Peruvian
student helpers down The Trocha to set up more
plots at another site lower in elevation. However, the Oxford crew needed some help carrying stuff
up so two of the Peruvian helpers followed them back up. By the time they
returned to Plot 4, where we were, it was 5 pm with little daylight
remaining. We loaded up our stuff and set out. And this is where Hell begins.
The first hour down--and last hour of daylight--was interesting. We made our
way up and down through an excavated tunnel system beneath the forest amongst
the giant tree roots. Feeling good about our pace, we hoped to be down The Trocha in a couple more hours, plenty of time to meet our
connecting car at The Mirador by 7:30 pm. The next
6 hours of trekking did not go as planned, however. Night fell and The Trocha got treacherous. The tunnels got old fast as they became
smaller and smaller so that we were forced to crawl on our hands and knees
with our 50 lb. packs of equipment, tents and clothes continually catching on
the sharp coarse-woody roots protruding from the sky. The ground itself was a
mixture of hard slippery rocks and thick swallowing mud. The space in front
of us was thick vegetation and sharp branches that cut us up and jabbed us in
the eyes and head. In fact it was so bad that we took comfort going through
the mud swamps because the mud was soft on our aching feet and we knew we
couldn’t hurt ourselves by slipping and falling on a rock. So yeah, it
was bad. But it gets worse. There had been a mix up in the water situation
and it turned out we had none except for one bottle I was carrying, which we
went through quickly. We also had no food as we had intended to leave in the
morning, not at 5 pm. So that was the situation. And we had little hope of
getting out of there safely because The Trocha
forked a few times and we weren’t sure if we had missed the right turns
in the dark. Oh, and we were following Oso tracks.
Miraculously we made it down The Trocha after 5
hours. But our driver wasn’t there since it was 10 pm. We slumped down
at The Mirador, despondent, severely dehydrated,
hungry, tired and sore. We yelled and whistled, hoping our noises would carry
through the valley, but to no avail. Left with no other choice, we gathered
up our stuff for the 2 hour walk to San Pedro. We soon encountered a
waterfall to our joy and we drank eagerly for a while.
We continued down the road in a zombie-like state, only to be startled by a
deadly snake in the middle of the road.
After
we scared it off, we lost each other in the dark in our dazed state.
Eventually one of the Peruvians caught up to me and we took a break in the
middle of the road. However, we both fell asleep lying in the road, but I was
awoken by his snoring. I woke him up with an unenthusiastic, "Vamos," and we continued on. Meanwhile, the other
two Peruvians had reached San Pedro, found our driver and sent him up the
road to fetch us. We reached San Pedro,scarffed down our food supplies there--namely cookies,
coke and oranges--laid out our sleeping bags and fell asleep, completely
drained.
We decided to take the day off the next day where we laid out in the sun,
soaked our feet in the waterfall and listened to music in our truck. Even
though The Trocha was hellish, there are two things
I can be thankful for. One, it didn’t rain on us. And two, the
temperature wasn’t too bad.
Tono is situated at the transition between the AndesMountains and the Amazon.
We always stop in Patria, which is a small town about 1-2 hours out of Tono to load up on supplies and attempt to get a bit of
internet. Patria, which is where most of the coca leaves are dried, is part
of the cocaine production line, but too much in the middle of nowhere that
the Peruvian government doesn’t do anything to stop it. Instead, the
government took Patria off the map.
Gas station.
Sometimes we see things that make us think of home.
A hearty meal of whatever they were serving that night.
Just down the road about 20 minutes is another, slightly larger town called Pilcopata. We had to stay here in July ’08 because
Patria was drunk from Dia de Carmen. Yeah
that’s right, the whole town was drunk.
Loading up before we get going to Tono.
Blasting Reggaeton, we speed off through the Amazon
for the hour drive to Tono. Along the road were
hundreds of butterflies that scattered as we approached, causing the sky to
change brilliant colors. Cruising along nicely to the thump of the bass, we
came to an abrupt stop as a river cut straight through the road. We cranked it
into 4-wheel drive, hit the gas and went into the river to cross it. We
passed about 10 rivers like this until we got to the drop-off point.
A quick stop for a permit check and a game of tetherball—in Peru
they call the game (translated) “Smack My Bitch Up”.
Amused at these so-called important Oxford
researchers coming in and acting like children.
A stop for a bite to eat of some fresh fruit.
Loading up at the drop off point.
The hike in to the site is about 1.5-2 hours through dense bamboo, thick mud
and over rivers.
The site itself is a pleasure to work at--flat and relatively open. But the
mosquitoes are like a continuous dust storm and the chiggers (microscopic spiders
that eat their way across your torso at night) are the worst. In July
’08 I was determined not to get eaten alive by chiggers yet again, and
I diligently applied deet and sulfur powder, which
amazingly worked very well!
Oops, missed a spot.
Su-Yin models her mosquito protection while I hide from the mosquitoes behind
this twig.
Our campsite by the river.
Our crew bumped into Steven and his crew during our second night at Tono in July ’08.
A few more monkeys check out our work.
Israel-Cuba Torres, who works with me on the fertilisation
experiment, was working in Tono in January 2008 in
the middle of the rain in the swampiest part of our plots.He was hacking his way through the
jungle with his machete when he cracked through the middle of a fallen bamboo
only to discover The Shushupe directly behind it, and
not too happy.The Shushupe went into full attack mode--straightening up, flaring
out, and hissing/rattling.Israel
froze to watch his life flash before his eyes before carefully retreating.He grabbed his camera and, insane as
he is, returned to snap a photo in the pouring rain.The flash startled The Shushupe and both it and Israel ran off in opposite
directions, never to see each other again...
From
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachesis_(genus)):
The Shushupe, also called The Bushmaster, is of the
genus Lachesis of venomous pitvipers
found in the remote, forested areas of Central and South America. Lachesis refers to one of the Three Fates in Greek
mythology—Lachesis determined the length of
the thread of life.
Adults
vary in length from 2 to 2.5 m (6.5 to 8.25 ft), and some may grow to as much
as 3 m (10 ft). The largest known was 3.65 m (12 ft), making it the longest
venomous snake in the Western Hemisphere. It
is one of the largest and most dangerous snakes in South
America, capable of multiple bite strikes and injecting large
amounts of venom—even the bite of a juvenile can be fatal.
Our crew (me, Israel,
Su-Yin and Alfonso) met up with Luiz’s crew (Luiz, Dan, Angela) for a night in Tono.
We had a bottle of whiskey that was to last us for the week. They had a
bottle of rum to the last the same. Both were gone in the matter of a few
hours. I blame it on the shushupe—all that
was left at the end was the spit of the shushupe (esputa de shushupe).
Kissy kissy!
This deadly snake tried to attack us (but didn't succeed) on our way out of Tono in April ’07 (not my photo, but same type of
snake).
Taking a little rest at the halfway point.
Alfonso with a pretty treasure.
We left messages in the sand for Steven et al.
Su-Yin does her karate kid impression.
We wanted her to do the karate kid on this rock, but she demanded that Israel
hold her up.
Woohoo, 3 Kings!
Yeah we feel tough.
Okay that’s enough of that.
Back down and out of Tono.
In April ’07, we were stuck behind this derrumbe
coming up from Tono. We had to sleep in the car at
the base of the derrumbe, but soon after sunrise
the road workers began to fix the carraterra.
Bringing in strong dirt and pushing out weak dirt.
The road was finally clear, much to our driver's joy as he had been stuck
below the derrumbe site all week. However, we
encountered the Edinburgh
group, who needed a lift to Tono so our driver had
to turn around while the Peruvian students and I loaded ourselves onto the
back of a yucca truck and headed to the paradise of Wayqecha.
Our
lowest elevation site off the TambopataRiver
in the Amazon is a pleasure to work at.We stay at an actual tourist EcoLodge with
tourists, there is a bar and good meals.It is a biodiversity hotspot and the birds sing beautiful music all
day and night.
On the boat ride into the Amazon.
Taking the boat in is way nicer than hiking with 50 kilos of stuff on your
back through the Andes.
Beautiful birds with black beaks and bodies bathe by the beach.
Fire tree.
Israel, me, Sven and Filio at Explorer’s Inn.
Common flowers around these parts.
This is Wawee, who likes to hang out.
Michael works along side her.
She even eats breakfast with us.
And helped the goalkeeper in football.
A gang rival.
More bird.
Cool leaf cutter ants look like wind surfers.
I accidentally pressed my arm into the tree on the right, which is covered in
caterpillars who were not pleased about this intrusion.My arm suffered the consequences.
Ew squishy bug.
Squishy bug for lunch.
A dendrometer measures the growth of this giant
tree.
Spider on the trunk.
Close-up.Yikes!
I think I’ll grow this direction, no wait I think I’ll grow in
that direction, no wait I think I’ll grow in this other
direction…
