January 2013
2 posts
Oil & Health in the Amazon Course
January 12 was the last day of the 10 day tour of Ecuador I did with three college students.
For a long time, it was doubtful the course would happen, but many factors came together to make it a success. Here’s the story:
Freeda (head of Cloud Forest Institute) and I had discussed at the end of the last course what future courses might look like. She wanted to delegate responsibilities to...
Second trip to Ecuador (for fellowship thesis)
Long overdue update on all this Ecuador business: After the six week trip with Amazon Mycorenewal Project and Cloud Forest Institute in summer 2011, I started discussing with the groups the possibility of taking a leadership role in future courses.
Before that could happen though, I had to finish my thesis that I had started on the first trip. It had become clear to me that I was more interested...
August 2011
5 posts
Experiments
After returning to Mindo from the coast, we decided to get down to work.
PLANT INHIBITION STUDY
A student from a previous year of the program set up an experiment in Lago Agrio that, for whatever reason, she was unable to follow up on. It involved various boxes of soil that each had different quantities of crude oil contamination. Mycelium was added to some of the boxes to test whether the oil...
The Coast Part II - Bahía
We went to Bahía to stay for three days. Bahía is a city on the west coast, 20 minutes south of Canoa, that sprang up relatively recently.
That area of the coast is dry tropical forest, so now during the dry season, there is little rain, and the land is generally dry and brown, like American forests in the fall. In this area, as in much of Ecuador, much of the land area has been cleared, burned,...
The Coast Part I - Canoa
We arrived on the coast on Saturday to a tiny beach town called Canoa, which means canoe in Spanish. There is a special dish here called ceviche - a cold seafood soup with lemon juice and cilantro, that we tried for lunch on Sunday.
The newest oil pipeline - (OCP) for heavy crude - flows west over the Andes through Papallacta to the coast where it is refined. There is a large refinery in...
Papallacta
Then I had to say goodbye to most of the people in the group, as only five were staying on the last two parts of the trip with me. Some of them stayed in Lago Agrio for a few days to finish up the experiment and conduct ecological surverys. Some went back to the Secoya to find out more about the oil pollution there. Some went back to the US, and some are still traveling around South America.
...
Meeting the Secoya
We were lucky to be able to meet with the Secoya community, a native people that have lived near Lago Agrio since long before the oil exploration began. They are open and accepting of foreigners, even though they were uncontacted only fifty years ago. We took a three hour bus ride to visit them, which included barely fitting our big bus on a tiny motorboat ferry to cross a river.
The Secoya...
July 2011
6 posts
Lago Agrio
We drove out to Lago Agrio, which is the place where the first oil well was built in Ecuador. The town grew from the activity of the oil industry, and even now is mainly just an oil town.
Donald Moncayo, a mycologist and friend of AMP, has lived in the area his entire life, and he took us on a tour of some of the sites where waste and crude had been dumped in large quantities. The first site he...
Mycelium running in Mindo
The first section of this trip is over, the one that was focused on fungi.
Here are some terms that will be useful to know:
mycelium - the underground network of cells that make up most of a fungus. The mycelium excretes enzymes that break down materials into compounds that it can ingest and use for energy. If you compare a fungus to an apple tree, mycelium would be the whole tree, and the...
Mindo
After a long and winding bus ride through the mountains, we arrived in Mindo.
This is a huge change from the city. Mindo is a tiny town with dirt roads in the middle of the mountains. Words are failing me as I try to describe this place. It feels like the rainforest - because it is. It rains every day. It’s lush. It’s wet. It’s thick and green. The flowers are bright and...
WatchWe started our van ride to Mindo today and stopped for a few hours at Ricardo’s organic mushroom farm. It’s a small-scale family farm that values sustainability. Basically, Ricardo and his family, along with another family that lives and works on the farm, use steam-pasteurized sawdust and inoculate it with the fungus that they want to grow, like oyster or shiitake mushrooms. They let...
Quito
Today was my third full day in Ecuador. It’s been so difficult trying to write down what it’s like here that I’ve been putting it off for fear of not relating my thoughts well enough.
The full day of traveling on Saturday was exhausting and uncomfortable, which is what I expected. But it was also ridiculously exciting, especially because I was undeniably very alone, going...
T-minus one week to departure
On July 9th, I am traveling to the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador.
The above title “no tengas miedo” sums up a good part of my sentiment about traveling. It means “don’t be afraid” in Spanish.
Despite my gung-ho attitude about travel, I’ve been getting raised eyebrow looks that say, “Well, good luck coming back disease-free and with all your...
