Finale

The exams finished. Grades in. Final research papers slowly but surely trickling in. Our nerves severely frayed, momentum flagging, restlessness growing...

El fin.

Catherine was kind enough to put us in touch with some great friends of hers opening up a new cafe in Cuenca. Jenny and Chris, a wonderful and cheery Australian couple recently immigrated to Cuenca. Part of the small expat community here. This is our venue and their first practice run at dinner in the cafe. Ours for the night.

So here we are around the table. Coral and I, Catherine, Teresa and her family, Stu and his rambuncitous kids, Jenny, Chris, and of course the students. After our style this place is so posh! Bright bowls of delicious dips and stalks of veggies, glasses of wine, and the murmur of conversation. All of us gathered round to share in the end of the semester and listen to the students. They are presenting their research projects. And so we sat and heard, listened and asked questions about things like land use change, cloud forests, bears, fire ecology, deforestation, farming, camera traps and so on and so forth went the conservation lingo. Appluase, pat yourself on the back. Well done.

At the end I put together my own finishing touch. A photographic and narrative journey through the tropical Andes. Our journey, our story, and our voices. My best and favorite photographs from these past three months paired with quotes from all of our natural history writing and from my journal here. Set to music and there we went down a long happy road of nostalgia. Past beginnings and endings, highs and lows, then and now, and all the beautiful places, ideas, and moments in between. It was a great success and made me happy. My way of saying thanks. Jenny and Chris loved it, being urbanites and outsiders to this circle they were particulary inspired by our fantastic adventures too. In fact they would like me to display my photographs as art throughout their cafe. Catherine had breached this idea to them before but relayed the reply that they only display their own art, being artists themselves. I must have made quite an impression. My first patrons!

Homemade spaghetti, fresh organic salad greens with tomatoes and uvitas, garlic bread right out of the oven, papaya juice, and wine followed the evening. Our bellies full, brains empty. Wandering the polished stone streets of the city bathed in street ligths. Warm and breezy by the river.

And so we are done. Tomorrow we leave for the Southern Sierra for a place called Zamora on the edge of the Amazon basin. El orient, la jungla, la ceja de la selva. The eyebrow of the jungle and our jumping off point to explore the lower reaches of Podocarpus National Park...