La pampa

We packed and left for Rumi Loma this morning. One week in the field getting the students started on research projects. Leah, a doctoral student from UC San Diego-Santa Barbara is coming along too. Her research focuses on carbon in paramo ecosystems and forest as a way to evaluate and quantify ecosystem services in the emerging carbon markets. One of her field sites is on Stu's land at Rumi Loma. We've agreed to give her a ride in and feed her from our stocks in exchange for sharing her reserach with the students and helping mentor a few student projects.

Before we left Cuenca we stocked up on major artillery. By artillery I mean a stockpile of water balloons and spray guns. Carnival is in full swing and today and tomorrow reach a crescendo of dripping wet water splashing across the country. It is a bit like our 4th of July in the States, everyone taking off for the coast or visiting family up in the small pueblos of the Sierra. Driving the carreterra between Cuenca and Azogues feels a bit like Mad Max...Carnage ensued, high speed water fights with pickups full of Ecuadorians stocked w/spray guns, water bombs, and huge buckets of agua. We got some hits in but seemed to come out the worse for wear. We are outnumbered on all sides. A car full of gringos....sitting ducks. Arthur in the pilot seat took the brunt of it. Completely soaked through, meanwhile I'm having a hard enough time concentrating on the road in between drive by wars and surprise deluges on the windshield at 80k.

Past Azogues the road turns to dirt and we begin to pass by the small towns leading up into the Sierra. Even here we had to stay vigilant. Ever watchful for little kids, brightly dressed Canari girls, even whole families and ancient grannies packing agua. The further we got into the mountains the less resistence we met, the villages giving way to windswept mountain meadows and checkerboard patchworks of fields. Eventually we turned on one another. Myself instigating all sorts of guerrilla warfare tactics on Seth and the students following behind in Big Blue. They never even saw it coming....

Right after we crossed the river into Parque Nacional Sangay I saw a fox! An Andean fox to be exact, russet red and gray patrolling the road and scent marking the tussock grasses with smug squirts as he went. These guys are quite large for foxes and look more like coyotes really. The local people call them lobos, the Spanish word for wolf. I call them a magical good luck omen to our arrival in the paramo.

Since it is Carnival Rual and Ramon are down in Colepato, likely drunk and celebrating heartily. That means no horses to carry our gear into the field. Instead we made a few trips to carry everything in by hand and then jumped in the truck for a bump and joltdown the old road adjacent to camp leading off mysteriously into the hills. Stu said this beat up old track leads deep into Sangay, though only a few miles in it becomes increasingly gashed and washed out. That hour right before sunset has the most crisp light of the day as any photographer knows and I got some great shots of the suns descend into the folds of the hills. Every sideways sunbeam illuminating the bunch grass, every needle in relief. A sinuous golden ripple of wind and color side winding over the hillsides as the gray mist of twilight drifts in from the East and the first frogs begin to chorus and chirp in the puyas...