Ecuador: September 9, 2006

getting close to the end,

vilcabamba was great
a mellow little town in southern ecuador

we stayed at a nature reserve run by a biologist couple from argentina
called rumi wilco (no relation to the poet, but named after a local tree that was sacred to the inca and others)
on the way to being quite well dialed-in as far as perrenial edible landscaping........
fresh coffee (not only freshly brewed, but also freshly harvested)

the kilometros of trails through the reserve provided some interesting hikes
very dry.....
lots of woody legumes----acacias et al.
the cactaceae was well represented---2 spp. of prickly pear (opuntia)
san pedro (no i didnt eat any), and a few other genera

met a young columbian anthropologia student who shared my passion for ethnobotany..........
shared a drink in the park;

my only regret was we couldnt stay longer......
perhaps i will return (but that is a story for the future)

but the road beckoned......
specifically the possibility of following up on a lead from a local botanist on where to find new species of orchids......

the hitch to cuenca was smooth....
we couldnt seem to do anything wrong
the first truck that came along picked us up
4 times in a row......

so we ended up on the road from cuenca to mendez because i saw a couple of peaks on the map just north of a little village called tres palmos (looked like the right elevation) resonable accessable etc

leaving paute no one knew where this town was
travelling was slow--and we ended up in the dark
got on a bus for a little while , but the driver didnt know where we were going either.
afraid to pass the spot in the dark we got off the bus and
camped in somebody´s pasture

in the morning we realized that
this road apparently had little to no traffic
and we had missed the first bus of the day
(we still werent sure where we were, or where we were going--nor could we see much through the fog)

at this point it was dirt roads and llamas (the classic andean stuff)
and we had thought we would be on a highway.............

walked for an hour or so and got a few kilometers down the road before the first truck passed

at nice walk in the morning mist after a night of rain.....

blooming orchids on the side of the road (not the ones we were looking for)
farm animals grazing in the ditches, some of the only places flat enough to stand
(the andes in thier youth are quite steep)
pigs (a wooly moutain breed)
chickens are common (sometimes it seems that it is impossible to get any thing else for lunch)
ducks where the ditches are particularly wet

at this point we wondered if we should maybe just take the ride and continue on our way.............................................

(we realized that not only were we not terribly prepared--as far as where we were heading, inclement weather, etc., but that the (too) small amount of time that we had given ourselves was quickly being eaten up by the sluggish pace of our travelling)

the truck dropped us somewhere on the eastern slope repleat with all of its rain
(the prevailing winds come off of the amazon, laden with moist tropical air)
and we spent the next 4-5 hours sitting on the porch of a ranching family (shelter from the rain) waiting for a ride that never came, until embodied by a bus to macas.

all of these events conspired to prevent our
exploration of the regions botanical secrets
but we did see a bunch of cf. epidendrums (pink) on the roadside
and the wait in the rain allowed me the time to read the better part of a paper by
a. gentry on the biogeography of neotropical epiphytes
all told it could have been worse---

today hitched from macas all the way to banos--
the first hour or two on top on a big truck that was hauling wood chips that smelled as though they had been used for chicken bedding.
they dropped us off at a bridge going over the rio pastaza that was
only passable by light vehicles and foot traffic

walked to the other side and promptly got a lift in the back of a pickup
we told them puyo, but when we arrived and discovered that they were going
all the way to banos, we stayed put.

the road from macas to puyo, while seeming to be the main artery on the east side of
the andes, was much worse than most forest service roads ive been on.....
bump, bump, bump.........

puyo to banos improved somewhat....wtih sweeping views of the amazon basin,
waterfalls
and passionfruit for lunch

hoping to catch a glimpse of the active volcano tomorrow

hasta pronto
t