Too much to say

Ok, in the last week and a half there have been 3 major happenings, I don´t know how much time I have so I´ll try to hit all of them.

First- El Bosque Nublado- The Cloud Forest. We drove 5 hours by bus to a remote area in Northwest Ecuador known as the Intag. Just the ride in was an experience, we have to first ascend the mountains surrounding Quito to get to the mountains surrounding the Intag. 50 kilometers as the raven flies takes about 5 hours as the bus weaves up and down switchbacks. We arrived at La Florida Reservation and were greeted by Carlos Zorrilla, a locally well known activist against foreign mining companies. He explained his fight against some of the most terrible people I have ever heard of- the ceos of two mining companies send in mercenaries dressed in Ecuadorian Military uniforms to break up the local protests in a small town called Junin. Before confrontation was over, the paramilitary sprayed the protesters with tear gas and opened fired on several leaders (no one was killed, but several were in unstable conditions afterwards). The most incredible part of the story happened after the confrontation. During the night 130 unarmed citizens of Junin made a civilian arrest of 60 fully armed men and drove them from the city. Carlos, as well as several others from Junin filled the largest lawsuit against not only the companies, but also the Canadian Stock exchange(exploitation of third world companies is especially easy for companies in the CSE), ever in history. The case remains unsettled. Anyways, this is a biology trip, so we started learning some field methods and techniques- DBH, Quadrats\transects, mist netting, botany and conservation methods to name a few.

In a very similar manner as our Quito drop off, we also had a cloud forest drop off in which we we lead into the woods by a guide, told where to sit and how to get back, then were instructed to use our recently acquired methods to identify our surrounding and be back for lunch three hours later. Speaking of lunch, all of our food was grown within the reserves limits in a sustainable way without the use of non native plants or pestisides. Carlos organized his farm in a way that each plant helped sustain other. I won´t go into detail but for example: the only family of plants that can fix nitrogen directly from the air and doesn´t need the use of mircorhiozae ( a bacterica in all other plant roots which coexists to draw nitrogen from the soil) is the legume family (or the bean family) Carlos had planted legumes in rows so that every fall, when the leaves fall, nitrogen is put into the soil, within these rows, other plants would grow off of the nitrogen rich soil year after year, without the use of fertilizer. It was quite brilliant. Anyways, we stayed in cabins without electricity or running water(more sustainable) -the whole reserve was self sustaining: everything was recycled or reused.

I´m low on time, more to come....