My First Week in Zuleta

So here's what's happened since my last post: I finally landed in Quito, got picked up by my hostel owners, had some cups of tea, took a shower, and promptly fell asleep. The next day (Monday) I was supposed to meet the project coordinator, Sarah, at the bus station across town at 8:20am, so the hostel owner offered to wake me up at 7:00am, give me breakfast, and call a cab. He came knocking at my door at 8:15am. Of course, I nearly shit myself. I grabbed everything, ran downstairs, and asked to use the phone to call the coordinator. Apparently Ecuadorians don't know the meaning of haste, because he sat me down, put out breakfast, and only got a phone after I asked another two times.

Anyways, I finally got to the bus station and managed to speak enough broken Spanish to buy a bus ticket to Ibarra, 2.5 hrs by bus north of Quito. I say "by bus" because the buses seem to stop every five minutes, bus stop or not, to pick up people by the side of the road. Some people were actually getting rides, but some were just popping on to sell snacks and drinks. It was a very long ride. It was also interesting because lane lines don't seem to mean a thing. People pass whenever the hell they want to, solid line or not, oncoming traffic or not. And typically one marked lane actually ends up being two lanes in practice.

When I got to Ibarra, the bus dropped me off a couple blocks from the actual station (apparently that's how some do it if they're continuing north). Fortunately I got help finding the station, and then met up with Sarah and two other volunteers (Stephanie and Savannah). We spent 30 minutes driving up to the Hacienda Zuleta, our home for the next month.

The researchers have their own house.

This place is absolutely beautiful. It's basically a farm, but with a luxury hotel on the premises as well. There are...

Everyone seems to have a dog here, and they all just go wherever the heck they want to!

Vegetable Garden

Pond!

Cheese factory!

There is also a friendly little calf tied up behind our house! She likes to lick hands. I had no idea cow tongues were so rough.

The only work-related thing we did on Monday was to wash out the rabbit cages. The rabbits, especially the little ones, were adorable! But man can they shit a lot...

The next day, Tuesday, was our first day with the condors. This program focuses in part on captive breeding, and part on getting a better understanding of condor behavior to help in their protection (there are only like 50 wild Andean condors left in Ecuador). Anyways, it's a 45 minute walk over a cobblestone road (cute at first, but definitely starts to hurt your feet/ankles) to get to the condors.

Tarishka eating breakfast

There are 7 captive condors in 4 cages. They are (male then female) Tariska and Coya, Ruco and Reina Pacha, Inti and Ayu, and Pimampiro. Ruco and Ayu were initially a couple, but genetic tests showed they were something like cousins, so they were split up in the hopes of getting more genetic diversity. There are also wild condors in the area, so we frequently see them flying overhead. What we have to do as researchers is record behavioral data for each pair of condors at certain times during the day. We also note any wild condor sightings.

Reina Pacha

Tarishka (left) and Coya sunbathing

Wild condor

One of the interesting/difficult things about this research is the weather. We're on the equator, and it turns out the sun is really freaking hot on the equator! The good thing is that it's usually super windy up where the cages are, so that cools us down a bit and keeps the mosquitoes away. The bad thing is that the weather can change in an instant, so we've had days that go from blazing sun to freezing rain. But it's nice to change it up once in a while.

It's also fun because you never know what to expect. For instance, on Wednesday, a pack of llamas wandered into our roped off area and started grazing like 10 feet from us. We thought it was funny, but the condors... not so much. Especially when one of the llamas started screaming and chasing another one around.

This little guy is always so interested in me. He starts walking over every time I go to the site.

Thursday was part Minga day for me. In Ecuador, or at least in Zuleta, Minga days are where people work together to get some project accomplished. For intance, if the water pipes burst, the whole town would go out to help fix them. Even those who aren't physically capable would do something like make orange juice or cheer from the sidelines. So each of us has one Minga day a week where we just go around and help get chores done. We'll collect firewood (we have a wood burning stove that is our only source of heat -- so quaint, and so necessary), feed the rabbits, help in the vegetable garden, prepare food to have as snacks later, and enter in the data we've collected on the condors into a database. So Thursday morning I stayed at the house and had a Minga morning, and then I went up to the condors around lunch. When we were almost done with the walk back to the house that afternoon, we saw this:

That's our house further down on the right...

The guys in the truck invited us to help milk the cows, but we turned them down until another time. I have today and tomorrow off from work, so I might finally see about learning to milk a cow! I also really want a tour of that cheese factory...

Yesterday (Friday) was another condor day. We were fortunate enough to get a ride up to the site, so that saved us some time and energy. The morning was pretty exciting because we saw a wild condor flying around, and then eventually he landed on top of the condor cages and just perched there for a while. He walked all over the cages and flew between a couple of them, just hanging out apparently. Sometimes the captive condors have interesting reactions. One was busy eating so he didn't seem to care at all, but his neighbor started flying into the side of his cage at the sight of the wild condor.

That brings us to today, my own personal Minga day! I hand washed my laundry, am finally updating this blog, gonna start learning parrot calls for when I'm in Peru, keep re-learning Spanish, and just explore Zuleta a bit more. The people here are so nice!

Also important to point out: we get our dinners cooked by the hotel chef and HOT DOG can he cook. Every meal seems to consist of soup and rice, and then usually there will be salad and some main course, and sometimes dessert. So far we've had green curry chicken, steak, spaghetti with a delicious vegetarian sauce, a salty lemon chicken, and something else that I'm forgetting. And oh god are the desserts fantastic. There was something with peaches and some South American fruit that I've never heard of, but it was good! There was also flan, and last night was raspberries in a super sweet sauce. I was in heaven. Also, they make their own bread and it is so good! Sarah and I were walking through the kitchen yesterday afternoon and saw a table covered in fresh loaves. I'm sad to say we didn't steal one.

Along the lines of food... Sarah is from Britain and the other two researchers are Australian, so we have like 5 tea times a day. I've never had so much tea in my life.

Oh, and I have to throw this in: if you ever get blisters on your feet, thread a needle and pull it through the blister, then cut the string so there is like a centimeter of it hanging out from each end to wick the liquid out. It seems to have worked so far!

Also, it turns out the my (Chris') tablet can't detect the wifi here (I think the tablet is too new, hah), so I'll be using one of the computers here for email and things. It is super slow, and I have to share with 3 other people, so I might take a little while to respond. Hopefully no more than a week, though. Time to explore some more!