Installation (Round 1)

After two attempts...all the equiptment is installed. It took a great effort from no less than 5 people and two days but here we are claiminng success. Cheers eh?
Getting to the river is half the battle..

This is the river upstream and downstream from where we put the stilling well. If I may draw your attention to the icy rain in pictures...always nice to work in.

This is Ecouvany and me working on the stilling well...he is the one who dove right into the work, burly Indigenous guy from Oyacachi. He and Oswaldo (in the yellow gators) are guardaparques in the Parque Nacional Cayambe Coca and my life savors! Wonderful people who always have time to chat.

And when all was said and done it was pretty damn hard to tell where the 1000Euro piece of equiptment was....despite the WHITE PVC stilling well....

Later we finished the process by installing the raingauge at Mulipungu. Here I am digging like a maniac. In reality Euovany did just as much or more digging than me. Oyacachi has taught me to not judge based on size. Considering everyone is smaller than me but much tougher and capable of more physical labor. These people leave at 4 am to milk cows then carry the portaleches to the queserias and then leave again with machete in hand to work in the fields in communal work groups called Mingas. Trust me, it's humbling, even for a dura Irish girl.

Then at the end of the week its the same routine again...back to Quito for internet and meetings with the folks at EMAAP-Q and a shower dios le pagi, thank god. In case I haven't mentioned it we dont have hot water in Oyacachi...or a bathroom in the house where I live. But currently my crush, the handsome carpenter is constructing one.

Anyway Quito....I went to a meeting in the North of Quito a few days back and I saw this graffiti basically just after listening to EMAAP-Q people complain about the "difficult, backward" people in the pueblos they take water from. I find it kind of funny that the talk of EMAAP-Q reflects corporate strategizing but then when you leave the high rise office with the planes flying by the bay windows...and you walk the streets...even of upperclass North Quito... you will see grafitti like this...

The translation is "water matters more than gold" or "water serves more than gold"
It's true eh? You can't drink gold. You can't irrigate with gold.
Anyway I really like these pictures of the mountains, the tile roofs, the signs, the young men and the dog. This is how it is. I hope that everyone who reads this has the chance to travel and leave only good things wherever they go.

Ode to the Paramo

Paramo is one of the most interesting biological environments I have ever encountered.

On any given day as we approach Oyacachi from Papallacta, we pass all nuances of Paramo. These are the Andes, high mountains of young, solid, bed rock. These valleys were once filled with glacial ice.

Glaciers are huge ice bodies that accumulate from the snow and below is an example of glacial striations these are the scratch marks the glaciers(and the rocks they are carrying) leave in the underlying solid mountain. Just like finger nails in playdough.

This scarred solid surface is underlying most of the paramo we see today, but as you can imagine it is pretty difficult to live as a plant on a frozen desert of bare rock. This means that it took a hell of a long time to accumulate the one to two meters of organic material that supports the Paramo.

As you drive by road cuts the brown meter of organics passes in rainbows with a knobby grass topping...in the end you really have to respect this vegitation since it took so damn long to grow in this environment. It is cold with short intense days of harsh UV radiation at the equator of the globe, while the atmosphere is thin and offers little oxygen and an excess of water, in Amazonia where we work.
If I were a plant, I wouldn't want to live here.

Here are some benados (deer) and the mountain Cayambe, the name sake of the park I work in, Cayambe Coca.

But being in the strongest UV radiation in the world along with the thiness of the atmosphere definately has drawbacks. In example for someone of my shade of pasty its a full time job trying not to burn. Just sitting in the truck... cold, with my sun hat and all my two sweaters and two pairs of pants, this itchy hot sizzling sensation on my skin is amazing considering the fact that it is so foggy humid I can't see more than five meters outside the window.

As we drove out of Oyacachi this past Thursday I wrote in my field book "I need a god damn bonnet! why didn't I just go to equatorial Africa? at least it's f-ing warm."

But it's worth it, because it is beautiful, and it is natural and should be here. The people are intelligent and inspirational. To be honest, off the record and independent of the thesis, I dont buy this whole health of Quito argument....I live there....Just try drinking the water without boiling it.

Tell me how your are doing after a glass of that.

Things that escape my camera...

The installation of the new fumeless stove went well in La Mana.

It was a wonderful typical pueblo event....two people working very hard and 10-20 visitors chatting and watching. Jose, a very talented mason from Rio Bamba, is the man in red in the photo on the left.

Then approaching Quito on the bus we had a flat tire... Which is also an interesting cultural experience...I was really amazed that the passengers on the bus were the ones who got up (fast) and changed the tire, then the 15 other passengers watching and chatting or taking the opportunity to stretch their legs. Below center you can see that the man who is closest to me is actually a passenger with crutches. First I thought the problem was that the luggage compartment wouldn't close, since the mechanics were torqing a bar like handle on a rock with a hammer and pin. But this turned out to be the super big jack handle. At times like this I try not to be too touristy...therefor the pictures are from the bus window.

There are some things about traveling that are really hard to take pictures of...one is the view of Quito as wet coastal clouds impact on the ridge above the city in fuming billows with red lightning from the air pollution. Really impossible to catch that in camera but especially from the back seat of a car traveling on infrequently maintained road. Just trust me it is gorgeous.

Its Monday and I am in the back of the Toyota truck again...This week we do Papallacta Chaco and Oyacachi again. I am going to try to maintain in Oyacachi and tramp around looking for the best place for the stilling well. We have almost everything now only missing the evaporation pan and hose.

Ciao for now....