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June 2009

Staff Updates

Karina Berg continues to function as the Ecuador Country Director, overseeing not only camp life butdoing much hard work behind the scenes in Quito. Jon Escolar starts his second phase in the FieldManager position and staff members Andrew Whitworth and Matt Iles continue work at camp withtheir respective projects on amphibians and dung beetles. Intern from the last phase, Chris Beirne hasnow joined as a full time staff member after showing his expertise with amphibians, hard workingnature and adeptness in a tropical field environment. New intern, Daniel Neilson, joined at the beginning of the phase who was a volunteer from the previous expedition. Daniel was offered the internship as a result of his relentless hard work andenthusiasm towards all aspects of research and life at camp. Hannah Urpeth also stayed on for asecond ten week phase as an intern, working hard on the butterfly project and presentations in particular.Three weeks into the expedition a new staff member, Samantha Brimble, arrived and brought a wealthof enthusiasm and ideas to all aspects of research, TEFL teaching and local management plans andhas already begun developing ideas for future GVI projects.

Week One

9am in the hostel garden, a crew of excited volunteers gathered for their introduction. The adminsorted, they boarded their bus to Tena, a jungle town surrounded by stunning scenery. Torrentialdownpours didn’t dampen their spirits as they wined and dined at a good restaurant, followed by afew cocktails.After another bus ride, this time through dense jungle, a canoe then took them to GVI port. Theyclimbed up numerous steps to their home for the next five or ten weeks.Learning the wildlife of the reserve occupied thenext few days, with animated talks and slideshowson birds, mammals, tropical health, andEmergency First Response training (EFR), which proved very entertaining during the role playingscenarios. Machete training, vegetation mappinglectures, insect (not bug) talks were veryinformative, especially due to the enthusiasm of all the staff.The staff also managed to find time to take thevolunteers out on walks, both during the day andat night, going to a variety of different trails andseeing an extraordinary amount of wildlife, some of which is rarely seen. The highlights were twomating frogs, a Glass Tree Frog, a Green striped vine Snake by Stream One, which came just tenminutes after two Blunt-headed Amazonian Tree Snakes. An Opossum and a Tailless Whip Scorpion,which climbed over everyone, were a few of the other numerous excitements of the week.

Everyone got along exceptionally well and evening entertainment for the whole week consisted in theexchange of funny stories, often about previous travels. With the camp running smoothly and the promise of a three beers on Saturday, spirits were very high!

Week Two

Satellite camps dominated the schedule for the weekdays on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Twostaff and up to six volunteers trekked through the forest to a camp area, pitched hammocks, ate dinner around a fire with a cup of tea or coffee and then headed out for a night walk, returning the morningafter. Due to some very poor weather the Monday and Wednesday camps weren’t met withunanimous enjoyment, but the Friday campers had perfect weather and headed up to the Laguna, primarily in search of caiman. After the weeks rain the paths were treacherously slippery, which didmake it more fun, albeit slightly more dangerous as well. After 30 minutes of spotting spiders andscorpions, a great view of two caiman was the highlight of the walk. They were incredible and soquiet as they sat with their heads poking out of the water.The next morning called for half an hour of bird watching on a very nice spot looking over a valley inthe jungle. From up on the ridge birds dotted the horizon and before they knew it the volunteers’ timewas up. A short walk around the ‘Laguna’ later, they packed up their stuff and headed back to basecamp through the ‘Green Inferno’ and the ‘Bloop’ trails, absolutely exhausted from the previousday’s excursions.The Saturday night excitement of that week was provided by an extremely difficult pub quiz. Thewinning team scored a massive 26 out of 51, but heavily competitive behaviour, generally from someof the staff members, meant that everyone had a very enjoyable time. Watching Andy and Jon gettingincreasingly frustrated with spelling mistakes and controversial answers, such as the Tour de France being the longest sporting event, was exceptionally funny!Sunday was the first chance to play the Ecuadorian students across the Rio Napo at the YachanaColegio at football, but half an hour into the game, conveniently when they were winning 1-0 theyhad a lesson to start. GVI formed an a game amongst themselves, which was a lot more physical asthere were less players and running around in the Amazon heat is not your average game of football!It was a great afternoon and the end to a brilliant week.

Week Three

Preparation for amphibian project continued this week. Groups of volunteers went out to Chris andAndy’s chosen locations and dug four holes spaced eight meters apart. It was really tough work but a bit of competition and peer encouragement made it a lot more fun!Bird and amphibian transects went out during theweek to collect the data for the various projects setup by our staff members. Poor weather interruptedone bird transect but volunteers still found time togo out twice at a later date when the rain hadcleared, but still with overcast conditions. It wassurprisingly perfect weather for birding. Sadly thisdidn’t yield any spectacular birds, as slightlydisappointed staff members returned to base havingonly seen as few as four birds in an hour and 1.2km of roadside jungle.

Wednesday was largely preparation for a trip to Hector’s island, a monkey reserve set up by Hector Vargas three and a half years ago, now having collected nine of the eleven different species of monkeys that can be seen in the surrounding jungle. He obtained them predominantly from peoplewho bought them from markets and decided that they no longer wanted them as pets.

Week Four

The start of the week saw the group return from Hector’s Island, all very tired with a boat load of washing to do. Whilst in Coca on their way back a few of the male volunteers decided to haveinteresting hair or facial hair cuts, resulting in some strange looks from others. Some invested in their own machete to use in the field now that they feel confident in wielding it, after being safely trained by the staff.The Ecuadorian elections meant that the local school in Puerto Rico was closed for the week so TEFLwas postponed, much to the prospective teacher’s disappointment. But the science continued asnormal. Dung beetling went out for the very first time with the aim to set out transects for future pit-falling efforts. Locations had to be precise so everyone got their compasses out. Paths were cleared in between the traps and seven of the nine traps were put in place before a steep drop away put a stop tonumber eight. The group had to search a little harder for a suitable location for the last two.Butterfly and amphibian surveys continued. Sweep netting for butterflies was enjoyed by all, catchinga one in the net leaves a great sense of achievement. A wide variety of species were caught, ID’d andreleased. The amphibian pitfalls were proving tricky to place as natural obstructions blocked thedigging process, but a bit of hard graft with spades, hoes and machetes led to success.Mist nets were set up and on Saturday afternoon a group went out to the upper ‘Bloop’ trail andwaited patiently for half an hour. Two humming birds were caught, which were spectacular to see upclose, as they usually whip past in a blink of an eye with barely time to see the intricate colouring or the beautiful gloss of their feathers. That session also saw a new addition to the species list (a total of 277 birds) a Pearly Antshrike. Everyone was very excited though as they are ordinarily very secretive.It was a stunning jet black bird with exceptionally dark eyes and white stripes on its wing and whitecircular spots on its tail feathers.The Saturday night, the last before the mid-phase break, saw a fantastic Camp Olympics competition,including an obstacle course with apple bobbing, passing a balloon down a line of people withoutusing hands, eating buns suspended on string - no hands, eating chocolate whilst dressing up in anarray of different clothes, and games that involved lowering a pencil (tied around your waste by along piece of string) into an empty beer bottle. After these events the score were level at 3-3 so thedecider was a good old fashioned English boat race – before one team finally came to glory!Sunday means only one thing in camp, beating the Ecuadorians at football! As yet this was not reallya common theme, but the weather today suited GVI perfectly; torrential downpours meant that thelocals couldn’t use their skill and speed as the pitch was now a muddy quagmire. Sliding tackles inthe mud were unavoidable and GVI were victorious (and extremely muddy) 3-1, a historic day for GVI Amazon, it seems a long time since there had been glory on the pitch.In the evening one of the volunteers, Gayathri, treated everyone to a talk on environmental politics,which led to a heated discussion about the issues raised. It’s always interesting to hear everyone’sdiffering opinions about the environment. It was also surprising to see how varied the views were.