In Cuenca

Hi everyone!

I´m still alive! We have been keeping so busy and internet is rather sporadic in remote areas! The constitutional election happened last Sunday, and due to the government propaganda, the SI side won... so Ecuador has a new constitution allowing the government to have more power. Great. Basically, they sent people out into the country to paint slogans on people´s houses and fences, and there were only a few poorly funded groups campaigning for the no side.

Santy arrived Sunday on the bus to Banos, and worked with us for the entire week! We came back from a frustratingly unsuccessful trip to find dry ice, only to find him waiting for me in my hotel room! It was so great having him around! I was sorry to see him go.

While in Banos, I had to chop off most of my hair. It had gotten so burned and tangled from the sun that it was a big frayed mess that I couldn´t get a brush through! Anyway we went to a hole in the wall and the woman chopped it bluntly around shoulder length. It´s a huge mess and looks awful. I can´t wait for it to grow out again!

Out of Banos, we worked on a transect between there and Puyo in the Amazon. We drove past Puyo into the jungle and collected far down the Pastaza river. where the forest is being cleared to make way for cattle ranching. It´s one thing to see Amazonian deforestation on the TV and quite another thing to see it.. very sad. The worst thing is that the people in the area don´t seem to care about the destruction, as they only see the economically beneficial side of the land change.

Anyway, a very exciting thing happened! The three of us discovered a very unique and unusual caterpillar behaviour that we plan to publish as a note later. I don´t want to give anything away in case there are scientific spies reading. Nevertheless, it is a major discovery in caterpillar behaviour and we have enough data for a small yet significant paper after only a few stops at the site!

We were sad to leave Banos (as the food was so good there), but we had to carry on. We drove south to a town near Alausi called Huigra and stayed at a hacienda there. On the road, we drove through Chimborazo and actually saw Ecuador´s largest volcano (Chimborazo)! It was massive!

We collected more mosquitoes along the transect from Huigra to El Triunfo. It was interesting to visit farms of the true indigenous highland people and talk to them about their fly problems. The valley was so dry but we managed to collect some Anopheles anyway. One old man asked us to give him the trap. It´s hard to know how people will react to our visit!

On Saturday, I put Santy on a bus to Guayaquil for one of his tours, and said goodbye for the next 20 days. It will be so hard to be apart for so long while knowing he is close by in the country.

Today, we drove to Cuenca, stopping for an hour at Ingapirca, which is Ecuador´s largest Inca ruin site. It was not anything spectacular but still very interesting to see the Incan walls.

I promise to get some photos up when I get the chance, but I still have not had a lot of time to do it. In the meantime, everyone send me their addresses so I can send some postcards!

I hope you are all doing well too! Bye for now!