Parque Nacional Yasuní

Captain´s log, Day 14: Barges carrying oil trucks and construction materials, flocks of Egrets and Flycatchers at the banks and on mudflats, Caracaras with black wings spread against the afternoon sun, dirtied coke bottles and foamy waste at the water´s surface. The din of the cicadas, crickets, and a thousand insects, the tracks of a Puma and hundreds of parrots gathered for the morning clay lick. It has been seven years since I learned about Parque Nacional Yasuní, and now I have been. 

Soy un camarón. I forgot my sunscreen, and it was three hours to Yasuní.

When I made a call home yesterday evening, I realized that I had been speaking (pretty terrible) Spanish for three days straight. Apologies to all the patient people I have spoken with in Coca, and many thanks for your conjugation lessons. Not to mention all you have told me about the changes, both environmental and political, in and around the Napo River over the last few decades. My trip with Witoto Tours yesterday was a roller coaster of natural beauty, engaging conversation, and views of oil activity and development along the Napo. Please read my previous posts for the background info...this post will be more or less another picture show.

We shipped off from the marina at around six (in Ecuadorean time, 6 is 6:17ish).

There were an incredible number of birds at the river's edge: I saw 13 life-list species over the six hours two and from Yasuni.  

This, though, was sad: foamy waste covering the river; floating plastic bottles and bags. Poignant: the murals painted on the side of the school at Coca.

There were a number of cleared oil sites visible from the river. Note the flame to the right. 

A closer view. I could see this flame from far-off when boating between Coca and Yarina. 

From six to when we finally turned our boat around to go home around three, there was a lot of traffic on the river. 

This was different: many canoes on the river would stop and buy fuel from bigger boats.

Despite the waste still visible on the water here, it was incredible how many insects and different kinds of birds were present on river islands. The Napo gets a few hundred meters wide in places, and there were many of these such islands. 

There were a few large bus stops and port-type docks for people living in the Quechua communities along the river and the oil workers. We dropped off two of our passengers here, who were headed for home. 

Manatee Amazon Tours. Hey there, Ruben (previous worker at Yarina lodge and the reason I know anything about Yasuni). 

The closest I got to cold in the lowlands was speeding along the river before the sun came out. Heh.

More oil trucks. 

As we went further down the Napo, there was less waste on the water's surface and more insect noise. 

The ITT part of the Yasuni-ITT initiative: Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini oil.

Storms in the dry season are still Amazon fierce. It rained on us for a while. 

And cleared up for a little while. 

This was my first view of Yasuni. After reading so much about it and talking to so many people about it, it was quite a rush of feeling. To actually -be- there. 

Right next to the park sign, there was a small clay lick (see previous blog post about parrot behaviors) with a hundred Dusky Headed Parakeets, a small band of Mealy Amazons, and a few token Chestnut-fronted Macaws. There were two other boats trying to view them, too, and the river was rough---apologies for the blurry binocular shot.  

I was able to get some of the parakeets as they flew off, startled by the boat motors. I wonder if such tour activity has driven them away from their traditional clay licks along the river banks; my guide and now friend Fredi told me they are mostly deeper into the forests, canals and lagoons now. He said when he was fifteen, he could see most of these banks covered completely by twenty or more different parrot species. 

We got to visit a Quechua (Kichwa) community around the Napo Wildlife Center, which is the largest (and only) conservation center in Yasuni. 

We spent an hour with the women of the community. Twenty-seven of them work with a program for cultural appreciation and education. They make traditional handicrafts and sell them to visitors at the Napo Wildlife Center. I bought from them a balsa figurine of a cotinga that's found only around the Napo River: the Black-necked Red Cotinga.

So much beauty here. (Black-necked Red Cotinga picture from google). 

They gave us some examples of traditional dance and music. This instrument was wild: a marine turtle shell, rubbed against the palm of the hand to produce a kind of rubber-squeaking percussion. 

As I've detailed in previous posts, a traditional Quechua drink is Chicha: made in the lowlands with fernented camote (sweet potato) and manioc (yucca). They make it in the highlands with different ingredients--often relatives of corn. Here you can see pots (made with those iron-rich tropical clays and pit-fired) filled with fermenting chicha of different varieties: some made with fire-roasted yucca, or different types of camote and spices. 

Guyusa (similar to tea, made from the leaves of the namesake plant) served in a dried mate fruit (different from yerba mate).

The youngest woman in the community was the main speaker. She's kneeling to show us how they prepare chicha in the community, in large troughs often cut from large butress roots of forest hardwoods. 

Showing the cleaning of the manioc for later grinding. 

Baskets woven from palm fibers, carried in the traditional way. They're incredibly sturdy. 

The woman to the right, a tourist from Quito, is holding a chunk of wood from a tree used as a dye for the pots and body painting. It stains really, really well. Another item is a land snail shell: used as a type of horn in the forest.

Some steeve-tool-like patterns! All the pots were coil-made, though. Incredibly smooth and even. 

Snake figure chair. There were many others depicting the eagle, jaguar, and (!!!) night-hawks; all figures from Quechua and Waorani legend.

I got to take a three hour hike through the park. This sign was upturned behind the station, where we had to register as visitors and give passport information. 

I was told this was a tree crab of sorts. 

Tapir prints.

And always more leaf toads.

It was incredible. Tons of tiny passerines. Completely tantalizing and mostly unidentifiable in the canopy. 

Fredi said this was my "looking worried about the forest" stance. He caught me at it many times during the hike. 

The tree the Quechua women use for dye.

We got pretty high up and could see quite a bit of the Amazon lowlands.

Another view of Crusespe, the flower used for contraception in Quechua communities. 

Times I wish I had a better camera: we found Jaguar prints. 

A fruit preferred by tapirs, I was told. There were bite marks taken from quite a few of them.

After we traded tomatoes, marmalade and cheese sandwiches, and bits of chicken, we headed back. There were far fewer boats on the Napo in the late afternoon. 

I read the foreward of my bird book for the first time on the ride back. It is incredible how much a field guide can really contribute to the appreciation and knowledge of an area...and how important such compendiums are for conservation. I saw 20 new bird species total on my short day to Yasuni. If I'd come with someone who'd known the passerine calls, I may have seen a hundred. 

There were a few ranches along the river as well: good for seeing troupials, blackbirds, and different flycatchers.

I spent some time musing about what it must have been like for Frank Gill (who worked with one of the guides at Yarina, Jaima Greta), Ridgely, and Greenfield to explore and document all these bird species for so many years. The guide was officially published in 2001 after over three decades of work, which is just unfathomable to me. The language is evocative (if you're a birder) and deliciously dramatic (if you're a real person): PUNISHING expeditions south of Loja, an ABSURDLY wide bill for a Finch of its size. It is my bible here. 

I said goodbye to Witoto getting teased about how red I was. Forgot the sunscreen. Mistake. 

The iced mango that followed in Coca made up for the sunburn, though, and I spent my last night writing quietly about all I've seen and learned here. Waorani voices over the park radios and the richness of life, both human and animal. It's an incredibly vivid conflict that needs a seriously complex compromise between man and nature: the conservation of the Amazon and its cultures really depend on it. 

Gyeh! Internet cafes. I am so grateful I had the chance to see the reality of the situation with my own eyes; speak to the people who are here and living it. Travel for this purpose is quite important.

More thoughts later.

Cheers.