Weekend in the Amazon

What a great weekend. :) I am posting pictures on http://chrisandanna.shutterfly.com. I am very happy. Yesterday, Julio picked up Lixin, Ian and I at noon. We went to a supermarket first and bought a ton of food for the equivalent of $75. Then we headed north into the rainforest. After about 50 km on a road that goes all the way to Venezuela, we turned west onto a choppy dirt road. Ian took the wheel at this point, just in time for a little bit of rain. The water makes the dirt very slippery so it's like driving on ice. There was one very steep hill that we initially didn't make it up because the truck lost traction. It was a little nerve-wracking reversing down a slippery, steep slope but the second try was a charm!

Our first stop was the C14 tower. It is at kilometer 14 on the dirt road. The hike to the tower was short and being in the forest for the first time was amazing! The tower is the oldest in Amazonia, I believe. It was put up in the early 80's. Also it is wide enough to have stairs to walk up (4m x 4m). The main tower goes to 45 meters, but Julio built an additional tower on top that goes another 10 or 15 m. That tower was a little more rickety but the view at the top was great!

At first glance from above, the forest looks like ... a forest. But two things are very striking. First, for 360 degrees all you can see is forest. No roads, houses, power lines, rivers, or lakes. That is incredible, especially considering what you can see from a 60m tower is a very small portion of the entire forest. Second, if you focus your eyes in one direction, you can probably count about 15 different kinds of trees right in front of you. That to me is kind of a subtly amazing thing about the forest because you might not realize it right away. Also you can see and hear lots of birds and occasionally monkeys. We had lunch on top of the tower, it was an ideal spot for a picnic. :)

Geek alert, move to next paragraph if you're not interested! I've learned some good things over the weekend. I'll just name a few. 1. We went through a couple of different types of forest. In the lowlands the ground is very sandy and there are mostly palms. They are enormous though ... maybe 15 meters tall with humongous fronds. Higher up there is more clay and hence larger, taller trees (some as tall as the first tier of the C14 tower). 2. It is very still inside the canopy. Julio kept pointing this out because its importance in carbon fluxes. Even if there are large exchanges of carbon between the trees, ground, water, and air, that doesn't mean that the fluxes will translate directly to changes in carbon in the free atmosphere. Above the canopy, there is a nice breeze that is very refreshing ... and it enables exchanges between the canopy air space and free atmosphere. 3. The Rio Negro is not black. It's clear ... which is black. I don't know, I was confused. But it is that color because of all of the nutrients that are leached out of the groundcover on the way to the streams/river. It is very acidic and bugs don't like it. There were not many mosquitoes because we were near tributaries of the Rio Negro and it was really nice. OK, end the geek out session.

After climbing the tower he headed to the LBA base camp. I was feeling a little tired and thinking how nice some coffee would be. We first stopped at another LBA base camp and there were two guys there ... who offered us coffee! Yay! :) Then it was on to our base camp. It consists of a two-story building. The bottom is open and has a kitchen and tables. The top has screen windows and all the beds. There were a couple of bathrooms/showers, an equipment room with a pool table, and a cabana with a TV. It was weird to see a TV out in the middle of nowhere. We didn't watch it. Once it got dark, we had our own entertainment.

We cooked a surprisingly good meal considering we were in the middle of the forest. Tortellinis with sauteed green and red peppers, onions, green olives, a broccoli-type vegetable and a spinach-type vegetable, and chicken. Yum! The night sounds were pretty neat. Crickets, birds, and these crazy monkeys. Julio said they are not very big, just a few feet tall but they are very very loud! The males basically roar and fight for the females' attention. Julio said the ones we heard were probably 4 or 5 km away but they were so loud. It was pretty neat and a little creepy too. He said it is really hard to sleep when they are closer but I think it might have been worth it to hear more of them. I woke up a couple of times in the night and heard them again. Very cool.

After dinner we were very full and decided to go on a hike. At first it was neat to be in the dark of the forest (we had two headlamps but mine was nearly dead). After a bit, I saw two green eyes glowing from the side of the trail! I wasn't too concerned until I pointed them out to Julio and he said it was a snake, and it started moving toward the trail! We kept going, and then I started noticing, out of the corners of my eyes, glowing green eyes everywhere! Maybe they were not all snakes, but it freaked me out. Julio made fun of me, Ian sounded annoyed, and Lixin freaked out too. It was interesting to say the least. Lixin was nervous too and too reassure her, Ian asked her something like, "How many times do you get to do something like this?" She said, "Never!" And he said, "So this is a first." And she said, "Yes, that is very nice, if we survive!" My sentiments exactly. Well, we made it and it was a neat experience. After that, it was time for bed. I will write about today's journey later, we are going to dinner soon!

this is a movie of the monkeys roaring at night. It is kind of faint and sounds like the wind howling, but those are monkeys!