Welcome to the (Ecuadorian) Jungle

By Nathan Donnelly

The expedition into The Jungle (La Selva) was an even bigger affair than I expected. We had a crew of 15 people. Botanists, ornithologists, guides, cultural diversity experts, camera men, tree climbers, etc. from around Ecuador and the world. Including several people from Humboldt County.

We all hiked in with full packs and an additional four horse pack-train of equipment on a barely discernible trail that luckily our guides knew well and the horses and machetes made more apparent for those following in the rear. It was a hot day, but it was immediately apparent long sleeves were going to be necessary for much of the trek. Minuscule red ants hung on every leaf you touched ready to climb onto us and give us a bite very similar to a nettle sting. I realized the further back you were in the group the angrier the ants got and the worse you got bit. I was in shorts and short sleeves and luckily ended up at the head of the group, just behind the horses, but still received many dozens of bites. Those coming in later arrived in full parkas, despite the heat, to keep the ants off.

The next two days were spent with groups of us going out with large bags collecting any plant in fruit or flower. They were processed by our botanists to be taken back to the herbarium in Quito. Over 300 specimens were collected, and those were just the ones flowering or fruiting.

One of the important aspects of this trip became learning about new varieties of Cacao, the wonderful tree that chocolate is made from. On one of these outings a gigantic cacao tree was discovered of unknown species, and it was fruiting. The lowest fruits were 90 feet off the ground though. It's an incredible tree with a huge flaring buttress about 15 feet wide. Several foot deep bays between the fins of the buttress grew dozens of vines and termite tunnels and over all marched our friends the little red ants. We would have to come back and climb this tree.

Cacao is becoming important because it is a forest crop that can provide the settlers in the area with an income that doesn't require them to cut down the forest. World wide domestic cacao varieties are suffering from many diseases and new and wild varieties are highly sought after by specialty chocolate makers. I was amazed at the variety of shapes, sizes, and colors of the all the cacao varieties just in Galeras.

On the third night about 1am I got up and got sick in the jungle a couple times. The next day I stayed in camp with Kaya (sorry for the incorrect name spelling K.) who also was sick and we watched over camp and laid around in the dirt a lot, too wiped out to really accomplish much. I spent the morning sewing a little sack to place a stone in as a weight to sling a line in another huge tree not far from camp so William, our ornithologist, could do some bird watching from the canopy.

We were ill-equipped unfortunately for slinging lines into trees of this size so we had to invent things as we went. I tried for a lower branch in a nearby tree from which I hoped to be high enough to reach the lowest limbs in my target tree. The branch I was trying for was about 60 feet up, but in my weakened state (I nearly blacked out several times) I was only able to throw a rock with a line tied to it 59 feet. After a few hours of trying and couple good cord burns on my arm I hiked back to camp to help Kaya with dinner, defeated.

The rest of the group had spent the day hiking to the summit of Galeras mountain and discovered quite a few lowland trees and plants that were inexplicably growing up in the mountains, further pointing out the uniqueness of the place. They returned well after dark, something that had me a bit worried back at camp, but later ended up being the norm with all the work we wanted to get done in our short time there. They worked late into the night processing specimens.

The next morning I was back online and hiked out with William and our guide Manuel and another man Nelson, who was all around useful and generally hilarious. We were looking for a good spot to set up our infrared camera to photograph wildlife. Manuel found an excellent spot where several game trails converged near some water. We actually spooked some peccaries when we got there and the ground was torn up with tracks.

I set up the camera where it would get the best view and we hiked back for breakfast. On the way back Nelson showed me several varieties of edible and medicinal plants, including one for snake bite (which I almost needed days before; I'll talk about that later). We got back to camp and had a much needed breakfast. I had not digested any food for two days and was light-headed.

Later, James (one of our photographers who's been on this project with Jonathan for sometime) and I returned to the cacao tree to come up with plan for climbing it. It looked like we were going to have to do it in stages and climb a nearby tree with lower limbs and throw a line up from the top of it. James got a line over a branch with a small crossbow arrow I tied a rock to for weight, and a wrist-rocket slingshot.

I set up our rigging and anchors and James prusiked up the line (prusiks are cord loops knotted in such a way around the rope that they grip when pulled down, but slide when pushed up, allowing for the ascension of the rope). He made several attempts at shooting the arrow into the cacao, before the arrow got caught and our line broke. The canopy is very dense and trying to get a clear shot is almost impossible. He decided it would be better to climb higher and try again. He hacked his way up the tree with a machete, basically free climbing a section of the trunk. By the time he got to a high point and cleaned out some of the limbs night was falling and we would have to come back the next day.

On the hike back to camp in the dark, Manuel and I were out ahead of the group and noticed eyes looking down on us from the canopy, just like in the cartoons. When the group joined us I loaned my binoculars to Jonathan who identified one of the animals as a katamundi, a small raccoon-sized mammal with a prehensile tail. The other animal was similar in size but had a different reflected eye color and moved differently. Bruce heard a low growl come from it several times, but we were unable to identify it.

A few days ago I visited the zoo in Baños and saw a katamundi and had no doubt that was the animal we saw. I also saw another animal, a jaguarundi, a 20-30 pound cat with a stretched out body like a weasel. It growled at me just like Bruce described and in the evening light I could see the color of its eyes. It could really fly through the branches in its habitation like the animal we saw and I'm pretty sure it was a jaguarundi.

The next day the group decided to hike down hill to get a good lower elevation transect of the area. Marty and I would stay behind and attempt to climb the cacao again. I climbed up to the high point James had attained and set up a safer anchor point while Marty did an excellent job of being my ground man keeping lines straight and sending me up tools, etc. as needed.

This tree had an ant nest in it about half way up and I got hundreds of bites, enough to make it look like I had a sunburn from all the red spots. Ants hold no place sacred as far as where they will bite you. It's amazing what you can get used to though and eventually I didn't notice them anymore. The sweat bees were another matter though. I don't know what they're actually called but I dubbed them sweat bees because they go after sweat (which is abundant in the jungle), constantly landing on us. Luckily they don't bite but when you have to pick one out of your eye or ear or clothing every few moments they can be infuriating. After a couple hours of this I finally threw a rock over a limb in the cacao and began hauling a rope into it as it started raining.

The next hour was spent climbing the rope up the cacao, being very careful not to cut it as I hacked away the vines with a machete as I dangled. When I got to the limb I realized I had no way of climbing up onto it from below. It was half a meter thick and covered in plants and ants and I had no way to sling myself up on to it. I tried for about 45 minutes in significant pain as I had been hanging in my harness for hours by that point. The one possibility I could see was to sling yet another line over a higher branch and climb it until we could get on top of this one. I rappelled down and took off all my gear. I was bruised at all points in contact with my harness.

Just then you could hear a low roar coming at us from the forest. Another BIG rain was coming and we could hear it crashing toward us as it advanced. Marty and I got our gear covered and rain gear on just in time for it not to matter. When it rains that hard nothing stays dry no matter what. Minutes later, everywhere, the ground was flowing water. The entire slope had water running on it and the little creek we were camped near was a raging river and the sound of boulders could be heard rolling in it.

Marty and I got back to camp just in time to find Kaya and William trying to hold the tarps up and keep camp from being flooded. We had a rain like this just two days before so I got to work restringing tarps, digging new trenches, and cutting new poles to hold up camp. It's a totally wild experience, and since it's so warm and I got to play with a machete, it's kind of fun. I've never experienced rain fall like that before, even working for years in the Olympic rainforest in Washington.

The rest of the crew was hiking back from their outing in this rain, and the last of them in the dark. They made a very important discovery that is probably the reason we were drawn to this place. While hiking they found some clearings that had been made in the jungle, survey markers for a new road, and province boundary markers that had been moved. In two days an illegal road was scheduled to be bull-dozed into the heart of Galeras.

Every new road is accompanied by immediate settling and rampant deforestation. Jonathan was on the phone with his lawyer, from the site, contacting the proper people and hopefully getting the road stopped. There is no other place left on Earth like Galeras and if we had not been there exactly then it would have been lost for good. I have not heard back from Jonathan yet about how that is going, but it's apparent that it's more important than ever to get that area included in the national park, as was originally intended when Jonathan was first here 15 years ago.

The next day James got up into the tree and put the new line up we needed and did a clever bit of rope work to get himself onto the limb by prusiking some foot holds onto the rope we climbed up, getting himself onto the limb. I followed him up and dragged myself up by a sling James placed for me. Unfortunately all the fruits of the tree were way out on the ends of the limbs. I thought I saw one directly overhead and was going to make an attempt at it, but I realized last second it was growing from a vine, not the tree. Our only other option was a pair of fruits 25 feet out on the limb we were standing on. It was risky but not insane.

James went out on a limb and got the fruits, using the skills he learned climbing redwoods in the headwaters area of Humboldt County. From his new vantage point he could see the original fruit I was going to climb for was a hornets' nest. That well could have been a fatal mistake in the position we were in if I hadn't noticed it was on a vine. We rappelled down in the dark and hiked back to camp with our prize that took several people 3 days of work to get.

The other fatal accident that almost happened to me on this trip involved a snake. Days earlier I was trying to throw lines up into a smaller cacao of another variety to pull some fruiting branches off. I stepped a few feet off the path to get a better angle for a throw when Benjamin (who started a nature preserve with his family near Tena) started saying something quite emphatic in one of the languages he speaks that I don't. Jonathon started getting excited too and told me get out of there fast. I assumed I was standing very near a deadly snake, and knowing sudden movements and wildlife don't mix, slowly got back to the path.

I could not see the snake and didn't want to step on it. I turned to see the snake safely from the path but it took me at least 30 seconds to see it even with Benjamin pointing right at it. It was perfectly camouflaged and had a viper head shaped exactly like the leaves it was laying in, complete with a lighter colored stripe that looked like a leaf vein. It was about as big as one of the rattle snakes from home and Benjamin said it was the most deadly animal in Galeras. I estimate I was standing about 10 inches from it and it left me alone.

We returned to Agua Santa a couple days later to attend the ceremony for the girls that drowned the year before and see the work done for the water tanks. I'll do an update for that soon, as this is already super long.

Thank you everyone for the help you have given us in this project. We've gotten a lot accomplished so far and gotten many other things started with some momentum. The support you gave us is going to continue to go good things for a long time to come. Thank you.

-Nathan Donnelly

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Nathan Donnelly lives in the wilderness of the Klamath River in northern California and considers it paradise. He does environmental restoration work, permaculture homesteading, carpentry, and is learning to live in balance and joy with the world. Contact him at Besatori@gmail.com.

Previous articles in this series:

1/19/10 - Reclothing the Mountains In Green

2/5/10 - Update on Nathan Donnelly's Tree Planting Trip to Ecuador

2/22/10 - Nathan Donnelly Arrives in Ecuador To Plant Trees

2/25/10 - Water Storage Integral To Ecuador Tree Planting Expedition

3/1/10 - Nathan, Friends, and Ecuadorian Military Plant 1000+ Trees

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