Category: Ecuador
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A snapshot moment
I’ll set the scene: Me (purple, floaty trousers, black and green Hawaiian shirt, slightly tanned, curly hair tied back), lying in my hammock in the “porch” of our “mansion”. It is HOT today, so hot in fact that I got in the “shower” earlier fully clothed just to cool down a bit. The sun is…
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22-02-2018 Menstruation Magic
This morning, a guide, Javier and myself set out into the forest to set up my project. I need 12 transects (straight lines that I use to mark where I will collect my data) in both primary and secondary forest. We found suitable areas with plenty of space and started to set these up, however,…
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20-02-2018 Monotony
I want to preface this post with a reality check: We live in the rainforest, in Ecuador, near an Indigenous Community, at a research station, on a river bank, in wooden huts, without a car, without a boat (more importantly), with just each other, in the jungle. Like if you saw our location on a…
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17-02-2018 The ups and the downs
It’s a quiet day at the station today. Only Heather and I are here so we have complete freedom to do what we like when we like. This freedom only really extends to when we eat, usually with more people at the station mealtimes are regular and we take it in turns to cook each…
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08-02-2018 ill and abroad: a detailed account
Date Saturday 3rd of February Scene Lying in bed in a hotel room on the 4th floor of our favourite Hotel in El Coca, the Rio Napo. 8pm And so occurred the last in a series of bad decisions: a massive bowl of pasta for dinner. Accompanied with soy sauce (beggars can’t be choosers) and…
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25-01-2018 Back home
It’s a beautiful day in the jungle. I woke up this morning at 10am which never happens because I’m usually sweating by 8, but this morning it was cool which was delightful. We arrived a couple of days ago with 2 volunteers who are living here for 2 weeks. They are a French/Colombian couple who…
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20-01-2018 Nice to be back, Quito
I have arrived in Ecuador safe and sound, sorry to say bye to England but excited to settle back into my Ecuadorian life! Goodbyes were quite hard this time, and it was tougher than usual to tear myself away from my family and friends, but the further from home I travelled, the more I started…
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How to survive in the Jungle
First of all, I hope that none of you reading this are intending on actually using this blog post as a guide to the jungle. I am not professing to have succeeded at life here, nor am I suggesting I have any great wisdom on the matter. This is more a collection of observations and…
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Why We Are Here – The Research
For those of you who have got the impression that so far my time in Ecuador has mostly been exploring, lying in a hammock and swimming, you’re wrong. Well, half wrong. Okay, just a little bit wrong, we have been doing a lot of that. But there’s a much more serious side to our life…
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Rainforest frustrations and jungle revelations
So it turns out that the rain forest is actually a fairly harsh environment to live in. Who would have thought? Gone are our misguided delusions of tanning in the sun, swimming laps across the river, being fluent in Spanish within the month and keeping up our physical fitness. These activities have been replaced with…
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My first week in Ecuador
Did you know that the capital city of Ecuador, Quito, is the ‘highest’ capital city in the world? (but only when Sucre is considered capital of Bolivia, if it’s not then technically La Paz in Bolivia is higher) sitting at 9,350ft (2,850m) above sea level. Altitude sickness is a real danger in Quito, and unfortunately…
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Arrival in Ecuador – impressions
The language barrier is strong here. I feel completely ashamed at my appalling lack of Spanish. I learnt French at school and not a single word of Spanish. First thing I did this morning was organise a Spanish lesson with the hostel who employs this lovely Ecuadorian woman where we went over some basic phrases…
Sophie Victoria Manley 