travel

Should You Move Abroad?

| Sophie

I think you can count a ¨move¨ as something you do with the intention of staying for a while, setting up a base, working, making connections and building a home there.

You can move with the intention of coming back to the place you left, or perhaps moving on to something else. You can move with a job and a living lined up, or you can get there with no idea what you´re doing and live on scraps until someone will hire you. You can move for something, a loved one, an adventure, a job, a fantasy, which might work out and you´ll live happily ever after, or it might not.

I´ve moved countries 11 times in my life. And I´m 26. The first time I moved was Kuwait to Bahrain when I was 1 years old, and the last time I moved was Manchester to Seville almost 2 years ago when I was 24.

Advantages

Whatever happens, you´ll gain valuable experience that will help you and whatever kind of life you choose to pursue afterwards.

Depending on what you´re bringing and what you´re willing to sacrifice, you don´t have to spend much money doing it.

You don´t have to commit to anything. Being open to whatever life may throw at you and being kind to yourself, you could find that it doesn´t work out and you return home sooner than planned, and that´s okay.

It´ll challenge you, you´ll be scared and excited. Sometimes overwhelmed and sometimes underwhelmed. You´ll feel deeply worried and occasionally euphoric. You will feel. You will experience.

You will have to deal with problems you´ve never even heard of. It will open your mind and your heart. It will give you new perspectives and new ideas. It will change the way you see the world, for the better.

And it may just become the start of your happy ever after.

Disadvantages

There are a lot of sacrifices. You sacrifice stability and connection, above all. You have to make the decision that you´re new adventure is more important than the things you´ve been working for your whole life.

You lose touch with people you care about. Your friends are busy with new friends. You talk to your family less and less. Before you know it, a year has flown by and you haven´t been able to book a flight home.

You open yourself up to risks and dangers you have no idea how to prepare for or deal with when they happen. For it´s not IF they happen, it´s WHEN.

Paperwork. Man oh man moving country, unless it´s with a company that will sort all that out for you, is bureaucracy. Google mapping your way to embassies, queueing for hours to exchange your licence, bringing every document you´ve ever owned along to the appointment to register yourself because the website was rubbish and didn´t tell you anything you actually needed to know.

You won´t have home commodities. Most of the things you loved about your home won´t follow you to your destination. The foods you loved, the conveniences you´re used to, the way you can safely predict and understand the behaviour of people around you because you know the culture in which they belong.

You may loose more than you gain.

So, where does that leave you? Do you move abroad?

Well, when reading the second list, did the disadvantages section excite you or scare you? We have to know 2 things before making that decision. What do we truly value, and what are we capable of?

Do you value new or old? Do you value adventure or stability? Do you value safety or risk?

Are you capable of withstanding multiple visa appointments, a potential trip to a foreign hospital, being away from the people you love?

I read the disadvantages list and I thought, bring it on. It´s all part of the experience and I´m excited to overcome these hurdles.

If you read it and think, ooh no I´m not sure about that, I don´t think I´d like it very much.

Well then you have your answer.

Is anyone thinking about moving abroad soon? What are your plans?

A snapshot moment

| Sophie

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 shining and the river flows idly, the grass is quite overgrown and bright, little seeds cling to my socks and trousers whenever I walk anywhere. Insects are constantly buzzing about, jumping up from the grass and circling through the air which hangs heavy and still with humidity. Frogs and mice occasionally peep out from their homes and the geckos in our “mansion” crawl silently across the walls and the ceiling. The crickets are buzzing and the birds chirping and every so often the rumbling of a motor crawls past as members of the community travel up and down the river. The giant leaves on the banana trees rustle slightly in a gentle breeze, and the sound of the shallow water dancing over the rocks in the river floats up from the bank. I can smell the rich scent of tropical nature, almost cloying and almost sweet. And I feel calm. The heat has soaked into my bones and it is bliss to lie here, embraced in the warmth of the air and the peace and serenity of the trees.

I have spent the morning working on my project. Hours and hours and hours of data collection and analysis, with hours and hours and hours to go. My ears are ringing from listening to my music too loudly, my mind is buzzing with thoughts of work, and my fingers are sore from clicking and dragging and typing. I’m taking a break. Whether it’s well-deserved I’m not so sure, but the heat and limitless time we have make it hard to concentrate.

Heather and I have been at the station for 9 days now. Just us. Here. Alone. In our paradise-like prison, or prison-like paradise; depending which mood we’re in. We’ve been on rations for a few days now because our food supply is dwindling so meals have been delightfully creative or completely boring. The flies are out in full force so we’re both covered in bites, but I think we’re more used to them now so they don’t bother us as much. Evening is settling in, the air is cooling slightly and the sun getting lower.

 

 

I’ll get back to work now. The tab of my spreadsheet is staring at me disparagingly from the bottom of my laptop screen and, as much as I wish they would, the photos won’t start sorting themselves.

 

 

*”quotation marks” used to indicate the metaphorical nature of these descriptive nouns. We don’t actually live in a mansion, but a 4 roomed, open, wooden building built on stilts. The porch refers to the area at the front of said building. We have a structure which does a very good imitation of a shower, but in reality is 3 small concrete walls and a shower curtain with a barrel that we pump full of river water when it gets low, and a tap coming out of it.

 

22-02-2018 Menstruation Magic

| Sophie

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, we happened upon an unusual obstacle. The community believe that when a woman is on her period, she has witchcraft that destroys their land and crops. So as we were walking through the forest with our string and measuring tape, we kept accidentally finding ourselves in bits of farmland that were completely off limits to me, a woman with magic crop-destroying periods. Not a problem I thought I’d have to deal with, frankly.

20-02-2018 Monotony

| Sophie

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 map it would just be a dot in the green bit that covers some of the East of Ecuador. This place is isolated. To get to the nearest town which is a very basic, very small, very local little place takes 3 hours. To get to the nearest town with a bar takes 4 and a half hours. To get to the nearest town with English speakers takes 9 hours. To get to a city takes 14 hours.

In my opinion, that is fucking cool. We are separated from civilisation (apart from through the internet of course – thank god for the internet), out in nature, surrounded by beautiful wildlife, cooking from scratch, doing ‘science’, living a life (almost) free of social pressures and expectations and best of all living and working closely with a community of people who are from a completely different (metaphorical) world to us. It’s fascinating…

But wow! Does it get boring. It is effectively our job to run and maintain the station, that requires being here 24/7 funnily enough: in this small little patch of land, with a finite amount of things to do and people to talk to; for days, and sometimes weeks on end. Also, now we’ve started our projects we are tied to the station for at least 2 or 3 days a week to collect our data from the forest, there is 0 flexibility here so that our projects are valid and our results usable. And like I explained in paragraph 1, it takes a hell of a long time to get anywhere from here. There’s no ‘popping out’ from the station. No, no. There’s ‘right we have an appointment in Tena at 9:30am on Thursday for 20 minutes so we’ll need to leave 2 days in advance and we’ll be away from the station for 4 days okay let’s pack up every single item in the whole station so the community can’t steal anything, umm order a canoe a few days in advance, pack a weeks worth of laundry and clothes, book accommodation, write a shopping list and then yeah, good to go’. So, as you can (hopefully) see, unless we have a visa office to visit or a document to retrieve, we are stuck here.

Most of the time I think I have more freedom here than anywhere else in the world. I can get up when I like, I have enough time to read books, watch movies, eat leisurely and work at my own pace. I don’t have a myriad of lectures, meetings, shifts, matches, events that lead my life for me; I lead my life here, not the timetable on my outlook calendar. But sometimes I feel caged in and bored. Bored bored bored. And when I get bored I get tired, which just perpetuates this boredom cycle and I loose motivation and sometimes when it gets really bad, I loose touch with reality a little.

I don’t mean to undermine the life we have here (I actually think sadness and challenge augment our reality as we learn and grow through these hard experiences) but understandably we get a bit stir crazy every so often! This manifests in many different ways, some weirder than others, I won’t go into details. We haven’t yet had the time to take a holiday in Ecuador and go and have some fun. Every time we’ve left the station previously it was on visa or food related errands which are crazy-frustrating and boring, in that order. I think Heather and I deserve some real credit here, for all intents and purposes we are managing extremely well under the circumstances. We chose this placement in the first place (separately) knowing it would be challenging and isolated, so we also knew ourselves well enough to know we would probably be fine with it. Which we are *insert earnest smile*. However… we really ought to get out more.

Which we will: back-at-the-station-after-christmas resolution number 1 was to take some time off ‘work’ (go on holiday) every month; and Heathers 21st birthday is fast approaching so we are taking our first fun trip in Ecuador and going to Banos (Ban-yos – Baths in Spanish because the town is built on the side of the tallest volcano in Ecuador and there are lots of thermal baths there) for 6 days which will be mega fun. Lots of canyoning, hiking, rafting, zip-lining and thermal-bath bathing in Banos. We leave this Friday and will shun all responsibility until we get back the following Thursday, and it’ll be great. We will come back renewed and full of life, I’m sure.

Anyway, the day is running out and I’m actually procrastinating a little right now – I should be reading Fungi Biodiversity papers.

So, signing off – from the hammock near the wifi router, wooden hut, river bank, Payamino, Ecuador.

17-02-2018 The ups and the downs

| Sophie

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 meal, but with only the two of us here, I ate breakfast at midday and Heather ate lunch at 3: we’ve descended into madness. Apart from that, we are still at the mercy of the weather and can’t leave the station as we have work to do here. It’s been raining the last couple of days so wifi and power have been a little dodgy, and until recently the station has been relatively full! So it’s back to our quiet little life.

Life has taken a few turns recently, ebbing and flowing like the tides of El Rio Payamino. It’s easy to see a surface view of someone’s life and assume that all’s fine and dandy, but actually there’s usually something going on there which doesn’t breach social media or light conversation.

My life has been a bit up and down recently. I think being ill always gets you down and it takes a little while to regain the swing of things; I’m still not better after my ear infection which is making me a little lethargic and foggy. Another thing – this one took me a while to figure out on all my travels – but it turns out you’re not immune to insecurities / down days / mad panics about life just because you live somewhere cool: had a few of them recently. Also, the direction of my project has changed once again. It’s been a real challenge figuring out what kind of research is available in the field, balancing my highly-optimistic research aims, and evaluating my own limitations in order to find the middle ground of what’s actually doable here.

It was quite disheartening at first, but I am a fan of silver linings and have started to appreciate the benefits of my new plan. It will be a lot simpler and easier, I will have more control over every aspect, and the write-up will be more straight forward. All boring things, I’ve lost interest over ease, but at least I can actually make a start.

Field work is surprisingly slow. There are a lot of social, political, meteorological and ecological hoops to jump through that you just don’t expect to meet when you set out on your journey, hoping to uncover some valuable resource or hidden knowledge. And field work is clumsy. Of course we adhere to ‘the scientific method’, and keep all our data as valid and reliable as possible, but at the end of the day, research is limited by the people doing it and the amount of money and time they have. We’ve recently been collecting data for an arachnid biodiversity study which sounds to me awfully professional and serious, but the actual field work/data collection side of things juxtaposes this scientific vision of serious, intelligent people doing serious, intelligent things, and replaces it with a group of people, some scientists, some undergrads, and some indigenous community members, literally catching spiders in the jungle. There’s more to it than that, years and years of research that has cultivated the perfect method and most accurate data analysis, however the literal translation from the methods section in a scientific paper to people working in the field is not what you expect. It’s been fascinating to learn this and experience some real life science in the field.

All in all life at the station has been great. The company has been wonderful, and it’s nice to be back home in our idyllic, little corner of the world. But I’d be lying if I said life has been perfect: life has been normal, I guess, but still full of discovery, new experiences, learning and getting shit done, which are the main things, I think.

20-01-2018 Nice to be back, Quito

| Sophie

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 to look forward and the easier it became to leave my comfort zone behind. My journey to Ecuador was long and comprised of: a car, boat, bus, train, coach, bus, Travelodge, bus, plane, plane and finally taxi and took 35 hours. Definitely not the longest journey I’ve been on, but exhausting never-the-less!

Getting through Quito airport was a little tricky… they have 2 security checks, each one before and after baggage claim, and I got questioned a lot over my visa situation! I only have another 9 days left on my tourist visa: I’ve applied for a work visa but Ecuador is THE SLOWEST COUNTRY EVER and it’s taken months and I haven’t heard from the visa office at all. So I got a little warning upon entry and was told I must leave after 9 days. When we were applying for work visas, it wasn’t a case of just filling out a form online and sending a couple of emails, because in Ecuador, they don’t reply to emails. (What!??) So you have to SHOW UP everywhere. And these visa offices and universities aren’t near each other – on average they are probably about a 6 hour coach journey from each other. So ‘getting our visas’ translates into zig zagging up and down the country, having meetings and showing our faces so we can pressure them into moving forward in our applications (mine and Heathers). So anyway I got through security with a warning I have no intention of taking seriously, then we teamed up with another traveller to get a taxi to the old town in Quito where we’re staying.

One thing that struck me when I arrived was how familiar Quito feels to me now. It’s a joy to get to know a place and feel safe there, especially when it comes to logistical things; like knowing if a taxi is taking you in the wrong direction and if they are over-charging you! Also, it was an absolute joy to arrive in Ecuador and have enough of a grasp of Spanish that I can communicate with the locals – it makes life so much easier! And I think it’s such a special thing: being able to speak more than one language, it gives you such an insight into other cultures! I’m always so curious when I hear people speaking a different language, I would love to know what they’re saying! It seems so mysterious when you can’t understand, but I bet most of the time it’s just the usual mundane, boring stuff we talk about in English! Speaking all the languages in the world is in my top 3 most-wanted super powers. So being able to understand Spanish is so exciting for me. I’m no expert, but I get by and I am trying to get better all the time.

Another beautiful thing about being back in Ecuador is the music. I was surprised to learn that Spanish music has heavily infiltrated the UK charts when I was home over Christmas, and lots of the songs I cherished as being a part of my South American journey were actually quite well known in England! But I will always associate those songs with Ecuador: the places I’ve been here, the journeys I’ve done, the bars I’ve danced in, the hostels I’ve stayed in. And that is quite magical. Although, true South American music is quite different to Spanish chart music. It’s the more traditional salsa and flamenco that you’ll find playing in local, less touristy areas!

Last night Heather and I went out for a few drinks and we started the night at another Hostel called Minka. We were informed by the staff at our hostel who were also going that it is a bit of a party hostel. When we arrived, however, we weren’t particularly enthused because it was really quiet and there were even 2 guys asleep on the sofas! But we joined a little group outside eating, drinking and smoking and started to have fun and eventually, unsurprisingly, a guitar somehow made its way to the table! A quite accomplished Colombian guy and his girlfriend then proceeded to play a bunch of Latin American songs, harmonising and with a shaker might I add – definitely rehearsed for moments like these, and most of the table were singing along. Now, I know that travelling guitar players have a bit of a bad rep among the British, but I genuinely think it’s because we’re not as open to it, and also there are definitely a few douchebags who ruin it for the whole lot. Unsolicited guitar playing while everyone is quite happily chatting is definitely a dick move, but a group sing-song with a good player and a few beers is actually a really great thing. I actually fall into this group of travelling guitar players so I may be a little biased, but I’m just as happy to sit back and listen as I am to take centre stage. Last night was a bit of both, we spent the first couple of hours soaking in the culture of the passionate South Americans and their fiery music, and by the end of the evening I had a guitar in my hands and was serenading the whole group with I’m Yours and Somewhere over the Rainbow… and I unapologetically loved it.

One of my resolutions in Ecuador is to properly learn a Spanish song by the end of the year! Then I’ll be a real dick when I travel haha, not only playing the guitar and singing, but in another language too. Don’t hate me too much.

So right now I am in my hostel, hungover but feeling really satisfied and comfortable. We chose to stay in Hostel Revolution this time, which is more quiet, because it has a kitchen – a real must for travellers on a budget (which unfortunately is me). It’s nice enough, not as good as Secret Garden but the kitchen has been SO worth it!!

Side note: if anyone is thinking of going travelling, bring a towel dressing gown. It is one of my FAVOURITE things. You avoid the awkwardness of walking around in a towel and its really easy to get changed under – little travel tip. Also!! Second travel tip: Lush shampoo’s and conditioners are AMAZING. They are completely vegan and bio-degradable which is obviously fantastic, but they come in these little bars which sit neatly in a little tub, so super easy to transport and they last for ages!! I washed my hair for the first time with them today and my hair looks really great, so massive advocate for Lush right now! 

Today the weather in Quito is 15 degrees-ish which is pretty perfect for a life admin / movie day in bed. So that is exactly what I’m doing!

15-01-2018 I really ought to be packing

| Sophie

So it is (almost) that time again. The time to leave my family and friends behind in England and live in another country and culture for a significant period of time. This is, in fact, the 5th time I have taken off to another country with no return flight booked. The shortest period of time away has been 4 months, the longest, 10 months. This time I’m going for an intermediate 6 and a half months, planning to be home sometime at the end of July.

Something I hadn’t really expected to happen, was that each time I go away, it gets harder. It’s meant to get easier, isn’t it? Although I think I was probably at my most reckless and adventurous when I was 18, and so realistically it couldn’t have got any easier. Back then I couldn’t wait to travel, I was more than excited to leave the island and explore a different country and had absolutely no fear. Potentially due to the blissful ignorance of having never done anything like this before, and the fact that at that point in my life I felt really trapped somewhere I didn’t want to be. But things are quite different now. I’m 4 years older, I’m an awful lot happier and I’m actually sorta enjoying being at home, who’d have thought?

After a month of easy living, the prospect of having to go back to the rainforest actually gives me a little bubble of nerves in the pit of my stomach, something I’ve never felt before. It’s been quite emotional being back at home with my family, we’ve had our ups and downs which we always do, but it’s been a joy being surrounded by loved ones and I’ve had complete freedom. I haven’t had to work, or had any responsibility of any kind actually. It’s been wonderful. I’ve spent lots of quality time with our new kitten and my bunny, I’ve been writing a lot more, playing the piano, seeing my friends, being cold, having hot showers, forgetting how it feels to be constantly sweaty and itchy, you know… all the normal stuff.

I really ought to be packing right now. I leave Wednesday lunchtime so that gives me a meagre two days to sort my life out. And that is no easy task. For anyone thinking to themselves, what is she worried about, this experience sounds incredible! Read this: Rainforest frustrations and jungle revelations. It’s not so much the place or people or situations I’m worried about, it’s more the physical experience of living there. The water that tastes so strongly of chlorine I’ve had dehydration sickness twice now, the constant itching, scratching and scabbing, the humidity that is so high I’m almost never dry, the fact that communication is dependent on how many hours a day I sit at an uncomfortable table and try and learn Spanish.

I am, of course, completely neglecting to mention all the really awesome things about living there. When I am back in Ecuador and super inspired and in love with the rainforest, I will write a post about how completely amazing it is to be living there and make you all sick with jealousy. But for now my overriding emotions are nervousness and a deep aversion to my suitcase.

How to survive in the Jungle

| Sophie

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 lessons I have learnt so far in the 2 short months that I have been living in the Amazon rainforest.

Don’t complain about how much you sweat.

Complaining makes you frustrated, which causes your blood pressure to increase and your body to heat up, which causes more sweating. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. There’s no escape or respite from it, there’s nothing you can do to prevent it, and it doesn’t get any easier. My advice is tranquillo, tranquillo. Being chill is synonymous with cold for a reason. Relax, be calm and slow, and the sweat is manageable.

Laugh a lot at how ridiculous life can be.

The best thing you can do when the jungle pushes you to the limit of your adaptability is to laugh. 3 new super itchy bites on your bum, an awkward and socially-unacceptable place to scratch? Have a giggle about it, then scratch it anyway. Droplets of sweat that have made it all the way from your under-boob down to your ankle? It’s okay, just wipe and laugh. A huge, scary looking scorpion thing sitting innocuously in the exact spot you were about to place your hand? It’s cool, you saw it just in time, scream a little bit, then laugh. When the local, wild, jungle dog has raided your kitchen, upturned all the bins and spilt gross, smelly liquid all over the floor, maybe don’t laugh right away, maybe clear it up asap and lock the doors. Yell ‘hijo de puta’ to the general surroundings… then laugh.

Make friends with the insect community.

Only the harmless ones though. Become one with nature and take on a Snow-Whitely demeanour as the butterflies and moths swirl around you, and weird and wonderful little creatures somehow end up on your body and you’re not quite sure how they got there. Smile at them warmly, sing a little song if you’re so inclined, then get them the hell off you just in case.

Be prepared for attack at all times

The silent, tiny enemies that cause an unbelievable amount of grief are the biting bugs. A sting, and a week-long, incessant itch are the least of your worries, some of these insects carry horrible diseases like Malaria and Leishmaniasis. The likelihood of us getting either of these is fairly slim, but I don’t want to take any chances. Along with deet and long clothing, Heather and I have developed a series of noises and phrases designed to scare off unwanted critters. They work with varying degrees of success. These usually explode out of us when we realise we’re being attacked and often come from the recesses of our subconscious. Heathers go-to insult is yelling “BIG HAIRY BEAST” at the offender. It seems to work. My expletives are usually a series of weird noises like ‘lblblblblbllb’ or ‘chchchchchhc’. Yesterday, a wasp was hanging round the spout of our lemon juice, and I politely turned to it and said ‘Go away! That is not your lemon juice!’ Needless to say the wasp didn’t listen.

Tiger balm, and lots of it.

The only successful minor relief from the stingy itchiness is our beloved tiger balm. We try to keep stocked up at all times and apply it so often that most of our clothes and bed sheets have a yellow-ish tinge. I feel like every time I kill a mosquito, I’m helping humankind, ridding the world of disease one bug at a time. You’re welcome.

Frequent showers – for clarity of mind

The water is pumped straight from the river and is dispensed into a concrete shower block from a medium-sized plastic tank, so it’s always cold and fresh and has to be topped up every couple of days. When I say shower block, I mean a very small concrete cubicle with only 3 walls and a shower curtain, and no ceiling. Sharing a shower with the outside world is not so bad although the unavoidable, clothe-less nature of a shower does increase skin surface area for flying insects to land on. An inevitability unfortunately. One time, when Heather was showering, glasses-less and vulnerable, a massive toad reduced to a blurry leaf due to lack of 20:20 vision leapt desperately on to her leg. Not the ideal shower companion. My favourite time to shower is just after the sun has set, there’s something quite magical about showering and staring up at the moon and the treetops, plus the water is usually not freezing as it’s been heating up all day!

A strong stomach

Because who knows how many ants have died a merciless death in your boiling soup after they’ve climbed into your saucepan, and how many bugs you’ve had to force down after they landed in your drink and you only realised when you felt them sliding down your throat.

You’ll need a good selection of offline films, series and books.

I have rediscovered my love of reading here. My absolute favourite, most perfect, peaceful time of day is the morning. We usually wake up as the sun rises and make the short journey from our mattresses and the protection of our mosquito nets to our hammocks on the porch between 7 and 8, then read for an hour or so as the day heats up. We take our kindles to breakfast with us and read whilst sipping coffee, eating and chatting. Our mornings are delicious. Then at night we usually watch something we have downloaded, swinging in our hammocks listening to the buzz of night life around the station. The other night we were watching Stranger Things during an intense thunder storm lighting up the sky with bolts of lightning striking the trees across the river, the atmosphere was incredible.

Take a breath and remember how lucky you are all the time.

Because it’s true. Heather and I often have beautiful moments where we become sort of meta-aware about our surroundings and it dawns on us how unlikely and wonderful it is that life has brought us to this magical place. Glorious sunshine and a swim in the river can quickly turn into a furious thunder and lightning storm, deafeningly loud and thrillingly close. The river can be serene and gentle one minute, then have turned into raging rapids and be transporting large trees the next.

Why We’re Here – The Research

| Sophie

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 here: the research.

To preface the bulk of this post, I’ll just explain why I’m here: I’m 2 and a bit years into a degree in Biomedical Sciences with Industrial Placement at Manchester, and this is my placement. Heather is also on placement with me, she studies Zoology at Manchester and is a passionate animal lover, even the grizzly, scary, creepy ones… especially the grizzly, scary, creepy ones. Our aim over the course of this year in the Jungle is to complete research in an area of our choosing and produce scientifically viable results. If we work hard, then getting published could be on the cards.

We’ve both spent a long time coming up with a plan for our research proposals which mainly involved a lot of emailing, scrolling through PubMed, reading papers and chatting to Javier, the Ecuadorian station manager, about what would be possible. Javier has a degree in Forestry Engineering and has been working at the station for 6 years now. He’s affectionately nicknamed Jungle Dad and is sociable, generous, and a real joker. Even though most of his jokes are in Spanish and fly straight over our heads, he still makes us laugh with his faux-stern expressions, dad dancing and inability to say slept. “Slepech. Slepecha. Slepch?”

Heather’s main project will be investigating the Arachnid biodiversity here at Payamino. She was given a fantastic opportunity to work closely with an Arachnid specialist during her time here; they’ll complete the field work and research when he arrives at the station in January next year. ‘Arachnid Biodiversity Study’ means capturing as many spiders as possible, bringing them back to the station and identifying what species they are. Heather’s hoping to gain a greater appreciation of an animal that’s normally shunned in society and has a huge fear stigma attached to them. In her opinion, they’re actually underappreciated, beautiful creatures that aren’t nearly as scary as they seem. Already we’ve seen lots of spiders, including a baby tarantula (that we caught in a soup bowl) and many jumping spiders. Heather uses the word adorable, not something synonymous with spiders in my personal opinion, but it’s her project not mine. It’s a good thing I’m not scared of spiders (which my mother proudly attributes all credit to herself as she always made me and my sister get rid of the spiders in the house so she didn’t have to, thanks mum). Also, Heather will be continuing with the research on Heliconias, a native flowering plant, which was started by a previous placement student. The project is looking at the effects of genetic variation in Heliconia species and the associated insect communities. It will involve cutting off roots from existing plants and growing her own little, genetically-identical garden, then measuring the species diversity found between the two plants. Interesting stuff, plus Heliconias are really pretty.

My projects, which I’m very excited about, will be Fungi Biodiversity and knowledge about ethno-medicine in indigenous communities. Fungi are a largely under-researched, under-appreciated group of organisms. They are neither a plant nor an animal, but a whole kingdom to themselves. My project will be on the different types of flowering fungi found in Payamino. It will be impossible to do an all-inclusive biodiversity survey as a lot of fungal species are microscopic and I just don’t have the equipment to find them, so the project will be limited to fungi I can see with my eyes. There has been absolutely zero research into fungi biodiversity here, so I’m in unchartered territory and hopefully my research will be valuable to the scientific community. Once I’ve collected data on each fungi I find, I will get in touch with a fungi specialist either in Quito or the UK who can help me identify each species. Hopefully I’ll develop a comprehensive list of species found in this area. My interest in fungi started to develop in first year of Uni when I came to appreciate how diverse, interesting and spectacular they can be. For example, did you know that some species of fungi create their own jets of air in order to spread their spores further; some species are carnivorous, capable of punching holes in the cell walls of passing nematode worms and insects for food; and some have even teamed up with plants they live on and kill the insects for them then feed them the corpses. I started to see them as the research underdog of the natural world, and love the idea of contributing to this hugely unfinished puzzle piece of nature.

My second research project is quite close to my heart. I’ve always been interested in alternative medicine and how they practice medicine in different parts of the world, inspired by my own battle with illness, and had the idea of looking into medicine used in the indigenous communities here before I even applied for the placement. When I arrived, I found a book on the book shelf entitled ‘Plantas de Medicinales en Payamino’. I’m sure you can crack that Spanish on your own. The book was a catalogue of all the different plants used medicinally by the Kichua community, what they’re used for and how they’re prepared. I got in touch with the author of the book, Dr Brian Doyle – a researcher in the States, asking if there was any further research he wanted to do here, and if not, whether his research bought up some interesting questions that I could research myself. He replied with 3 large bullet points, each detailing a possible research area I could pursue, and said he was planning on coming back to Payamino next year to continue his research. This was the best possible news I could have hoped for. Bullet point number 1 turned out to be not so relevant after chatting with Javier who knows the area and communities really well. Bullet point number 2 was simply monitoring all the plant species year round; collecting samples for the National Herbarium in Quito and collecting data and pictures about the life cycle of each plant. Bullet point number 3 was by far the most interesting and challenging suggestion. Brian had recently published a paper that analysed the distribution of knowledge about traditional medicine across the community near the station. His suggestion was that I do the same thing, with improvements and a few alterations, in a few other indigenous communities, and use the data to compare knowledge between communities. Imagine: travelling to various indigenous communities in the rainforest, staying for a week or so and in that time surveying a random sample of the population using images of plants and a basic questionnaire. Queue huge excitement and the stomach-dropping realisation that I’m going to have to be near fluent in Spanish to pull this off. So at the moment I am doing my best to learn Spanish, with a general plan to do this field work next Easter.

So my plan is to get a chunk of the Fungi project done by Christmas and send over the data to a specialist to see what results I get; and learn Spanish rapido. There’s only so far you can get with audio-tapes, books and Duolingo, so Heather and I spent an intense week in el Coca having Spanish lessons with an Ecuadorian-but-lived-in-Norway-for-18-years English teacher, Fernando, doing 4 hours of lessons a day. It was a pretty hard week but we learnt a lot. On the Friday, we went to a bar (Papa Dance, a salsa bar on the river) with Fernando and met some of his other students learning English and found we could actually have a simple conversation and swap basic information about our lives. It was a triumphant moment.

The pace of life is still quite slow here as we travel to and from various cities on a weekly basis to get all the relevant documentation needed for our contracts with UEA and our Ecuadorian work visa, and as we adjust to the living conditions in the Rainforest. We’ve only been here a month but it already feels like a lifetime. This little clearing on the bank of el Rio Payamino has become our home and we love it. We both have high hopes for our research here and can’t wait to see our ideas and plans come to fruition. Let’s hope that in a year’s time, Heather and I can look back at the blog post and have succeeded in meeting our aims. Buena suerte a nosotros. Good luck to us.