I arrived in Ecuador for the first time in January of 1988; needless to say, I was fascinated by both the cultural and biological diversity, and amazed by the kindness and resourcefulness of its people in general. I never forgot the impact the country made on me and returned to volunteer in conservation work in 1997. My plan was to volunteer for three months, one month each in the Amazon, the high Sierra and in a small coastal mountain range, the Mache-Chindúl. It became rather evident that my first project, the Guandera Biological Station located in the high Andean forests and páramo of the Carchi province, could use my help for a longer period, so I decided to stay there for both the second and third months of my volunteership. It was an extremely rewarding experience in many ways: I learned much first-hand about mountain ecology, sustainable agriculture, community relations and more, and I put that knowledge to good use when I became that station’s director in 2001 and for the six years that I continued there. You see, I never left the country after my three months were up, and have been fortunate enough to work in the Galápagos, the coast, the Amazon, in short, all the regions of the country. It’s been an incredible twelve years that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Who knows where your volunteering may lead you?
Christopher James - Director of Educational Programs and Conservation Network Coordinator Finding Species
Estar en Finding Species como voluntario ha sido una de las experiencias más gratificantes que he tenido, no solo por el hecho de trabajar con varios grupos biológicos que se encuentran amenazados, sino también por luchar por su conservación a través de la fotografía, especialmente con la amplia biodiversidad que tiene el Ecuador – Diego Acosta
Internship with Bilsa Biological Reserve, Ecuador By: Jenny Litz
My internship with Bilsa Biological Reserve in Ecuador was an incredible experience, and taught me things that I can apply to various aspects of my life. The lessons I learned during this internship will be important to remember in all of my future endeavors both personally and professionally. I learned things commonly discovered when traveling abroad for the first time including improving my language abilities and adjusting to a different culture and way of daily life. I also gained practice working as a field biologist in the jungle which is important for my biology major and my future career.
I spent ten weeks at the reserve from January until March, 2008, the wet season in Bilsa. When I went to my orientation in Quito, I met up with two other girls also traveling to the reserve. Just getting there is an adventure! After the five dollar, five hour bus ride to the city of Quininde, we took an open passenger truck with large wooden benches filled with locals to La Y de La Laguna. It rained most of the hour and a half trip up to the town where we were able to leave some of our stuff at a small shop. We hiked about a half an hour to La Laguna, where we enjoyed an evening jungle swim, dinner, and conversation with locals and other visitors. In the morning, we returned to La Y to meet Don Amado with the horses and mules to pack us and our stuff into the reserve. During the rainy season, the road is a muddy mess and I was glad to be riding a horse into the reserve, but one of the girls with me was afraid of horses so she walked and was just fine, but covered in mud. After about four hours on the road, we made it to the station house of the Bilsa biological reserve.
My first day at the internship site I participated in an orientation with the other four volunteers who were staying there. Julieta, the volunteer coordinator, told us about the founders of the reserve and its purposes, and some of the people important to the projects. After the orientation and a tour through the station area of the five houses and the medicinal garden, we had lunch. Then, we worked on weeding some of the nursery beds used in the reforestation project. I was also able to make a quick phone call to my mom using the reserve’s cell phone from the volleyball field. The reception wasn’t very good so I got cut off, but it was enough to tell her I made it safely (there is better reception at the village of La Yecita, and the bar is there- a 20min walk on the road). When you use their cell phone you just pay for how ever much time you use and it was not too expensive to call the US, but I didn’t talk long or call often. We explored the station area, and snacked on fresh bananas from the reserve’s plantation. Down a steep stairway (about a 5min walk) is the river shower which has a manmade spout that diverts water to a stream that spills over a flat area of rock where you can shower. It was the most beautiful place I have ever showered, and I felt like I was in a dream showering in the middle of the jungle. Later, we explored the bromeliad and orchid garden. I was lucky to be there during the blooming season, but the flowers don’t remain for long so I had to pay attention and check often to get pictures of them. Time is a strange thing in the world of Bilsa. After one full day on the reserve I already felt like I had been through a lot with the other girls I had traveled with and we were quickly becoming close friends.
After my first day of work, I was feeling like cold showers would not be so bad for the next couple months and I was intrigued and excited by the way of life on the reserve. I got to know some of the Ecuadorians who work there and practiced my Spanish. I found that I was able to understand almost everything that people said when they spoke clearly, but it was hard for me to think of words fast enough to join in conversations, tell stories, or ask complex questions, and it was a difficult position to be in. After work, we frequently spent time in la casa de ping pong, playing until it was too dark to see the ball. We played card games while listening to Don Vicente or Carlos play guitar and sing songs which everyone knew the words to and I learned quickly. When it got dark, the generator was turned on, bringing light to the main room and power to charge ipods, rechargeable batteries, or whatever you want. We were served boiling water just before dinner for tea, coffee, or hot chocolate (which you make by mixing powdered milk with chocolate powder, a technique requiring some practice to get it right). Thanks to Menita and Rosita, the food is always good at Bilsa, but you better like white rice and you will get used to plantains. I made it a rule to try everything I was served, and I’ve never eaten meat so fresh. After dinner, people played guitar and sang and everyone was sat around joining in on percussion instruments. I shared photos from home, and explained them in Spanish which was great practice. The Bilsa staff made me feel comfortable using my Spanish and always helped us improve our language skills. We generally listened to the live music and hung out until about 10 when people started going to bed and the generator was turned off. I enjoyed staying up with a small group using candles for light while we talked, told stories, and watched insects commit suicide in the candle flames. The conversation was all in Spanish so I listened at first, understanding pretty much everything, but unable to think of the words quickly enough to participate or share many of my own stories. It was frustrating for the first few weeks.
My language abilities improved immensely throughout my ten weeks in Bilsa. When I first arrived, I felt like I could understand fairly well when people spoke slowly and clearly, but many times I would be gathering a lot of my information from facial and hand expressions. As time progressed and I was able to make friendships with Ecuadorians and I grew more comfortable with trying to use my Spanish and replying to questions or attempting to tell stories. After one month on the reserve, I left for a few days to take a trip to the beach with one of my American friends and two of my Ecuadorian friends. We spoke only Spanish throughout the entire trip and when I returned to the reserve I had newfound confidence with my abilities to communicate in Spanish which many people on the reserve noticed and commented on right away. My short trip away from the reserve, really strengthened my love of the Spanish language and way of life in Ecuador. Through my final month in Bilsa, I made an effort to learn and use a new word or expression every day which helped me expand my vocabulary rapidly. By the time I left, I was able to participate in any conversation, share all the stories I wanted, and make entire journal entries in Spanish, a goal that I had set for myself before starting my internship.
I achieved various personal and professional goals during my internship. Personally, I gained a great deal of independence traveling alone in a foreign country for the first time and performing the demanding manual labor of the reserve. I learned about personal motivation and work ethic under strenuous work conditions, and how to work with a team and complete difficult projects under these sorts of conditions. Before my trip, I had no real career goals or ideas for the future, and after my time in Bilsa, I discovered that field research would be an excellent occupation for me. I really enjoyed collecting data in the field, and I was able to experience many different facets of field work from ornithology and entomology to phenology and botany (my primary interest) all in the context ecological interactions. This range of experiences allowed me to determine with more certainty that botany is indeed where I want to continue focusing my studies and future work. With my newfound direction for the future, I am now more motivated to graduate and continue school, working toward my masters degree. In fact, this experience gave me an idea of a possible topic for a master’s thesis.
The biggest challenges I experienced included adjusting to life in the middle of the jungle and dealing various difficulties while working in the field. Other than getting used to the tarantulas, cockroaches, and bats in my room, I became accustomed to the way of life quickly, and was very comfortable living on the reserve after my first two days there. It was far more challenging to leave the simple reserve life and return to the busy city full of cars, television, and commercial influence, things that I never missed while living on the reserve. Other challenges included the strenuous work and some of the hikes, but these were always worth it. Some of the projects that we undertook included their own unique challenges. For example one of my main projects was an inventory of trees at three different sites located at varying elevations. The project had been done once ten years ago, and we were updating the information to see how things had grown and changed. In order to get to the highest site at 730m elevation, we had to hike five hours mainly uphill, with all of our gear, and camp for a week. It was the rainy season, so of course it rained, and we had to work though it. All of the trees were tagged ten years ago, but many of the tags were covered with moss, epiphytes, grown into the tree bark, or had disappeared completely. Sometimes, a big tree that had fallen within the last ten years was covering or had knocked down other trees in the study area and new trees were filling the gap. The various difficulties I encountered with my projects, gave me an understanding of the challenges involved in field research and working in the jungle environment.
To become an asset to the reserve, I involved myself with a wide variety of projects that needed to be completed and also interested me, including both short term and long term activities. By occupying my time with different tasks from day to day I was able carryout projects to the best of my ability without loosing interest. The directors, Carlos and Julieta, did an incredible job simply guiding the activities and work being done on the reserve, but they never forced us to do anything we didn’t want to do or weren’t interested in. We were able to choose which trails we wanted to go on for the hikes and which projects we wanted participate in on project days. It was easy to learn about the variety of different projects in progress when I arrived and I was able decide what I wanted to help with during the course my internship. If we had an idea for our own project they were willing to donate all of the knowledge that they had to help create a successful project. I hope to someday return to the Bilsa Biological Reserve to carry out my own project and continue the work that I was introduced to through this incredible internship, an experience that has changed my life goals and view of the world completely.
What I wish I knew before I arrived:
Mail: If someone wants to send you a package, keep it under 2kg or it won’t be delivered, and you will get a letter saying you have to pick it up in Quito. Mail is brought in with others traveling to the reserve from the office. If you want to send letters, bring envelopes from home, and buy stamps in Quito. To send mail you have to send it with someone who will be in a city long enough to visit a post office because there are no mailboxes to send things out.
Boots: Buy your rubber boots in Ecuador, either in Quito or Quininde, they are less expensive and boots from the US just aren’t made for the jungle.
Things to bring:
- Tall socks, like nylon soccer socks because when you wear rubber boots with shorts the rubber can rub against your leg and cause discomfort which socks that come above your boots prevent. Also, they dry faster than regular socks.
- Ipod, it’s nice to listen to your own music in the jungle, and if you have a radio transmitter (there are radios at the reserve) or small battery powered speakers it’s nice to be able to share your music too.
- If you bring anything that runs on batteries, bring rechargeable ones.
- Books, cards, hacky sack, knitting, whatever activities you like to do in your free time.
- Garden gloves
- Headlamp
- Binoculars
- Duct tape
- Waterproof field notebooks, and plenty of pens/pencils
- Neosporin
- Antifungal cream- warm, wet, humid = perfect environment for fungus
- Tea- they have plain black tea, but I brought my own varieties which were nice to have
- Instant cold compresses- no refrigeration and if you get hurt and want ice it’s the only way
- Chocolate/candy- enough to share, but nothing gooey (like starburst, the humidity melts them)
General Advice:
-Read Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rainforests of Central and South America,
By: Adrian Forsyth and Ken Miyata – It has excellent background info about what you will see.
-Pack EVERYTHING in Ziploc bags because it will probably rain on your way to the reserve and you don’t want to arrive with all of your stuff already wet- remember you pack in on mules.
-If you have the option to visit one of the communities do it!