In The End
I am sitting sipping coffee on the morning of my last day in Quito. The saga ends... 133 days in Ecuador and a whole load of data. Work in the second community of 'Cascabel 2' went relatively smoothly. The community of 2,000 ha is small compared to the almost 16,000 ha of Verde Sumaco and much closer to the town of Loreto, which is where the markets are. We worked fast and well, managing to finish our sampling in exactly 20 days. The only event was a dog-bit to Nick's leg. Luckily the bite was small and nothing more than scratch but the owners of the dog could not produce a vaccination card, which meant that we had to get Nick to the hospital to get a series of rabies vaccinations. We arrived at the small Health Center of Loreto on the night of that day but got told that we had to go to Coca to get the shots. I had spoken to the Epidemiologist of the province of Orellana a few weeks before about photographing some of the health issues related to Oil pollution as well as HIV and prostitution and called him to confirm that Nick could, in deed, get the shots in Coca. Otherwise we would have had to fly Nick to Quito which would have meant a delay of about a week. Luckily the Hospital in Coca had the vaccines and Nick braved a daily 3hr commute on the back of a truck for 7 days to get his shots (which by the way, go into the stomach). He managed to make it there and back for the sampling and we didn't loose a day. For that I am truly thankful ... "Chapeau". One of the things that struck be about the community of 'Cascabel 2' is that the noise of chainsaws was constant and when I asked how many people owned a chainsaw the answer I got was everybody.
After finishing our stint in 'Cascable 2', we spent a few days in Coca and travelled to Tena where I had been scheduled to give a talk. We spent a few days relaxing in Tena and then headed back to Coca to make our way into the Park. We had arranged to hire a canoe from Verde Sumaco and asked Raul (our incredibly hard working and motivated guide in Verde Sumaco) to come and work with us in the Park. We met as arranged via radio communication (this is a wonderful system - there's a local radio station in Coca which broadcasts to the surrounding area and if you want to send out a message to one of the communities you go to the station, pay $1 and ask them to relay the message - here's the part that is amazing - EVERYBODY in the 100 or so communities living in the area listen to the radio station) to meet in the community of San José de Payamino, where we would head up the river Payamino for a couple of hours and then go up the river Bigay to where the Park is. We had arranged for Eliberto, one of the local residents of Payamino and one of the 12 national park wardens to show us the way. On the way we saw the president of the community and I decided to stop and tell him that we were going to the Park. That was a bad mistake. The president was obviously drunk and didn't like it one bit that we were passing through the territory without permission. Now you might think fair enough it's their land, but here's the deal. First of all; we were on official park business and the community has no jurisdiction over the park - see the Ministry of the Environment. Waterways belong to the state and are thus free to navigate - the illegal part here would be to extract resources without permission - see dynamite fishing. Secondly, we were with Eliberto, one of the Park wardens and a resident of the community; why he had not told anyone we were coming is still a mistery to me. The park had a guard house on the communities territory, built with the agreement of the community and with the purpose of serving as an entry point to that area of the park. The reason for hiring a canoe was that the canoe of the park broke whilst we were in Verde Sumaco, which meant that whilst we where sampling in Verde Sumaco we needed a canoe and knowing that we were also going need a canoe to sample inside the park we decided to arrange current and future use of a canoe whilst we had the chance. I had been quoted $400 for a single trip on a canoe from Coca to Verde Sumaco (which I though was a ridiculous rip off and quite insulting really - a new canoe and a new motor would cost $4000 which would mean that a canoe and motor only had a lifetime of 10 trips). In the end we turned back - a decision which costed me a lot of money in gasoline, waisted food and broken promises to the guides plus the stay in the hotel in Coca, which is not cheap and ended up being a lot longer than I had hoped for. We ended up sorting things out with the people of park, who returned with us to the community to set things straight (I felt a little bit like I had been bullied and had to get my older brother). The important part here is that this could set a precedent, where the park itself needs to ask for permission to pass through the community to enter the park meaning that the community itself gets control of who enters the park and the park itself. In the end we had to hire the people from the community of Payamino to work with us and since we were short of time we had to work more intensely than we had done previously. But we finished sampling and I have to say that I leave Ecuador having fulfilled all the goals I has set out at the beginning of the field season. I am happy and ready to go home.