A Day at the reserve

We like to hit the ground running every morning at the reserve, yet some mornings are admittedly slower than others, sipping hot tea on the porch with a beanie and sweatshirt on while monitoring hummingbirds for an hour. This day in particular, was not a tea sipping morning for us. It started with the weekly Andean Cock of the Rock Lek monitoring. This is a magnificent bird, and one of the coolest ones we have on the reserve, in our opinion. Their display in search of a mate is a daily grind for them, which we have the honor of monitoring and collecting data. Believe me when I say it these birds are for lust, and not love. When a male asserts dominance, he will mate with as many females as they can.

Andean Cock of the Rock

A monitoring day entails waking up at 5am and hiking up the bosque trail with our headlamps to arrive by 5:45. I’ll spare you the long description as you have heard it in past manager’s blogposts, but it is a harrowing experience not knowing if the stick you are stepping on is a snake just hiding in the shadows of the early morning. Once we got to the Lek, we monitored these birds putting on their daily display. We also get cell service at the Lek, of course we have to text our parents/ girlfriends we haven’t talked to in a week.

We continued hiking up the bosque trail machetes in hand, backpacks stocked with hammocks, peanut butter, our fresh reserve grown bananas and last night’s rice stir fry. What can we say? We get hungry up there and we know how to relax, sue us. Food aside, we were clearing the upper part of bosque trail, which had been reclaimed by the jungle. Bosque is our favorite trail since it takes you as deep and as high as possible into the cloud forest at the reserve. Noticing new flora and fauna appear as we hike is also one of the best aspects of the trail. We continued hiking on for about 25 minutes past the lek and encountered our first tree fall. We hacked away with our machetes clearing the small branches and vines first to reach the main log. After, one of us would hack away at the log, until they got tired and would tag in the other to start unleashing whatever anger they had pent up over the last 10 years. Macheting really is great therapy.

On the Bosque trail

We continued for another few hours, losing the trail and finding it again, and taking in the old growth trees and the out of this world bugs that comprise the beautiful Andean cloud forest. Bit by bit we continued clearing away more and more trail. Until we heard a distinct and strangely cute sound in the trees above us. We began to scan canopy above us with our binoculars searching for the perpetrator of the sound. Arthur then proclaimed he saw a monkey! It took Matt a second to decipher the small fuzzy creature about 75 ft above them perched in a tree. We walked the trail keeping our eyes on the creature to find a good viewpoint. As we walked, we saw 2, 3 and eventually 8 monkeys running and jumping across trees! We began watching them in awe, groom and communicate with each other.

Capuchin Monkeys (via phone through binoculars)

We realized these are Ecuadorian capuchin monkeys. They are critically endangered due to habitat loss and hunting. Over 90% of their habitat has been destroyed and places like Reserva las Tangaras are the last frontiers for these magnificent creatures. They are also known to be one of the smartest species of monkey, employing tools like leaves as cups to drink water. However, their behaviors are not very well studied, since they are rare and usually very elusive. We hungout with the monkeys for a while and took a bunch of pictures, as one does when they see an endangered monkey deep in the Ecuadorian cloud forest.

Hammock Break

The next part of the day was not quite as Tranquil. After moving on from watching the monkeys, we came to a sign in the trail that let us know “Ruta no matienen mas alla de aqui” Not until now it isn’t.  It was a bad day to be a treefall blocking what we thought could maybe at some point have been a trail to the top of the ridge.

End of Trail Sign

We spent hours walking, climbing, and crawling up the ridge with our machetes leading the way. Often, we would look down and realize we were standing on fallen branches and logs which were 8 feet in the air and not on the ground. At a certain point anything that remotely resembled a trail was completely gone, and we’d catch ourselves yelling “found it” and start hacking away if we could see the ground at all. Now this was proper bush whacking. It was awesome.

I’d never really considered the accuracy of the term bushwhacking until right now. Because that’s almost exactly what it felt like we spent the rest of that morning doing. Whacking bushes and trees in an upward push to the top of a ridge that seemed to be getting further and further away. Once you were finally birthed out of the bramble at what you originally thought was the top, you’d see that there was a higher point just a bit off, and we wouldn’t settle for second best after coming this far. Maybe that area was a bramble free oasis ringed with Verbena flowers we thought.

When we finally did reach the top, that wasn’t the case, but the view made up for it tenfold. Describing it won’t do it justice, so we’ll just drop a picture of it below. This view combined with last night’s stir fry, well earned, was a match made in heaven.

The top of Bosque