The countdown starts. I am heading towards a ten day internship, in Tiputini, Ecuador, with a White-Crown Manakin expert Wendy Tori who is also my godmother. We will be going into Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS) located in the Yasuni Biosphere reserve were 10% of all the species in the planet currently inhabit (150 species of frogs, 120 species of reptiles, 600 species of birds, 200 species of mammals,400 species of fish, etc). Only qualified researchers are allowed into TBS; I am really fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to live through such a granting experience.
The time has come for my internship to begin. I arrived at Quito, Ecuador on February 15th. We would be going into TBS the next day because the special boats that take the researchers into the biodiversity station only headed that day. This meant that we had one “free” day before the real adventure began. Why not learn some Ecuatorian culture and visit the city? We decided to go to the Center of the Earth and practice watching birds with our binoculars and at the same time do a little of tourism to get to know the Ecuadorian culture a little better. We got to the Center of the Earth and ten seconds after we got out of the bus, people started to throw water and foam to our whole body. This was due to the “Carnavales” holiday, were people went to the streets to throw water and foam at other people. During the Center of the Earth visit we didn’t really see much but the experience was great and learning about this countries “Carnavales” culture was even better. We would be waking up tomorrow at 6am to go into TBS so we had our last warm water shower for ten days and went to sleep.