Around the dinner table

I´m finally getting settled here and into the routine here at the bear house. We have such a diverse group this month it makes the dinner conversations so interesting! This month we´ve got volunteers from South Africa/Switzerland, USA, Germany, India, The Netherlands, and France. Talk about interesting stories...it´s been a blast getting to know everyone and here their travel tales, walk with them along the bear tracking trails, and show them around the area. This picture is of us about to have dinner after a long day of hiking where we were able to hear Frida the bear´s collar. And as the person who has to do all the grocery shopping, let me just say that 6 people hiking at altitude every day sure do eat a LOT!

I finally made it to Otavalo to do the food shopping. There was a landslide (again) yesterday that kept me from going in, but today passage was clear and it only took 2.5 hours to get here. It was worth the wait though as the views of the andes from the road are just stunning (they´re up on facebook) and I have to pinch myself in the morning because the snowcapped peak of Cotocachi is just unreal.

It´s been great to be out here hiking everyday and I definitely feel myself getting in shape fast. Some of the trails are litterally 4 hours of just a slow, steady incline up. We stop about every 20 min to get out the radio and listen for the bears (we have 6 collared right now that we are tracking), and then we keep going up. Some trails are all in the sun and others you need to hack at a bit with a machette to make it though...keeps it interesting!

We recently had our dart pistol stollen that we need to tranqualize the trapped bears to put the collar on and this has been quite the blow for the project. At about $2000 a pop and the impossibility of importing items that look like weapons, we have been trying our hardest to track down the theif and get it back. We have until April at the lastest when the maize starts to grow and the bears start entering the fields for snacks. This is the best chance we have throughout the year to catch the bears cause it´s the only time we can deduce where they´ll be: at the corn. So fingers crossed we get that back before then...

The project is amazing and I continuously feel lucky to be a part of it. They really focus on research and the welfare of the bears. You never know when you board the plane quite what you´re getting yourself into, but I managed somehow to get into an incredible project with some of the hardest working people I know. I honestly don´t know when Armando and Sarah sleep. I am looking forward to the upcoming months: hopefully trapping more bears, getting Bubu released, moving forward on the construction of the sanctuary, training volunteers, tracking bears, and enjoying this incredible life in a very rural area of Ecuador. ¡Que chevre es eso!

Bubu the Bear!

For my first month in Ecuador, I´ve sure covered a lot of ground...and icing on the cake was meeting Bubu the Bear on Tuesday. So far my work with the Andean Bear Project (AndeanBear.org) has been incredible. I have spent about a week and a half getting to know the volunteers and our bear house in Pucara. I´ve gotten to travel as a translator to the countryside of San Gabriel to try and track a bear killing cows. And most recently I got to see first hand the amount of work and passion that the project puts into rehabilitating and releasing Bubu (the most adorable Spectacled Bear I´ve ever seen). This rehabilitation work is vital in order to try and enhance the low amounts of genetic diversity of the wild populations of Spectacled Bear...just by releasing even one bear we can strengthen their likelyhood of survival for future generations.

We were on the road by 6 am to make the 5+ hour drive out to hacienda Yanahurco to visit Bubu, who has quite a view overlooking a rolling river, hillsides filled with horses and deer, and occasionally Cotopaxi when it comes out of the clouds. I would love a view like that! The trip was rough in Armando´s car, sloshing through rivers, getting out to pile rocks so we wouldn´t bottom out, and crossing our fingers that we didn´t get stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Once we made it, the ability to be that close to a wild bear was incredible...and even though he is still in a cage (hopefully not for much longer!) you can tell that he is ready to be free. I am so glad I was given the opportunity to have met him before he is released and to spend (a slightly rainy) day photographing him in all his muddy glory. Now I´m ready to head back to the bear house with our new volunteers from Germany, USA, Switzerland, and The Netherlands. I can´t wait to get back out there and track some more bears!!!