To the Amazon and Beyond...: To Tiputini

The journey to Tiputini was exciting. Tiputini is the field station that I will be staying at for the next two months. I began by waking up at 4:30 am to be ready to go to the airport by 5:00 am. At the airport I had to pay 9 dollars for my extra 6 kilos of weight gained from my shopping at the artisan market. Then going through the security my bags were asked to be searched, so I had to have one of my team members come over to translate so I could understand. It was very interesting to see all three of us standing over my suitcase. I ended up not being allowed to have wire cutters, even though they were lab equipment and allowed through the USA security. Oh, well. Once through security I found out that our 7:00 am flight had been delayed, and I now had no idea of how long the delay would be. So I took the time to teach my team how to play the card game UNO. We had lots of fun. The flight finally arrived and was ready to leave by 9:15 am. I was lucky enough to get another window seat which allowed me to see the jungle from the air and the multiple rivers winding their way to the ocean.

The flight was really short, almost an hour, to fly over the Andes Mountains to the town of Coca. At Coca I got on a boat to travel down the river Napo. That was fun to see how green the jungle really is. It was also my first time seeing a river larger than the Colorado river. Once two and half hours down river I had to go through a security check point. Between the check point and the Tiputini River the petroleum company does not allow pictures to be taken. After the security point I got onto an open side bus. I had a ride on that for about another two hours. The bus was the one that the indigenous school children use. The ride took me through the jungle past little houses and banana farms to the Tiputini River.

At the Tiputini River I got on a smaller boat, because the Tiputini river is a small river. I really enjoyed going down the Tiputini river. I was able to see the jungle really well. I felt like I was a part of a discovery channel show. I saw a few different kind of birds, some turtles, and the rare fresh water pink dolphins. It was way cool to see the dolphins. The pink dolphins are not as playful as the ocean dolphins. They are really shy. All along the river I saw clouds of butterflies on the shore of the river drinking up the salts. I also noticed that the butterflies loved landing on the very tip of the turtles' noses. After two hours I arrived at the Tiputini station.