Monday, August 18, 2014

Abigail Collingwood: 5/26-5/31

This week was a really exciting one at Jatun Sacha! On Monday, we went birdwatching. We had to take pictures of all the birds that we saw to catalog them. When the reserve was founded a couple years back, it was overridden with mora, so Cesar wanted to see what new species are settling in now that the mora is being cleared. Our group couldn't find many birds, but it was still nice to walk around in the forest for a while!

On Thursday, we were going to play in the volunteer soccer tournament, so we started practicing Tuesday. Every three years all the volunteer groups on the island get together and have a big soccer tournament, so it was a rather big deal. We spent a lot of time this week strategizing and practicing. It was fun to take a break from work and play some sports. Soccer is the biggest sport in Ecuador, so it was cool to be able to partake in a little of it during my trip. We came second in the tournament, by the way:)

On Wednesday, my friend Julia and I were assigned a special task: to plant the tomatoes! We had to plant 250 little tomatoes in plastic cups so they could grow and later be transferred down to the bigger garden. It was really nice to be able to work on a project from start to finish and be able to look back on all the work I did. When we work in the larger garden it's usually as a big group, so it's hard to see what my individual contribution was. With these tomato plants, I could, and it was really rewarding.

1 comment:

  1. Abigail,

    I have heard about the Mora plant. Did you make quite a bit of progress wiping it out? Invasive plants/species wreak havoc on the stability of the environment.

    Good work in the soccer tournament! Ti's nice that you were there during the year the tournament took place. Did you get to eat your tomatoes? It's nice when you see the fruits of your labor :)

    Best,
    Tammy

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