Mindo

So this past weekend I went with my herpetology class on a field trip to a place near-ish to Quito called Mindo. Mindo is known for being an Andean cloud forest, meaning it's a relatively dense tropical type of forest that's found at a high elevation. There's a good bit of biodiversity and lots of clouds.

On Saturday, everyone in my herpetology class woke up bright and early and we all met at a bus station in the North of Quito. The ride to Mindo takes about 2 hours, it took us slightly longer because at one point in the road we came to a complete stop for a while and had to wait. I told my friends it was because there was a moose blocking the road, but it turned out to be a tractor trailer that seemed to have lost its trailer. Along the way, the scenery was gorgeous. The road we were on wound along the side of a mountain that was covered with beautiful exotic plants, such as ginormous ferns, and bright red bromiliads. As we drove closer to Mindo, we went down in elevation and the sky became much cloudier. In some places there was pretty dense fog as well. The town of Mindo itself is a cute little place with several restaurants and hostels. Parts that we'd seen looked relatively prepared for gringos. When we got off the bus, we started walking down a dirt road in the forest. I'm not good a judging distances, but it seemed like it could have been around a mile give or take. Finally we reached our hostel, a very nice little place in the middle of the forest that had stone and wood-walled buildings with thatched roofing. Outside of the check-in building were several humming bird feeders and over 20 humming birds flying around and having drinks.

We spent the day settling in, eating lunch, and getting briefed on the field work we'd be doing that night. We were there to test a hypothesis on variations in biodiversity of frogs in different habitats. We ate dinner and night rolled around. We split into our groups and headed off to our various assigned locations. I was with two other people and our area was a field on the side of a forest that had a creek flowing through it. We spent two hours walking slowly along the edge of the creek looking for frogs in the grass, the creek, and in the foliage of the nearby forest It was raining a little bit and my nose was running, but I had my poncho and rubber boots on, so I was pretty set. My group caught about 14 frogs of different types, including a tree frog and several yellow and black poison dart frogs (they're OK to pick up as long as you wash your hands before eating or touching your face). That night, our teacher identified most of them (they guy's a genius, I'd guess he's in his mid twenties and has already published 10 papers on lizards and amphibians). The next day we gathered in the morning and he showed us preservation techniques. We returned most of the frogs to their original habitats, but he kept a few that he wanted to bring back. First he euthenized them by putting some anesthesia on them for them to absorb through their skin. While they were groggy and unable to jump away, he would put them on some leaves and take pictures of them and let us take pictures too. Then when he was sure they were dead, he would extract a part of them to preserve for future DNA study. From the bigger frog he took the liver, and from the other, smaller frogs, he took one of the muscles from a leg. Then he went on to preserve the rest of the body with a technique that makes them last longer and makes them better for physiological study but damages the DNA. It was really interesting.

Overall it was a great trip, we got to see the cool landscape and plant life of Mindo, as well as catch a bunch of frogs. I know some people who went zip-lining through the forest there, that would be a fun thing to do some time. As always there're photos to be seen. Feel free to drop me a comment. Even if I don't get around to responding to all of them, I still appreciate hearing from you.

Take care everyone!
~Joey