A snapshot moment

I’ll set the scene: Me (purple, floaty trousers, black and green Hawaiian shirt, slightly tanned, curly hair tied back), lying in my hammock in the “porch” of our “mansion”. It is HOT today, so hot in fact that I got in the “shower” earlier fully clothed just to cool down a bit. The sun isContinue

22-02-2018 Menstruation Magic

This morning, a guide, Javier and myself set out into the forest to set up my project. I need 12 transects (straight lines that I use to mark where I will collect my data) in both primary and secondary forest. We found suitable areas with plenty of space and started to set these up, however,Continue

20-02-2018 Monotony

I want to preface this post with a reality check: We live in the rainforest, in Ecuador, near an Indigenous Community, at a research station, on a river bank, in wooden huts, without a car, without a boat (more importantly), with just each other, in the jungle. Like if you saw our location on aContinue

17-02-2018 The ups and the downs

It’s a quiet day at the station today. Only Heather and I are here so we have complete freedom to do what we like when we like. This freedom only really extends to when we eat, usually with more people at the station mealtimes are regular and we take it in turns to cook eachContinue

How to survive in the Jungle

First of all, I hope that none of you reading this are intending on actually using this blog post as a guide to the jungle. I am not professing to have succeeded at life here, nor am I suggesting I have any great wisdom on the matter. This is more a collection of observations andContinue

Why We’re Here – The Research

For those of you who have got the impression that so far my time in Ecuador has mostly been exploring, lying in a hammock and swimming, you’re wrong. Well, half wrong. Okay, just a little bit wrong, we have been doing a lot of that. But there’s a much more serious side to our lifeContinue

Rainforest frustrations and jungle revelations

So it turns out that the rain forest is actually a fairly harsh environment to live in. Who would have thought? Gone are our misguided delusions of tanning in the sun, swimming laps across the river, being fluent in Spanish within the month and keeping up our physical fitness. These activities have been replaced withContinue

My first week in Ecuador

Did you know that the capital city of Ecuador, Quito, is the ‘highest’ capital city in the world? (but only when Sucre is considered capital of Bolivia, if it’s not then technically La Paz in Bolivia is higher) sitting at 9,350ft (2,850m) above sea level. Altitude sickness is a real danger in Quito, and unfortunatelyContinue

Take Off

I’ve been waiting all summer for moments of inspiration, flashes of thought that creep down into my hands, urging me to write. But they have eluded me. I think writing is an art, for which you need creativity, passion and a purpose. It’s not like maths or science where you apply logic or reason toContinue