GALAPAGOS/ECUADOR RAINFOREST TRIP REPORT
SECURITY AND EQUIPMENT - before leaving, I made a list of all
equipment in both English and Spanish and presented it to security
and customs at each point. The equipment was broken down into its
constituent parts and hand-carried in a small (8"x 10"x 16" or 3.2cm
x 4cm x 6.4cm) in size. That included an M-S system with tripod,
preamp, Rykote windscreen, batteries, 10m of cable; a pair of ECM55s,
a hydrophone (w/ 10m cable) and miscellaneous connectors and wires
and 12 DAT tapes. Result: not a single question or problem at any
point in the trip.
GALAPAGOS - Week 1. Wonderful but frustrating. The Ecuador National
Park regulations specifies that every journey to any of the islands
requires a licensed guide and that the trail markers are sacred. One
is not allowed to leave the marked path. Since there are about 75,000
visitors/year, none of whom are allowed to camp or visit sites
unattended, they are hauled to each island by boats pulsed on
schedule to arrive at every site. Visitors are then ferried to a
beach or landing site (reminded me of the Normandy D-Day landing) and
pulsed along the marked trails to see whatever can be seen. And
there's lots to be seen but it's obviously difficult to record with
so many folks clicking cameras and exclaiming at the wonders of a
blue-footed booby or albatross or tortoise. Kat and I hired our own
private guide to help mitigate the situation (who knows when we'd
have a chance to return) and we were able to get away from the
madding crowds at least for short (20 min) periods of time now and
then. I also left earlier in the mornings than the visitors on our
boat (and other boats) so that I had some quiet time to record. We
discovered only too late that we could have got a permit to leave the
trails and wander off (with a guide, of course) had we known in
advance that that was possible. So in 7 days and nights, I got only a
few short soundscapes amounting to a little over 4 hours of material
of reasonable (but usable) quality where normally, I would have
expected to get three times that much or more.
RIO NAPO - Week 2 - is an equatorial rainforest river on the eastern
side of the Andes SE of Quito, Ecuador. A tributary to the Amazon and
part of the Amazon Basin watershed, the Ecuadorian govt has run an
oil pipeline along the river with pumping stations every 10 - 15 km.
Also, the Quechua have been allotted land within former rainforest
reserves, which they now farm. Slash and burn is the manner in which
the forest is tamed and a thick layer of smoke hangs everywhere over
the areas we visited along the river. At dawn, one hears roosters
crowing instead of the four or five species of monkeys that once
inhabited the place. Not one monkey sound was heard in the wild even
though we were there for a week and I walked alone some 6 or 7 km
into the forest late one afternoon with nothing by my recorder and a
hammock. Reason: the mammals have been mostly poached and hunted out
almost to extinction in that area. All ones hears are insects, a few
birds (hunted, as well), and frogs. In two days of old growth forest
hiking, not a single mammal (normally one would expect to see
peccary, capybara, howler and other monkeys, puma, etc.) was seen or
heard where formerly there were many. I did manage to get some
recordings, but the biophony is surely altered and everything sounds
stressed to me.
A old shaman we visited asked one gal in our group (a noted healer)
to do a ceremony for him in exchange for one he did for her. When she
asked what pain he wished to be treated, he pointed to his heart and
said (in Quechua) "My heart hurts."
Bernie Krause
Wild Sanctuary, Inc.
P. O. Box 536
Glen Ellen, California 95442-0536
Tel: (707) 996-6677
Fax: (707) 996-0280
http://www.wildsanctuary.com
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|