Jose's Vacations

My brother and I repairing the nets

I didn't go to anywhere far, and most part of my vacations I spent it here in Quito. But one week I went to visit my mother, she lives in Santo Domingo with her husband. Is more than a year since my mother moved and since I started to live alone with my brother and my dog. 

My mother has a land in Alluriquin a little town half an hour from Santo Domingo, or at least that is what my mom does when goes in car. My mom and her husband sell fish for aquariums, so they have the pools in Alluriquin, and my brother and I used to help collecting the fish, or cleaning and repairing the pools and nets.

Is a dirty job but the place is awesome, there is a river that in summer the stream isn't strong, so I used to swim with my brother and search some animals near the shore, also I love to teach him some biology stuff. Also there is a lot of beautiful insects like mantis, butterflies and beetles with light or metalic colors, other with mimic colorss, so you can see them when you get close. It's an awesome place, magic because of the wild things you can find there, and full of life because every animal there is breeding and being born.

Someone was trying to sleep, a tree frog

The river now is in peace, in winter is a brown strong river

Collecting aerial vegetation, seems easy but to get to the quadrant we had to walk a lot

Then one week before back to classes, I went 3 days to Yanacocha's moor near Guagua Pichincha. I was working as volunteer for an organization that is making a research of global impact in the moor. I went with an ex-student of my school and a friend also of my school, and two girls that where making their thesis with this research.

So we collect aerial vegetation (that means no roots) in 16 quadrants, we take 4 samples of each quadrant, so we were carrying 64 bags with vegetation. Another dirty job, but as reward we had a beautiful view of the mountains, specially Guagua Pichincha. I loved that field trip, I met new people, I was working hard and I was in peace. And this were my vacations.

The crater of the Pichincha, I love this photograph