Ricardo´s

Right after school, I devoted to botany. The truth is that my vacation was a bit strange because it actually spent my time in college, doing some research with my professor of botany. To be honest my career is Beautifull, but it is better if one falls in love for a single area in biology. In my case it is botany.

With Alvaro Perez, who is my teacher, we made some trips around our beautiful country with taxonomic research purposes.

One of my first trips lasted seven days and was with Catalina Quintana, who is studying the dry forests of Ecuador. The purpose of this trip was geotag some Ecuadorian Austro points respectively in the provinces of Azuay and Loja. Catalina is an excellent botanist, who is now doing her doctoral studies in Denmark.

Returning from this trip that lasted from Monday 18 June to Sunday 24 March. I returned to college and I was ready for another trip.

On Tuesday 26 June with Alvaro, we traveled to the Siempre Verde reserve in the province of Imbabura. The reserve is located in the foothills of Mama Cotacachi. There were 7 days with a group of Americans studying the flora. It was actually a beautiful experience. One day before our return to Quito we walked nine hours. On this walk we crossed the paramo of Urcusiqui up to the cloud forest. Really a unique experience that I will always remember because we found a new record for the flora of Ecuador. This is the orchid Telipogon sarae.

Once we say goodbye Siempre Verde, we return to Quito on Sunday July first. We rested two days and also with Álvaro, we started our trip to the province of Pastaza, with the purpose of conducting surveys on a plot of 2 hectares, located in the Villano B oil field.

This project takes several years and is in charge of PUCE. Along with Álvaro we went to check out the plot and carry out censuses of 6 000 trees. We were there nine days and from the beginning everything was full of surprises because the only way to get to camp is by helicopter. So it was a unique experience.

In villano we walk a few hours into the jungle. We see wonderful plants in places that never before has  been explored. We return to Quito on Friday 13 saying goodbye to our field trips.

Since then we have not returned to the “wild”, but I devoted entirely to classify and identify plants in the herbarium until the day we went back to the college.

Those were my vacation. Really cool to me.