Lago Doings

Lago Agrio reminds me a lot of Tijuana, in the sense that it´s the kind of town that a lot of people pass through, but never really stop to visit, or think about the people who actually live here all the time, as opposed to just move through it. It has very Wild West feel to it... the Colombian bakeries and hoochie clothing shops... the Nightclubs and Discotecas with copyright-violation cartoon characters as their logos... the sun that starts burning my shoulders to a crisp if I ever stand out in it for more than half a minute without sunscreen. I really enjoy the feeling of getting to know the city: knowing where to get the good 1 dollar batidos as big as your head, where to find air conditioned internet cafes, the lonely vegeterian resteraunt. It´s slowly but surely become my favorite place in Ecuador. It just feels warm and good and familiar, while much of Quito still has the big-city feel to me: I much prefer our little loveshack in Guapulo, huddled up against the enormous green hills dotted with eucalptus trees.

We´ve been here since late Tuesday night, involved in the inoculation of mycelium at the different experiment sites. It took all day on Tuesday to drive here, since the bridge near Papallacta was closed until 4pm, making our 5am wake-up time decidedly unnecesarry. Day 1 involved the funnest stuff, namely Brian wading out in the middle of Charapa (one of the oldest contamination sites, at 30-something years old) on a perilous bridge made of thin bamboo sticks and scooping up gooey, sticky oil into a bucket. Then we got to take the oil back to our central base (Donald´s house, who has generously offered his land as space for the project) and do the extremely fun task of pushing oil through a filtering net, in order to get the asphalt and rocks out. After a certain amount of time, the surgeon masks had to be busted out to avoid fume-induced headaches. We all agreed that anyone who wants to own a car should be forced to do a day or two of cleaning up spill sites and dealing with crude or 30-year old oil with their bare hands.

Day 2 involved less sticky oil handslegsclothes and a bit more brute labor. I carried sacks of old sawdust away from the experimental site pits and dumped them under a nearby tree to turn into mulch. We had to be careful not to dig up the layer of petroleum in the pits, as we didn´t want to be dumping oil-contaminated soil on Donald´s land! I reflected that for the past three summers now, my job or volunteer position has always inevitably involved some element of manual labor.

Yesterday we learned the art of making ¨burritos,¨ or a method of wrapping up the mycelium in cardboard to make them especially hungry and happy about growing and hunting for oil. We got to make a human chain while tossing the bags of mycelium (which to me look weirdly reminiscent of crushed, smashed Frosted Flakes) from the storage room into the car and then from the car to the pit site. It was like basketball practice all over again, as I huffed and heaved and tried not to smash Brian´s face as I hurled bag after bag of mycelium at him, trying to keep up with Corey´s tosses.

To celebrate getting done what we worried might be ten days worth of work in a mere three, we went out for some very important business: the drinking of chichi cara, which I am almost certainly spelling wrong. The adjectives used to describe this local beverage throughout the night and the blurry-eyed next morning included ¨bile from the Devil´s steaming entrails,¨ ¨butthole juice,¨ and ¨nasty schtuff.¨ Think aguardiente-flavored paint thinner. After the bar closed, we were invited to go to a salsa club by a group of large black men from Esmeraldas, and we ended up riding in the back of their very nice truck, after being poured more chichicara into plastic cups from one of the men, who carried the liquor around in what looked like a giant empty plastic bottle of cooking oil. Much salsa dancing and dance floor spinning madness ensued, including me frequently getting hit in the back of the head by the tiny beads on the end of the braids of the dreadlocked girl Brian was twirling enthusiastically around, and learning that one of our generous hosts was the owner of the brothel that we drive by every day to get to Donald´s h0use, the one with the cheesy mural with Avril Lavigne on it. This morning Corey asked me, ¨did we get invited to a salsa club by the owner of a brothel last night?¨, and I replied in the affirmative.

Today has been somewhat of a day off (Sunday is the day of rest, after all), as we all nurse our chuchakis (slang for hangover) and drink our cold batidos. This afternoon we stop by at Donald´s house for a final clean up, and then hopefully tomorrow or the day after we may get to go on another Toxic Tour to look for mushrooms at different contaminated sites and hopefully clone them in the little portable laboratory Corey and Chris built (think small greenhouse with plastic walls and tubes for a frame--it rocks, apart from tending to get very hot).

Brian and Corey have big plans for continuing the experiment back in Quito: the phrases they throw around in such conversations often involve ¨open-mouthed jars¨ and ¨small scale.¨ I have some pictures I intend on posting soon, including some of Lago I plan to steal from Jess, as well as some from our brief 6-day vacation in the coast a while back, including the famed Corvina (sea bass) festival, famed mostly in Cojimies, where it takes place.

In other important news, we now may possibly own a kitten, which Brian rescued from underneath a car last night. Brian lay in a puddle while I shone the little flashlight on the stranger´s cellphone I borrowed until I saw her, pulled her tail and Brian grabbed her. She has enormous bat-like ears, wide suspicious eyes and an extremely feral nature. I hope we get to keep her forever and ever.

Mushroom ID project on the Rio Shiripuno in Huaorani Territory

Whether one believes in rebirth

or not

and whether one believes in religion

or not

there isn´t anyone who doesn´t appreciate

kindness and compassion.

Dalai Lamai

I try to live by this quote...

I discovered this quote after the irresponsible and untimely death

of my wonderful, kind and loving younger brother David J Guidry.

He was one of the most honorable and kind people you could ever meet

if you treated him and the people around him with kindness your cup would

overflow. Not in the material sense.

I think about him most everyday and miss him dearly, I´m crying as I write this 4 weeks from his birthday and almost 2 years after that tragic evening.

I know this will probably make my mom cry, but I had to send out some positive energy in his name.

Now for some fungi....

Coprinus dessiminatus
Hygrocybe miniata
A tiny bagre´ I caught. There are billions of fish in in this damn river and you would think I was a fish leper.
Look at his fat catfish(bagre) belly.
The Yasuni sunset


I went to Yasuni National Park to do some mushroom ID stuff and make a poster with some interesting mushrooms you might see on the trails. Julie talked to the owner of Shiripuno lodge about my mushroom geekdom so they paid my basic expenses and gave me room and board for 5 days. Basically I was hanging out in th jungle going along on the tours. The tourists can really wear you out especially when they complain. The French people were nice but they DO NOT BELONG IN THE FOREST. I mean that. I can say that a hot shower is nice though...I don´t really shower that often. I would be considered disgusting by most western standards. I consider most western standards disgusting anyway. I like being stinky.

I can also say I´d like a good game of 1-2 no limit texas hold em.

I´m not a good journalist. I´m better at laking about these things than writing

Ok a poem I guess

When we stand alone
in woody stands far
from any place,
we can wonder why people
are so cruel.

Why must we destroy everything
for a coca cola, a candy bar, a barrel of diesel.
This place in which I stand
only stands due to
The People (The Huaorani) (Wow-ranny)
they refer to us as cannibals
we definately are willing to consome everything
including ourselves.
Do you really own the things you have?

We´ve called them savages
but they knew more about everything
then we know about
anything.

texaco,repsol,mobil, conaco,shell...etc
and all the little unimportant idiots
that run the money machines
go fuck yourselves.

I think I believe in karma.
I´m not a christian
or evangelist.
Let the world and true human culture thrive or.
Death. or.
Death and rebirth. and.
I just can´t believe you burn for eternity for not
believing
in some superstition.
you should believe something because
it helps you spread kindness and
understanding. The age of doctrine and dogma is dead.
The boat will sink.

thank you.





Hairy cucina
Ganoderma Applanatum

Jelly tooth
Pluerotus ostreatus Lepiota species(green spored buddy)

¨if I can´t see dancing elephants then I´m not interested.¨

Well, I´m in Coca all day, and the Internet at the hotel is free, so I´m jealously hogging it from the passive aggressive Frenchman lurking over my shoulder and uploading some photos for folks´ viewing pleasure.
The flooded forest of Cuyabeno.

Little caterpillars.
This was a cool tree. No one seemed to know the name of it, it was just ¨the white tree.¨ It´s white because it´s covered with a kind of fungus. It´s cool because the tree hardly has any leaves on it, so it´s as though the fungus and the tree are in a kind of symbiotic relationship with each other, where the tree benefits from the fungus and vice versa. Wow, my scientific writing is so wonderfully informative and accurate. What´s really cool about the tree is a) it glows in the dark (really! I saw it in Yasuni!) and b) when you rub your fingers against the bark the fungus comes off in a powdery, crumbly form, and apparently you can use it as a deoderant. Mmmm.
Earth tongue fungi (genus xylaria).

This fungus glows in the dark too! Bioluminescent fungi (genus mycena). The first cordyceps we found in Ecuador! Thank you Jessica (I mean, yeeeeeessica, her other alias), for being clever enough to lift up the leaf and spot it.

NOT A REISHI (a cool polypore you make tea out of it and drink for general health and well-being, following the example of the Chinese). Reishi have brown spores. Probably ganoderma applanatum.

Brian deconstructs our homemade laboratory, essentially a giant fishtank, in which exciting things such as cloning take place.
The cicada nest. You know, the bugs that are buried underground for 17 years and go EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE when they come out. Kind of like me very early in the morning.

An earthstar!

Corey doesn´t even know what this shit is.

Orange fuzzy cup happy fungi! i.e. Cucina
There are a lot of monkeys in the jungle.

A lot of pretty sunsets, too.
The yage or ayahuasca vine (the one with three leaves--Corey is mad at me for using this picture because he feels it isn´t correct, as there are three vine species depicted. My attitude is it´s in there suuuuumwhere, the shaman man told me sooooo!). otherwise known as Tori Amos´ favorite beverage. Thank you, yage, for blessing the world with such lovely ditties such as ¨Father Lucifer¨!

Also, this is a bit of a long interruption, but I wanted to cite an interesting Tori Amos quote from an interview concerning her experiences with this plant:

¨The drug which had a big effect on me was ayahuasca. It comes from a vine in the Amazon and you ingest it. You know that stuff they take in The Emerald Forest? It’s like that. I was hanging around with some medicine women and they suggested I try it. I was very lucid, but felt like I was walking around Fantasia, having a conversation with myself. It isn’t like acid. It’s more emotional, more mental. But it can grab you by the balls and just shove you up against the wall. I’ve been in a room with a woman who was literally trying to bite her own arm off. And this lasted for 15 hours. I wasn’t scared - just scared that I’d make a fool of myself. The funny thing was, I kept laughing and laughing, rather than sitting in the corner being intense. Then every so often, I’d say, I’m in a really rough patch. And one of the medicine women would come over and reassure me that everything was going to be alright. But it would keep on getting deeper. In the end, though, it was an educational experience. I learned a lot about myself. I haven’t taken it in a couple of years now. You can only really do it once in a blue moon. But the wild thing is that sometimes I only have to smell something and I’m right back there again, high as a kite. It just happens.

I’m really into moderation. Too much of anything will harm you in the end. Too much sugar. Too much pasta. I’m into drugs as a teaching tool, which is why I only take hallucinogens. I mean, it’s not like I’ve never done cocaine, but, on the whole, if I can’t see dancing elephants then I’m not interested.¨ [Q - May 1995]

Thank you for those wise and informative words, Tori. For more interesting Tori stories on journeys and more, click on the Tori Stories link at yessaid.com.

The Brian! We love the Brian! The mushrooms love the Brian too!

Moths don´t mind cigarette butts. This was at the bridge where we took the canoa into the park, mind you--not the jungle floor!

Pizza Hut takes the concept of salchipapa (french fries and sausages, fried together in the same gloriously sizzling oil) just a little too far.
Corey´s fish face.

Pipe lines running along the road in front of people´s homes, a common Lago Agrio roadside scene.

Back in Quito, we relaxed and recuperated for a few days. Corey, Chris and I went on a dayhike to Ilalo, a nearby mountain in Tumbaco. We originally wanted to go mushroom hunting but the landscape ended up being a bit too dry and arid, very California-like. Still, it was nice.

Danny and Clyde, i.e. Theresa. Danny was an absolute hero with his camera throughout the trip and is responsible for the amazing site chronicling all of our Mycotour mushroom finds, ranging from Cuyabeno to Mindo. Check it out: http://www.flickr.com/groups/mushroomsofecuador/ Rock on, Danny.
The lady who owned this donkey scolded us on our way back down the mountain for not making it all the way to the top. We bowed our heads in altitude-gasping gringo shame and scurried away.

notes from Julie´s Jungle Adventures

I never thought I´d be ringing in a new month in Coca, another dusty, dirty oil town with some important redeeming qualities that sets it slightly above Lago Agrio: there are less Colombian prostitutes here, for example. There are a lot of jungle tour chivas rattling down the unpaved streets in the morning, with giant capital letters proclaiming ¨JUNGAL HABITAD¨ and inexplicable pictures of tigers. I´ve been working as a translator for visiting tour groups and have been in and out of the jungle. The jungle! You just never know where you´re going to end up a guess... write a thesis, graduate... move to the jungle... all in a life´s work, I suppose.









Corey flies in from Quito later this afternoon to accompany me with the next group (some Frenchies) to the lodge, which is right on the border of Yasuni National Park, the largest national park in Ecuador with a lot of unexplored territory. There are two tribes that are considered to be uncontacted here and two more whom no one is sure really exists at all. For a good read and introduction to the history of this area and the Huaorani tribe´s dealings with the oil company, read Joe Kane´s Savages. Anyway, Corey is going to be compiling a basic info sheet about mushroom species in the area to serve as a reference for both the guides and the tour groups. In exchange, hopefully the tour agency will provide some good contacts in terms of hunting down potential donors who´d be happy and enthusiastic about funding some oil-munching oysters in Lago Agrio. Ah, networking.

Here are some photos from the jungle, then:













What is this mushroom? Is it even a mushroom?? It´s a total mystery to me. It smelled very mushroomy. It was also huge by rainforest standards--from the tip of my fingers to the inside of my wrist. The stalk was very thick and white on the inside, very plant-like. Help me out here, smart plant people!

Stalking wildlife at the hotel in Coca with the offensive Huaorani statues.

I´m pretty sure these mushrooms were the same kind our guide Don D´leo pointed out to us in Cuyabeno, the kind that cure earaches.

Amanita!












Going through these photos, I find a lot of pictures of trees. I have to keep stopping and zooming in and wondering what it was about so-and-so tree that I found so interesting that it became imperative at the time for me to take a picture. I was impressed by the roots on this one, I believe.










Abundancia!










Awesome cortçdyceps. I didn´t even notice it was growing out of an ant at first, I thought it was just a speck of dirt. It wasn´t until I went back to the cabins that someone pointed it out to me and I let out a nerdy squeal of delight, and then went around waving it under the tourists´ noises trying to make them see the wonders of the killer zombie mushroom. My token explanation of cordyceps to people is that they´re mushrooms that take over insects´ brain, making them climb really high up in trees, where they die when the mushroom grows out of its body and disperses its spores. Paul Stamets discusses the use of cordyceps as a natural pesticide in every mushroom picker´s favorite book ¨Mycelium Running.¨ There´s a neat montage in the jungle episode of the ¨Planet Earth¨ BBC series, that shows a series of insects dead from a cortycep specific to each respective species. For me, it was really exciting to find cordyceps in the field, having only read or heard about them before. Man, it makes me nervous to think of some crazy people figuring out how to use them as a biological weapon against humans. It would be a scene straight out of a science fiction movie, all of us staggering towards trees and ascending them slowly, fungus stems poking their way out of our skulls.













Another tree in my series of ¨what did I think was so cool about this tree?¨photos. This was a cool tree whose bark peeled off, in order to protect itself from lichens and other unwanted growths.









A poison dart frog.










The conga (bullet) ant whose sting is said to hurt for hours, hence the name. I didn´t get bitten by any, though I did get stung by wasps when the guide accidentally hacked their nest open with the machete. I screamed at the tourists to get out of the way and shamelessly pushed a Swiss girl uphill away from the onslaught, placing my hands over her rear end and giving her a huge shove. They were a type of wasps that local people call ¨los pepsis,¨ because they´re shaped like a pepsi bottle and are kind of brown. However, their stings are not sweet and sugary--rather, they gave me goosebumps of tingly pain all over my body.












There has been surprisingly (to me) few orchids in the jungle, I guess because it´s the dry season.












The tree ferns made me nostalgic for a ¨Land Before Time¨ viewing session.










On the canoa, heading down the Shiripuno river. Getting to the lodge involved a three to four hour bus ride from Coca (depending on whether or not it rained), followed by a four to seven hour canoe ride (depending on the lowness of the river).












The awesome French Canadian guy attempting to ascend the ginormous capoc tree. I loved the Canadians.









The lagoon where we took folks pirana fishing, though people ended up catching mostly sardines.