Podocarpus National Park

5/22/2011
Today started off kind of weird. We started later and the bus was late picking up Eric and I. We got on and 2 of our fellow students were M.I.A. with some sort of stomach bug (we hypothesize it was the salads they ate the night before but that's what they get for being vegetarians haha) which really sucked. We went to Podocarpus National Park which if your studying ecology/biology in Ecuador is a huge deal because it is one of 5 National Parks that has been created and protected fairly well. They even stopped a road being developed into the park to preserve the biodiversity and to save some of the plants that the University (UTPL-where im at) is studying for the plants properties in possible cures for cancer and diabetes. We started off on a 5km loop (about 3.1 miles) and were taking our tim enjoying the cloud forest we were in and taking pictures along the way...the elevation also had something to do with going slower because we were at about 3500m (11,000ft) and hiking some steep terrain. Thats when the stomach bug took it's third vegetarian victim! She wasn't feeling well and the elevation wasn't helping so we turned around and headed back for the trail head for her sake. So we left her there at the trailhead and took off on a much shorter route so that we could enjoy some views of loja and learn some more plants and get into some actual paramo ecosystem (high elevation neotropical tundra). It was beautiful check out my photos at http://www.photobucket.com/lostintheparamo and see the panoramic view that we had on the trail Mirador! So we cut the day short and ended it after eating lunch from the view point and headed back to Loja to relax.

It was actually really nice to get back into loja by 2:30 we were able to relax a little bit. Eric and I decided to kind of adventure around town and see if we could find the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean so we could watch the 4th one in theatres. We actually ended up finding a great video store pirates 1-4, Battle: LA and many many more movies! It was awesome! But then we went to go watch our pirates movie and Antonio (One of the girls' host "brother") advised us to see how the quality was on pirates 4 and it was a russian version that was in spanish! But all the other movies were find and we watched pirates 3, and attempted to go to the movie theatre but Pirates 4 was sold out so we will attempt to go tomorrow night!


 Hope that's enough information about that day make sure to check out the sweet pics!