arrived … and gone!

I am still arriving, at least it feels like it. But I am doing quite well. On the parties I am no longer standing in the corner with my beer, feeling like being only with strangers, I have now a few people here and some topics I can talk with them about, I even remember some of the names (who knows me knows that this usually takes me some while). Every friday it’s really social in the departement,  at 3.30 we play football which is great fun, I even bought football shoes (me, the worst football player ever! but nobody plays football here so nobody cares how i play). After that it’s wine and cheese time, and an old professor always brings both, and it’s good stuff, they have both good wine and good cheese here. But of course everybody gets drunk soon, because wine is not the right drink after sports. So those evenings often went out to be awesome. Josh, Rose and Cooksy bring their guitars and ukuleles and everybody sings along.

I think my period of locking myself in my room is over, but now I leave Chch. Tomorrow I am going to Tasmania on a Workshop about New Zealand volcanoes (don’t ask me why it’s there, I don’t complain). We will have some extra time there, and we will have Halloween in Sydney!

After that, I have 1 or 2 days in chch before we go to the field around Rotorua. Then we fly down again and go to a conference in Oamaru and go straight back with a field trip to Taupo Volcanic Zone (where all the nice volcanoes are) it’s more a touristic trip, and it will be really nice. We will then stay up there for more field work and arrive back in Chch on the 24th of decembre. I think we will have a second field work in february…

So, finally I will see some of the most beautiful spots of New Zealand.

About this blog: I gave almost up to put in pictures. It is a bit annoying and takes ages, and at some point I put them on Facebook anyway. But because writing is much easier and looks better here, I will still try to write my blog.

Arrived!

After 18h of relaxing flight, I arrived in New Zealand. My Luggage didn’t but it was brought to me in the evening. Ben and Signe picked me up at the airport which was a good feeling, especially because they had to wait a long time after everybody left, because I had to claim my lost luggage. I already had a glance at the country from above: The snowy mountains of the Southern alps, rising above the clouds of the western coast. And the farmland on the planes of Canterbury. Beautiful, almost like in Munich, but with an ocean. Ben (my PhD supervisor) and Signe his Girlfriend gave me a warm welcome to their beautiful home in Sumner, a small suburb south of Christchurch, in a beautiful coast. I stayed at their house for the first week until I found my place. And I ate…. after a month of being really unsure about the food, and a long time without cooking, it was such fun to tryout all those fantastic products they have here, fresh vegetables and high quality meat for really good prices. So much fun to walk through foreign supermarkets and see what there is. Especially when they are as huge as they are here. And I had a lot of vegetables after this meaty month: Silverbeet, Parsnips, Kumara, everything from New Zealand.

When I woke up at Ben & Signe’s place i could see the sun rising (i was still a bit jetlagged) over the beach. And the weather was great with sunshine and no clouds (not anymore by the way) everybody was happy about that because those were the first days of spring.

Next day we took the bus to uni – which is about 50min – the reason why i don’t live in Sumner.  And Ben introduced me to everybody. The department is small, but big enough, the people are really nice, of course some germans (they are everywhere) and americans but also many kiwis. From my window in the office I can see the volcano – Banks Peninsula which is a 6Ma old volcanic complex with several domes and lava flows and craters. Quite nice even though it is not active. By now I am more or less done with all the paperwork for enrolment and so on, but that took most of my time the first few weeks. And of course I am slow in whatever i do because I get distracted or lost. Somehow my orientation is fucked up. It seems to be easy to find your way in this city… the streets are arranged in squares, but somehow i always take the wrong direction. Maybe i am still not used to the southern hemisphere.

L. A.

I left Ecuador after this terrible week, happy to leave and happy to eventually take off to my final destination. I felt really lost, being in between my old and my new home, Ecuador was great: fun, interesting work, my good friends around and a beautiful country. I had all my stuff together ( a lot) for one of the worst connections you can imagine: Quito-Guayaquil-San Jose (Costa Rica)- Guatemala City – L.A.

I arrived in LA in the middle of the night and passed out immediately. I woke up in a room with 4 beautiful girls… unfortunately they left before i regained my consciousness completely. So I woke up and walked down Venice beach… A beautiful beach with a lot of freaks and tourists walking, skating, or dancing… Crazy…

I wasn’t really keen on sightseeing, so i spent my time buying clothes and new Sunglasses, my beloved Wayfarers with prescription glasses have been stolen in the bus in ecuador too and i had to wear contactlenses because my glasses broke…

and a laptop, which took some time because i had troubles with my credit card… and it is really hard to find a telephone in LA, there is wireless reception in the buses and everybody has an iphone, so no way of finding an internet cafe or a telephone…. stupid new world. in the evening my new sunglasses were stolen (Is there a sign on me that says rob me? No!) Luckily it was only 8$. In the evening I was a bit grumpy and drowned myself in expensive beer, which led to a horrible hangover. But I started to see Hollywood before my flight left, so after 1h bus drive almost throwing up, i arrived on this famous street, armed with my new 8$ sunglasses and a gatorade to face LA and my incredible headache. The stars are pretty boring, the most famous one might be the one of Chuck Norris – who cares about Miles Davis?

I had a coffee (fantastic, compared to the ones in Ecuador) and threw up. ON HOLLYWOOD Blvd!

After that I felt better and could enjoy the scenery… Alice Cooper having a burger, Playboy bunnies waiting at a traffic light, Shops for wigs and crazy stuff…

The most fascinating place though was the shopping mall where I bought my computer. After being in Ecuador for a month, this was a shock! A village like in the truman show, with a little cable car and loudspeakers in the trees, that provided the whole thing with Frank Sinatra. Shopping Paradise, or hell… and me in the middle of it, in the apple store.

Time to leave

The bad last week

The first bad sign was that my 1month old camera broke down, the next one was that i felt really bad after we got back to land. This feeling of being on a boat did’t stop, and i had aching limbs and back, like in the beginning of a flu or a cold. So the last night in Galapagos didn’t end up in a nice celebration but in an early sleep. Next morning we went back to quito and straight to banos, 13h of travelling in plane, bus and taxi. When we arrived, nobody was there and we didn’t have a key. We looked in every single club of banos, hot ecuadorian women, but no sign of our mates… damn. We went back, I fell asleep, and the drunken guys woke me up and dragged me into the club, I couldn’t stay there, I felt really miserable.

The next 2 days I wrote my AGU abstract, and we didn’t manage to go back to the field until we left for Quito. In the bus it happened. I got robbed, and the worst: they stole Uli’s Laptop!!! Fuck, two days before I left. I took good care of his computer except for two minutes, but I suppose that is how it works and they were damn good. I am still so mad at me, and so is Uli – sorry again!

The next two days we had to organize stuff, and go to the police – not funny. I still was a bit weak and had a terrible diarrhea from this strange illness. So I was really happy to leave this country and leave all the misery behind (I am still thinking about those stupid two minutes though)

Galapagos

after Cotopaxi, I went back to Quito where the others had a severe party night and had terrible hangovers. On Monday we had an arrangement with the university to give some talks at their weekly seminar. And I thought about going on Chimborazo on tuesday. But when I asked some travel agencies it was around 300$ for one person… ugh. So i asked how much it is to join the others for galapagos . And they gave me a very good price…. Maybe not as cheap as the cheapest boats, but it was a luxury catamaran (it is still really expensive to go there, so i won’t give you a number). So I bought my ticket for galapagos for the next morning.

You leave Quito around 5.30 am and fly about 3 h via Guayaquil (i am flying a lot those days). The flight was nice, we saw Cotopaxi and Chimborazo and it made me proud to be almost at the same altitude as I was 3 days before. Arriving on the islands reminded me a lot of Iceland, there is nothing… the landscape looks so empty… until we got on the bus. Crossing the Island Santa Cruz is stunning, first the vegetation looks like in the desert, then you come to the Highlands where there is always mist and on the other side of the beautiful shieldvolcano (shield volcanoes are really flat, large volcanoes, because they are mainly built by lava flows… like e.g. Mauna loa in Hawaii) there are nice green lanes with cows on it or plantations for bananas, guavas, papayas … We arrived in the town and went to the ship… wow. That is luxury! Everything clean, jacuzzi, sundeck, bar, fantastic rooms with maybe the nicest bathrooms on our whole Ecuador trip. Nice. Really good lunch. The other guests where a really funny mixture. Of course Yan, Marc, Robert Michelle and Carol, who was unfortunately sea sick from the first moment. Then a family from New York, the dad an investment manager, the three kids really into watersports like diving and surfing (not the cheapest sports) and they were talking and discussing all the time in a funny american way (a bit like a mixture between Woody Allen and Larry David). Then a very nice couple from France, Emanuelle and Marie who were both as tall as I am but a little bit in a better shape, because they are or were professional volleyball players. And at last a fresh married couple from Ukraine: Valerian and Olga. She looked like a stunning 16year old model but she was already 21. He looked mostly rich and was 42. On the last day of the trip, they both wore t-shirts with two hearts and “just married” on it and both also the caps with the same on it. Wow.

On the next day we were already in a nice bay. We went on the small boats and saw iguanas, sea lions and amazing birds. The huge pelicans, or two galapagos hawks, only about 5 meters away… wow.

The sea lions are fantastic, lying around on the rough volcanic rocks, always looking for a more relaxed position, they make you wanna sleep immediately. But as soon as they are in the water, they are fast, agile, and playful. Looks like a fantastic live. The iguanas look like little dragons and also don’t give a fuck about people. Sitting on the rocks in the sun the only noise the make is when they blow out the salt from the seaweed from time to time. In the afternoon we went snorkeling… nice but not as nice as in the next day. First we saw a beautiful Pahoehoe flow (Pahoehoe lava is lava that has a ropey surface, when it cooled down, a thin skin was produced on the outside that makes some wrinkles where the speed of the flow is different)

In the following snorkeling trip we saw: 3 white tipped reef sharks, a penguin shooting through the water, sealions and a stingray…. and of course a lot of other nice fishes, like the huge colorful parrotfishes or strange looking sea needles or spotted eels. Wow. In the afternoon we were snorkeling again with the sealions. That is so impressive. They are not really small, and they come so close. Stop in front of you and look at you with their beautiful huge eyes then they bark at you once and swim away. Some male ones were fighting when i was two meters away from them. In the shallow crystal blue water their movements looked like a fantastic choreography whirling up the sand. They are also lying around in the harbor. You have to step over them to get to the bus!!

Fantastic! And all the time there were two humbuck whales in the beautiful bay. We did not snorkel with them, but we saw them from the boat, 3m from us, a mother with a child… amazing.

Some guys came on the boat and sold some spiny lobsters for the dinner which were then prepared by the cook for us…as a little extra to all the meat! So we ate lobster and drank wine on the deck under the stunning stars of the southern hemisphere before we had a whisky and a cigar. Sounds good ey?

When we saw the Flamingos on the last day it reminded me of munich, good old hellabrunn. But somehow it looks more majestic when they are in a natural pond…surrounded by sand dunes that are full of holes from turtles who lay their eggs there.

We went of the boat and had another day in Porto Catcha (how they call it) but unfortunately I felt bad, like I had a flu!

So this was the end of a fantastic trip, I would have loved to go straight to New Zealand then if I had known….!

Maybe the first bad sign was that my camera broke down. The pictures in this entry are from Yan… thank you!

Cotopaxi II

Ok, now I have more time to write… and a lot more to write. But let’s finish Cotopaxi:

Ok we went down in terrible weather, exhausted and frustrated because the fieldwork was stopped and we did’t get much out of it yet. But as soon as we were around Santa Barbara the weather was better, there was air and we felt fantastic again. Back down in the Luxury of the refuge after a soup and a beer, we played cards (500, the canadian Schafkopf) until we went to bed. With a new plan.

The next morning we wanted to take the horses up to Morurcu to have time for working. Yan felt bad in the morning and had to vomit after breakfast, still he went with us. The horses were nice and kind and carried us up. But the weather was horrible as soon as we came close to Morurcu. There is an outcrop on the other side of the valley, which we investigated instead. And it was actually worth it. A nice old volcanic dome (a plug that sits on a volcanic conduit like the cork on a champagne bottle). We worked through it in a good speed and good teamwork. When we reached the other end, it started snowing right after we could enjoy a fantastic view over the valley next to Morurcu.

Really happy we went down and felt like kings: Riding over the  plateau in our western saddles, over us the condors, in front of us the llamas and wild donkeys and in our bags 20 kg of rock samples.

success

Next morning we tried Morurcu again. We took the horses, this day we had a much longer ride ahead, crossing the valley takes at least two hours by feet. So we rode faster. Galloping was fun… and we reached the valley much faster. But the valley is steep, really steep so we had to get off the horses for a bit. We arrived at Morurcu and the weather was not too bad, just a cold storm, no rain, no hail… So we could work. We almost did the whole thing, even though it was freezing cold, but in the end the snow started and we had to get out there. Horses were shivering because they were so cold. So it was really hard to keep them from running. After a few meters Jon fell of his horse because the strap of the saddle broke. Then we went down a really steep hill… wow that was scary, the horse almost fell, but it worked out. As soon as we were around Santa Barbara this enthusiastic feeling came back, warm, a lot of air, and the work is done. So Yan and me started a little race, I just heard him screaming yeah… yippiiee, ….. aaaaah! When I finally stopped my horse, I saw his horse behind me, without yan and without saddle. But he was already on his feet, so I supposed he is ok (He was, except a few bruises). The way back was scary because my horse always wanted to gallop with the -now- free horse, down all those steep hills. But we made it back, safe and happy. In this evening I decided to try the summit next day, Jonathan did not want to join me, because he planned it to make it with sandra some weeks later.

In the night I was already nervous. All the people I met before on the Refuge did not make it up to the summit, and the others I met, who made it, told me it was the most exhausting project of their lives…. And you never know wether you are healthy and the weather stays ok.

The next morning the others left, and I stayed with the nice swiss couple who wanted to try it with me. That was a luck to have them. Monika and Uri, two really experienced mountaineers, travelling half a year through South America.

We went up in the afternoon, me feeling bad. I had a terrible night before and a slight headache the whole day. When we reached the Campo Alto at 4800m I felt much better. The weather also looked much better. The camp was cold, but not as cold as the first days, and not as windy. Short dinner around 6 o’clock and then some hours of sleep, before we had breakfast at 12 and started around 1.20h in the morning. We started in a slow pace, and i felt really good. When we reached the glacier, Segundo(my guide) wanted to leave soon, when the crampons were fixed. So we left some minutes before the others. Now it started. He went up straight the steep hill, not too slow. I thought ugh thats quite fast, we’ll see how long i can go on like this. But it worked. Every now and then we had a two minutes break, strange way of climbing, but that’s how you do it in high altitudes i guess. Whenever Segundo asked me how i felt, I felt good. It was exhausting, but it was ok. We crossed a few crevasses and I thought “ok, he told me it takes between 6 and 8h, we are walking since 2h but i can’t do that 4 more hours” but when i asked him, we already had half of the altitude. When we reached 5500m it started to become a little bit nasty. The firn got softer, the air thinner and the route really steep. really steep. So we had to stop very often. When we crossed a little ash field which was killing me because you slipped away with every step, we stopped and sat down. Segundo told me that we are ten minutes from the summit, but we should wait here for the others because it is more cosy. Wow, after 3h and 50 min. nice. And I could enjoy the garden of Ice flowers around me, glittering in the light of my headlamp. only my feet were awfully cold. The summit was completely in clouds, a petty that I could not even see the crater. But all those icesculptures were amazing. And the feeling of being on a mountain I always wanted to climb, at 5897m altitude. On the way down the sun was up a little bit, and the clouds opened a bit to show us Chimborazo and Illinizas. Beautiful. When we arrived at the base of the glacier, Chispa the (male) dog gave us a really nice welcome.

I was happy to do that, and I am proud, and I think Segundo was pretty impressed, that I did such a good time.

Cotopaxi

Ok. I know. still the pictures are either missing, too big, or upside down… I work on it soon… promised. But first some words about the last week.

The last week was really important for me, because my project, the morurcu outcrop at cotopaxi will be part of my phd thesis and as it is somehow the reason i am here, it was really important to work out well. And it eventually did. But first things first:
Last friday we (Yan, Jon, Robert (the father of yan) Marcel(a friend of Robert) and me) left Baños in the evening. We arrived in Latacunga after a busride with fantastic view of Tungurahua, Chimborazo and Cotopaxi and i felt like i caught a small cold… So we had some strong alcohol in the only opened bar in the sleepy Latacunga. Jon and me tried the specialty of the bar: The severly stoned barkeeper started to mix some alcohol and set it on fire. As soon as the flames got down because the alcohol was combusted, he poured some more into the drink and mixed it by pouring it into another metal jug. After he put in liters of all the different kinds of alcohol he had, he served proudly those two sweet, hot flaming specialties which made you aim for a drinking night immediately… But we were strong and went to bed, a hard week was about to start.
In the next morning we went to the market, bought some cheep watches, dvds of reggaeton and bachata mp3s and watched the people selling all kinds of food. As everywhere in Ecuador, the people selling stuff of the same kind always stay together. No idea why you should sell eggs when there are already four booths only selling eggs, but it looks good on photos. Latacunga is famous for deep fried pig- stuff, mostly pig skin which you can buy grilled everywhere in the country (or at least at the few spots i have seen so far) and deep fried pig heads – also really nice on photographs. But we stayed conservative, we wanted to keep our stomachs save for the mountain.  Eduardo, the owner of the Refugio at the southside of Cotopaxi, a really nice guy fetched us in his wicked Toyota and we left Latacunga.  The inner city is really nice, has some old buildings, is really busy during the day, full of trading, a lot of barbershops and somehow different, less touristy and more lively than Quito and Baños, at least the first impressions. Outside these few blocks though, this town is ugly as fuck. Sorry Latacunga. But barely one painted house, everything really crappy. Maybe because this town has already been destroyed by cotopaxi 3 times since the spanish arrived, the people don´t want to give their houses a nice touch. But it is a city with caracter, there is no doubt. So Eduardo brought us near Cotopaxi which was clear and beautiful this sunny day and we walked up from 3200 to 4000m. W were awaited by a nice meal of salty popcorn, soup and salad in the really nice Refugio del Cara Sur. What a nice place, with a friendly dog, chispa, horses and some tiny huts to sleep in, all at 4000m of altitude. nice…

The night was not too bad and we left the next day  towards campo alto at 4800m. Still fantastic weather, which is an exeption as we learned soon. Campo alto are 3 tents, of which one is rain and windproof. We slept in this one, in another one (the one without door) we ate and in the third one, the guides cooked and slept. The first night was cold and windy but still not horrible. I had a slight headache the next morning, but i did not have to throw up such as Marcel (who still looked pretty good for those circumstances). We left in cloudy and windy weather but not horrible weather for Morurcu, which is 2h and several valleys away. The weather there was awful. Storm and rain let us freeze immediately. I had a headache as soon as i had to hike uphill and we gave up after the 3rd outcrop. The way back was terrible, either hail or rain exhausted us as we were already vulnerable from the altitude. As we arrived at the tents, Jon and me, who did not suffer of the altitude before, lay down in the tent because of our headaches. I was shivering but too lazy or just unable to put of my shoes to get into the sleepingbag. As soon as i managed it I thought i have to vomit, so i had to organize a plastic bag. When i got up for dinner my headache was better (thanks, ibuprofen!) but I felt so cold that i just had a few sips of soup and went back to my sleeping bag.

The next morning i felt better, but the weather was worse. We all were freezing all the time. First because of the snowstorm during breakfast and i think also because of the altitude, which seems to make existance already be exhausting. So we left this horrible place towards the luxurious refugio.

end part one. I go home and try to make the photos smaller. Or I go to a bar and drink mojitos.

Cable Cars and Juices

Today we leave banos to go to cotopaxi. The last 10 days were busy with field work, so I did not find the time to write something. Today we had breakfast again in the market where all the ecuadorians eat. There are several booths with fresh juices. Usually we go for mora or naranjilla with spinach but today we tried the special powerjuice: 2 raw eggs, some strange fruit which looks a bit like liver inside, malt beer, malt extract, milk, naranjilla, and half an avocado… together with those deep fried sweet cheese things this should be the energy we need for cotopaxi.

I wrote on facebook that we had some live threatening experience: On the way to some pyroclastic flows we had to cross two big canyons. The exhausting way went down a steep trail, the dangerous way was some cable car. A rusty self-welded shopping cart hanging with open hooks on two weels on a cable. That looked really scetchy and the locals adviced us not to use it … so we used it and survived. Actually it was not too bad after you entered it over this old ladder which was about to fall apart..

it was fun as you can see on the picture. There will be more photos when we will be back in quito, but for now we leave to coto, tonight at 3200m tomorrow 4000m and then a few days on 4800m altitude. So no connection the next week.

back on track

After 4 of the five of us were sick yesterday, we went to the field again. After a really rainy morning which we spent shopping hammer, gloves and machete, the afternoon was amazing. Mama Tungu stripped naked and we could see the amazing crater rim. And the way back was the best: we had rented bikes brought up with the truck that drove us up, and had a beautiful downhill trip back to baños. Now we are drinking our medicine (Scotch) and are waiting for Jorge, the nice guy from the observatory to show us some pictures of the 2006 eruption.

Baños

So we left quito first by taxi through some quarters where I really don´t want to put one step on the ground (when even ecuadorians have to put electric fences on top of the walls which protect their houses!!) and by bus. This was really nice, not to crowded, no chicken or other animals in the bus, and great views on Cotopaxi and Tungurahua, the two volcanoes we are going to work on.
Baños is a nice small town, surrounded by steep green hills, not far from the amazon. It is only at 1800m so the air is more humid here as in quito. And it is protected by a huge ridge and the virgin of agua santa from the volcano Tungurahua. A beautiful stratovolcano with nice steep flanks 5000m high, and really active. There was a big eruption in 2006 where some houses were destroyed and some people died, which we are going to investigate. The people from the observatory especially pete and patty did a good job, so most towns were evacuated when the pyroclastic flows destroyed them. Those are fast avalanches of hot gas, ash and rocks of up to a few meters, rolling down the hills.
On the first day, we visited the nice observatory, about 13km away from the volcano and got some good advices and an update on mama Tungu´s activity which is really calm the last three weeks, so we will be able to go to the summit next week. Right now we are trying to get an overview of the deposits, first we stopped at some pyroclastic flow, and yesterday we hiked up to the lava flow which was formed right after the main eruption of august 2006. The hike up was nice, but also a bit exhausting, because we had to cross a bit of jungle and a valley, but like a miracle we arrived right at the front of the flow when we came out of the jungle. After that we had pizza and some relaxing in the fantastic thermal baths of baños, right below a waterfall, always crowded with locals and tourists – like in iceland, but a bit warmer outside. The weather though, is not as tropical as you might think, right below the ecuator. It is often rainy and around 15 centigrees. Mama Tungu seems to be pretty shy and is covered with clouds most of the time. Today, we all feel miserable, except ulli, it seems the pizza knocked us out, especially yan is a wreck. Maybe we should stick to our meat diet of the last week: mostly local food and only eggs and meat. We didn´t have a problem with that yet. So field work is postponed to the afternoon, maybe it also stops raining by then.