Out and About: Ecuador Part I

In the spring of 2012 all sorts of things happened. Julia had trouble organizing an internship in Utah. This was not ideal. She ended up eventually securing a spot back home in Michigan. Because of my responsibilities as a graduate student, this meant we wouldn't be together from May to August. Not awesome. As an aside, that sort of arrangement will never happen again, at least not if we have anything to say about it.

A consolation prize was that I had the opportunity to study abroad with my friends in Ecuador in May. This turned out to be pretty much awesome. It was an extraordinary experience. Occasionally I will have a flashback to some crazy adventure and then realize it was one of the many packed into 3.5 weeks in Ecuador. This involved hanging out with a bunch of grad and undergrad students from the U of U. I feel very fortunate. This crowd was up for just about anything and everyone was of the mind that we should take advantage of all the great opportunities for adventure the trip offered. It was easy to explore Ecuador with this wonderful group and look for trouble.

The itinerary was packed. Flew into Quito and quickly hopped in a van and headed to Mindo (worth googling and visiting).

Our hostel in Mindo. 

The porch of our hostel. It was very easy to relax
here. Photo by Brooks.

We observed meetings at an NSF-funded workshop that my advisor helped put together. It was interesting. We sat in on about 6 hours of talks by Ecuadorian and U.S. experts on mercury contamination. There is a lot of mercury contamination in Ecuador from gold mining.

We also got to do some ridiculous tourii activities in Mindo like zip lining. I should mention that two of my colleagues in the geology department are from Ecuador. One of them came along for the trip. She acted as a very patient translator and very helpful guide. This was especially valuable when choosing a company for zip lining. We made sure to go with the guys with the orange shirts. A few weeks later we were reading the news and saw that some tourists died while zip lining in Mindo when the zip line broke. Different company. One more reason to be thankful for our gracious hosts.

View from the zip line. Photo by Brooks.

After a few trips down the line they asked if we wanted to pretend to fly. I jumped at the chance and suddenly found myself at the beginning of the line. Surprisingly no one shared my enthusiasm. They must have understood the Espanol explanation of how we would be connected to the guide.

Getting set up. Photo series by Brooks.

Legs locked.

Taking off. 

Flying through the jungle!

Mindo was awesome and that was just the beginning. We headed back to Quito and flew down to Quenca. Here we met up with our driver, Fernando. He carted us around in a van for the next two weeks and contributed to the fun and laughter. We were lucky to have him as a part of the trip. In general he is a great guy and a very good driver.

Cuenca is a beautiful place. As the Incan empire expanded they conquered the Canari and built an enormous city at/near Cuenca. Eventually the Spanish set up a city as well. Then in 1822 Cuenca declared independence from Spain.

A big statue in Cuenca celebrating independence
from Spain.

We headed south out of Cuenca and into a beautiful canyon. But before getting to the coast, we a had the opportunity to tour the Quimsacocha mining project. The proposed mine site is up at about 12,000 ft on the slopes of a caldera formed by a collapsed volcano, right at the top of a watershed that provides drinking water for thousands of people. Inside the caldera is the paramo, high altitude grassland that all sorts of people are concerned about protecting.

Fernando knew a good place to have lunch. They pulled meat
off the pig and put it on our plates. It was very good.

We first stopped and met with residents of Chumblin. This was interesting. The mining company developing the project, which has since sold their stake in the project, had hired several people to simply live in Chumblin and convince the people that the mine was a good deal. They had helped women start businesses selling clothes, tea, and fruit, all of which were tremendous. But the whole thing seemed like a distraction from the water quality issues that having a mine up there would create.

Chumblin and the surrounding mountains.

We were hosted by the mining company, which was great. It was relatively cold up there and they provided us with hearty work camp food. We slept in the work camp bunkhouse. Three of us used the restroom and had our own pee flow out of the bottom of urinal and onto/around our feet. It is easy to laugh at the sounds someone makes when they realize everything going into the urinal is ending up on the floor. Since we were up towards 11,000 ft, is was windy and around 35 degrees. The bunkhouse was pretty drafty. We piled on 6-10 blankets and hoped for the best when it came to lice and other small things.

The next morning we got a tour of the paramo and the caldera. The paramo has its own distinct type of beauty.

Looking across the caldera. Photo by Brooks.

Beautiful flowers of the paramo. 

After the tour of the proposed mine site, we packed up the van and headed down to the coast. The canyon we followed was carved by the Rio Jubones. It was spectacular. Enormous cliffs had been cut by the river, which was choked with huge boulders and miles of whitewater. I don't know enough to give it a rating but it looked pretty challenging and exhilarating. One part of the canyon was bare rock, resembling pictures I've seen of the Hindu Kush. Then suddenly we were in a jungle filled with life. In 8 short hours we went from shivering up at 11,000 ft under 6 blankets to sweating at 50 ft with the AC running on high. Ecuador is certainly a country of contrast. That night we successfully wandered lost through Machala for an hour until we found our hotel. Don't get lost in Machala, especially if your van has "TURISMO" plastered to the front of it.

After a night on the coast we headed back up into the highlands to start collecting samples. The El Oro province is known for oro. Zaruma and Portovelo are two mining towns. These towns were buzzing as the price of gold was around $1,400/oz while we were there, eventually getting as high as $1,800/oz by the end of the summer. There was a lot of excitement.

Portovelo sits in a valley along the Rio Amarillo and is characterized by poverty. The town relies on the small scale gold processing plants that use mercury amalgamation and cyanide leaching to process gold rich ore. On very small scales, a fellow will fill his truck with what he hopes is rock with lots of gold and bring it to the plant to crush it and run it down a sluice. Then the gold is mixed with mercury and stuck in an oven. The oven bakes off the mercury and what's left is some gold. On a larger scale, trucks dump rock into a crusher and the slurry is mixed with cyanide in huge vats. I don't remember what happens after this but eventually a gold rich slurry is produced that can be further processed somewhere else.

Cyanide barrels were ubiquitous. Thankfully there was no
shortage of trash cans.

All of this is happening about 100 m from a river. Huge volumes of water are required and filled with trace metals like mercury and zinc as well as cyanide. Ideally this water goes to and stays in tailings ponds. However, in Ecuador that is not always the case.

Tailings ponds are not supposed to look like this.

Usually when tailings ponds fill up it is kind of a hassle. There is nowhere to put the wastewater. But not in Ecuador. Sometimes when tailings ponds fill up, they suddenly empty over night. At the processing plants we toured, water was being pumped into a pond from the cyanide sludge process. We noticed a pipe in the middle of the tailings pond. As fast as the water was going into the pond it was draining out into the river. Other issues were related to the overuse of mercury and cyanide during processing.

The confluence of the Rio Calera (left) and Rio Amarillo
(right). One is influenced by mining activities.

Water treatment plants are often located at the top of the watershed, which made for some pleasant views and precarious sampling. Zaruma sits about 1,000 ft above the valley floor. One of our sampling objectives was to see how well water treatment plants did their job. The plant inflow was from surface water. The geology department at the U of U can do a lot of analysis that are not routine. So we had the opportunity to be helpful.

Some rebar separates a grad student from a 50 ft fall. 

Looking down on Zaruma and Portovelo. 

We also sampled the water treatment plant for Portovelo in the mountains on the other side of the valley and then up to a smaller water treatment plant in Salati.

Rio Amarillo and Portovelo from near the Portovelo
water treatment plant.

The Portovelo water treatment plant has a beautiful mascot. A baby ocelot got caught in a fence and they've kept it in a cage.

Glad to be able to see such beauty. Sad to see it stuck in a cage.

The Inca conquered the Canari in Zaruma, just as they did in Cuenca, and took control of the gold mines. Then the Spanish came along For centuries the Spanish mined the mountains near Zaruma. Eventually in the early 1900's western companies set up shop in Zaruma and set up large scale mining operations. We also toured a large scale mine in Zaruma that is pulling ore out of the heart of the mountain. The owners of the mine were kind enough to let us stay in bunks at the camp. This is where the experience became somewhat surreal.

Sodirec appears to be doing a very good job of responsible mining in Zaruma. The tailings ponds we toured were double lined and they processed the water before sending it back to the river, removing toxic trace elements. In the middle of our tour we realized that the owner of the mine was tagging along. The same guy that has body guards sporting hand guns, german shepherds that he trains to protect is family, and a gate with armed guards around his house. And we were hanging out with him.

Our hosts at Sodirec were extraordinarily generous. After the tour of the processing plan, they invited us to tour the mine. We were given brand new pants, shirts, and rubber boots and broken up into two groups. My group went with the head geologist who had been working in the mine for decades and the other group went with the owner of the mine. We proceeded to go on a tour that I don't believe would be allowed anywhere in the United States. We climbed down the same ladders and ropes the workers used and followed the vein of ore down into the second to lowest level of the mine. I don't remember exactly how far we climbed down but I remember the estimate being 600 ft. At that point we had been two hours in the earth and it was pretty hot. Some members of the group asked to head out before we reached the lowest level where they were actively filling trolley cars with ore to bring to the surface.

I think our guide would have shown us every inch of the place. He talked about the ore vein like it was a beloved friend and explained why some tunnels were cut off and others were pushed through. There were faults throughout the mine and they had to determine where the vein had been shifted to. There were huge crystals of fool's gold laying in the tunnels. We crawled out of the tunnels exhausted and exhilarated. The other crew had made it all the way to where they were drilling holes in rock and blasting it out. Some of the students drilled holes themselves. The tour felt similar to watching the Fellowship of the Ring move through the mines of Moria. However in our underground adventure the ceilings were much lower, our guide was a cheerful geologist rather than Gandalf, and orcs were not of great concern. I could certainly identify with the fear of being lost. All I knew is that I needed to go back up to get out but there were way too many left/right decisions on the way back to feel comfortable.

Then spontaneously we were invited up to the owner's home that night to have dinner and socialize. We had fancy food of all all sorts prepared by the chef from our host's favorite restaurant. It was the type of meal that cost more than my monthly rent. What was going on? Then the owner of the mine offered to open up the liquor cabinet and told all of us to have at it. I am not a whiskey connoisseur but I was informed that some prized whiskey with a green label was pulled out as well as something even more high class. Soon most of the crew was pretty drunk. We, the students, were in awe of what had transpired over the last 6 hours.

A few of us desired to go to sleep but others wanted to bask in the glory of this amazing liquor cabinet. The tired group was finally able to arrange a ride back to the bunkhouse but not before we schemed with Fernando to tell the security guards at the gate to give the drunk kids coming down the hill a hard time before letting them in.

I was amazed by the past day. I never expected to find myself in the middle of a mountain wandering around in a mine, then follow it up with the type of party at the type of villa we had just enjoyed. A few hours after drifting off to sleep, the rest of the group kicked the front door off its hinges and started rehashing the day's events through song, dance, and shouting. When they got to the topic of the gate, they realized that it was extremely important to immediately tell the rest of us, half-asleep in the other room behind closed doors, that we must let the guards know we were a part of the group from Utah or else they would be really suspicious and not let us in. So they smashed our door open and let us know. They must have forgotten that we had fallen asleep two hours ago. Undergrads.

Then two nights later another extraordinary party happened again at the mine owners villa, except with less drunkenness. We ate a meal prepared by the same chef except this time it was every type of fancy seafood I have ever heard of. The meal appeared to cost more than I could sell my car for. But what do I know? I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and I am content with Ramen for two meals a day.

What a trip. I can only judge from Hollywood and documentaries, but I felt like I was at the compound a drug lord. I don't remember being in such close quarters with a person who appeared to have the influence and wealth that he had. No offense to our hosts, but the handguns, guard dogs, armed guards, fences, gates, personal chefs, and general opulence made me feel like I was in a movie. And someone was about to make a poorly timed joke and be put to death as an example to us all. Even so, it was still an extraordinarily fun and exciting experience.

After three nights of this extraordinary lifestyle we headed for our next sampling objective. We transitioned from the highlands to the scorching heat and humidity of the jungle and banana plantations. It was still beautiful though.

An estuary to the Pacific near Tenguel. The last sample
location of the trip. Spectacular photo by Brooks.

This time we would sample surface water and groundwater near the coast. We were also able to get our hands on some seafood at a local restaurant to analyze for mercury. Some local fisherman also contributed to the study.

Turns out that fish has a $%^!-ton of mercury in it. Also, we
concluded that swimming in the river is not good for a
person's general health. Photo by Brooks.

There was a general consensus that we should wrap things up and head back to the highlands. Part of the urgency was related to the hotel we stayed at while on the coast. If the walls could talk, whatever innocence I have now would have been lost.

The glory days of the hotel involved managers/executives from mines up in the mountains coming down to the coast with cash in hand and a desire spend it all in one place. The entire property had a tall wall complete with shards of glass embedded in cement on the top. A menacing guard tower sat next to the gate. Though they were no longer in use, there were two pools, a dance floor and bar on the roof, and a large stage and bar in behind the hotel. I got the impression that at this hotel the beer flowed like wine and beautiful women instinctively flocked like the salmon of Capistrano. And cocaine, there was probably cocaine too.

Instead of talking, the walls harbored enormous spiders that were very difficult to squash. Two members of the party encountered especially large spiders in their room as soon as they walked in. Neither were particularly skittish guys as we had plenty of experience with small creeping things in the past two weeks. However their eyes were full of fear and their demeanor vastly altered after their encounters. We all ended up sleeping in one room so we could fight the bugs together. It sounds funny but 7 grown men decided it was best to all be in the same room so we would have better chances of living through the night. Despite the heat, one of the guys traumatized by their mother-of-all-spiders encounter decided to sleep in long sleeves tucked into socks on his hands and feet and a bug net for his head and shoulders. The AC was on as often as the power stayed on in hopes of putting the spiders into hibernation. It worked. Nobody died. This was not a great place to stay, but it added to the surreality of the trip and it was piles of fun.

After 2 days of sampling wells and rivers, we wrapped things up, about 1.5 days early. Most everyone was tired from sampling in the sun all day, exhausted from managing the terrifying sense of imminent death from spider bites, or overwhelmed by the diesel fuel that had been poured all over our rooms to try to kill the sources of our fear.

We said goodbye to Fernando in Santa Rosa and hopped on a plane headed for Quito. Strangely enough, this is where the trip hit high gear. I was about to become even more amazed and in awe of Ecuador's natural beauty over the next 5 days.