Posts from — August 2008

“It’s global warming.”

Until that moment, our native guide at Cotopaxi National Park had only spoken to us in spanish.  But she had learned enough english to point out the environmental threat to Ecuador’s second highest peak.

Pictures in the national park’s museum clearly showed how far the snows had receded over the past thirty years.

On the day we visited, mountain bikers began their descent of the mountain from a point covered by snow just a few decades ago.

But the snow isn’t the only thing to have disappeared from Cotopaxi National Park.

Twenty years ago, orange-bellied Atelopus frogs were a common sight around Laguna Limpiopungo, near the base of Cotopaxi.  Today they are nearly gone.

Laguna Limiopungo

Scientists have offered several theories to explain the disappearance of the frogs, including a degeneration in air quality and an increase in UV-light levels.

But it was a 2006 study by Nature that largely solved the riddle.  It showed that a fungus was wiping out the frogs – and that the fungus was thriving because of global warming.

I doubt our native guide read Nature, but she knew what was threatening her livelihood – and one of the best hiking and trekking destinations in the world.

With her limited english, I couldn’t tell if what she said next was a question about the climate or the condition: “How does it change?”

A Day In Pictures
Otavalo Day Trip

On Saturday we took a day trip north of Quito to the Otavalo Market and surrounding area.

Otavalo has been a crossroads and market town for thousands of years.  Today tourists from around the world visit by the busload to bargain for rugs, sweaters, jewelry, art and local crafts.

While the market has become a bit of tourist show, it has made Otavalenos the wealthiest, most commercially successful indigenas (indigenous people) in Ecuador.

As we traveled into Ecuador’s northern highlands, the views were spectacular.

The market lived up to advance billing: colorful, vibrant, offering most every product imaginable.

But the Otavalenos were more interesting than anything offered for sale.

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