A Week At The OVT: Day 2

I can't really describe how yesterday went; here are three thousand and some words, instead.

Tungurahua erupting, approximately 8:00am.

The swing at the edge of the world ...

... and the man who owns it.

A week at the OVT

Day 1

I'm living in the middle of nowhere! I have just started a week's work at the OVT (Observatorio del Volcan Tungurahua). This is an observatory belonging to IGEPN exclusively dedicated to monitoring the behaviour of Tungurahua, an active stratovolcano whose name means Throat of Fire in the local Kichwa language. Tungurahua towers over the local landscape; from the window of OVT, 8km south of the village of Patate, I can see it clearly through vertiginous valleys decked with fields and crops.

Location of OVT (blue dot), Volcan Tungurahua and Banos. 

This morning dawned bright, clear, and warm, so I took the opportunity to go for a walk to the end of the road. Tungurahua looked wonderfully peaceful and calm in the still morning air; and when I returned to the main observatory room, the monitoring instruments detected minimal activity.

The monitoring room of IGEPN's Observatorio del Volcan Tungurahua (OVT).

Summit of Tungurahua seen at 7:30am, behind tomates del arbol crops and
trumpet flowers in a local field.

In the early morning, we spent half an hour creating new drums for our seismograph. We have here a seismograph that incorporates sooted drumrolls for monitoring seismic signals; apparently, this method is very rarely used, and the OVT is one of very few still active. Creating a new sooted drum involves wiping the drum clearof charcoal, and then reblackening it over a diesel fire in a little hut.

Creating a new charcoal drum.

In the late morning, the skies became clouded, and we continued to observe minimal activity at the summit of the volcano. The skies cleared in the mid-afternoon, and I saw something incredible - my first active eruption! From OVT we observed minor ash emissions, which manifested as a small column of grey vapour that grew towards the northwest (presumably in the prevailing wind direction). The small emission was monitored by infrasound, seismic and visual instruments (all observable on the large-screen TV monitor) and the sooted drum seismograph. The latter showed a long period of emission tremors that slowly decreased in amplitude; smaller LP events were seen earlier in the day. The eruption occurred at 15:35 local time (20:35 UTC).

Small ash emission, seen at 15:35 local time (20:35 UTC).

Set-up of the OVT monitoring data.

Appearance of a long-period (LP) seismic event on the seismograph.

Throughout the late afternoon, the amplitude of the emission tremor seismic event decreased steadily. In the later evening Tungurahua showed a return to greater activity. A new emission, smaller than that seen at 15:35 local time, occurred at 18:09 local time (23:09 UTC), manifested by a small plume of grey vapour that rose from the volcano and drifted towards the northwest. Wind direction appears not to have changed.

Ash emission at 18:09 local time (23:09 UTC)

Occurrence of emission tremors on seismograph. Seismograph moves from
left to right, with needle drawing grey bands in soot. Compare amplitude
of emission at 15:35 (wide grey band) with amplitude of emission at 18:09
(thinner grey band on right-hand side).

After Cotopaxi, this is the second volcanic plume that I have seen! Very exciting. I hope to see some incandescence tonight; if a small explosion occurs on the summit, and the sky is clear of clouds, we may see a reddish glow emanating from the summit.

White patches of snow appear on the eastern side of Tungurahua's summit.
The convex shape of the summit shows the morphology of the most
recent lava flows from the volcano.

A guide to street food in Quito

At twelve o’clock today, a hurricane passed through our office. Curiously, papers were untouched and laptops unmolested. The only traces that it had been were the recently vacated office chairs – spinning wildly from their new freedom. Everyone had been evacuated safely, and when I walked out onto the street there they were, standing smilingly, in the line for the chiclo stand.

Food in Quito reflects the atmosphere of the city: fast-paced, full-blooded, and minutely colourful. From the moment that you get up, food is there to be celebrated: grab something quick from a colourful fruit stand, or take a while to wake by sitting in a cafe with the characteristic colada morada and a guagua de pan. If you haven't ever started a morning with purple drank and a cheesy crocodile, then you haven't lived well.

Traditional breakfast in Quito, absolutely brilliant.

All the fruits - pina, manzana, platano, chiclo ...

The ultimate meal of the day is lunch, as my co-workers and friends would agree. It's best to eat out, as there are so many different stands to choose from. Do you go for an enormous bowl of the ubiquitous chichlo, and risk not being able to walk upstairs after? This feast of maize kernels, fried plantain, fresh salad, potato and pork is one of the Seven Wonders of Quito. You could choose something from the frito stand: round bolones, or empanadas, fried yucca filled with cheese … all bright yellow and swimming in grease, just how I like it! There are snack stands with approximately five million varieties of candy, all called names like Fiesta and Popi. On the other hand, you can be healthy and load up on a plastic cup of fruit for $1. There’s really something for everyone.

At the park near my house, Parque el Ejido, that proof is in the pudding. Here, vendors almost outnumber the flocks of Quitoans playing and relaxing. Ejido is a playground of Alice-in-Wonderland dimensions. Sand-bags of candyfloss appear to tether a small umbrella'd trolley to the ground. A real-life game of Candy Crush is being played with fruit being stacked and sold from a stand. And the smoke rising from the local kebaberia seems to rival the plume from Cotopaxi.

More like Cotto-paxi, am I right?

What's a dentist's favourite patient? The candyman, he flosses every day!

It's so chilled. Forget lunch al desko or even al Tesco - at Ejido it's all about the great outdoors, grabbing a bite and participating in a peculiar local phenomenon: mobile park comedy. How it starts: you notice a group of bystanders in the distance. As you approach, a small crowd is drawn around a single comedian and gathers itself in. The crowd, drawing gravitational attraction, expands in size; it inhales and exhales like a single lung as passengers of the comedy show arrive and leave. The comedian senses his power; he uses the black hole of his mouth to entice, encourage, the bystanders to follow him. Slowly, this group of tattered souls moves around the circumference of the park, orbiting the central star; and the vendors follow, with their brightly-striped umbrellas and cawing voices.

What a sight! Listening to comedy in another language is rather exhausting, though. My favourite place to go for lunch is on the roundabout connecting Avenida de 12 Octubre and Av. Cristobal Colon. This takes about 15 minutes from my office. On the corner of the two streets, I will find Blanca. She is tiny and wizened, but has lungs big enough to shout one word – chiclo! – over and over, loud enough to compete with the foghorns of trucks whizzing through the roundabout. A portion of maize is $1.25, and she’ll load me up with a bowl bigger than my head. Do I want chicharron? Zanahorias? Salsa?* Whatever I’m not in the mood to add, she’ll ask if I want more of something else. The answer is always yes: here in Quito, more is moreish.

Blanca's chiclo. I would eat this every day if I weren't too lazy to walk here.

*Pork, carrots, sauce.

Quito: the first 48 hours

In a rain-washed city just south of the equator, sparks rise and raindrops fall, from budding skyscrapers and streets that steam in the mist. This is Quito: urgent, curious, frustrated. Construction is incessant. Traffic buzzes and hums: buses speed through humdrum life. People chatter and argue, and everywhere direct their looks and words at me: hola, gringa, muy buenas, chica. On street corners and roundabouts people hunch, frustrated, under umbrellas or in shacks. Their long faces mirror the city's profile on a map: hemmed in to the east and west by 11 of the country's 30 volcanoes.

It's 2800m above sea level, but the streets rise like the sea, in drunken waves, capped by frothing, foamy cloud. Traffic sprays you with puddles as you pass. Occasionally, you'll reach the peak of the waves and stare around you, out of breath as you see the heaving mass of the city - and then you plunge back into another trough of dark avenues.

The steepness of Quito

I expected Quito to be colourful. It is, and it isn't. Pale clouds queue to pass each other between grey skyscrapers. The lower terraces of Guagua Pichincha, the local volcano, are ochre and brown, fringed with silhouettes of black trees. The palette is from recent forest fires, that burned the local hills down and eagerly licked the trees clean of leaves. Luckily they were extinguished. Two days ago, the rain came - and how it came! At 2 o'clock each afternoon, the passing clouds accumulate and the faucet to the sky twists open. I sat in a loud meeting at the university today. We all raised our voices, ignoring the tantrum of rain on the roof. Outside the window, whole buildings dissolved in the mist.

So, no, Quito isn't a riot of colour. The city is painted in small daubs: flowers, language, and people.

The avenues are crowded by flowers. Hibiscus, pink and blood red. Pale yellow trumpet flowers, a foot long. Candles of golden wax appear as votive offerings on greenly trimmed trees. Violent purples and moody blues. Alliums in mauve, their shattered globes larger than my head.

Flamboyant colour in roadside plots.

And the people: all shades, all stages of life.

First, the businessmen. Out of offices on Avenida 12 de Octubre they step, with comically large Bluetooth headsets, yapping into their phones and snapping up the sidewalks. Pale and pressed in grey suits. Down the sidewalk, a world away, squat the vendors: dark, short, and round. The men are burly, the women squat, and all have curious faces tanned and wrinkled like boot leather. Most tell me they're from Quito, and they tend to have a uniform. The woman sport narrow ebony plaits and wail their food prices, sad and shrill, like tattered birds of paradise in old black cardigans with bright shirt-feathers, pink and red, bunching through the neck. In comparison, those from the farms outside of the city wear a different costume: wildly embroidered shawls, dark trilbys. Where I work, you can find another tribe: the students. They are split into two teams. The late teens, who look haughty, and the older students, who look anxious. Apparently it's not uncommon to finish your degree only in your late twenties.

Despite their differences, these tribes all speak a common language. Spanish here is fluid, bright and quick. It isn't dissimilar from the Spanish spoken in Spain, but it's peppered and salted with words from Quechua and other indigenous languages. I'd love to share the vibrant slang they use here - but that's for another blog post!

Mementos

On the floor of my room, nestled among the scraps and stacks of my gear becoming to South America, lies a little stone. Red-and-tan striped, flawlessly polished, and about the size of a conker: this is a red tiger’s eye. It was given to me recently by a friend, to take with me on my travels.

Tiger’s eye*: the name is charismatic, and the description doubly so. The little pebble shines like a spool of silk. Gemstone sites tell me that it ‘stimulates taking action’, gives me ‘courage, self-confidence and strength of will’, and aids ‘kundalini awakening’ (here) – good news! Unlike me, my kundalini will no longer be grumpy and bleary-eyed in the morning. The website goes on to say that my possession of the stone will afford me protection against curses, rise up to the challenge of a rival, etc. The alternative, less esoteric description given by my friend was that it would be a charm for ‘brave and adventurous travel’, which is definitely what I need.

Memories in indelible ink.

What’s the purpose of taking a rock to the Andes? It seems like taking whisky to a Scotsman’s house, or hauling the proverbial coals to Newcastle. It’s actually a mixture of sentimentalism and superstition that means I’m choosing to have the rock take up a tiny bit of space in my backpack.

I’m a scientist and a skeptic. I’m not superstitious – just ask my shaman! – But the thought of leaving the objects in the picture above at home sends a slight shiver down my spine. Imagining the stone nestled in my room among the wreckage of the items I jettisoned, the list of kit that didn’t fit, makes me sweat a little (thank god I packed my wicking T-shirt). I know it’s not practical, but it is personal.

Mementos – little objects to remember loved ones, or a greeting from a minty candy? If the former, there’s a multitude of thoughts I have when I wear the pendant, or hold that little stone in my hand, that make them markedly more valuable than something practical of a similar size, for instance a book of matches.

That stone represents friendship. Gratitude and generosity. A message when I weigh it in my palm: be confident and adventurous in your travels.

The pendant – freedom. Curiosity. The sense of independence and interconnectedness that are gained, paradoxically together, through travel. (Side note – I bought the pendant on a whim in a Thai marketplace. I imagine that it’s very likely that I’ll acquire future mementos in a similar way.)

Letters – love. Future hopes and expectations, and present happiness. A testament to creativity.

Maybe I don’t believe in superstition. I certainly don’t believe that these items will bring me luck, or adventurous travels, by their presence alone. What they actually are is a reminder of the people whom I’ll be missing when I’m out there. I mentioned last post that I’m actually a sporadic communicator. If I carry a piece of my loved ones with me, I’ll be reminded to keep in contact – and to share all the bad and good luck that will inevitably befall me. And if a little pebble inspires me to do that – then hey, I’m happy to say that I believe in lucky charms.

*For any other rock doctors reading, Wikipedia tells me that tiger’s eye is a member of the quartz group, with the stripes created by pseudomorphic replacement of crocidolite by quartz, giving a chatoyancy or ‘cat’s eye’ effect (here). It’s a 5.5 – 6 on the Mohs Scale of Hardness, meaning that it would take on other rocks in a fight and win. So there you go.

Plans and Ideas

Welcome!

(Or, less likely but possible, welcome back.)

Thursday was my last shift at Black Medicine Coffee Company (Here). During the afternoon, my friend and co-worker asked me:

‘When are you off, again?’

I took a little time to respond. I actually know the answer (Monday!), but the fact that most of my colleagues are unsure of my travel plans is a little strange. They can’t still be sleepy – we have literally just had some coffee. Surely I've been pretty communicative with where I’m going? Later, I ask my dad if he knows the institute where I’m working in Ecuador, and he doesn’t, because I haven’t mentioned it. Ah.

Communication has never been my strong point; I derive a lot of romance from reading travel stories from the likes of Peter Pinney, who just got up one day and wandered around Europe and Africa alone. That said, it does seem a little foolish to jet off to the jungles of South America without telling anyone where you are. More to the point, it’s already been done before. My uncle Martyn walked the continent many years back, solo and unaided and often far from family and friends’ communication. I’d like to be just as unconventional as him – and in this case I can be so by actually telling everyone where I’m going! 

I wonder why I haven’t really shared my travel plans before. Is it fear I’m a bit big-headed? I mean, I literally am a bit (52.5 inches, climbing helmets are a nightmare). However, I remember that I’m always interested to hear about other people’s travels and adventures. I think this one of mine is exciting enough to share. Hopefully it’ll inspire some more!

Anyway, on to what I’m actually doing.

Notice the scale and orientation. Once a geologist, always a geologist ;-)

The Plan

1. Landing on Quito on Monday (eek!) for 2 months’ placement with IGEPN, the Geophysical Institute of the National Polytechnic School in Quito (here). Plans for work include Spanish-to-English translation of engineering students’ pre-publication documents, work on a geochemical dataset of rhyolitic caldera systems, and fieldwork based on the Tungurahua volcano near Banos. These plans may have changed since Volcan Cotopaxi exploded in August, possibly the best excuse for a work reschedule I have ever heard in my life!

2. Two months’ travel – Quito, Banos, Tena, Cuenca, Otavalo, los Narices del Diablo, Colombia, etc.

3. Three months’ placement with CIIV, the Centre of Exchange and Information in Volcanology, at the University of Colima in Colima, Jalisco state (here). Work includes: remote sensing and geochemical monitoring of the active Volcan de Colima, assisting Mexican students with their projects, creating and performing my own project, and driving a massive 4x4 up a volcano (yes).

And then, who knows? I haven’t booked a flight back yet, and I hope to see more of Mexico after my placement. (I won’t travel first, because I’m planning to throw myself into the volcano when I arrive. Metaphorically.) I would love to see the Yucatan peninsula, and Cancun; also the Pacific coast, for the longest wave break in the world. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I hope to keep in touch with the people that got me there.

Over the Shoulder

Return to el Teide (Part 1)

It has been a month since I returned from Tenerife, and el Teide, on what was my third visit. As I expected it to, visiting the arid caldera and the volcano provided me with a lot of inspiration. The landscape is so imposing that it calls to be photographed, and I was lucky enough to be able to summit el Teide on foot in time to see the dawn. The latter was an experience I won't soon forget.

In my shelves and on my floor at home I have scattered a cacaphony of photographs, unfinished essays on the volcano walk, shadows of sketches and scraps of stories. I think that there is potential for good writing in there - but, like seeing the volcano, my work definitely requires a revisit. Not that it will actually manage to encapsulate the scale and magnificence of the landscape!

My only finished piece so far is a three-part poem, inspired by a day spent rock-climbing in the Picos de Canada caldera. The background panorama was striking; but during the ascent, with your face pressed to the wall, the beauty of the background was lost in the fear of the moment. At the finish, though, the volcano appeared over the edge of the cliff - and cast a new brightness over the fright you just felt.

Part 1

Allow yourself to imagine this: a playground, bound in rock;
An easy, pleasing read between the lines - or a squeeze, and then a shock.
The playground now is heating up; how you wish you could downclimb
Off the reddened earth, plowed
By pressure and time.
And yet it stands unbowed
By the winds of change
Unlike you - don't allow yourself
That smooth slide off the iron bolt, that swing from an upper bough, No:
Vow to haggle with the untrammelled Earth
Plough it, pound the Fraggel Rock
Climb with power, reach around, send the route, stand your ground.

Part 2

The umbilical rope dangles below
Tethers you to your sister, your home
Let the belayer be laden with a certain doubt - 
Her voice flies loud and it lands flat.
She grows cold in the shade that throws a shallow scowl
A little while longer - and then a smile
Una sonrisa, as someone rises over the brow
Beyond the penultimate bolt
You step up and over the boulder rises - behold! -
The shoulders and head of a bolder Mt. Teide:
Beholden to no-one, beheld in its beauty anew
A magical view
For no-one but you; you know,
The winds of change blow kindly here
The breeze has slowed and stole the fear of flight
Into the great unknown - but wait!
There's still a flight of stairs to go
Down
You must climb; 
A line of dew upon your brow -
Does climbing make you happy now? - 
But listen: take a second, pass the time,
Hear the wind and see the line
Of silver, singed by sun, that writes
'el Teide' on the blue skyline
The hue of hope; and think again
Of when you took the rope and rose - 
and guess what? - you were fine.

Part 3

There's still a little way to go,
Down the straightened narrow line;
And yes your fear is burning bright 
Tigers clawing at your spine.
But you already did it! Ten minutes ago
Risking strife, and limbs entwined
And it was a breeze (to hashtag humblebrag)
So breathe - and go downclimb!

I've considered if this poem would work better spoken aloud.

Above: a view of me at the base of the climbing route that inspired the poem. el Teide is lit up in the background. The route was only graded 4+, but the rock and the surroundings made it feel more imposing!