Amazon to the Paramo from Ella Fornari on Vimeo.
Today marks my final day on the mainland of Ecuador. Tomorrow I voyage 600 miles off the coast to the Galapagos islands where I will spend the remainder of the semester. I’ve always lived in big cities in the US and could not be more ready to trade the quick pace of Quito for the small sleepy beach town of San Cristobal island.
Paramo of Papallacta- altitude 4,400m
I really enjoyed spending a month at Universidad San Francisco de Quito’s main campus before heading to the Galapagos campus; being able to talk to students and see all that the university has to offer. Although I’ve been based in Quito for the past month I’ve had amazing opportunities to explore many other areas in Ecuador. My first class, tropical ecology, was easily the most field intensive class I’ve ever taken. In the three weeks of this class I went to the Amazon for a week, Rio Topo Cloud Forest for 3 days, and the paramo of Papallacta for a day. These three locations span a huge range of Ecuadorian environments. In Papallacta it was 8 degrees and blizzarding while in the Amazon it was 90 degrees with 98% humidity.
Ella Fornari
<p><span style="color: rgb(29, 29, 29); font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(237, 237, 237);">Ella Fornari is a biology and media arts double major at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA and hails from Brooklyn, NY. Her interests include but are not limited to zoology, film, digital design, coffee, natural history, photography, scientific media, KenKen puzzles, bicycles, and the third person. She has an encyclopedia-like knowledge of the NYC subway system which will prove useless while she is studying evolution and ecology in the Galapagos Islands</span></p>
