Living up in the clouds at Santa Lucia

Just got back from spending an amazing month in the Choco cloud forests of northwestern Ecuador. The Choco bioregion is considered one of the Earth’s Top 10 “hotspots of biodiversity” because it is not only one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet but is also considered one of the most endemic. That is, it has an extraordinarily high number of native plant and animal species that can be found only in that region. Even without knowing this though, I would have been very very impressed by the cloud forest. I have seen a lot of incredible places in my travels, but the Choco cloud forest is by far one of the most beautiful forests I have ever seen in my life.

I spent the first two weeks at Santa Lucía, a community cooperative that manages and maintains 750 hectares of Choco cloud forest. Santa Lucía has quite an interesting history. About 30 years ago, 20 formerly landless campesino families were given land through a land reform act. Santa Lucía was originally formed as an agricultural cooperative and part of the land was cleared to raise cattle and farm naranjilla, tomate de arbol (tree tomato), and mora (blackberry). None of the land up there was very good for farming though, as the soils quickly become depleted of nutrients once the forest was cleared. Because of this, agriculture was never very sustainable; after growing crops in one area for a short time, they would have to move again, clear more forest, and start all over again. Then in 1988, all of the land was suddenly declared part of protected forest, and hunting and further clearing was prohibited. The families in the cooperative then began to look for other, more sustainable alternatives and turned to ecotourism. They constructed a lodge and started receiving tourists in 2001. Since then, they have won several awards for ecotourism and sustainable development. I was particularly drawn to it because it is entirely community-owned and community-run, which is unfortunately quite uncommon in Peru and Ecuador.

When I read on their website that they were also looking for volunteers to help with conservation projects, I quickly signed up to go. As with most of the places I have volunteered at in the past 7 months, it was not exactly as I imagined. But all in all, I really loved it at Santa Lucía. I could have seen myself staying there for much longer, and I would really recommend it for tourists, although maybe not for volunteers…

But first, starting with all the great things about Santa Lucía. The lodge is a 1 hr drive along a dirt road from the closest town (Nanegal) and then a hike up the mountain that takes 1-2 hrs, depending on how fast you walk. It sits on top of a hill at 1800m right in the middle of pristine cloud forest. The forest there definitely lived up to the hype; it is absolutely beautiful. Soft blankets of green mosses cover all the tree trunks and lianas, giant bromeliads with long blade-like leaves and delicate orchids perch high up tree branches, enormous tree ferns more than 30ft tall loom high above the understory vegetation, and bright pink and purple flowers bloom everywhere. I don’t think I have ever seen single leaves as large as some of the understory and epiphytic plants in the cloud forest; a single leaf can measure 3ft X 2ft or even bigger! And everywhere you look, there are plants growing on top of plants growing on top of plants.

In the mornings, it was often clear and sunny, and the views from the lodge were incredible. You could look out from the top of the hill and see miles and miles of dense green forest, bathed partially in thick clouds. In the afternoons, the clouds would descend completely over the forest, drenching everything in a fine mist that would inevitably turn to rain. Visibility would then go to zero; everything was cloaked in fog so thick that it seemed like we were floating in the clouds, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist entirely. In the morning, the fog would then lift like a curtain to reveal endless rolling hills covered in rainforest, sparkling in the sun, looking more lush and fresh than ever before.

The lodge itself is incredible; it is beautifully constructed with panoramic views from all the rooms. It is also impressively eco-friendly, with biodegradable soap in all the showers and composting toilets. In the afternoons when it was cold and drizzling, I would have a nice hot cup of tea and look through field guides or read my book. Santa Lucía definitely takes the prize for the coziest, most comfortable, most beautiful accommodations I have stayed in during the past 7 months.

The work there was also the hardest I have done in the past 7 months. I had looked forward to helping out with reforestation and their orchid and bird monitoring projects. About 80% of the Santa Lucía land is primary forest that has never been cleared, while the remaining 20% is secondary forest and pasture. They are slowly converting some of the cleared pastures back to forest, and I had hoped to help them plant more native trees like cedro (cedar). Some of the volunteer work consisted of helping out in the plant nursery where they raise young cedar trees and maintaining the reforestation areas by weeding around the young cedar trees. But we really spent most days doing trail maintenance and weeding their small sugarcane and banana plantations, which are part of an agro-forestry project. The weeds there are not your typical weeds though; many grew taller than me and in such thick, intractable tangles that it was completely daunting just to look at. Some days we would spend up to 7 hrs hacking our way through endless walls of weeds with a machete or hoe. At the end of the day my back would be aching and my hand would be locked into a fist from wielding a machete all day. On other days, we would work on the trails, using hoes to widen them, move dirt from small landslides along the trails, and fill in giant ditches and holes created by the mules used to bring up supplies and luggage.

I didn’t mind working hard, but the difficult part was that we were not really given any sense of the bigger picture. The “big picture” is more apparent when you are doing something like taking care of young cedar trees, but much less clear when you are busting your ass over weeds that will just grow back in a few months. Even this would have been okay, but I really questioned the value of both the sugarcane and banana plantations. The bananas don’t even grow very well because of the climate and elevation. In fact, I didn’t eat a single banana the whole time I was there, so the banana plantation doesn’t seem very productive at all. The sugarcane is used to make organic brown sugar, but this is not sold by the families in the cooperative; it is merely used at the lodge. Is all this work really worth it, just so rich tourists can dump 4 teaspoons of sugar in their coffee instead of 1? As for the trail maintenance, I would not have minded this either, even though the work was really tough. But I questioned the value of it when we spent hours widening a small section of a trail from its original 3 ft width to 5 ft. When I asked them why we were doing this, they told me it was because many of the birders that visit the lodge as tourists are quite old and may have a difficult time walking along narrower paths. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes at this a bit. I mean, if you are coming to look for birds in pristine, primary cloud forest, shouldn’t you be able to step over the occasional fallen tree trunk or walk along slightly narrower paths? I may also have been more sympathetic if the original path had only been 1 ft wide and crumbling dangerously, but I personally thought the original path was more than adequate. Moreover, after a few days of this kind of work, I had to ask myself, “Am I essentially PAYING to work for tourists richer than myself?”

This realization was quite unsettling. Most of the places I have volunteered charge $10 to $15 a day, which covers 3 meals a day and your accommodation. Since food is not very expensive here though, they definitely make a profit from that contribution. Some people think it’s a bit ridiculous to pay anything to work; that volunteering should mean you get free room and board in exchange for your work. I agree this would be ideal, but as I have discovered along the way, volunteering is often just a slightly different form of tourism, and many of these projects wouldn’t be able to maintain their work without your monetary contribution in addition to your labor. I was okay with paying at a place like Piedras. As they receive so few tourists there, the extra money is needed to pay the annual fee for maintaining their protected forest status and their research projects. In exchange, we were given the opportunity to take part in that research, walk through beautiful Amazon forest and see endangered birds and other really cool animals. At Piedras, we were also given all the afternoons off to read, go on additional hikes, or just laze around. I also really appreciated that Emma also made an effort to include a few extra things that weren’t really a part of research and that she didn’t need to do. One time, for example, she took us out on a night walk to look for nocturnal animals. And even though we sometimes didn’t feel that helpful on mammal transects, Emma has said that her research wouldn’t really be possible without the help of the volunteers (and not just our monetary help). At Tsurakú, in spite of all of Jatun Sacha’s problems, their work definitely would not exist without volunteers’ work and the project managers were very receptive to volunteer’s suggestions and ideas for new projects. I got a very different sense of things at Santa Lucía though. At times, the other volunteers wondered if all the weeding was basically just busywork to give us SOMETHING to do. I don’t really agree with this, but I did question the usefulness of our work and even when it was bearable it wasn’t exactly enjoyable. At least for me, taking part in things like mammal transects is inherently enjoyable because it means you were getting to know the forest at the same time. At Santa Lucía though, we would work all day at the sugar cane plantation until it began to rain in the afternoon, leaving us no free time to go on hikes. I would have found everything more enjoyable if we were given more of a sense of the bigger picture, or if in exchange for our work we were given more free time to actually get to know the forest. But instead, I sometimes felt like I was paying half the price of normal tourists and only getting a very sore back in return.