Un Dia Malo en el Campo

So we had a pretty rough field day a few days ago, while scouting for new eucalyptus sites. The goal was simple: drive to new sites using maps and GPS points, verify that they will work for the study, and go on our merry way.

I should have known better...

We drove straight to our first stop - a young eucalyptus forest. Through several emails, I thought I had great communication with a local GIS person, who, as I understood, was assuring me these forests were first generation plantations. This is pretty important, because I want to investigate how vegetation diversity and community composition change through one entire cycle of forest establishment. Which means I want to know what happens in young forests, where grasslands were previously.

As you can tell below, there were branches, logs, and stumps at this site, giving us clues that this site was quite possibly forested before. So, I deleted that one from my list.

The next site we drove to took several attempts. We took a very long, windy, rough road from the first site to an older eucalyptus forest, thinking that would be the best way to go. Needless to say, with very windy roads, several turn-offs, "roads" that are more like cattle paths, and an incomplete map, we made several wrong attempts to this site. When we finally figured out we were going the right way, and literally 3 km away from the site (after driving nearly 20 on horrible roads), we discovered this...

You'll notice here that the truck is parked, and we're wandering around, slightly aimlessly. Here's why...

Yep, the bridge was out. And not just neglected and sketchy, but completely frickin gone. I could almost SEE the field site from there. So, we had the entire drive out to now look forward to.

We went back out and tried one last way in, and got close to where we thought the right place was, when we went through a gate and came out here...

 

The road completely ended into an open meadow. We're now completely dejected and losing hope, but we optimistically drive through the meadow for awhile in the hopes that a road will miraculously appear on the other side. 

Yeah, that didn't happen.

One of the few upsides of the day was having lunch near a small herd of cattle. Does he look Jewish to anyone else?

Oh, and we did finally find the old site. Even that wasn't enough to bring us out of our attitude funk. Only after homemade spinach pasta with creamy pesto sauce, and a really fine tannat wine, were we in a better frame of mind. And the next day was much better...

Mas Animales!

We’ve had several great recent encounters with animal cuteness lately, in the field and around La Corona.

On the way out to a field site the other day, I spotted what looked like a rock, but had a tiny face poking out. We pulled over, grabbed our cameras, and spent some time with this guy. I’m not exactly sure what he was doing near the forest edge, away from the water, but he seemed content to hang out for awhile.

We then saw all of these guys on the way out of the same area – babies, teenagers, and full adults. We of course parked our field truck again, grabbed our cameras, and tried our best to capture them with photos. They were a little shyer than the turtle, and slowly ambled away.

And I of course have to share these…In the stable area where Kike saddled up the horses for our ride the other day, we got to meet a bunch of these fellas. There were two young white short-hair dogs that were super eager for pets, and then there were some of the cutest little guys I’ve seen in awhile, but were really shy around us.

Maybe if we keep going down to the stable, they’ll get acclimated and want more pets. J

Solamente en Uruguay

There are several things I’ve only experienced in Uruguay:

Smorgasbords of meat – this grill only fed 5 people

Weather changing so fast, you can go from 40°C (nearly 100°F) to 9°C (about 48°F) in the span of twelve hours – and from clear sunny skies to thunderstorms in a much shorter amount of time

…and horses that get chased out of front yards…