Quito/Ecuador

 Quito/Ecuador Experience

    Hi guys! I'm Andres Manzano Zambrano and through Universidad de San Francisco de Quito and HPU I got to study abroad in Ecuador. I could not have predicted how amazing my time there would have been through the program. 

Quito

    At the beginning I was bummed to find out that the program was 2 months in Quito and 2 1/2 months in Galapagos. I thought I was gonna spend my entire time in Galapagos, but it turns out that was the best pacing for the program. 

    
How classes work for study abroad students is you only take one class for three weeks 9-12 Monday-Friday, and after those 3 weeks you move on to the next class and in total do 5 classes. For the marine bio track that I took our classes were Marine Techniques 1, Freshwater Ecology, Marine Ecology, Marine Conservation, and Marine Techniques 2. In Quito I took MT1 and Freshwater ecology. Every weekend if we didn't have a field trip with the school me and my friends would travel to different parts of Ecuador and explore the country. USFQ gave us so many tips on how best to travel and info on the best places to explore. The coolest places me and my friends went to was Cotopaxi, A huge dormant Volcano with glaciers and did a huge hike and got to cross out lick a glacier from my bucket list!! Other places we went was like Banos, where there's a bunch of beautiful hikes, white water rafting, and hot springs.

Marine Techniques 1

Marine techniques 1 was an amazing class with the incredible Maggie Brandt, an amazing professor who was so much fun to be with. With her and our great TA Ibon we went to the coastal town called Ayangue, where there is a Marine reserve. We studied the rocky intertidal at several beaches and go to see awesome creatures like lobsters, sea hares, and brittle stars! (I actually got a brittle star tattoo on my foot because of it). We also dove 4 times while we were there to study the subtidal environment as well. On the boat ride to our dive site we saw so many humpback whales jumping and playing around. And while diving I got to see octopus, sea lions, and even my first shark. The hotel we stayed at was so pretty and had a a great pool and we always went to the best restaurants for food. The class was way more about practical application and diving practice which was awesome to experience since most college classes are way more theoretical.

Freshwater Ecology

This class was a bit more on the theoretical side for the first two weeks but then we got to do an incredible field trip to the Amazon rainforest for a week!! We went to the USFQ Tiputini Biodiversity station and got to explore Ecuadors part of the Amazon rainforest. Got to see monkeys, river dolphins, caimans, so many species of birds, snakes, spiders, and bugs and got the blessing to even see a jaguar!! The station even has a canopy tower where you can see the vast stretch of rainforest and hear all the birds singing. It was such a beautiful experience. 

Galapagos

Right after the Amazon we hopped on a plane and headed straight to the Galapagos. We stayed at the island San Cristobal which is overall my favorite island because it's the second most populated island (8,000 people) and has easily accessible beaches to be able to go every day. There me and my friends beached essentially every day and even camped a few times at our favorite beach called Puerto Chino. A heads up, Galapagos has not much to do aside from beach (no movie theatre, no people attractions, not many concerts) so it is handy to have a hobby to be able to pass the time. Me and my friends picked up DnD as a hobby and it was some of the best parts of the trip just playing and laughing together. For our fall break we went island hopping and explored the other Islands. Isabela is by far the prettiest island with long stretch of white sand beaches and super healthy nature to go see as well as penguins and flamingos!

Marine Ecology

For Marine Ecology we once again got Maggie as our professor. We got to dive again but now in the Galapagos and got to see so many sharks. We saw hammerheads, black tips and white tip sharks as well as eagle rays and hundreds of turtles and sea lions. 

Maggie got us an extension of her permits and allowed us to do our own independent research project. It was awesome how much trust she gave to us and allowed us to actually pit our field knowledge into use. My group and I were very passionate about our project and we did research on dominant behavior of damselfish and got some really cool results out of it. 

Marine Conservation

Marine Conservation was a much more theoretical class. Talking about management projects and seeing different stakeholders perspectives about conservation. I enjoyed this class because it made me think of how the rest of society especially business owners view environmental issues and how to make it possible for them to be persuaded. We also got to do some DNA analysis in this class for illegally caught fish to see what fishermen are actually selling on the market which was pretty cool to do.

Marine Techniques 2

Then we head probably my favorite class, Marine Techniques 2. This class was taught by Alex Hearn, one of the most knowledgable shark scientists in the world. He taught us about the tracking methods and catching methods of sharks for research. He was also very honest with us about how the world works and corruption throughout environmental and government institutions and how to combat them to protect the planet. He was very welcoming to conversations and loved debating and hearing out our ideas. To add to that we had SO MUCH field work experience with him. 

We got to watch him handle and tag baby sharks and teach us the tagging techniques in person and why they tag them this way. We also got to dive with him as well and saw so so many sharks. Including Galapagos shark that would swim up to 5 feet close to you and we encountered a school of 40 hammerheads which was such an insane and beautiful thing to experience.  We also ran into a school of over 100 devil rays and saw probably up to a hundred white tip sharks as well. 

End Note

The experience I have had to be able to connect with nature in such intimate ways was the best thing I could've hoped for. I got to accomplish so many things on my bucket list and enjoy the beauties of the Galapagos, Amazon and many more environments in just 4 months. To add to that I had awesome professors who gave us so much practical experience on the field with wild animals and techniques to study them. On the social side I got to make a group of friends that I will know and treasure for the rest of my life and go to explore and adventure with them across a beautiful country. The experience was a treasure and studying abroad was one of the best decisions I've ever made.