Jack Daw

I bet you would like to know that, wouldn't you...
Slightly above 10°C here too.

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Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



Zeitgeist - Corporatocracy 101 (~2hrs)

Zeitgeist - Moving Forward (~2.5hrs)

palmpje

It's getting better but still freezing ! still lots of snow that is not melting

see pictures !



Palms struggling to survive,



My wife struggling to not fall

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Dalmatiansoap

Looks to me that she is more struggling with the snow
Take care of her!

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Seweryn

Palmpje,You should to equip yourself with snow shovel - it might be useful this winter

Here the last remains of snow are melting down. Unfortunately all my gold fish in the garden pond died...

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palmpje

Seweryn; Sorry for the fishes. It seems we will all have some losses with the strong winter we have again!

Snow shovel could be interesting: The thing is that people are here not prepared for snowfall like that. Because we had maybe 10 years a row where it hardly snowed ( max 1 day and very little). People here don't have snow shovels, and no winter tyres. We already had lots of deadly accidents now. We have a service that distributes salt but they were suprised of the weather, and to late with applying it.

We got finally 2 degrees today ! snow is melting

At all I wish a very happy Christmas evening with the family and friends !
Enjoy the evening.

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Every day i get up in the morning I check my plants before even eating breakfast.

Dalmatiansoap

To record this:
the warmest Christmas in continetal Croatia ever with max. of 22C.
Mine highest today was 19 C!

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lorax

Hottest Christmas ever in Ecuador, as well. Max of 48 C on the coast, and about 39 C is my highest.

Sing it with me Ante: "I'm dreaming of a green Christmas!"

Dalmatiansoap

Aunty rulez!

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island cassie

Green here too - because we had 13.3 inches of rain in 4 days including 9.3 inches in the first day!! But it stopped raining just in time for a warm and sunny Christmas - Merry Christmas everyone!

palmpje

Snow is gone !

But meteo is telling us that it will get colder again next week.

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sbl

118 F! I did not know it got that hot anywhere except deserts! Everything must be brown there!

lorax

Surprisingly green. We don't get precipitation, but the area spends a reasonable amount of time inside of clouds - remember that I live around 11,000 feet of altitude. We get our moisture from mist!

mckoinld

Wow Beth when you get high you really get high!

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GOOOO TIGERS

lorax

It's not the highest I've been, Lonie! Ambato is fairly up there, but when I want to relax, I go to the hot springs. This involves a road journey that peaks out at about 15,000 feet and I end up in the springs at Papallacta, which are at about 12,000.

And if I really want to get high, I'll climb Chimborazo. If I summit it, that's 20,700 feet give or take a few. I'm quite blessed, actually - there are only a few countries in the world where I could do this (most of them in Asia), and only the one where I can go to the country's tropical beach after climbing a glacier.

mckoinld

That is amazing. I get alt. sickness just thinking about going that high. I am truly a flat lander. I like living in the nice warm (most of the time ) gulf coast flat lands.

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sbl

It is amazing that it gets that hot there at that altitude. The mountains east of the Mississippi River here are only a little over 6000 ft, yet it is significantly cooler than the flat lands. We get a lot of moisture from dew in the summer, humidity is rarely below 60%.

lorax

Lonie - I get revese altitude sickness when I go to the beach - there's too much oxygen there! On the other hand, living at this rarified height has given me an exceptionally high red blood cell count, which helps me on extended jungle treks - it effectively triples my stamina.

SBL - We are significantly cooler than our flat lands - the Amazon Basin and the Coastal Basin regularly record temps in the mid to high 50's centigrade, exacerbated by high humidity. However, the uniqueness of the fact that the Ecuadorean Andes are situated just about on the equator makes our sunlight much stronger and ensures that we have high temps here as well. The difference for we serranos (highlanders), which robs us of the humidity at high altitudes, is the wind. It literally never stops blowing here in Ambato, and it takes the ambient moisture with it. Above about 11,500 feet, it does suddenly get quite a bit chillier - that's the nominal treeline and there's normally absolutely nothing to interfere with the wind past it. (The exceptions are in the Kiss the Sky pass on the toes of Volcan Antisana - this is a high-altitude forest, and it's cold and moist, and the Llanganates National Park, which is a bamboo forest that is considered such a dangerous place to go for its weather (it is almost permanently clouded and snows without warning) and terrain (quicksand bogs) that nobody really goes there.)

I'm sure this whole area was very different waaaaaay back when it was a Polylepis forest, but it hasn't been that way for thousands of years.

palmpje

This really intriges me. I dream about places where nobody have ever been, where insects and plants live that maybe nobody knows. I don't think there are many places like that left on earth. Humans drift to expand always bring the need to change the landscape, except for these unique places.

So, Lorax, really nobody dears to visit that place? are there people that went and never came back?

Do you know what type of bamboo thrives there?

Greetings.

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lorax

Palmpje, the Llanganates claims about a dozen adventurers, both Ecuadoreans and tourists, every year. They go in, often looking for the fabled Inca treasure that is said to be in there somewhere, and they never come out again, and although rescue teams are mounted, bodies are never found. Others are able to visit the park and survive, normally those who hire very experienced guides and are very selective about the time of year they attempt their visit. Those who have come back, and the rare few who have managed to cross the park, say that it is heartbreakingly beautiful, and that they will never return. I have made short excursions into the cloud-forest portions of the Llanganates, and it is by far one of my favourite places in the country. If you'd like to locate it on a map, it's the cordillera to the east, between the city of Ambato and the cities of Puyo and Tena. The remote interior of the park is one of Ecuador's last remaining untouched Vicuña habitats, as well as one of the only remaining wild Alpaca habitats in the world.

However, there are quite a few other untouched places in this country, that fit your descriptions, and that are relatively less dangerous to visit and explore. (Ecuador's lower Amazon is one such area - lots of it has never been seen by human eyes, or seen only by the tribes that live there.)

The bamboo in the Llanganates is a mixture of Neurolepis species, predominantly N. nana (Flechettes, which have fairly wicked spikes); Chusquea species - C. aperta, an endangered species, is common on the lower slopes; and Guadua species, primarily G. aculeata although on the lower slopes G. angustifolia, our native timber bamboo, starts to take over. Neurolepis and Chusquea, which are cascading runners, are extremely hardy paramo bamboos; Guadua, a clumping bamboo, is more tender and generally found in the cloud forest stages of the park.

This is Neurolepis nana, which I photographed on a trip to the paramo at Guarumal, near Quito.

Dalmatiansoap

Want to keep this recorded here:
It is noon 31.12.2009. and it is more than 17 C on a partly sunny day!

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