Sometimes things dont go to plan

A little bit of text on the past few days to accompany my panorama...

The most exciting discovery of the 4 days we spent at Wayqecha was a really cool waterfall. The second most exciting discovery was 3 frogs inside a bromeliad. I photographed the first one, the second one escaped before we could catch it and the third one was also caught. Anyway, I had long hoped to see a frog inside the bromeliads I was collecting so this was very exciting!!

The main purpose of my trip was to take measurements of photosynthesis of the bromeliads and then to go to the Trocha Union to measure biomass in the 3 plots I havent yet visited. However, things dont always work the way you hope. The photosynthesis machine was not co-operating. Internal battery problems meant the time to take measurements was limited, and the plants were not to happy about being measured, often just giving up on photosynthesis completely. Once the machine is fixed I need to figure out how to persuade the plants to co-operate. The second part of the plan, to go to the Trocha, relied on new permits arriving on time. This of course didnt happen either, so eventually we came back to Cuzco to look for them and re-plan the way ahead.

Since the things I had planned to do didnt happen I had time for some fun activities - mostly hunting for new bromeliads. We walked down a new trail at Wayqecha (Trocha Trogon) and found a nice mountain stream. It was shallow so we wandered up it to find a little waterfall, and down through a canyon to some rapids. Above is 'team bromeliad', my assisstant Guido and my three volunteers, Liz, Payden and Sally.

I also had time to plant out bromeliad seeds in the Wayqecha greenhouse! I hope that these will germinate and grow and then we can use them in experiments to see how well they survive if I transplant them in different locations!