We walked a couple of kilometers down a trail to Jim and Mimi's place on the Rio Guaycuyacu. Here I spent the next few days studying the plants in his garden and exploring the surrounding area. Jim and Mimi had lived there many years, cooking on a wood stove and tending to the many tropical fruit trees, which he is best known for, that are growing on his property. You can read much more about their facilities there, with opportunities for student volunteers and visiting scientists at this link.

BILSA BIOLOGICAL STATION
On May 22nd I left Jim West's place on my way to the next stop on my itinerary. As I boarded the Ranchero for the trip back to the main highway, I remembered the white-flowered Costus I had seen on the way there. Despite my bad prior experience with bus drivers, I thought "nothing ventured, nothing gained", so I tried as best I could in my poor Spanish to explain to the driver that I would like us to stop for a few minutes so I could take photos of that plant. When we got close to Pachijal I spotted the plant and I yelled out "Por favor PARE! To my disbelief it actually worked! I stepped out of the bus and took some quick photos then reboarded the open-sided bus before it could start moving again. It was well worth it because the plant turned out to be Costus leucanthus which was not reported in Ecuador but thought to be endemic to Colombia to the north. My objective was to go to the Bilsa Biological Station - a biological station in the Mache-Chindul Ecological Reserve, deep in primary forests of western Ecuador. (NOTE: the biological station is no longer operated by Jatun Sacha, but the this link tells about the reserve there.)

The trip there was an adventure in itself - back on the ranchero to the main highway, then on buses to the town of Quinindé. From there I boarded a Toyota pickup truck with 24 adults and 3 children crowded in the back and hanging on the sides, headed for the community known as the "Y" de Laguna. I was standing in the back facing front as a few of the women were seated on a bench facing me. One of these women was hardly 12 inches from me holding a baby, and opened her blouse to breast feed as I tried to maintain a casual and disinterested look at the scenery passing by. The truck had a flat tire along the way to the "Y" and the passengers had to get off and help lift the truck to change a tire. When we finally arrived after several hours on a bumpy road, I spent the night at a local man's house on a lake near the Y.

The next morning my contact there told me that I would need to buy some rubber boots because the mud was so incredibly thick and deep at Bilsa. To get there, I had to ride on the back of a mule for nearly five hours. At some places, the mule sunk down in the mud to its belly. There is a WordPress blog by Elisa Weiss called "The Road Less Graveled" with a blog entry called "The Journey to Bilsa" that tells in much more details about her travel to Bilsa. It is almost exactly the same as I experienced, except that she started out from Quito.

Finally we made our way to the biological station where I was greeted by John Clark, a botanist who at that time was with the University of Alabama. (He is now associated with Marie Selby Gardens in Sarasota, Florida). There was a dormatory there with very uncomfortable beds, but a nice cold shower and every morning you would wake to the sounds of troops of howler monkeys.

For the next several days I walked the trails at Bilsa looking for Costus. The most exciting species I found was a plant that currently is included in the species Costus guanaiensis but soon will be published as a new species. (More to be added about this at a later date.) UPDATE January 6, 2026 - We have now described and published this species as Costus maasiorum to honor Paul and Hiiltje Maas. My guide at Bilsa was Don Vicente Quiñonez. He is celebrated in the region for his music and has produced several CDs and DVDs.

MOVIN' ON SOUTH
On May 27th I left Bilsa for the next stop on my itinerary - the Rio Palenque Science Center. It was pouring down rain during the long mule ride back to the "Y", and my bags and backpack were loaded in some rice bags. The mule finally got me back to the "Y" and soon I was climbing in the back of the Toyota pickup for the trip back to Quinindé where I waited for the next bus headed south. In Quinindé, after many questions to make sure I was in the right place, a large air-conditioned "expresso" bus headed for Guayaquil stopped and picked up me and another passenger who had some chickens in carry cages. This was a luxury bus and as I boarded, all muddy and looking like a bum, there were few seats and most passengers made it clear they did not want a muddy gringo sitting next to them. Finally I found a welcoming traveler who invited me to sit next to him. I asked him to help me know the right place to get off for the Palenque Science Center. It was already dark and we were going highway speed on the main road. I was very nervous that I might not know the right place to pull the cord and ask the driver to stop and let me off. Nowadays it would be a lot easier - you could just look at Google Maps on your phone and the GPS would let you know where you are. Anyhow I made the best guess I could with the help of my fellow passenger and managed to stop the bus just a hundred yards of so from the entrance to Rio Palenque. Still, I had to walk in the dark down the long entrance road for couple of kilometers hoping I was on the right road to get to the science center. It was a great relief when I finally got there and the shower, meal and bed that night sure felt good.

The next day, my contact at Palenque Science Center, Freddy Villao, showed me around the trails, accompanied by an ornothologist named Ronald Navarrete from Gualaquiza. Here we saw several rather common species of Costus growing in the wild including a very compact form of Costus pulverulentus. There were also some cultivated Costus there including a large patch of the plant that I described and publishished in 2023 with the name Costus gibbosus. In the nursery they had a nice collection of orchids. When I told Freddy that I did not have any real specific plans for the rest of my trip but that I wanted to head south and ultimately to the eastern side of the mountains in Morona-Santiago, he suggested going to Juaneche. Sounded good to me.

On May 29th I headed to a little known reserve called "Juaneche" where there is a protected area called "Bosque Protector Pedro Franco Davila. Ronald Navarrete (the Ecuadorian ornathologist) and a Scandinavian ornithologist were interested in going there also, so I did not have to travel alone and figure out the buses to get there. When we arrived at the small town of Jauneche, there was no bottled water in the stores, but fortunately I had my Steripen on that trip so I could treat the water. The local ranger, Juan Castro, took us on some trails there and I collected seeds of Costus macrostrobilus. I also learned a very important lesson about howler monkeys - It is not a good idea to stand on the ground below them and watch them by looking in the trees above you. This YouTube video clip I made will show you why it is not a good idea!

Ronald told me about another place near Guayaquil called Fundación Ecológica Andrade where I could meet up with a man named Orlando Carillo. So the next morning (May 30th) I headed out on my own taking a series of buses and working my way farther south to the Fundación Ecológica Andrade. It was nearly impossible to figure out exactly where to get off that last bus, but I made my best guess and I found myself standing along the highway in the middle of nowhere with no idea where to go next or even which direction to go. Finally a young man on a moto came by and told me he knew about the place I wanted to go. So I hopped on the back of his moto loaded with backpack and a small bag, and we drove back up the highway several kilometers. To my relief I found the place and Orlando was there waiting for me. Ths was the first place on the entire trip where I was bothered by mosquitos, and REALLY bothered. Thank goodness I brought mosquito netting with me. The next day Orlando took me to the Churute Mangroves Ecological Reserve and we looked for Costus and found what must be the southernmost population of Costus villosissimus.

The next morning, May 31st, Orlando helped me flag down the right bus to take me to the town of Piñas in El Oro province. This is a pretty little town in the foothills of the mountains with steep, hilly streets reminding me of San Francisco, California. I found a small but clean and comfortable hotel and enjoyed walking around the town. The next day I took a bus to a tourist area called Reserva Buenaventura, about 20 kilometers out of town. This place is primarilly known for bird watching and has lodging accomodations for small groups. I just took a bus out of Piñas and watched for a sign to Buenaventura. As it turned out, I had seen what amounted to a billboard and got off at a small road well before the main entrance. So I just walked along looking for the place and got lucky enough to find the right trail to bring me to the lodge area. Along the trails I saw lots of Costus lima and another plant like the new species I had seen at Bilsa. Then I went back out to the highway and flagged down another bus that was headed for Piñas and got back to my hotel. A few days prior I had injured my finger and it had gotten terribly infected, but luckily there was a doctor's office right downstairs from my hotel and for about $5 he drained it, cleaned it, wrapped it and gave me some antibiotics to take.

ZAMORA

The next location on my itinerary was the town of Zamora in the southeastern part of Ecuador on the other side of the Andes. I took buses first to Loja and then on to Zamora. Zamora is a big enough town to have plenty of interesting places and good hotels. I stayed at a small but really nice place on the river. I really had no specific plan other than the Podocarpus National Park and to look around for any other places to go.

The first day, I took a taxi to the entrance of the national park on the Rio Bombuscaro and hiked all the nearby trails. I saw many interesting plants and then walked along the river on the trail on the oposite side from the road until I reached a bridge across the river. I had not arranged for a ride back to town, about 10 kilometers, so I just continued walking in that direction. I saw nice patches of Costus scaber and collected some seeds. Eventually there was a taxi coming back from the park and I got a ride back to town.

The next day there I asked a taxi driver if he knew of any other good places with forested areas that I might go. He told me he had a "buena idéa" and took me to a house on the outskirts of town. No one was home there, but he said he knew where the man's wife worked. He said that this man loved plants and knew the entire region very well. I had no way of knowing that this would lead to an introduction to someone who would become one of my very best friends in Latin America - Marco Jiménez Villarta. Marco's wife called him and he said he would take the afternoon off and we could go to a forested area nearby to look for plants. We took a bus out of town and walked a trail near the Rio Zamora, but did not see anything new or particularly interesting, The next day he said he would take the entire day off and we could go by bus to a place in the Rio Nangaritza watershed, a town called Guayzimi. I was surprised to see Marco wearing good trousers, dress shirt and street shoes. We stopped first for breakfast and they served the usual Ecuadorian Nescafe - instant coffee in a restaurant! I made the mistake of trying to explain to Marco that it seemed unusual to me that a restaurant would not have brewed coffee, and before I could stop him he called the waitress over and insisted they make café filtrado for me. I was embarassed, but I began to understand that Marco was trying to impress that he was a very important person in that region and he had to dress and act the part. We took another bus to Guayzimi and then started walking a small road out of town. After a short distance, Marco ducked back in the forest and changed clothes and shoes that he had carried in his backpack. We then walked on down the road and off to several trails in this area. Here I saw for the first time the speciesCostus amazonicus, although I did not know what it was at the time. Also in that region I saw the huge plants all along the road sides that I later found out is a form ofCostus asplundii. Little did I know that I would be returning to that area during two future trips in 2009 and 2015, traveling with Marco and his son Marco Jiménez León.

GUALAQUIZA
After Zamora, my plan was to go to the town of Gualaquiza in Morona-Santiago province. There was a record of a collection of Costus geothyrsus in the nearby village of Bomboiza that I wanted to see. As I said hasta luego to Marco at the Zamora bus station, I had no idea what was in store for me.

After this trip I wrote up in Spanish the details of the story of my "Escape from Gualaquiza" for my Spanish class at the Senior Center. Depending on your browser settings, the pages may attempt to translate to your native language and the automated translation may not work very well. On most browsers you can also right click on the page to translate the Spanish to another language. Eventually I will write a separate English version, but meanwhile you can CLICK ON THIS LINK if you want to take a look.

The short version of the story is that the Shuar indigenous tribe was protesting against a Canadian mining company the week I was trying to go to Gualaquiza, and there were blockades all along the highway. I managed to find a way to get there but then I was stuck there as no cars, trucks or buses were allowed to pass through the blockades. I made the best of the situation for a few days, but I knew I had a flight back home coming up soon and needed to get to Quito. The story tells how I got there and how I eventually got through the blockade despite being threatened by some angry protestors with machetes.

iNaturalist Link
iNaturalist observations in Ecuador 2007