Picdump: The Páramo or "I thought Bogotá was cold"

Colombia has been my home for quite a while now, but it never ceases to fascinate me. It is Semana Santa here, everything stands still in catholic Colombia. Except for the buses. So we took one to a strech of land called Páramo about 30 minutes outside of Bogotá. 

My day started in the early morning, packing my rubber boots (which in the end I did not even need), taking a quick shower and applying about four kilos of sunscreen (which in the end I did not need aswell) and took a taxi to the Transmilenio station called Tercer Milenio.

Man I have seen crazy, f****ed up places here in Bogotá, but Tercer Milenio set a new low.

Arriving there at about 8.30 in the morning, the first drugged up persons approached me and asked for money. One of them started puking right away, I guess to loosen up the mood a bit :P

Another guy sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk got woken up by some policemen and started throwing rocks at them right away. There was about 40 policemen in the street and a police station close by, so they chased him away and almost beat him up doing so. Meanwhile the lady working at the Transmilenio (basically a transport system consisting of buses, delays and thiefs) told me a bit about what she sees everyday working in such a neighbourhood... showing off her tazer she confirmed that it was not too nice.

About 50 homeless and 150 drug addicts later my friends showed up and we got to the bus to the Páramo.

They told me it would be cold.

They were right.

It was very cold.

And windy.

And wet.

Cold-windy-wet.

But awesome and worth every second of freezing 

:-)

We just walked up a mountain, stopped for a second at Dracula`s house (people were disappointed when I pointed out that he actually lived in Transilvania and that it can not be anything but a holiday lodge of him... if bats went transatlantic... or Vlad traveled by boat/submarine).

We kept on walking and, reaching the top of the mountain, we found a nice and windy place... with condom wrappers lying around.

I mean it was about 10°C, it was raining and the wind was crazy, it looked something like this:

How I imagine the situation went down:

She: "It is so cold Jésus"

He: "I have an idea Juanita, hold this"

.

.

.

and so on...

No more talking, here we go!

 (haha he probably said that, too)

Blogotá kulinarisch: Vier Beilagen und ein Todesfall

Oder Fünf bis Sieben Beilagen und ein Todesfall... so umschreibt man wohl am besten das, was ich mir täglich mittags einverleibe. 

Geht man in Kolumbien mittags essen, stehen meist zwei bis drei Gerichte zur Auswahl. 

Pollo, also Huhn; Carne, also Kuh; Pescado, Fisch.

Das hört sich ja soweit gut an. Als Vorspeise gibt es immer Suppe oder einen Teller Obst. Meistens bin ich danach schon satt. Es gibt nämlich richtig eintopfige Suppe mit unheimlich viel Zeugs drin. Fleisch, Bohnen, Kochbanane, Mais, Reis, Fisch, ach meistens all das Genannte in einer einzigen Suppe.

Und jetzt, schon so ziemlich satt, kommt der Kellner mit dem Hauptgericht.

Das letzte mal hab ich mir Rind à la Mexiko bestellt. 

Der Teller sah wie folgt aus:

Ein hauchdünnes Stückchen Rindfleisch aus dem zähen Teil der Kuh. Der Kuhsohle sozusagen. In Barbecue-Soße schwimmend (Diesmal habe ich diese nicht direkt aus der Flasche getrunken) und in etwa so einfach zu kauen wie eine Nylonstrumpfhose.

Neben dem Fleisch lag etwas Salat. Salat geht immer.

Dann wurde es "exotisch". Denn zu dem Fleisch und dem Salat gestellten sich auch noch Bohnen. Irgendwelche kugelrunden Bohnen in Pframpfsoße. Ist ja auch ok, wenn daneben nicht noch eine Portion Säuglingskost-Spaghetti in kalter Karottensoße gelegen wären. Die waren jenseits von Gut und Böse, denn sie behielten ihre spaghettöse Form nur bis zu jenem Zeitpunkt, in welchem sie mit Messer und oder Gabel in Berührung kamen. Dann zerflossen sie.

Zum Glück aber war ja noch ein Stück Beilagen-Bananenkuchen auf dem Teller, der die kurz zuvor angerührte "Spaghettisoße" aufsaugen konnte. 

Neben dem Kuchen lag etwas frittiertes. Ich glaube es handelte sich um irgendetwas frittiertes. Es war zumindest frittiert. Glaub das war... irgendwie frittiert glaub ich... keine Ahnung was das war, aber es war frittiert :-)... Klopapierrolle hahaha

Das in der Fritteuse in Frittüre frittierte Frittiergut (haha bin ja immernoch Biscuitboden-Ingenieur) ward von einer Wand aus Reis umstellt. UNMENGEN von Reis. Ohne Reis geht gar nichts, die Leute drehen am Rad wenn sie keinen Reis bekommen. Es soll nämlich viel sein und sehr satt machen. Und hier liegt die Problematik. Oft essen die Leute nur einmal am Tag etwas anständiges, und um das alles in einen Bauch zu bekommen muss zumindest Abwechslung gegeben sein. Man könnte ja auch einfach noch einen Berg Reis dazubauen. Aber das wäre ja irgendwie langweilig.

Beschweren möchte ich mich ja eigentlich gar nicht. Es schmeckt, die Konsistenz ist halt oft ein bischen anders als gewohnt. Und es ist unheimlich günstig, denn das ganze Menü, bestehend aus Suppe, Hauptgericht, Getränk und einer kleinen Süßigkeit kostet gerade einmal €2,50.

Dafür grummelt es aber auch manchmal ein bischen im Magen, deshalb verabschiede ich mich heute mit einem "Schaun wir mal, womit ich morgen den Gärkessel beschicke."

Trip to the Tesoros de Colombia SAS breeding facilities!

As promised I finally made it to the Tesoros de Colombia breeding facilities. One should know that they are not open to the public. Still, as I am friends with Ivan Lozano and he wanted to know what I think about all of what he is doing there, I was invited to go.

So early in the morning, just after the peak of the rush hour, we left Bogotá after just one hour of driving. The city is huge, the streets are narrow and there are too many cars, motorcycles and trucks everywhere.

Typical view from a colombian highway. Cattle pastures as far as one can see. Luckily there is some forest left on the top of the hills

And a traffic jam, also typical for traveling in Colombia

With no cars and speedbumps in front of us we managed to reach almost WARP 9! Well, in Colombia that is about 50 km/h...

Back to the frogs. After we finally arrived at the Finca, I could not sit still for another second. I mean I knew there would be my favourite frogs just right around the corner! Nobody can sit still in that case.

Not only did Ivan get a property and built the facilities for the frogs, instead he put his effort in turning it into the original forest it was once so many years ago. This property stands out inbetween all of the surrounding sugar cane plantations and local wildlife readily accepts the new patch of forest. Imagine they counted over 100 bird species passing through or even settling permanently in those roughly 6 acres of restored forest. Snakes, birds, butterflies, spiders, small and endangered mammals even…

It is a great sight and a great contrast to the rest of the area!

Now some pictures of the frog facilities:

It was warm, humid and I am an aspiring biologist, don`t expect me to look good :-D
 Ivan on the other hand is a professional

Breeding setups on the left, boxes for the juveniles on the right 

Regular breeding tanks,  dimensions about 50cm long, 70cm deep and 50cm high

More boxes with all kinds of offspring inside

Basically lots of the smaller tanks will be replaced by almost one cubic meter tanks in the near future

The two Ivans, Ivan Lozano and Ivan Ramos

The look when you give a guided tour and the other person can not walk 20 cm without taking 50 pictures :D

Along with the frogs Ivan breeds different kinds of butterflies for Zoos, Botanical gardens and other educational exhibits

The butterfly hut will be turned into a frog facility with tanks and breeders aswell

More butterfly food

And even moooore butterfly food :D

Ok now some frogs. The frogs there are in a great condition, really look good and call all the time. 

Most of them come from Zoos, others from other institutions who gave up working with them. It is not that the people at tesoros can go to wherever in the rainforest they want to collect frogs. The breeders have to come from a preexisting livestock of selected institutions working with them.

And this is why it took some time getting things going. Mainly breeding. Those of you who tried to obtain some nice frogs and get them to breed know, that it is a time consuming process. Now imagine doing that with a couple hundred of frogs. On top of that colombian bureaucracy is not the easiest to deal with. 

The breeders:

Stunning Phyllobates bicolor

 Phyllobates bicolor

 Phyllobates terribilis

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

A nice new blueish morph of Auratus from Colombia

Oophaga lehmanni red

Oophaga lehmanni red

Oophaga histrionica "Anchicaya"

Oophaga histrionica bullseye

Oophaga histrionica blue

Oophaga histrionica blue

Oophaga histrionica "Anchicaya"

Oophaga histrionica "Anchicaya"

Oophaga histrionica "Large red heads"

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

Phyllobates terribilis

Phyllobates terribilis

Phyllobates aurotaenia

Oophaga lehmanni red

Phyllobates aurotaenia green

Phyllobates terribilis

Oophaga lehmanni red

Oophaga lehmanni yellow

Dendrobates auratus "blueish colombian"

Oophaga histrionica blue

Oophaga lehmanni red

Phyllobates bicolor. Just amazing, probably the most beautiful I have ever seen!

In the beginning I was a bit doubtful they would be getting those large eggfeeders to breed. Phyllobates and Dendrobates are easy to breed, Oophaga on the other hand…

But check this out, offspring:

Eggs eggs eggs...

tadpoles tadpoles tadpoles...

And some perfectly healthy baby Oophaga (histrionica "bullseye")

And another one

Then there are some baby O. lehmanni

and some more

Many many baby lehmanni happily hopping around in their boxes

(mixed containers, not all Oophaga)

Breeding the frogs and the feeder insects in this scale is incredibly labour intensive and therefore expensive. This is one of the reasons behind the need of donations at the moment. Ivan is putting all the money he earns from his approx. eight jobs into the project! Still, dealing with thousands of dollars in overheads is extremely difficult for one single person. Moreover, for every little change in paperwork and everything dealing with the bureaucracy Ivan needs a lawyer at his side. And lawyers never have been the cheap kind of attendence. 

Having seen all of the effort and money put in the project, my conclusion is that Ivan and the frog keepers at Tesoros are doing an incredible job trying to offer the most beautiful frogs on this planet to us hobbyists. So lets support him with buying the frogs offered. Every single Phyllobates, every single Dendrobates gets us a step closer to getting legal Oophaga from Colombia. 

With CITES paperwork and certificates showing they are of captive origin. 

The frogs are there, the first shipment of large Eggfeeders is close to being sent!

Prices will be fair! Fair concerning what is being done here, fair concerning what the market situation is like at the moment and fair, because this is the only chance to get legal high quality colombian frogs.

The dartfrog community is not getting closer than this to finally obtain those great colombian frogs.