What frog?

When Phil approached me on the last day of our Master’s degree, searching for a field assistant for an amphibian project in Ecuador, I was excited, but not too much! I knew that there was a long way from conception to execution. We met up a couple of times, exchanged ideas, edited our proposals and then, just over a month ago, on the day of our graduation from Imperial, the funding was approved by the Mohammed Bin Zayed (MBZ) Endangered Species Fund. There was just one problem: The encroachment of guerrilla warriors into the state of our species, Atelopis longirostris. The kidnapping and execution of innocent people made the project too dangerous and we had to come up with a new, last minute strategy. After a lot of going back and forth, we chose an alternative species: Atelopus podocarpus. A black frog that lives in the mountains of Southern Ecuador. Our dreams of warm, tropical adventures were quickly replaced with concerns over hours of hiking in the rain and cold at altitudes of 3000m. But we didn’t mind, because MBZ approved the change of species and we now knew that we were actually going, with just two weeks to prepare! We’re still feeling the frenzy of the preparation (my phone with our Airbnb address has run out of battery en route and several forgotten items have been remembered - too late). So we’re writing this on the plane to Guayaquil with an oncoming jetlag and a pan con queso in hand. But we’re expecting a familiar face in the airport, and are getting excited by the views flying over Columbia and the prospect of a Cuba Libre.

If you want to know more about our project, read the blurb on our home page.