Back to Quito - August 5, 2010

After almost a week in Ecuador, many nights of waking up before 5 in the morning had conditioned us to wake up at ungodly intervals before dawn. Thus, although our alarm was set for the blissful hour of 5:35, we both woke up at 3, and 4, in the morning. Finally, we crawled out of bed to pouring torrential rain. We struggled to the dining room, a short walk from our cabin, where many cups of fresh hot coffee awaited us. After lingering awhile, we put on our jackets and hit the trails, rain be damned.

orchids are scattered about the cloud forest

Birding was slow, but a few beautiful flocks full of saffron-crowned and beryl-spangled tanagers (what names!) danced in the canopy overhead. After trying our luck birding the entrance road, we went for a walk through the mystical primary forest that envelops the property. Every limb was festooned with absurd quantities of epiphytes--a truly shocking amount of greenery. The rain started to let off, and we were treated to shafts of light piercing the canopy, highlighting the amazing complexity of the forest, with layers upon layers of leaves and vines, branches and flowers, some in shade, some pierced by sun, all wreathed in mist and cloud. Then the sky darkened over again and rain returned. Time for lunch.

Emily in the beautiful cloud forest of Cabanas San Isidro

As anticipated, lunch was spectacular: eggplant lasagna, fresh ravioli with basil, salad dressed with fresh naranjillo, and perfect plantain fritters. After gorging we walked the road once more, spying some perky flycatchers, beautiful trogons, and a toucanet, all hunkered down in the rain. As the rain picked up once more, we headed back to the cabin. It was time to return to Quito.

We gathered our gear and piled into our driver Miguel’s 10 seater van. Emily sat up front, and managed to keep up an intermittent conversation entirely in Spanish for the length of our 3 hour ride back up the Eastern slopes. The steep ascent to the high pass was graced with waterfalls that were now crashing through every sheer forested slope, flush with the recent rain. We picked our way up the road, avoiding the few rockslides that the weather had unleashed. Eventually, we entered a land of cold fog and tawny tussocks--a spitting image of County Donegal in Northwest Ireland, with alpacas replacing sheep. Finally we crested and started down into the inter-Andean plateau. As we dipped below the clouds we were greeted by hundreds of sun rays alighting on the valley below, with the sparkling edifices of greater Quito glinting in the distance.

entering the inter-Andean plateau from the East

Making our way to Quito, Miguel took us along the old Camino de Francisco Orellana--the same route that the Conquistadors, Incans and Quechans before them had used to travel back and forth from Quito’s lofty heights and the Oriente. The narrow cobbled road was lined with hand crafted rock-walls that might have been laid before Columbus was born. We stopped to look out at the sun slipping behind the volcanoes, and then headed in to the bustling traditional heart of Quito.

Miguel stopped and took Emily to buy some fritada, a luscious dish of deep fried pork, potatoes, corn, lima beans and plantains (our $2.50 serving was more than enough for two). I waited in the van so it would not be broken into--a task I doubt I was well suited for. The food was superb, however, and we made it to our hotel already full, and ready for bed. The next day we would enter the Amazon Rainforest.

looking back down the Camino de Orellana

The Suburban Wilds

This post is rather long, I hope you'll forgive me, but after spending some time recently wandering around the woods I grew up near, I felt compelled to write something about them.
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I grew up in the Maryland suburbs, where the natural world was experienced primarily as a smattering of wispy parks, bike paths through ribbons of second growth forests, and man made lakes sprinkled with paddle-boats and Canada geese. Even still, nature was a source of constant joy and revelation. Near my house was a stretch of low-lying woods bordering the Little Patuxent River--more creek than river, but a wonderland nonetheless.    
    Bordering the creek were a few wisened sycamore trees that must have been sentinels shading the lazy creek as it flowed past croplands and pastures, but were now largely hidden by the thick woods that had grown up around them. One of the sycamores was large and hollow enough to crawl inside and stand upright in the gloom, staring at imaginary bat-roosts. Even more impressive was an epic tulip-poplar, perhaps twenty feet in circumference, that stood guard over the bike path. Most of the woods however was newer growth, a few decades old, of oaks and straight young tulip-poplars--descendants perhaps of the giant near the path, who had seen the forest logged and was now there to witness its rebirth.

The Good Life

Well, I've gone a little while now without any new posts. As many of you loyal readers (there are now at least 18 of you!) might have surmised, this was due to the fact that I had to help carve two roast goats, scoop out handfuls of succulent squash, and open up many many bottles of cava to quench the appetites and thirsts of the dancing mobs of friends and family that were kind enough to celebrate my recent wedding. Never fear, there is more to be shared about Ecuador in the days to come--all the more appropriately shared after the wedding, as our justification for the trip in the first place was that it could count as a pre-honeymoon of a sort. But right here I'd like to simply thank everyone who helped pitch in to forge the greatest festivities of my life. May there be many more to come.

Across the Andes - August 4, 2010

On Wednesday we slept in late (until 6 AM), and enjoyed our last Mindo breakfast of fresh squeezed blackberry juice, flakey buttery breads with jam, eggs, coffee, and slices of fresh fruit. Our new driver Miguel showed up with our new guide (conveniently also named Marcello) and we were on the road around 8. Our plan was to bird our way up and over the Andes, en route to Cabanas San Isidro on the East slope. We wound our way up to the inter-Andean plateau, and after driving through a few suburbs of Quito we stopped in a dusty back lot, where we saw a golden-rumped euphonia flitting around the bushes. A simple start to what would be become an epic day of new bird after new bird.

Next we wound our way to the high paramo near the Papallacta Pass. This was an ancient portal across the Andes to the Amazon, and had long been used by native peoples to traverse the often snow-covered summits of the Equatorial Andes. We were over twelve thousand feet high, and the ground was covered with strange spongy alpine-like plants and laced with trails of icy mist. We tracked down Andean tit-spinetails and Sierra finches, but the harsh wind made birding difficult and we had little patience for time spent outside the warm car. So we continued on, to the cloud forests on the Eastern side of the Andes.

blooming bushes of the paramo

We stopped near the thermals of Papallacta to eat lunch, and stumbled upon a fantastic mixed flock of tanagers and flower-piercers, as well as one of the more spectacular high-elevation hummingbirds, the stunning purple-backed thornbill. Moving down again, we stopped to wander the grounds of Guango Lodge. The hummingbird feeders at Guango were overwhelming, with sylphs and swordbills and sunangels and woodstars all zipping about inches from our faces. After sipping coffee and making use of the first truly plush bathroom facilities of our trip, we walked through an adjoining pasture down to a torrential river. There, on a rock 100 meters downstream, perched a female torrent duck! We watched her swim about until she vanished in the foam and slipped out of sight, and then we piled back in the car and continued our journey.

the preposterous sword-billed hummingbird

collared inca and tourmaline sunangel

Our last stop of the day was a dirt road near the town of Baeza, close to our destination San Isidro. The scrubby forest bordering the road was overwhelmingly full of birds. Trees filled with turquoise, golden, emerald and silver shimmers of tanagers. Woodpeckers, spinetails, bush-tanagers, brush-finches, barbets, foliage-gleaners and more whirled past in dizzying succession. We crept along the road until it got too dark to see, all the while finding new bird species after new bird species, until we finally were forced to call it quits. All told we saw almost 90 species of birds, nearly all of them new to me. Spent, we arrived at the beautiful Cabanas San Isidro in pouring rain. We were met by the proprietor, the lovely Carmen Bustamente, who saw us to our cabins and alerted us to dinner at 7.

runoff from the paramo splashing down to the Amazon

Dinner was superb--Indian nouveau with curried meatballs and cardamom bread pudding. We shared a table with a couple from St. Louis who had been to South America many times, often while leading tour groups, and we listened to the equivalent of birding war-stories while the evening wore on. After dinner our table-mates pointed out an owl perched near the cabins--an undescribed subspecies of black-banded owl. There were hot showers awaiting us back at our cabin; a magnificent end to a magnificent day.