Ecuador: Birding Tour

This part of the blog has been hard to write.  I was so excited and with so much expectation is was probably never all going to be realised however i couldn't have expected what did happen in the end.

We booked a birding tour through an established company with lodges in most of the hotspots we wanted to vist.  From the get-go (in my opinion) they disappointed, cutting every possible corner, i won't go on but we found them very overpriced and won't use them again.

The first lodge we stayed in was Tandayapa, we had a lot of leisure time for various reasons, though helpfully one of the on site staff members was keen on birding too.

From the lodge we saw a good number of species, including Golden Tanager:

Golden-headed Quetzal:

A female Purple-throated Woodstar:

Red-headed Barbet:

A bathing Tropical Parula:

Crimson-rumped Toucanet:

We did do some walks on the property and visited another local property, before thankfully being joined by the son of the owner and one of the best bird guides we've had the pleasure to be guided by.

He took us on to a lodge at Milpe, birding the forest and grounds there, roads to-and-fro, etc., a much more active, targetted birding experience and somewhat more reflective of what we expected.

On this section we saw Summer Tanager:

Spotted barbtail:

Ornate Flycatcher:

White-whiskered Hermit:

Yellow-throated Toucan:

The trail and lodge had some very large snails:

From our room i photographed a Brown-billed Scythebill just as it captured an insect:

It wasn't only birds either, a Blue Morpho, briefly and indeed unusually sat with its wings open:

On a section of road we visited a pair of Rose-faced Parrots were building a nest:

On another route we saw Masked Water-Tyrant:

On the last day (as it turned out) of our tour, we visited a pass in the high-Andes, headed eventually to Amazonia for the first time.   The landscape was stunning:

We saw some cracking habitat specialists including Rainbow-bearded Thornbill:

Pale-naped Brushfinch:

Many-striped Canastero:

Then, frankly, was the wildlife sighting of the tour, a Spectacled Bear, feeding on plants on an open stretch of road, unexpected and quite amazing:

We went on further looking again at the landscape and taking it all in:

Unfortunately it was at this point that Helen fell and broke her wrist (sheared and compressed fracture).   We had to drive back to Quito, get her into hospital, x-rayed and then after a painful night, emergency surgery.   That was the end of the tour, no Amazonia, no Amazon, 300 species below expectations; a lot of distress and for her huge amounts of pain and discomfort.  We cannot thank our guide, our fellow traveller,  the staff at the lodge and the attendants on every KLM flight we took enough, they were all amazing.    Now what to do.....?

Ecuador: The Avenue of Volcanoes

Having left the Galapagos we spent a night recovering from the lack of sleep, somewhat, in Guayaquil, before being collected by the excellent Metropolitan Tours, and being driven up to Cuenca.   Our first guide and driver kept us informed, hydrated and looked after us as we explored the historical city, dined out, visited Cajas National Park at both the humid-forest and then the paramo zones.  

From Cuenca we headed North to the ruins of the most significant Inca temple in Ecuador, at Ingapirca.   Lama grazed in a pasture just outside the site:

The ruins were impressive as was the detailed exploration of the history of the sites, both Inca and indeed before them:

We stopped for lunch just outside Ingapirca, watching a Black Flowerpiercer amongst some flowers:

The second half of our visit was overshadowed, literally, by a volcanic ash plume from the nearby Sangay volcano:

The pink skies were eerie, the falling ash affected sight, breathing and covered everything so it was a relief to be inside for the lunch and the drive onwards.

After Ingapirca they drove us to meet our next driver and guide as we headed North for Riobamba.

By this stage of our tour we realised that some of choices needed changing and to their credit, the guide, driver and indeed the company did everything we asked, even proactively suggesting changes based on our interests and tastes.

So it was we found ourselves walking up part of Chimborazo volcano, starting at 4,800m altitude, rather than walking through enclosed tunnels in Banos, in the middle of a national holiday!

We reached the 'lagoon' at the second stop, a height of 5,100m, this felt like a significant achievement, walking up a steep muddy track at that altitude in fog, drizzle and hail was a genuine accomplishment for us:

As we left the park some Vicuna were watching us, watching them:

The next day, another change to the original plan, we drove to the rarely visited Llanganates National Park, a landscape in the high Andes so vast it was hard to capture with the camera.

This was a view across a reservoir at one point:

We really enjoyed our visit there and were also looking forward to the next place, Cotopaxi National Park and the active volcano there.

We were a little nervous as the park had shut the previous week while the volcano let off some steam, literally.   We persuaded the park staff to let us drive through the park to our lodge, catching glimpses as we drove.

The next day however dawned cloudless and i was bouncing-off-the-walls excited at the opportunity to see the Volcano proper.   Even though we were supposed to go to Quilotoa that day we again changed our plans to head into the park to see the volcano first, we weren't disappointed:

Once we'd taken some photographs we carried on to Quilotoa arriving at the caldera a couple of hours later:

This next image of Helen looking into the caldera is from my phone, interesting how it increases colour saturation automatically:

The next day we visited Cotopaxi park properly exploring some trails, the lagoon, etc., but nothing as good as the previous morning.   We then made our way to Quito.

Our penultimate day of the tour started with a visit to a birding spot between Quito and Tandayapa where they'd set-up and indeed planted to attract hummingbirds, we weren't disappointed, I am particularly pleased with this Swordbilled Hummingbird in flight:

We briefly visited the main churches in the old town of Quito (no phtography allowed), then a regretably touristy spot at the 'Centre of the Earth' before reluctantly being dropped back at our hotel, with an afternoon to ready ourselves for the last major section of this trip, the magic circuit birding tour of Northern Ecuador...

Ecuador: The Galapagos

The Galapagos.   It was a tricky decision to go, it's a very expensive place to visit with limited access and indeed options, but it does still have some exotic and incedible wildlife and we were going to be in Ecuador anyway, so...

We booked our voyage through our birding lodge agent in Ecuador and joined the Infinity having landed at Santa Cruz.

The first stop was a dingy ride into a mangrove lagoon to watch breeding sea turtles (early) and spot some of the more obvious birds such as this Brown Pelican:

And a Blue-footed Booby just taking off:

That evening and night we motored Northeast to Genovesa, an island just North of the Equator.   It's fair to say we didn't adapt to either the motion of the ocean or the noise of being on a smallish metal boat.

The following morning we visited the first landing site, seeing our first Nazca Booby:

A Lava Gull, one of perhaps 500 individuals left on the planet, alighted on the boat before we landed ashore:

We also saw another scarce and endemic species, the Swallow-tailed Gull:

And the iconic Marine Iguana:

As the top predator on the Island, the Short-eared Owl hunts whenever it wants to, so we got outstanding views of this bird:

A Red-billed Tropicbird settled on the lava:

Beyond Genovesa, which was a real highlight of the trip, we visited Santiago, Santa Cruz again (mostly to pick-up and drop-off some passengers).

One of the main reasons for wanting to visit the Galapagos is their relationship with 'Chuckie D' as Charles Darwin is affectionately called there.  Darwin's finches are widely credited with forming an important bedrock of his development of the then theory of evolution and his book On the Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection.  The bill shapes of the species being specifically adapted to habitat and food.

We saw a number of these finches, including the Large Ground Finch:

However it turns out the species classification was undertaken by a colleague of Darwin's in London and it was in fact the speciation of the Mockingbirds, here the Galapagos Mockingbird, that initially drove his thinking:

Seeing these iconic and indeed important species was a particularly rewarding part of the trip for us.  Seeing some of the signature species of the Islands was rewarding too, including this species of Giant Tortoise:

There's a huge amount of conservation work ongoing across the archipeligo, saving these species is one of the more visible projects ongoing.

At Sullivan Bay, we saw Red-footed Boobies, both the common brown morph:

And the 1 in 20 white morph:

In the second half of the voyage we stopped at Rabida, an island with a lot of recent lava flows, the view here looking out to a collapsed caldera from the 100-year old lava field, with Infinity anchored in the channel:

The lava moved slowly forming air bubbles that collapsed over time:

We joined various walks, taking in the unique landscape, here sea coral sand between the emerging vegetation and the lava:

Spotting some of the Caribbean Flamingo that inhabit the islands:

One particularly interesting stop on Santa Cruz was specifically to see the land Iguana, this dry forest being their key habitat:

You can see why they are so iconic and indeed popular with visitors:

We got a call across the tannoy at one point while motoring, dolphins had been spotted, luckily my camera had been set for in-flight photography so i was ready to go when these two Bottlenose Dolphins breached:

Almost every beach had breeding Sealions, with lots of pups between hours and weeks old:

Blue-footed Boobies were relatively common too, this one had glowingly blue feet:

The last major stop and another highlight for us was Espanola Island, which hosts the subspecies of Marina Iguana know locally as the Christmas Iguana for the red skin tones taken from their algae diet:

More young sealion pups:

Lava Lizards:

And my target species for the entire trip, the Waved Albatross:

We even got to witness their mating behaviours, properly magical if also sad as this is way too late in the season, behaviours driven by climate change:

More Nazca Boobies, with different bill and eye colours showing their respective ages:

The iguanas seemed to be hugging, though in reality probably too lazy to move while warming their bodies under the equatorial sun:

Our very last stop on Espanola island was a beach drop, you get dropped on the beach and can walk, swim, sunbathe.   It was overcast and breezy and the water was cold but Helen took the opportunity to get her Galapagos swim fix before we got back on board and motored for San Cristobal and our departure the following day:

San Cristobal included a visit to an interpretation centre before 90 minutes of free time and then the bus to the airport.  We chose instead to walk a short trail beyond the centre taking in a viewpoint and harbour point and then walking back into the town.   We saw a few of the local species including at least one last lifer, although having been assured the San Cristobal Mockingbird was only visible in the forest, they were in fact spotted in the shrubbery in the town, while we drank a pleasant coffee.

It's fair to say we found a week on a smallish and ferociosuly expensive boat quite challenging, but it is by far the best way to make the most of the Galapagos,

Next up then a cultural and scenery tour en route to Quito...