My trip up to Bosque Unchog with 66-year-old Reyes, whistling through his remaining 7-and-a-half-teeth to coax out birds, was a success. Despite a bank of clouds that rolled in around 9 am and enveloped us for the most of the day, we managed to spot our quarry just as I was ready to give up...

...the rare endemic and endangered Golden-backed Mountain-Tanager. Reyes said flocks of 7 or 8 used to be common in the area decades ago, but nowadays seeing a flock of three is cause for some celebration.

I had one last quarter chicken dinner in Huanuco before catching a bus back toward Lima.

The city had really started to grow on me and I nearly got stranded there for an extra day as the bus station was a madhouse of people trying to get places for Fiesta de la Patria, a vaguely

defined holiday period centered around Peru's independence day, July 28th.

After another 8-hour bus night I was in Chosica, near Lima, where every highschool student from the area seemed to be involved in some sort of massive marching-band-type parade. Other than that it was mostly a well-needed rest day to prepare for a trip up into Santa Eulalia Canyon.

The plan was to meet a group of avitourists coming from Lima. When it turned out that they would be getting a late start, I set out up into the canyon on my own with the assurance that they would pick me up from the side of the road around 3 or 3:30. When the sun set below the rim around 5:15 I was relieved to see an overcrowded bus winding its way up t

he switchbacks toward me. I crammed in and wound up at 3,200 meters in the cliffside town of San Pedro de Casta where I encountered a group of students from Lima planning to climb up to Marcahuasi, some Incan ruins some 800 meters and three hours up above town.

It sounded cool, so I decided to tag along rather than try to track down my lost tour group.

We set off with our 70-year-old guide at 5 am and had a gorgeous clear morning wandering around the dilapadated ruins and unusual rock formations. It was no Machu Pichu, but the views sure were stunning.

Can you spot the gringo?

We made it back into town for lunch where we discovered that the two buses that normally serve the area were both defunct. It seems most people have a "chicken bus" story from travel within latin America, but I now present to you the "cow bus."

There were three huge cows and about 20 passengers. The goal for everyone was to avoid getting trampled or covered in manure. It was a combination of hectic, hilarious and terrifying as we all lurched down steep potholed switchbacks, staring half the time off a shear 2000 meter precipice and the other half into oncoming overhanging tree branches and cactuses that raked the sides of the truck and threatened to tear desperately clinging fingers. All the while the cattle jostled and fought against their tethers like fish trying to wriggle loose from their hooks. Miraculously, through the three-hour trip, the only casualties were one tent and two backpacks (heavily fertilized), fortunately none of which belonged to our party.

My new friend, "John," a mechanical engineering student in Lima has been nice enough to let me stay with him. Though desperately in need of some decent sleep, I woke up before 5 am for the third time in four mornings to take a taxi to the marina to catch a boat out to the continental shelf with a crew of ornithologists and birdwatchers. As coincidence would have it, one of the other passengers was a profesor who completed his doctorate in zoology at Duke, where I'll begin my own PhD shortly.

Obviously a big incentive for making this trip was to see some unique pelagic bird species. But I also wanted to venture out onto the "Peru Margin" to see the area from which the sediment core was extracted that I studied for my honors thesis at Brown. What makes the sediment

as well as the marine life in the area so remarkable is the upwelling nutrient-rich water characteristic of the ocean here. High primary productivity supports high concentrations of fish and pescavores. Seeing penguins, albatrosses and sea lions was awesome, but the highlight was definitely the group of humpback whales that came up so close to the boat that it became unclear as to who was watching whom.

Whales are always hard to capture on camera, but rarely because they are too close! (I´ve uploaded this picture four times and it always comes out sideways no matter how I orient it in MS Paint...sorry).

Since I have a free place to stay and friends on holiday, I'll probably stick around Lima for some behind the scenes touring and fiesta, though this will leave me with some tough choices for how to spend my remaining time. I want to visit Machu Pichu, Manu and Lake Titicaca, but will probably only have time for one of the latter two.

I´ll be back in the US before I know it!

Bienvenidos a Peru

Turns out buses are well in abundance here. Parks however can be tougher to come by.

I blasted out of Tumbes for an 18-hour haul to Lima...not nearly as bad as it might sound.

I checked into this cool hostal that had pet tortoises and parrots running around its roof deck restaurant. This Red-and-Green Macaw was trying to protect David's nether regions from an incoming pigeon poo I guess But I didn't even stay the night as it turned out. Given advice from eminent Peru-based ornithologist Gunnar Engblom, I hopped on another bus--this one a 10-hour jaunt to Huanuco. From this area supposedly one can access some of the best areas of remaining cloud forest in the country. The city, Huanaco, is not even mentioned in my Moon guidebook for Peru. This is probably because the area used to be a haven for Sendero Luminoso until recently, so it has been more than off the Gringo trail. Given my track record, this forgotten corner of the world should be making headlines any day now. I just have to find where they're building their drug smuggling zeppelins.

Huanaco is quite a bustling place and the swarms of three-wheeled taxis buzzing around through the narrow street gives it a bizarre southeast Asian feel (not that I have been). The surrounding desert hills remind me more of the Himilayas (and I haven't been there either) than the Andes I know. Anyway, it's a loud rather confusing place.

And the nearby cloud forest that brought me here? It turns out to be an hours drive away. Finding a ride there isn't too difficult unless you're on a birdwatching schedule. I arrived there over an hour later than I had hoped this morning (though this was more to do with my alarm not waking me up...maybe I didn't get as much sleep as I thought on the previous two nights' bus journeys). There were a few birds around, but the forest, at least that along the road and anonymous trails is in pretty awful shape.

While Ecuador's abundant national parks are not always managed so well, they are miles superior to the lack there of offered by Peru. And this is some 11 hours from Lima in what is supposed to be one of the best sites the country has to offer for this sort of habitat. I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed. It is always fascinating, though sobering, to see the interface between pristine wilderness and encroaching distruction. Apparently much has changed since a team of ornithologists from LSU surveyed the area back in the 70s and disovered a handful of previously undescribed species bringing (relative ornithological fame to the area).

I did manage to see this Masked Fruiteater, one of the area's endemic specialties, right by a freshly slashed-and-burned patch of former cloud forest.

And tomorrow I'm visiting a different even more remote and (hopefully) more intact section of higher elevation cloud forest with none other than the original guide that lead the group from LSU back in '74. So it will be quite the early morning...4 am wakeup to try to get to Bosque Unchog for 6:30. Let's hope it doesn't rain!

park bus park bus park bus

A series of long bus rides punctuated by a stop in Bahia de Cariquez to catch the world cup finals brought me to Cuenca where I successfully encountered "Mike," (the Danish birdwatcher who had beena volunteer at Bilsa).

We immediately left for nearby Cajas National Park.

It was gorgeous and had its share of interesting birds despite the rather srubby and windswept habitat. On our way it a thunderstorm came out of nowhere and pelted up with sleet/hail? Whatever it was, we went from being very hot to very cold in a matter of seconds.

We thought about harvesting some wool from this llama (or is it an alpaca? - I´m better with birds than mammals)

Next another quick 5 hour bus ride to Loja where we hiked around a park owned by the local University. Thanks to some tainted peanutbutter, I lost my breakfast and lunch (unbeliveably, my first throw up in Ecuador!) on the way up to this peak overlooking Loja.

On to Zamora, but we broke up this bus ride with a stop at Arcoiris Cloud Forest Reserve, part of Podocarpus National Park. The place was deserted, which was fine with me, because that meant nobody to collect money and free access to trails.

Zamora is probably my favorite town in Ecuador. We ended up staying at this inexplicably inexpensive hotel with an awesome roof deck that yielded great views of the town´s immense clock imbedded in the hillside.

(it says, "Zamora, Ciudad de aves y cascadas")

From here we went to (where else) another national park. Actually it was still Podocarpus, but a different section at much lower elevation than Arcoiris (900 meters vs. 2100) meaning different climate, ecology and wildlife. We didn´t find exceptional numbers of birds, which I blame on this white-faced capuchin monkey that followed us around for the better part of an hour shaking branches at us and no doubt scaring away all sorts of birds that consequently remain unknown to science.

We doubled back to loja and parted ways. "Mike" directly south to Piura, Peru on a mad 7'day mission to some remote volunteer outpost in Bolivia and myself on to, yes, another park. Though this one gets special mention as it is the largest petrified forest in South America. The significance of this claim is not really clear since the petrified trees don´t actually form a forest...they are mearly fossilized remains of what was once a forest some hundred million years ago. There is of course a new forest growing over the fallen ancients that has some impressively thick and presumably quite old bottle-shaped green Ceiba trees.

Today I crossed into Peru and I am already missing Ecuadors busses and national parks. There are supposedly some well-protected reserves near Tumbes, but they are apparently rather inaccessible without arranging a private tour with an agency. As a single traveller this is costly and apparently alltogether impossible to arrange on a Sunday. So I will probably forego the entire region and dive right into some more long bus rides down to Lima.

More Buses and more national parks!

In the land of emeralds

Before we get started here´s a pcture of Pululahua Crater that I wrote about last time around.Believe it or not there´s a charming little hostal down there with a wind turbine and solar panels and a 70-something retired electrical engineer trying to start an organic farm.

Far from this eden-like paradise down on the sticky-humid northwestern corner of Ecuador lies a gritty frontier backwater called San Lorenzo where I wrote my last update. Many concerned readers have contacted me regarding the secret drug-smuggling submarine factory that was discovered in the mangroves near this town. Indeed it was no coincidence that the 150 militia raid came on the heels of my visit to the area. Check out this photographic proof:
Above you can see the manglares de mataje where the base was hidden and below the town of San Lorenzo.
I´ve been working for the DEA all along. I can admit this now that I´m done in Manabi province where the Colombians can´t reach me for retribution. Bird watching is the ultimate cover for any spy. It´s an excuse to visit far-flung out of the way places and carry around high-end optical equipment and cameras.

But this blog post is going to focus on the past week I´ve spent in the province of Esmeraldas, meaning "emeralds." Enterprising Americans supposedly relieved the area of all its precious stones years ago, but the name still sticks.

With my work finished in the mangroves, I headed south down the coast to Sua.

This was the view from my private room that cost $8. I sure will miss the Ecuadorian prices when I´m back home.


From Sua I backtracked briefly to head inland toward Bilsa Biological Station that contains one of the largest rare patches of remnant lowland wet forest left in Western Ecuador and the Choco mega-diverse bioregion. En route I met the first gringo I had encountered in several days, a lovesick and hungover Swiss guy who scarcely new where he was going. His goal, Baños, being some 12 hours distant (it was at this point 2 in the afternoon) I suggested he come with me to Bilsa.


We made fast friends and promptly got stranded in Quininde where we had missed the last camioneta for la Ye de la Laguna. Fortunately it was Saturday night and the grand finale of Quininde´s cantonization day. Some sort of a celebration of political independence celebrated by fireworks and of course Salsa dancing. It made a perfect substitute for the 4th of July that I was missing back home, only it came a day early.


The fireworks were probably the most exciting I have ever seen. Not becaus eof theirhigh quality per se, but because of an almost complete disregard for the safety of spectators . They numbered in the thousands and pressed close to the arsenal of mortar tubes stationed in the city park, a concrete slab surrounded by a 12-foot high steel fence, just to make sure nobodycould escape ground zero should anything go awry. Many of the mortars seemed to have blast radiuses greater than the height that they ended up exploding so that glowing fireballs were raining into the crowd. Car alarms were going off everywhere fromthe shockwaves and everyone was constantly dusting fallout from their heads and shoulders.

The next morning "Dan" and I got up early to catch the pickup to la Ye, a 2 hours ride, which was followed by a 3-and-a-half-hour tromp down the muddy clayey "road" to the Bilsa station. That bulldozer was there to graded the road to make it passable for vehicals with 4WD, but most transport is made by horse or donkey.

The station had a few confused volunteers and researchers, but the folks who would have resmebled volunteer coordinators or directors were away on vacation unfortunately. Of course, I didn´t need any help or coordinating and set right out each and every day to look for rare Choco endemic birds with a Danish birdwatcher who used my presence to get out of volunteering responsibilities.

On my first day I got some great looks (but but no pictures) at the famous and rediculous-looking Long-Wattled Umbrellabird, an endangered species I had been trying tofind for some time. On my last day I saw probably the rarest bird I´ll ever see anywhere (except for maybe Okarito Brown Kiwi), the highly sought-after, but seldom encountered Banded Ground-Cuckoo. A large endangered terrestrial bird.

From Bilsa I left for Mompiche, a quiet off-season surfer village, and then to Bunche to visit some interns from Great Wilderness who had been working on community development projects with cacao farmers there all the while I had been at La Hesperia.

I´m currently blitzing my way south to try and dodgethe Colombians and meet up with my new Danish friend in Cuenca so we can do some birdwatching together in Podocarpus national park in southern Ecuador.

Hopefully I can sustain my phenomenal luck.

¿que pasó?

I just cannot seem to find spare moments to write this blog.

So much has happened since my last post and I sent all my photos home with my parents (they came to visit for two weeks by the way) so this will be a wall of text, unfortunately. But I´ll try to just touch on a few of the highlights and milestones to keep it from becoming excessively overwhelming.

I finished up my La Hesperia work and responsibilities about three weeks ago. But a managed to cash in my last few vacation days I had saved for a excursion down the east slope to the Tena area in the foothills. I ended up mostly visiting other volunteer projects, which I really should have been doing months ago befor finishing my work as coordinator of a volunteer program.

One, El Arca (like Noah´s Arc) was an animal rescue center with all sorts of caged Amazon animals the proprietor had rescued from indigenous digestive systems by exchanging fish and chicken for what in many cases were pretty special animals (i.e. nocturnal currasows, macaws, an ornate hawk-eagle, monkeys, an American Crocodile, etc.). The volunteer program was barely off the ground and the friendly owner was very excited with the prospect that I might somehow bring her lots of volunteers.

The other, Jatun Sacha (meaning big forest) is one of the oldest private reserves and volunteer programs in Ecuador. La Hesperia up until last year used to in fact exist under the Jatun Sacha Foundation´s umbrella. The most remarkable thing about my visit, other than the insanely precarious canopy tower that made for some splendid bird-watching, was the derth of volunteers present. Other than a couple confused gap-year girls fresh of the boat from New Brunkswick, the place was dead. Given this, I am impressed that La Hesperia has been able to maintain such a decent-sized (8 to 18) volunteer population during my tenure. I have heard that the San Cristobal, Galapagos Jatun Sacha Reserve usually has 25 to 30 volunteers.

On the way back toward Quito I met up with "Colorado" and "Komandatey" in Tena and managed to blagger my way into a rafting trip with them for less than half the dvertised price. This was my first ever serious rafting trip and the river was super-high (it´s name, Jatun Yacu, meaning "big water" was very approprite), so I found the intense sections and biggest towering waves thouroughly exhillerating. And when I was knocked overboard I found myself laughing maniacally. With 8 people in our boat we had 8 nationalities represented (though not all had qualified for the world cup - see Poland and Austria).

Speaking of la copa mundial,...after watching the US fortuitously tie against England with a crew of volunteers in Quito I went back to the east slope to check out some legendary birding spots that I had skipped out on to go rafting. I rushed back from Cordillera de los Guacamayos, one of the Ecuadors best bird watching locales, to meet my parents at the airport.

I took them straight away to La Hesperia so they could see what I had been up to for the previous 5 months first-hand. We all kept insisting that they had chosen the perfect time to come, the "dry season," despite the fact that it rained all afternoon all three days. "Komandatey" and the directors threw me a surprise going-away party one night. Somebody bought me a machete and everyone signed the blade. "El Vaquero" made me an awesome leather sheath for it as well.

I think just being at La Hesperia and seeing all the work and maintenance everywhere that needed to be done exhausted my parents. Luckily they had signed us all up for a comparatively luxurious cruise around the Galapagos. Despite the archapelago´s exalted reputation, the visit really exceeded all expectations. The wildlife was all rediculously tame and abundant. The hardest part was avoiding stepping on a camophlaged marine iguana or nesting booby. Our little (20-passenger) boat´s staff really made the trip special though. It wasn´t long before we were all repeating our favorite naturalist guide´s catch-phrase exclaimations in genuine or mock-enthusiasm (and unfortunately the Ecuadorian accent doesn´t translate into text): "Oh my goodness!"..."Take a Picture!"..."Come Quickly!"

It was sad to see my folks go, and not just because of the dramatic increase in food and accomodation budget. At least they didn´t have to leave me on the side the road with my thumb in the air like they did in northern New South Wales.

Nevertheless I started to feel oddly homesick the day of their departure, so I blitzed out of Quito for Mitad del Mundo for a change of scenery. It´s about as close as you can come to tourist-trap in Ecuador with indigenous displays of questionable accuracy and gimick demnstartions designed to prove the magic of the ecuator robed in speudoscientific explanations such as the Earth´s oblate spheroid shape and the coriolis effect. It was reasonably entertaining to pick these apart in my head. A couple Australian girls were blown away, but I thought it better to let them believe in magic than to reveal to them that the tooth fairy isn´t real.

I had read about a nearby crater, Pululahua, that had been made into a national park, so I hoped a local bus and then hiked up a long deserted road to the entrance. The park warden encouraged me to stay the night at the hostal. Not quite understanding the implications of this advice I wandered over the mirador. Several hundred meters below lay a patchwork quilt of farmland. If it were not walled in by shear mountains it could have passed for somewhere in rural America.

I estimated it would take the better part of an hour to descend the steep winding trail down from the rim, and then more for the return. At this point it was already 4 pm, so I heeded the warden´s advice, provisioned myself for a night´s stay, ditched my large pack in his office and started my steep decent.

It turned out that one of the owners of the hostal at the bottom is a bird guide. He didn´t offer to take me out anywhere, but he did give me some advice on what trails to cover the next day. He´s got a pretty nice Ecuadorian Bird Blog: birding-ecuador-responsibly.blogspot.com

After a tiring trek out of Pululahua, I road a series of buses to Otavalo, the most prosperous indigenous population center in all of South America. It is most famous for its markets, though for me at this point in my travels, I´m not exactly looking to pick up a thick wool tapestry to lug all the way down to Peru.

I considered trying to sign up for some sort of tour to one of the nearby high altitude lakes or the raptor rescue center, but when the recommended travel agency had not opened by 10:30 I decided to move on. I will be making my way back to similar highland environements later and these sort of things are best booked with a group anyway.

So I took a bus to Ibarra and then straight downhill toward the coast. The decent was stunning with the andes seeming to never end. Finally, I arrived this afternoon at the remote mangrove outpost of San Lorenzo. It was only recently opened to overland transportation and is a world apart from everything else I have previously seen in Ecuador. I may as well be in a different country.

Tomorrow I plan to hop a ferry through the mangrove archipelago to La Tola where I should be able to visit the tallest mangrove forest in the world.

Congratulations if you made it this far and doubly so if you are still awake.

I promise pictures will be featured next time around.