Quito old city

 February 18 and 19

We arrived in Quito about noon on the 17th  with no flight issues. The drive into the city reminded us that Quito is built a long plateau surrounded by channels created by the surrounding volcanoes. Quito was founded in 1534 and sits at 9200 feet of elevation. It is 45 miles long but only 7 miles wide, with a population of 2.8 million. Our hotel, Patio Andaluz, is located just a few blocks from the central square in the old city of Quito. The hotel is in a restored 16th century mansion that was the home to major Spanish families during the colonial period. It is a good example of Spanish Colonial architecture, with balcony-lined courtyards as the major feature. When it was restored in the early 2000’s they put glass roofs over the courtyards to increase the utility of the building in this cool and wet climate. 

After a quick lunch, we walked to the archaeological museum, also housed in a 16th century mansion. Its collection of pre-Colombian art was organized by theme rather than chronologically. It was fascinating to see the similarities and differences over time and by region in the common concepts of the circle of life, the role of the shaman, the agricultural cycle and the bimodal nature of the world (light/dark, male/female, etc). We had dinner at a very nice restaurant on the central square that served local cuisine. 

Today we met the rest of our Galapagos travelers for a tour of the old city of Quito. UNESCO declared it a World Cultural Heritage site in 1978, which prompted the restoration of many colonial buildings. Quito has the largest (400 acres) colonial district in Latin America. 

Our first stop was the gigantic statue of the Virgin Mary atop a hill just south of the old city. It is a replica of the statue of Mary behind the altar of the San Francisco monastery church. The statue is actually taller than the famous statue of Jesus in Rio. She stands on a globe and holds a dragon by a chain leash, symbolizing protecting mankind from the devil. The spot also afforded a panoramic view of Quito and the surrounding hills and volcanos. 

Next we visited the San Francisco monastery, the largest and oldest in Ecuador. It was begun shortly after the Spanish took over the city in 1534 and stands on the spot of a former Inca palace. It is still in active use as a church and is the home of about 100 monks ( though the number varies depending on the number on assignment or in the seminary). The interior of the church, like many in Quito, is covered with gilded decorations. The decorative style is a mix of baroque and moorish elements, a combination common in Quito and one that works surprisingly well. 

We took a break to go to a local family-run chocolate factory where we learned about making chocolate. Many other countries in Central and South America grow the red variety of cacao. Ecuador only grows the yellow variety which is more aromatic but not as resistant to changes in humidity and temperature.  We did a tasting of nine different variations, plus a brownie, hot chocolate and an excellent chocolate stout.  The Ecuadorian chocolate is very good; even the 100% chocolate (no sugar) was not harsh. In Ecuador, they consider any chocolate under 60% as “fake chocolate”.

Next we visited the “gold church”, the church of the Jesuit order in Quito. Again we saw a mix of baroque and moorish design elements— and so much gold! The gold is from Ecuadorian mines, and is all thin gold leaf. It is estimated that 150 pounds of gold (about 500,000 square feet when pounded into foil) is present in the church. There were also beautifully carved pews and confessionals.

Finally, we had a sumptuous buffet lunch in the Augustinian monastery. The chapter house there was the location for signing the first declaration of independence for Ecuador in August 1809, although final independence from Spain did not occur until 1822. All the food was traditional Ecuadorian and the dessert was a sampler made from Ecuadorian fruits.

Pictured: A pre-Colombian jug depicting a shaman who has transformed to a jaguar, Statue of Mary, main altar from the gold church, main altar from San Francisco during mass, native fruit dessert sampler at lunch? 

Kichwa Anangu

 Wednesday February 18

In order to make our 10:40 flight from Coca to Quito, we had to leave the lodge at 4:45 this morning. Sunrise is at 6:30, so the entire 4 mile canoe ride out to the welcome center was in the dark. The only illumination to guide navigation through the winding creek was a headlamp on the foremost paddler. It was an eerie experience! We transferred to a larger motorized skiff for the 2.5 hour ride upstream to Coca. 

There is so much to say about the Napo lodge and the Kitchwa Anangu community that manages the reserve and the lodge. Kitchwa is the local indigenous language; Anangu is the local name for leaf cutter ants. The village chose the name because “they are always working”. It is absolutely true. The sheer logistics of building and running an upscale ecolodge 4 miles from the last place you can take a motorized boat and 80 kms from the closest real town is impossibly impressive. 

The Kitchwa Anangu community began when five families from further north on the Napo River moved to the area in the 1960’s. In their previous home there was not enough land to grow their own food, so they moved in hopes of being more self-sufficient. While other indigenous communities along the Napo signed deals with oil companies, they did not, in order to preserve their farming and way of life. 

In the 1990’s, eight men in the community convinced the other members to try a new model that would bring in enough money to assure education and health care for the community: to create a nature preserve and an eco-tourism business. This included a commitment to cease subsistence hunting on their land. They attracted some outside investors, and in 2001  began construction of the lodge. In 2006 the community became the sole owners of the lodge and the reserve. 

In order to build the lodge, they had to create access: the four-mile creek was hand cleared with machetes and chain saws. These are waters where caiman and leeches thrive, not to mention other creatures. The lodge staff still go out (usually barefoot) to clear any trees that have fallen in the creek. 

Then they had to transport all the materials by canoe— larger items like floorboard and appliances were strapped across two canoes during high water conditions to be able to make it. For four years they labored before enough money came in to pay back the investors. Their earlier commitment to conservation means that their reserve has a higher density of animals, birds, and mature rainforest trees. They have increased the size and amenities of the lodge over time. 

The community now has 34 families (600 people), and the lodge we stayed in employs 60 people. The lodge offers employment to any community member that wants it. There is also a rustic lodge in the village center, a few miles upstream on the Napo from the welcome center of the reserve. Almost all the lodge employees are male. The women and children live in the village, which we visited on Monday.

The village has a modest health center that serves the whole region, a covered sports center, a soccer pitch, and a 10-room school. They are building a computer lab. The school is mandatory for all children and is bilingual in Kitchwa and Spanish. The women of the community created a “women’s center” 17 years ago. The center employs 24 women in two teams (10 days on, 10 days off). They host information sessions for tourists and sell traditional handcrafts as both a source of income and as an incentive to preserve traditional culture in the younger generation.

The women demonstrated traditional instruments, dances and songs, as well as kitchen utensils and cooking and food storage methods. They also explained the construction of the buildings. Both in the village and at the lodge, support pillars and crossbeams are made from re-purposed oil pumping pipes. Other structural members are from ironwood or other forest materials. 

Traditionally they used land snail shells as a kind of horn to call people from far away. One of the older women was much better at it than our young guides! The women also explained the construction and use of blowguns, the traditional silent hunting method for large birds and monkeys. One of our guides said that his father could shoot a poison dart 60 feet into the air with accuracy. Several of the folks in our group tried the blowgun (without poison and with a small hanging target) with mixed success. 

We sampled traditional foods: plantains, heart of palm, cacao beans, manioc and grilled grubs. There was a homemade hot sauce as some of the foods are a little bland. We also had some yuisa tea, made from leaves of the local plant and high in caffeine and antioxidants. 

Throughout our village visit, it was clear that while the traditional roles are quite gender-specific, that there is real admiration and respect for the women’s tasks. We were also impressed with how confident and comfortable the women were in hosting groups of tourists. 

Pictured: our hostess Maribel by the kitchen hearth, our traditional snack, Kevin with the blowgun (yes, he hit the target). 

Our last full day in the Amazon

 Tuesday, February 17

This morning’s pre-dawn expedition was to travel by canoe across the lake and then hike for a half-hour to a 110-foot high observation tower. The objective was to get above the canopy and look at monkey and bird species “at eye-level”.  Although it was raining lightly as we set out, it subsided by the time we were hiking. Katharine joined the rest of the group at the top of the tower. They saw about 25 species of birds (most of them at spotting-scope distance rather than close) over about a two-hour period. 

Kevin opted to stay on the ground ( a 110 foot tower and his acrophobia was not a good combo) and wander with one of the local guides. The two of them saw three new bird species and a troop of Wooly Monkeys the rest of the group hadn’t seen. Of course, since Kevin stayed on the ground, there are no photos to prove that Katharine saw things! On the way back to the canoe, our local guide explained the medicinal uses of several of the trees and plants along the trail.

This afternoon’s outing was a great reminder of the diversity of nature experiences. It was a spectacularly sunny afternoon, but the birds and animals seemed to think that was a reason to stay home; some, however,  opted for sun bathing. We canoed very slowly along the main creek and saw the usual species but not much that was new. On our way back, two tiny and beautiful birds (new species) came into view. And while our afternoon was sunny, as we entered the lake on the return trip there was a rainbow behind us. 

A word about Hoatzin. These are very odd birds, very ancient as a species and with no living relatives. They look slightly like chickens with long necks, tiny heads and ragged crests. They are really not very lovely, but they are certainly curious. We had tried to see them in the Peruvian Amazon in an earlier trip, to no avail. Here they are everywhere. They are referred to as “stinky turkeys” and they have no predators. Their diet consists of leaves and they digest their food by way of bacteria (rather than the multi-chamber system of more modern species). The bacteria give their flesh a nasty flavor.

Tomorrow we head back to Coco and then Quito, to join the Galapagos portion of the trip on Thursday. 

Pictured: Hoatzin, Dot-backed Antbird, Wire-tailed Manakin, Woolly monkey, Greater Ani sunning itself 

7 species of parrots and much more

 February 16 

We left the lodge before dawn this morning (remember that we have to go everywhere by canoe and you’ll see the challenge!) in order to get to our first destination by 7am. This was a “clay lick”, essentially a clay-rich cliff created by a landslide on the bank of the Napo River.  

Parrots (including macaws and parakeets) require the minerals in clay to offset the concentration of alkaloids in their systems. Many animals require clay as a source of minerals, but in parrots the alkaloid buildup is increased by their habit of eating unripe fruit: the competition for food is so intense that they don’t wait for the fruit to be fully ripe. Parrots will fly 10 miles or more to get to a clay lick. In this case they tend to arrive just after dawn and leave by mid-morning, so we did too. 

We sat in a motorized skiff off-shore to avoid disturbing the birds. We saw four species of parrots this morning: Mealy Amazons (large and pale green), Yellow-crowned Amazons (large and green with large bright yellow forehead patches), Blue-headed parrots (smaller, dark green with indigo heads), and Dusky-headed parakeets (even smaller with a gray head). The parrots used their beaks to break off piece of clay. When they’d had enough they flew off in a flock. In the case of the mealy amazons, the flock was probably 30-40 birds and quite a sight! 

We then travelled to the central Anangu Kichwa village. The history of the Napo Wildlife Center and the village deserves a full blog post, probably on Wednesday which is a travel day. 

In the late morning, after the village visit, we traveled to a second “clay lick”. In this case, a steep leafy hillside inside the forest allows water to pool around clay-rich soils. We walked about a half-mile from the shore to a permanent “blind”, where we sat and waited for the birds. As we arrived at the blind, a flock of scarlet macaws were there, drinking the mineral-rich waters. After they left, we heard a large flock of parakeets chattering high in the trees. We waited for about an hour as the parakeets gradually came down to lower altitude. Then the heavens opened and it poured for about a half-hour. It was fun to watch the parakeets duck under leaves to stay dry. Finally about ten minutes after the rain stopped, the cobalt-winged parakeets came, en masse, to the ground to drink and to nibble on the soil. Two orange-cheeked parrots (which looked enormous next to the parakeets) joined in as well. 

After a late lunch at the “welcome center” at the edge of the Napo property, we headed back to the lodge. As we canoed down the creek, we saw several Golden-mantle Tamarins jumping in banana plants. These tamarins are endemic to just this part of the Yasuni national park, and are the mascots of our lodge. Our naturalist guide had not seen them in quite a while, so he was as excited as we were. 

We also watched a very large troop of Squirrel Monkeys cross the creek on overarching branches and vines. There were several mothers carrying infants across; some of them had to cross back to help monkey toddlers make the crossing. 

As if that wasn’t enough wildlife for one day, we went on a night walk after dinner. We saw 6 types of frogs, several very interesting spiders, and a massive walking stick insect. 

Pictured: mother and child Squirrel Monkeys, Orange-cheeked parrots and Cobalt-winged parakeets, Blue-headed parrots and Mealy amazons at the clay lick, Golden-mantle tamarin running down a banana leaf, map tree frog

A full day at Napo

Sunday February 15

We had a “lazy start” this morning: breakfast at 6:30 and the first activity (birdwatching from a tower) at 7:00. But about 6:45 the local family of giant river otters came out to fish along the shore, so that took priority over everything else!  Once we got to the tower we saw two kinds of monkeys and a number of bird species, including three kinds of macaws. Later in the morning we took a canoe ride up a different creek than yesterday’s, stopping to watch the otters again on the way.  We were treated with a sighting of five Red Howler monkeys, including a baby. 

In the afternoon we went out by canoe again. This time we took a short walk in the woods, to see Noisy (or Spix’s) Night Monkeys. While similarly cute, these are a different species to the Panamanian Night Monkeys we saw in the Darien. A Fer-de-lance (a highly venomous snake) was curled up along the trail to add to the excitement. We walked single file along the far edge of the trail, as this is not a snake you want to make nervous! 

We returned to the canoe and retraced our “steps” from yesterday afternoon along the main creek, spotting a two-toed sloth and some new birds. We were grateful for the strength of our canoe paddlers to get us home ahead of a thunderstorm. 

Pictured: Red Howler monkey family, juvenile Zigzag Heron, fer-de-lance, white-fronted capuchin monkey 

Made it to the Amazon

 February 14

For the first time ever (which means we are really lucky) our trip was a bit delayed by travel issues.

We flew to Quito on Friday February 13 without incident. On Saturday the 14th we were to fly 40 minutes to Coca, then board a motorized skiff for a two hour transit followed by another two  hours by canoe to get to our lodge. It was a lovely morning in Quito and our 9:00 am flight departed on time. However as we flew east across the Andes the clouds closed in.  

About halfway through our flight, we got a view of a very odd dark cloud towering well above the cloud cover. Based on its location, we believe it came from the current eruption of the Reventador volcano.  A later google search verified that the volcano did erupt Friday night.

As we neared Coca we had to abort the landing, as the  fog was too dense. We circled the Coca airport for about an hour and were unable to land. We flew back to Quito. We changed to a new plane about two hours later and took off again in the early afternoon.  This time we landed without incident. We were greeted at the Coca airport by a double file of police— it turns out that a famous Puerto Rican reggaeton band was on our plane, coming to help the celebration of Mardi Gras. 

We traveled two hours at high speed in motorized skiffs; this gave us a good appreciation of how wide and long the Napo River is, but didn’t allow for much wildlife viewing. Then we moved to canoes— these had space for 5-6 passengers and 3 paddlers. We were conveyed up a narrow twisting creek for about 4 miles to the lagoon in front of our lodge. This is the only way to get to the lodge, which means all the construction materials, appliances, everything to build the lodge had to be transported in the same way. We saw some wonderful birds and quite a few caimans in this last leg. 

Pictured: Hoatzin, our lodge from the lagoon, Black Caiman, Green-banded Urania (a diurnal moth)

Final day in Panama

 Thursday January 15

We transitioned north overnight to Punta Patino on the edge of the Gulf of San Miguel. In the 1980s the northeastern edge of the Darien was being stripped to create cattle ranches, many of them owned by wealthy families connected to Noriega. A conservation non-profit (ANCON) bought 70,000 acres in 1985 to create a private reserve. They have since protected other areas of Panama as well.

The tide swing in this area can be five feet or more; at low tide this morning the ship had to anchor more than 2 nautical miles out from shore. We went zodiac cruising around small rocky islands offshore. We were pleased to see a crab-eating raccoon scampering along the shore. They are  nocturnal species so to see one at 9am was a treat. We also stopped by some small fishing boats to admire the corvina and spiny lobsters they caught this morning. 

This afternoon we zodiac’d the 2+ miles to shore and walked trails in the reserve. We heard thunder as we landed, but the storm held off until we were returning to the ship. Riding in a zodiac into the teeth of the storm made us very grateful for our ponchos!

Pictured: crab-eating raccoon, fishing boats, roadside hawk, female crimson-crested woodpecker