a few hours off over the Easter weekend

I did have to work through the Easter weekend, to make up for the days 'lost' at Sacha Lodge, but still found the time to rush downstairs on Friday evening when the Easter parade went past my building.  For over an hour there were marching bands and biblical characters passing slowly by. As an atheist I struggled with some of the references - why did the bands keep playing "Abide with Me"?  Isn't that the FA Cup Final song?  & why the creepy Ku Klux Klan style costumes (with the tall pointy head coverings)?  But it was interesting to see the effort put in, not just to the fancy costumes and the big floats, but also in the people who walked along the road barefoot in various roles.  I'm not sure how heavy these crosses were either:

Then I also took Sunday morning off to get a little exercise by walking up Cerro Ancon, a big hill in Panama City with various historical connotations as well as some nice views from the top.  I can just see it if I look to the right from my balcony, but had not yet made the effort to walk up it in my four years' living here, and I must say now I'm in the final year of my contract I've become even more aware of the things I haven't yet done and places I haven't yet visited.

It was a bit of a slog in the humidity, and the views were hazy - again because of the humidity. But it was worth it not just for the exercise and the 'tick' on the To Do List, but also for this great caterpillar I found up the top.  The size of my index finger and quite beautiful, although I resisted the strong temptation to put it on my hand as it almost certainly had stinging or at least irritating hairs along its body.

a long weekend in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Work is getting more and more demanding as we managers in my department are currently down to three, from the usual six (vacancy, secondment and long-term sickness).  So in 2017 I have so far been asked to cover on assignments in India, Kenya and our UK head office - and that is in addition to my regular workload in Latin America.  It's not that I don't love the job so much as to want to work seven days a week for months on end, it's just that I am in the last year of my contract here, and there are still so many places to go and things to see in this region.

So following a recent three week assignment in Ecuador (where disruption caused by the flooding and the post-election protests added to the demands), I decided to add on three days for some personal travel, even though I knew this would lead to my working throughout the Easter weekend.  The thing is, Ecuador has something special - the best place in the Americas (well, in the world) to see crested owls.

It was worth the trip.  A 45-minute flight to Coca, followed by a 2-hour speedboat ride down the Napo River, a twenty-minute walk and finally a twenty-minute canoe paddle to reach Sacha Lodge in the Amazon.  But I saw the owls - the ones in this photo - before I even reached the lodge, during the twenty minute walk!

But I'd booked three days, so went out as planned with the specialist bird guide to see what we could find, relaxed in the knowledge that I had already seen my target species. There were plenty more birds, including some seen at a clay lick (macaws, parrots and parakeets go there to eat clay so as to ingest the minerals it contains), some from the comfort of the little canoe and some from the top of a kapok tree, courtesy of a wonderful 41 metre high canopy tower.



The views over the treetops were superb, especially with the early morning mists draping themselves around some of the trees.  & when the mists cleared there were some lovely birds perched in the tree canopies, like this toucan:

Quite a few monkeys too, including the bush-baby-like night monkeys with their enormous eyes, and a tiny pygmy marmoset peering down from a high branch.  There were caimans and turtles in the lake beside the lodge, and short-nosed bats hanging onto the wooden piles that hold up the bar area.  Although not part of the birder itinerary, I asked to join the non-birders for a night walk, and there I added a whip-scorpion, a wolf spider and two different types of tarantula to the list.  So it was three days (and quite a lot of money) well spent.  Pretty busy, with a 4:30 alarm call on one day, but with no internet access - thus no work and no depressing world news - it was also very relaxing.  How can you not relax when your guides paddles your canoe silently across Lake Pilchicocha with this early morning mist over the trees?