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?

and some Mexico bird-watching

My Mexico holiday finished with a few days in the San Blas area - one trip out to see the humpback whales in the bay, and a few walks to see the local birds.  There were quite a few crocodiles around in the wetlands too, which are great to photograph as they mostly don't move.  Look carefully at the crocodile above and you will see that two of its lower teeth have grown right through the upper jaw...




We saw some nice birds, most of which I did not get to photograph as I don't have the right camera - maybe not the right photographic skills either.  But this lineated woodpecker posed nicely with its crest in the sun.

As did this citreoline trogon - shown in a back view so that you can see the deep blue of its back and tail - although it did turn round for some nice front shots too.

The amazing nocturnal northern potoo - look at the eye!!
















Finally, whilst they aren't as spectacular as the birds above, I did love this group of groove-billed anis warming themselves in the early morning sun:

monarch butterflies in Michoacán

The main sight around which my Mexico holiday was designed was the over-wintering grounds of the migratory monarch butterfly. Over the course of a year, they cover a round trip of up to 5,500 miles, taking several generations to do so.  The toughest are those that fly from the northern US (or even southern Canada) to Mexico, where they gather in their millions in the pine forests of Michoacán to see out the winter, mostly living on fat reserves although eating and drinking a little on warm days.  Then when the temperatures rise sufficiently, some time in March, they set off for Texas.  There they mate and lay eggs and die, by that time some eight months old.  The generation born there travel further north, mate, lay eggs and die all within the space of a month, as do the next two generations, before the autumn comes and it is time to fly south again.  Amazing that this generation knows where to go, when neither their parents nor their grandparents made the journey.

Many areas of the forest where the butterflies over-winter are now protected, and it was nice to see many parties of Mexican school-children there, being shown this spectacular part of their national natural heritage.  We visited two different such reserves on two days.

The largest of the two was El Rosario, with perhaps five million butterflies this year.  On the day we visited it was quite cold, with the sun mostly obscured by cloud, and so the butterflies were quiet, just perched motionless, with the wings closed.  There were none fluttering about. If you passed through that stretch of forest and didn't know the butterflies were there, you might just think that some of the foliage on the trees was dying.

Look more closely however and this is what you see (although easier to spot here as some opened their wings to catch a brief bit of sun):

Millions of butterflies.  Covering the tree trunks and hanging from the branches.  Apparently sometimes the branches fall from the trees with their weight.  They have very few predators at this stage as the milkweed plants they have fed on in the US are poisonous.  Only three species of birds in Mexico can digest the poison and we didn't see any of those birds on either of our visits to two different reserves.

On a sunnier day they set off in flight, in search of nearby pools of water to drink, or flowers to feed from, to boost their reserves and help them to make it through the winter.  Some die at this stage, having insufficient strength in the cold air to get back to the colony in the trees.  We saw many such dead and dying butterflies on the ground.

Overall a really spectacular sight, which I'm glad I finally got round to seeing.  A beautiful red warbler seen on the way up (sadly no photo of that) on day one added to the experience too.  A warning to anyone tempted to go - the reserves are at some altitude (over 3,000m) so take a horse up (only $5) and walk back down - and dress warmly.  I needed my hat and gloves!

Mexico City and Teotihuacán

After a month back at work, in both Panama and Honduras, I was able to take a few days off again for holiday, this time to Mexico.  I'd never been to Mexico City before so took a couple of days to whizz round a few highlights of this city of 22 million people.  It was crowded (and the sense of personal space is quite different, as people consistently bash into you as they walk past, making no effort to step a few inches to the side to avoid such collisions), it was polluted, and there was clear evidence of the subsidence the city is suffering from as the aquifer below is depleted of its water (see the angle of the chapel to the right of the cathedral in the photo above) - but it was still a city I felt comfortable in.  There is so much grand old architecture that it looks like a European city.  It is also bursting with museums and galleries, several of them world class.

I spent time at Frida Kahlo's old house and made two separate visits to the incredible National Anthropological Museum.  I was headed out to Teotihuacán afterwards and they recommend a visit to this museum first, but really it is a place everyone should go, full of impressive exhibits from the various pre-Colombian civilisations such as the Aztecs, the Mayans and the Olmecs.

I didn't want to focus only on ancient cultures, however, so also had a wander around Tianguis del Chopo, a flea market for old (and new) punks and goths.  Lots of stalls selling punk Tshirts and leather jackets, mixed in with lots of stuff using the skull motif that is so popular in Mexico.  I wore an old (37-year-old!!!) Siouxsie & the Banshees Tshirt and an equally old skull-and-crossbones earring, but couldn't compete with some of the people there, like this guy to the right with his multi-coloured mohican!

But the time passed quickly and soon it was time to find the northern bus station, to head out to Teotihuacán to join the tour group from the UK who I'd be spending the next week with.  I was already with a friend - an American guy I'd met in Guyana a couple of years ago - and we'd spent many hours in Mexico City discussing Trump and Brexit, thankfully sharing the same revulsion towards the illiberal, racist and xenophobic movements convulsing our two countries.  So when I saw the Brits in the tour group - nearly all of retirement age and none from London - I warned him that we should probably steer clear of such conversations if we didn't want to get into arguments, given the demographics of the Brexit vote.  But the subjects came up anyway - how you could you avoid discussing that wall when you are in Mexico?! - and I was pleasantly surprised to find we were all on the same page.  I suppose because we were pre-selected as a group of people who travel, and who are interested in the wider world, so how could we hold such prejudices?

Of those people I know back in the UK, a disappointing number of them voted for Brexit, but all Brits I meet whilst travelling are more open to the world, thankfully.  It does though make me wonder what I will encounter should I move back to the UK.  Indeed it makes me ask myself the question sometimes whether I really want to move back there at all.  But meeting with this group of British holidaymakers did give me some hope.

So, my friend and I went birding around the hotel area before the others arrived, and joined them in the morning for a tour of the ruins of Teoptihuacán.  Sadly we were not doing the luxury hot air balloon version of the tour that is clearly popular:

but we did a walking tour, managing to pick up some nice birds along the way such as cactus wren and blue grosbeak, as well as spotted ground squirrel sitting on what looked to be a painful seat!

solitude in nature (or was it just the exercise?)

At the end of my trip to Nicaragua, I spent a few days in the mountainous north, first in the small city of Matagalpa and then in a "mountain resort" called La Selva Negra.  Matagalpa has a small museum commemorating Carlos Fonseca (founder of the Sandinista Front but killed before he could enjoy the revolutionary triumph) and some nice coffee shops (a latte with a large slice of passion-fruit cheesecake for $3...) but little else.

Around Matagalpa, however, are the mountains, with their cloud forests in the upper reaches and the coffee farms just below.  La Selva Negra is located within a coffee farm, one producing shade-grown, organic coffee, all exported to the USA.  I took the $20 morning tour to see how they processed the coffee berries, but far more appealing to me were the 20km of trails through the cloud forests, with the prospect of birds, mammals (maybe) and the beauty of the forest.

On my first morning there I started walking at 6am, eager to get onto the high, more distant, parts of the trails before other people went out walking.  The trail I chose turned out to be one of the toughest, where I had to pull myself up some of the steeper parts using the tree roots, but I made it to the top ridge and didn't see another person for the first three hours of my walk.  At that point I encountered an American birder with his guide - whom I'd already said hello to the previous afternoon - and they invited me to join them for the day.  Of course I accepted - a free bird guide!! But it was interesting afterwards to compare the time I spent alone with the time I spent with the guide and his client and find that I much preferred the former.

The client had given the guide a list of the Central American birds he had not yet seen, so the guide was targeting these birds, constantly either playing their calls or making owl calls (other birds sometimes come to mob the owl), which not only didn't seem to be attracting any birds but was also quite annoying as it detracted from the real sounds in this forest.  I was able to add a couple of new woodcreepers to my life list, and an eye-ringed flatbill that I wouldn't otherwise have seen, but the best bird of the day - the resplendent quetzal - was just spotted sitting quietly on a high branch.  & out on my own again the following two days I was able to find a slate-coloured solitaire, an emerald toucanet, a pair of brown-hooded parrots and a white-faced quail dove just from looking and listening to the forest around me.  Much more satisfying!  In fact I was so happy to finally see the solitaire that I whooped for joy and spent the rest of that morning with a big grin on my face.

I was wondering what it was that made me feel quite so good.  At first I thought it might be the solitude combined with the beauty of the cloud forest, but then I wondered if it were just the effect (the endorphins) of several days in a row of hard physical exercise?  I should vow to keep up the exercise on my return home, a slightly late New Year's Resolution, but I know there is no point, that a machine in a gym will have nowhere near the attraction of a deserted hiking trail through a beautiful cloud forest.

wildlife-watching in Laguna de Apoyo

Whilst the Laguna de Apoyo has been designated a nature reserve, that hasn't stopped people building houses there, cutting down trees, burning rubbish, etc, so I didn't really expect to see much wildlife there.  & it's true that I didn't see any of the more exciting stuff like armadillos, ocelots, skunks, etc that are supposed to still exist there.  However the howler monkeys were everywhere, seemingly unconcerned by the presence of humans, so I was able to take quite a few photos of them (and moan to myself when they woke me around 5am every day with their roars).

There were some sizeable tarantulas around the area.  They would come out of their holes from around 6pm onwards.  We saw a few scorpions too.  & plenty of birds, including some very attractive species (the photograph below shows a white-throated magpie jay, which is very common there although difficult to photograph as they will not sit still for more than a couple of seconds).

& whilst not specifically looking for them, we came across six snakes, of four different species.  Here I am holding a scorpion-hunting snake.

cross-cultural sharing

I made very clear to the Spanish teacher that I did NOT want three weeks of grammar lessons.  If I need to know how to conjugate a verb using the imperfect subjunctive I can get the necessary information from a book or website; what I needed was practice in using the language.  Three weeks of conversation, basically, with explanations for areas where I consistently struggle (eg in ser v. estar and imperfect v. preterite when trying to translate that simple English word "was").

I hadn't really thought about what our conversations would cover, but in hindsight I'm thinking that she did really well to keep the conversation flowing for some 60 hours over the three weeks. Having found out about my work and interests on the first day I suppose she used that as a base, but I'm sure she also took advantage of my presence to find out what a foreigner thinks of some issues that are perhaps not openly discussed between Nicaraguans.

There were two main subject areas: Nicaraguan political history, and Nicaraguan social issues. Mostly she would give me a topic and my homework was to research it and return ready to discuss it with her the next day, so I actually got a double benefit as I not only improved my Spanish but also got to learn more about this country that I like so much.

So I learned more about the Somoza period, about Violeta Chamorro, about Alemán and his corruption ... about the Sandinistas too, and current views of Daniel Ortega and his wife ... but in some ways the social issues were far more interesting.  We discussed machismo, the shocking extent of single parenthood and of teenage pregnancies, of physical and sexual abuse within families, and of local views on homosexuality.  She surprised me by raising the subject of anal sex at one point (apparently encouraged for young people as a means of avoiding pregnancy - but also something her boyfriend was trying to persuade her to try), and during our conversations about child abuse she confessed that she was sexually abused by her uncle at the age of eight - and that I'm one of only two people she has ever shared that information with.  There were tears when she told me.  I also know at what age she lost her virginity, and that her father used to drink too much...  They were astonishingly open conversations.  Fascinating for me but also a way for her to hear a different viewpoint on things.  She told me on the final day that her boyfriend and family were teasing her about me, apparently she was talking about me and my life/views a lot at home - and she told me that our conversations had made her consider whether she really wants children, or whether it is just the social pressure that makes a Nicaraguan woman assume that she wants them.  Wow!  It was strange to get to know someone so well, to connect on such a level, and then just say "goodbye and thanks for the lessons".  But perhaps in some ways my transience facilitated her openness with me.

Back at the living quarters, all students are treated to one 'activity' each school day.  Occasionally a trip out of Laguna de Apoyo - a visit related to the local political history, such as the prison outside Masaya where Somoza's National Guard held and tortured political prisoners (the photo to the right shows blood stains on the walls of one of the torture areas in the prison), or a quick meeting with the woman known during the revolution as "La negra" (the number 2 to Camilo Ortega, who was never captured as her nickname was deliberately coined so as to mislead - he skin being quite light in tone).  She's still a feisty lady, who entertained us by recounting how her exasperated husband issued her with an ultimatum: "La revolución o yo!" (the revolution or me).  She chose the revolution, of course.

We were also shown some videos on the history of the Sandinista revolution and on more recent socio-economic issues in the country.  All tying in neatly with my language lessons.  All in all a very interesting three weeks.