yet another corner of Nicaragua - the Indio Maíz Reserve

After so many weeks away I was entitled to a little compensatory leave, and joined up with a birding trip to a very remote corner of Nicaragua.  The Indio Maíz Reserve is on the Caribbean side of the country, just north of Costa Rica.  Nobody really goes there apart from a few fishermen (and perhaps the drug smugglers who are rumoured to use this sparsely populated coast to get their drugs from Costa Rica to Honduras, on the way up to the US), and there is only a small population of indigenous people, who are remote enough from the main part of the country that they speak English creole rather than Spanish.  Even the settlements that had been there were fading away.

If you can't read that (even in extra large size the writing is small and faint) it concludes with a note that the British cemetery was used until the 1980's.  This is what it looks like now:

In this state partly through neglect, but partly because of Hurricane Otto that hit last November - the southernmost hurricane on record in Central America which made landfall right where the lodge is located.

Unfortunately the company I was travelling with had not heard about the hurricane.  So the itinerary I read in late March, with its references to 8km of trails around the lodge in pristine rainforest, and much more primary rainforest to view mostly from a small boat, where we could see all kinds of rainforest birds not to mention otters, tapirs and perhaps even manatees, still reflected the situation pre-hurricane and was, frankly, a load of rubbish.  There was only a 1km trail that was passable, and even that just passed through a post-apocalyptic landscape of broken vegetation.  This is a view from the river.

Hardly a dense, pristine rainforest.

However it was quite fascinating to see the effects - how powerful nature can be - as this forest will surely take decades to regenerate.  We all tried to make the most of it and our poor guide, as well as predicting that we will get sizeable refunds, made superhuman efforts to find us birds so I was able to add Great Green Macaw, Nicaraguan Seed-finch, Masked Duck and Least Bittern to my life list - all of which are pretty difficult to see.  The green basilisks and the green and black poison dart frogs were pretty cool too!

visiting home and family

I was going to post something about my recent time (nearly four weeks) in the UK, but it was so depressing that I really don't want to.  Let's just say it was very cold, and too right wing.  I was glad to get away.

Although London will always be my favourite city, in part because of the amazing variety of culture there.  On my first day back I went to an exhibition of world music photography (which the Royal Albert Hall kindly let me and another woman in to view, even though it had officially closed the previous day), and then that evening to a concert by Bassekou Kouyate, Seckou Touré and others (an Afro-Cuban thing) that was superb.  If I'd had time I would also have gone to see Orchestra Baobab, Leftfield, and a talk by Yanis Varoufakis.

& being in the UK of course gave me the opportunity to visit my Dad, which is always nice.  Lots of discussions on politics, which can get heated but always remain discussions rather than arguments.

Then, just one week after spending time with my Dad, I was with my Mum in Kenya!  Probably the first time in thirty years that I have seen both of my parents within the same month, let alone within a week!!  Nice to visit her too, with lots of discussions on the pros and cons of living in a different country and culture.

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?

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!