Ring-necked Kingfisher
Hoatzín (pronounced "hhwatson"
Amazonian Kingfisher
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Ecuador: Day 8 - NWC to Sani Lodge
No good deed goes unpunished.
The sun came up over the river. Despite the clear skies, a thick mist rose up.
At dinner, the po went out. That makes us three for three on power outages at the lodges. Of course, it is the Amazon, and I've got Internet. The world has indeed moved on. So now I'm finishing this up in the bar, enjoying a mostly cool Pilsener beer, and about to call it a night.
Since we had half a day off yesterday, we paid for it by getting up at 3:40 this morning. No coffee. No breakfast. Just packed, luggage out of the room, and in the canoe (ow butt) at 4:30. There was a waning gibbous moon though, so once you were away from the lights, you could see pretty well.
Apart from the lack of coffee, it was really cool to be canoeing down a stream in the Amazon rain forest in the dark. There aren't many lightning bugs flying around, but on the hyacinth beds along the stream edges there were glow bugs glowing. Just a bright tiny point light on a field of black.
We called some birds along the way, trying to get them in, with no luck. If you get a chance though, listen to the call of the Common Potoo and imagine hearing it at night on a stream in the jungle. Something about it is just great.
After we got to the bodega, we got in a motorized canoe and headed to an island in the Napo River. There we got to see a small flock of umbrella birds. I'm sure Dad's pics will be better than mine, but here's a quick one to give the basic idea. They just stayed way too far away for my 300mm lenses to reach them.
Well, it was thicker before the photo. We headed back to the bodega.
On the way, we passed a boat from Sani Lodge, and Jorge yelled a lot of Spanish at it. Apparently he was letting them know that he had two passengers aboard that needed a ride to Sani. It seemed the tour company we signed up with had a bit of a snafu, with our guide Andrew leaving for Coca at 8, and our new guide not picking us up until at least noon, and maybe two o'clock. But Jorge, the boss that he is, set us up with an instant ride to Sani. We arrived much earlier than expected (obviously) but the folks here were super friendly and accommodating. I really had to show of my Spanish skills though, responding tactfully to each statement or question with either "Donde es el baño" or "Para español, oprime dos." I must have been very convincing because they all kept talking to me in Spanish. Especially Luis. He paddled our canoe in from the river. Then he took us on an impromptu walk of the grounds looking for birds. I kept explaining that that was just too hot for many birds to be out, and finally I found the right combination of hand gestures and "oprime dos" that got the point across.
An hour later though he came and found me and showed me a pair of tropical screech owls. I snapped a few pics, then got Dad. It made for some good photos.
For some reason they were giving me the stink eye
Not long after, Pablo arrived, just in time for lunch. We talked about what is coming up of the next few days, and then took a break. The cabin was very hot, and the little oscillating fan helped, but not by much. Or so I thought. At 3:00 they turn the power off to give the generator a rest. That's when the fan turned off, and that's when I got right up out of that cabin. Hot.
At 4, we met Pablo, Luis (our paddler and owl finder) and Jason (our local guide) and the canoe (ow! My butt). We paddled around the lake for two hours and got some good shots and a new bird or two.
We also saw many turtles.
More photos to come soon.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Ecuador: Day 7 - NWC
Today we had our usual 4:30ish wake up, coffee, breakfast, and canoe (ow! My butt!) at 6:00. Fortunately, it was a short canoe ride across the lake to the trailhead for the tower. We climbed the 33m-tall tower in short order, and proceeded to see some birds and get attacked by bugs. Spraying deet directly on some of the nests deterred or even killed some, but others returned, and in greater numbers. I must admit though, some of the birding was good.
After 2 hours (or ~0.00000323 Current JLs) on the tower - 25min of clickity click and 95 min of shoo fly) we headed back down the tower and along a trail. We hiked the trails for a bit, saw a few birds, but it was getting close to noon and the bird activity slowed a lot.
After lunch, we took the rest of the day off. Dad and Andrew went through bird photos, and I updated the blog. Nice to have a little hammock time.
Radio silence
Heading to the last lodge today. Hopefully there is Internet. If not, more posts when we hit Quito.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Napo Wildlife Center Lake
As I mentioned before, this lake is very very alive and very much a part of the life here at the wildlife center.
This is a black water lake, meaning that the water is a very dark brown and has a low pH. The reason for this is that the rain water filters through all the rotting fallen leaves in the jungle and the water carries all the nutrients down to the lake and streams. So basically it's a giant lot of compost tea.
The multitude of bugs are at the bottom of the food chain. The birds eat the bugs. The bats eat the bugs. The fish eat the bugs. The fish eat the fish. The bats eat the fish. The birds eat the fish. Bigger fish eat the big fish. Some fish in this lake and the surrounding streams can get to be over 6-1/2 feet long and weigh over 450 lbs. Big fish.
*insert Jaws music here*
The river otters here are very playful and surprisingly vicious looking when they smile. But they are great fishermen and watching the hunt is great. They're also very loud and talkative.
At the top of the food chain here, of course, are the caiman. Spooky creatures, them. They lurk under the surface, occasionally peering out to take a breath and see what's around to eat. And when they attack, they make quite a splash.
There's no swimming here in the lake. The decision to ban it was made a while back by the NWC board of directors, a vote amongst the staff, as well as some input from the national park staff, one lucky caiman, one very unlucky woman's next of kin, and the Ecuador tourism board.
The caiman, of course, would like the decision to be repealed.
Ecuador: Day 6 - NWC
Today was composed of several parts: the creek to the river, the parrot clay lick, the Napo River walk, and the return to the lodge.
Village mill
Escargot avec kite
I actually slept until my 4:45 alarm this morning. Got up, had some coffee, a shower, and then a very light breakfast of two small pieces of toast, half a glass of orange juice, and I got a good fulfilling whiff of a plate of dragon fruit (Gary's given both Dad and I an eye-opening look at our eating habits on this trip). From there, we gathered our gear and loaded into the canoe (ow! My butt!) and proceeded to work our way down the stream. We saw and stopped for plenty of birds along the way, making the 7km trip in a leisurely 3.75 hours (ow! My butt!!).
From there we hiked to a parrot clay lick, where birds eat dirt and people watch. I'd like to think there's a place on this planet where those roles are reversed. Anyway, after about a 30 minute wait, the birds did come in and there sure were a lot of them.
Before they dropped down to the clay lick though, I wandered around the park a bit. I got some pictures of a spider, some other bugs, and the like. While I was trying to take a picture of a grasshopper jumping (it didn't work of course) I heard a buzzing around my left ear. I figured it was a wasp or a bee or perhaps a curious beetle, as they'd been buzzing around all week. I looked up to find a giant bug the size of my nose heading right at me, clearly intending to see first hand if it was as big as my nose, and while it was at it, it might as well see what my nose tastes like too.
Would not hop on command
Have you ever tried to swat a bug, and have the bug deflect the swat and laugh at you? Becuase I'm pretty sure that happened to me. Fortunately the bug decided to leave me alone, either due to my startled scream or because it saw I'd had such a light breakfast and was hardly worth eating.
Turns out, the thing is called an assassin bug, which only confirms my long-held belief that one of you is trying to kill me and has hired this bug to do your dirty work for you. Well, nyah-nyah to you! I lived.
Assassin bug: "I was born in the shadows...."
After the clay lick we got in a boat and took a quick ride to the same community center where we'd had lunch before. We were served talapia whole, with a side of cucumber salad. Everything was delicious but I kept hearing Gary telling me I was fat, so I only ate 3 bites of fish and half a slice of cucumber.
After lunch, we walked a trail through the local community along the Napo. From the boats going up and down the busy river, you'd never know there was a whole village back there. It was really interesting to get to see how the folks there get along in life. At one point, we passed a group of people - four or five adults, three teenagers, and two little kids - running a kind of open kiln and drying and knocking corn kernels off of the cobs. It was a big operation and all manual labor, but many hands make light work.
Village solar
We saw a lot of birds, including several kites, a Rufus (sp?) Headed woodpecker, jacamars, a ferruginous owl, and some other things that I don't remember. Also, I kinda hit my limit with the birding thing. The others got very excited trying to get to some bird, but it was not cooperating, and it was down in some bushes where you can hardly see it. Now don't get me wrong - I like birds. I even like birding. But I really prefer photography. So I'm more of an opportunist when it comes to birding. I'll take pictures of what I can see. That said, the idea of spending two hours in ankle deep mud playing the same recording over and over again and having the same nondescript small brown bird on a brown background with brown reeds in front of it make the same call back from the same place in the hopes that said bird might shift position enough for someone to get a photo of 19% of that bird so they can in later years show that picture to someone and say "See that slightly darker smudge of brown there in between all that other brown stuff? That's the tail feathers of a Brown Crested Wandering Pygmy Shrike Heron. Or it might be its wing. Either way, pretty cool, yeah?" has no appeal for me. So I wandered around instead.
Birders birding
Some other sort of butterfly
They finally gave up on the bird and we contained our hike along the river. I'm pretty sure some more stuff happened, but I was feeling cry faint due to only consuming 545 calories in two days (thanks Gary), but somehow we made it out of the woods. At the mouth of the stream. Where a canoe was waiting for us. Ow. My butt.
Fortunately, we saw nothing of interest on the way back, and the guys paddled the whole way in an hour and fifteen minutes. Afterwards, a tasty dinner of 3 pieces of white rice washed down with a refreshing glass of particularly humid air.
When I passed out on the way back to the room, I was told by the lodge doctor that I needed to eat something and should stop listening to this Gary guy. I was prescribed some cake, ice cream, waffles, eggs, and bacon, to be taken daily with a meal.
Once feeling myself again, back to bed. Out like a light.
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