ECUADOR, MINDO PART 4: MORE BIRDS AND STREET FOOD

March 19, 2022

Having had our day of recovery, it was time for Geneil and me to join our husbands on a birding expedition. I got up at 4:30 AM to be ready to meet our birding guide at 5:20. All of us were on time and waiting, but no guide. At about 6:15 AM, Terry and Geneil and I went back to our rooms, and I went back to sleep for an hour. Meanwhile, Bob called, texted, and emailed the guide but got no response.

Eventually, the hotel owner started looking for another guide for us, and one showed up around 8:00 AM in a very small taxi. We were dubious. Who would stay behind? Apparently, there are contingency plans for that. The four of us squeezed into the taxi and the guide sat in the open trunk, his legs dangling over the rear bumper. The hotel people said that is common in Mindo. I wish I had gotten a picture, but it felt too awkward.

We drove about 30 minutes up a winding road to a large parking lot surrounded by jungle.  You can see why this area is called a cloud forest.

According to a sign, there are some waterfalls about a mile down the trail.

Green growing things are everywhere and on everything.

ECUADOR: MINDO, PART 3 - THE MEN'S BIRDING TRIPS TO MASHPI AMAGUSA RESERVE AND MILPI BIRD SANCTUARY

 March 18, 2022

As mentioned previously, my friend and I slept in to recover from our long flights and the hot, meal-less tour of Panama City. At about 9:00 AM, we ate a gourmet breakfast, then visited butterflies and a chocolate factory. Meanwhile, Bob and Terry got up at 5:30 AM to meet a bird guide, drove two hours to Mashpi Amagusa Reserve, ate plain bread with thin slices of meat, and stared into trees.

I thought we had the much better deal.

Then I saw Bob's photos.

I have to keep reminding myself that HE has the long, telephoto lens that gives him these views, and that I would have been looking mostly at specks among the leaves. Still.

The Mashpi Amagusa Reserve, according to their website, is "Privately owned 130 hectares [321 acres] of recovering forest . . . . [T]his area is the last foothill-forest that directly connects to the lower subtropical western forest of Ecuador. Its unique location makes it particularly attractive for birders looking for the highest biodiversity regions with chocó endemic birds." 

So what is "Chocó endemic"? "Chocó" refers to a region extending from southeast Panama, along the western sections of Columbia and Ecuador, and including northwestern Peru. This region is recognized as one of the most biologically and culturally diverse regions in the world.  "Endemic" refers to a species found only in a specific part of the world. The Chocó region has the largest number of endemic birds in the Americas--over 50 species.

As noted in a previous post, Bob has photos of 60-70 birds from this day trip, and many of them are Chocó endemic. 

Bob gave me a flash drive loaded with his bird photos from the trip. Here are some of my favorites from his bird-watching day. Click on any picture to enlarge.

Flame-rumped tanager

Golden tanager

ECUADOR: MINDO, PART 2 - DOWNTOWN, CHOCOLATE TOUR, A STORM, FINE DINING

 March 17, 2022

After our time at the butterfly refuge, we got a cab to take us downtown, where we enjoyed the small markets and noted a few unusual items, such as a whole pig strung up by its snout in a grocery store right behind the eggs and bunches of beautiful roses grown in Ecuador being sold on the street.

"Arroz Viejo" translates as "old rice."  Doesn't sound too appealing to me.

Plantains--a huge staple of the Ecuadoran diet--are for sale everywhere. 

ECUADOR: MINDO, PART I - PARADISE AND BUTTERFLIES

 March 17-19, 2022

We had a two-hour flight from Panama City to Quito, Ecuador, arriving at about 7:00 PM. We passed quickly through immigration and customs, but we couldn't find our driver on the other side. After about half an hour, he arrived and found us. After two long drives with him, we understood why he was late to pick us up. More on that later.

We set out for Mindo, a small town of about 3,000 people located northwest of Quito in the Andean foothills of Ecuador. It is set in a cloud forest, or a tropical mountainous region that gets frequent, heavy rainfall and has a persistent low-level cloud cover at about canopy level. Forget the details; just the name "cloud forest" was enough to make me love the place.

Although just 70 miles, the drive took about 2 1/2 hours on winding, sometimes unpaved dirt roads that climbed first to the high elevations of northern Quito and then dropped into the valley where Mindo is located. There were many speed bumps that enforced a low speed limit. We drove through one area where the road was more or less washed out by a landslide, and for the last hour the road was narrow and very dark as it was often shrouded by tree canopies. We later talked to a couple whose driver had done the route in half the time. "Cautious" doesn't even begin to describe our driver.

On the other hand, he didn't speak much English, so the l-o-n-g drive was a great opportunity for me to speak a little Spanish, which was fun for me. I'd been reviewing my Spanish (learned 40+ years ago) before the trip, and I think I did fairly well at keeping the conversation going.

We finally pulled into the parking lot of our hotel, Las Terrazas de Dana, at midnight. Staff was waiting to welcome us, haul our luggage up to our rooms, and give us instructions. We were exhausted and fell into bed immediately. In the morning, however, I realized that we had arrived in Paradise.

Our room was large with a queen bed and two doubles, tile floors, and a sliding glass door that opened onto a private balcony and gave an expansive view of the lush valley we were nestled in.

So how did we end up in Mindo? Aside from the fact that is is one of the most visited places in Ecuador, it is also one of the best birding sites in the Americas, and birding is Bob's passion. He had arranged for a private guide to take him birding on that first day, and Terry was gracious enough to go with him.

PANAMA: A DAY TRIP

 March 17, 2022

We are not ones to sit around the airport in a foreign country for hours on end waiting for our next flight. Our flight to Quito included an 8 hour 52 minute layover in Panama City, and that meant we had plenty of time for an excursion.

The four of us were met by our pre-arranged guide as we exited the airport at about 10:00 AM, and he drove for over an hour to a dock in a lake area that is part of the canal system. Honestly, I didn't think it wasn't the best way to start the day as we had already been sitting in LAX and then on the plane for hours and had eaten only a small breakfast on the plane since leaving LAX the night before. 

There was one highlight on the drive, however--a stop at a little convenience store where Geneil bought dim sum dumplings to share and we all got Cokes. The dumplings were divine, and the Coke/caffeine was much appreciated. Unfortunately, it would be the only food we bought all day until we returned to the airport, which was a significant negative for us as we were looking forward to eating in one of the restaurants recommended to us by a friend who lived for several years in Panama City.

Anyway, we boarded a boat like the one below that could have seated twelve or more passengers. It had a nice canopy for shade, and the temperature was very pleasant. 

The Panama Canal stretches 51 miles across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and creating a man-made division of North and South America. It was started in 1881 by France, but progress was halted by engineering issues and a high worker mortality rate. In 1904 (23 years later!) the United States started work on the canal and was able to finish construction in ten years. 

Part of the project was creating a huge artificial lake 85 feet above sea level that has been named Gatun Lake. This reduced the amount of excavation work needed.

Map from Wikipedia

ECUADOR (AND PANAMA): MARCH 2022

 March 16-17, 2022

Background:

Back in 2019, Bob began planning a trip for the members of his law firm and their spouses to the Galapagos Islands in March 2021. Bob booked a yacht that would hold eight couples. Five of the rooms would be taken by the attorneys and spouses, and we found three other couples to join us, including some close friends of ours, so that we could fill all the rooms. Then Covid-19 hit in March 2020, and after it became apparent that travel would not be possible in March 2021, the trip was postponed. 

Over the ensuing year, Bob's partners dropped out one-by-one for various reasons, as did our friends. However, Bob would not be deterred. We cast about among our other friends who enjoy travel and came up with two new couples, and one of those couples had friends who wanted to join us, making four couples total. For several months at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, we bounced back and forth as to whether or not we should commit to the trip, knowing that we stood the risk of losing a substantial downpayment. We had been badly burned in 2020 by our aborted trip to Argentina and another trip to Indonesia that we had fully booked. (Trip insurance, which we had, did not cover any of it.)

TEXAS, HOUSTON: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF FUNERAL HISTORY

 November 29, 2022

Our last stop in Texas before flying home was one of the weirdest museums we have ever visited (aside from the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico). 

The 35,000-square-foot National Museum of Funeral History opened in 1992 and, according to their website, has the largest collection of funeral service artifacts in the country. (I can not imagine that any other place even comes close.) The museum's purpose is to "educate the public and preserve the heritage of death care."

I have to confess that I was intrigued just walking through the gift shop to buy our tickets. I could tell this was going to be an unusual experience, to say the least. I was happy to see Frida, but a death mask???

We began with the large Presidential Funeral Gallery.

Just after seeing this famous photo of five living Presidents standing together . . . 

. . . we started learning about their deaths and funerals, starting with George and Barbara Bush and moving backwards in time.