South American Trails
April 6 Continental Airlines #4204 St. Louis to Newark, New Jersey
April 6 Continental Airlines #1867 Newark to Quito, Ecuador via Bogotá, Colombia
Suddenly it’s here. Six months of planning, six months of budgeting, six months of virtual travel on the internet and six months of getting ready for early retirement have now come down to the simple act of getting on an airplane. We are about to find out how far thirty pounds and a passport can take us.
We’re up at our usual 5:00 a.m. and at the airport by 8:00. The airline clerk not only checks our tickets but notes our appearance as well. We’re already dressed for the jungle: khaki long-sleeved shirts, khaki cotton trousers, hiking boots and a wide-brimmed hat for the sun. Little does she know that this is exactly how we will dress almost every day for the next eight months. Long sleeves will keep the sun off when it’s hot and keep the wind off when it’s cold. As for the boots and hat, we have to wear them on the plane. There is no room for them in our duffles.
A 9:00 plane takes us to Newark where we change planes and head south. Friends were surprised that we are flying down from the East Coast instead of St. Louis. Actually, if we flew straight south from St. Louis, we would miss South America altogether and end up in the Pacific Ocean. It is a popular misconception that the southern continent lies due south of the United States. In reality it is far to the southeast. Ecuador, which is the westernmost of South American countries, lies directly below Miami.
Our trip today may be simple but it’s not short. After an intermediate stop in Bogotá, we fly on to Quito, landing at 10:15 at night. This first day of flying takes over twelve hours and chalks up 3700 miles. We’re tired but the trip is officially underway.
Five o’clock the next morning finds us up and ready for our first trip into the Andes. No moss grows on these travelers! With Juan Carlos at the wheel we head out of town for Papallacta Pass. At 13,000 feet we find fog and COLD wind but there are birds here, particularly hummingbirds. Even here close to the snow there are flowers blooming and where there are flowers in tropical America there are hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds are the most amazing of creatures. They can hover; they can fly backwards. Their wingbeats are faster than the human eye can follow. Wherever I go in Central and South America I always stop and watch the hummingbirds. It is thrilling to see them zip from flower to flower and then abruptly stop in midair to probe blossoms with their long bills. What appear to be small dark birds will suddenly flash spectacular reds, greens, or blues when the sun hits them just right.
Most of these hummingbirds are smaller than my finger and appear like delicate little fairies. What are they doing here high on the mountain where it freezes every night? Actually, hummingbirds are well adapted to mountain living. There are more species of hummers living in the Andes, even in the high Andes, than there are in the lowland jungle. One reason is because of the alpine flowers that provide nectar for birds.
Flowering plants require pollination to reproduce. Throughout the world the major agents of pollination are wind, insects, bats and birds. For various reasons wind pollination is not as common in the tropics as it is in the more temperate areas of the world, such as the American Great Plains. That leaves birds, bats and bugs. All three are excellent pollinators in the warm lowlands. But with every gain in elevation up the hill slopes and mountainsides there is a decrease in temperature, particularly at night, and an increase in the harshness of living conditions, so that in the higher elevations the number of pollinating insects and bats decreases dramatically.
For alpine plants that leaves only the birds to spread pollen from one plant to another. Here on the equator where there are no seasonal temperature changes, high altitude plants evolved to bloom year round and produce a steady supply of sweet nectar. This attracts hummingbirds and keeps them coming back. And every time a hummer feeds in a flower, it gets dusted with pollen that it will spread to the next flower that it visits. Both the plant and the bird benefit from this relationship. Even so, the harsh alpine climate places special demands on these, the smallest of all birds.
Hummingbirds’ unique ability to hover and fly backwards requires super fast wings that may beat as much as eighty times per second. Their heart rate can exceed 1200 beats per minute. This necessitates a high rate of metabolism and hummingbirds must eat many times a day. Shirley found out that being described as “eating like a bird” might not necessarily be a compliment. A hummingbird may literally eat it own weight every day. With its high metabolism the body temperature of a hummer is about ten degrees higher than a human’s and among the highest of all birds.
Being the smallest of the birds means that a hummingbird has a higher ratio of surface area to its volume than other birds. Thus the alpine hummers face the problem of having an extra high body temperature coupled with a relatively large body surface that looses heat more rapidly than most birds. Add to this the fact that they are so small that they must eat frequently because they cannot store up enough energy to last through the day. If they must eat all day to survive, how do they make it through the night when they can’t feed and the temperature goes below freezing? The short answer is that without slowing down their metabolism they couldn’t survive. They would starve to death or freeze to death before morning.
Hummingbirds have evolved the ability to reduce their body temperature at night and slow their metabolic activity to the point they become torpid, a condition where body functions and temperature are barely above the level of death. Some hummingbirds drop their body temperatures fifty degrees and in extreme cases drop to only a few degrees above freezing. High altitude hummingbirds survive for another day by having a near-death experience every night.
The top of Papallacta Pass may be great for alpine hummingbirds but in this cold wind Ms. Shirley is already talking about near-death experiences if we don’t leave soon—and it may be the ranger’s near-death that she’s talking about. It is time to go down the other side of the mountain.
The top of Papallacta Pass may be great for alpine hummingbirds but in this cold wind Ms. Shirley is already talking about near-death experiences if we don’t leave soon—and it may be the ranger’s near-death that she’s talking about. It is time to go down the other side of the mountain.
Less than two miles down the dirt road we are out of the wind and in warm sunshine. The jackets come off and shirtsleeves feel just fine. Grassy meadows, small mountain steams, and tall bushes covered with wonderful red blooms have replaced the rocky outcrops of Papallacta Pass with its inch-high alpine flowers. This is a good place for a picnic.
Red flowers attract hummingbirds and they are all around us in greater profusion and variety than up on the exposed mountainside. Between bites of sandwiches we see more than ten different kinds zipping around us at breakneck speed. They generally ignore us but Juan Carlos has acquired several new “friends.” Shirley and I are dressed in khaki but Juan Carlos sports a new T-shirt that includes some bright red designs. More than once hummingbirds fly up him, only a foot from his face, to see if the red designs on his shirt are a new kind of flower.
That is certainly up close and personal. I saw a similar thing happen in a national park in Colorado where I was leading a nature walk. On the hike a certain well-endowed young woman (to use a trite but accurate phrase) came dressed in a brightly colored blouse that had several large red flowers in strategic locations. She soon had three small Broad-tailed Hummingbirds hovering six inches from her chest. They were persistent and she could not shoo them away. She ended up quite embarrassed with a face redder than her strategically placed flowers.
But here at Papallacta it is not the small hummingbirds that catch our eye as much as the large ones. Those who have only seen hummers in the United States would not believe the size of some of the ones here. My favorite is the Sword-billed Hummingbird with its four-inch long bill. Its bill is almost as long as its body. These birds are so pugnacious in defending their favorite flowers that we frequently see them squabbling and chasing each other. Seeing two of them square off in midair with their long bills looks like a duel about to commence.
Our picnic on the mountain is a lot of fun and a great success for birding. By the end of the day we find 82 different kinds of birds and have some good laughs at the expense of Juan Carlos and his colorful T-shirt. I think that I’m going to like retirement just fine.
April 8 Aero Gal #21 Quito to Coca, Ecuador
As flights go, this one doesn’t look like much; it is only 45 minutes long. But it might as well be a space ship on a nine-month flight because it’s taking us to a different world. To go from metropolitan Quito to the Amazon Basin is like going to a different planet and Coca is the space station en route.
April 8 Aero Gal #21 Quito to Coca, Ecuador
As flights go, this one doesn’t look like much; it is only 45 minutes long. But it might as well be a space ship on a nine-month flight because it’s taking us to a different world. To go from metropolitan Quito to the Amazon Basin is like going to a different planet and Coca is the space station en route.
The day starts with breakfast in the rooftop restaurant at the Hotel Quito with its panoramic view of the city and the mountains. Quito is surrounded by the Andes. The city is 9,000 feet above sea level, the second highest national capital in the world, yet Quito does not stand on a high point; it lies in the bottom of a valley. Ringing the city are 13,000-foot peaks with higher ones in the background. Towering over the tops of the nearby mountains is Pichincha at 15,600 feet. In the morning light it stands out not only because of its height but also its color. In a world of brown-topped mountains this one shines white with snow on top. Snow right here on the equator!
We cross the equator on the way to the airport. It is a line painted on the plaza. We will cross the equator four times in the next five weeks in Ecuador and cross it again another eight times in the seven months that follow.
Aero Gal flight 21 awaits us. Two propellers and 24 seats, the plane has seen better days and those better days were probably at least twenty years ago. But we have faith! Without faith, there can be no adventures.
Our fellow passengers are certainly a diverse group. Those four men in hard hats are obviously oil field workers. Four Roman Catholic sisters are sitting in the front. When is the last time I’ve seen nuns wearing habits? Two Indian families come to board, the men in jeans and boots, the women in traditional dress complete with felt hat and a huge woven shawl across the back and tied in the front. The shawl can carry most anything but at the moment it holds a sleeping infant warm against the morning chill. Several men dressed in only short sleeve shirts are obviously from a warmer place than Quito. There appear to be four other tourists besides us. The flight is almost full.
Will we actually make it to Coca this time? The last time I tried to make this flight in 1996, I was diverted instead to Lago Agrio, a small town up on the border with Colombia. I sat in the deserted open-air airport for three hours waiting for alternate transportation. Just four months later, Colombian guerrillas, who slipped across the border, kidnapped three Canadian oilfield workers in this same town. They were held for five months before ransom was paid.
This time we are assured that the plane will go to Coca. We remember that one must have faith to have adventures.
Flight #21 starts down the runway at a leisurely pace. In a world of fast-flying jets, propeller planes seem to move at almost bicycle speed. As the plane gains altitude and we climb above the nearby ring of mountains, our worldview suddenly changes.
Ten minutes before, as we taxied across the airport we were at the bottom of the valley and could see no more than a few miles in any direction because the mountains hemmed us in. Now as we pop up above the rim, the horizon opens up to forever and hundreds of miles of the Andes lie below us, brown, stark and rugged. This is a world more of rock and soil than trees and grass, so brown is the prevailing color. The Andes here average 2½ miles above sea level and middling peaks are over 14,000 feet. But the eye is immediately drawn to the giants, the towering glacier-covered volcanoes that ring Quito in a 30-mile radius: Lliniza 17,105 feet; Corazon 15,561; Pichincha 15,600; Cayambe 18,818; Antisana 18,714, Sinchologua 15,902 and above them all is Cotopaxi at 19,165 feet. The symmetrical cone of Cotopaxi is the most beautiful of all the South American volcanoes and is rivaled in grace only by Japan’s Mt. Fuji.
In only a quarter of an hour Flight #21 reaches its highest altitude and is already starting back down. Our trip to Coca in the Amazon Basin is only a short upward flight followed by a long downward glide. From 9,000 feet at the Quito airport the plane climbs for fifteen minutes to 20,000 feet in order to clear the mountains. Then the airplane goes into a slow, straight decline for thirty minutes down to only 900 feet above sea level at the Coca runway. Once we pass the Andes I look down and see nothing but forest. The Andes mountains were brown; the lowland forest is twenty shades of green. This is the great Amazon Basin, jungle as far as I can see broken only by muddy rivers. From here to the horizon there is not a road or house in sight.
At Coca the airplane taxis to the one room “terminal.” We are sitting in an airplane that is the same temperature as Quito that we left 45 minutes before—about 60 degrees—and we all have on long-sleeve shirts. The plane door opens. We step out and are slapped hard in the face by tropical heat. It is 11:00 in the morning and already 90 degrees. Long sleeves come off quickly. We retrieve luggage, board pickup trucks and take a quick tour of Coca on our way to the river dock where our “cruise ship” awaits us.
Coca is a raw town in every sense of the word. It is a new frontier town, not thirty years old, established to service the oil exploration and pipeline companies in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Coca was slashed out of the jungle with a bulldozer and still has the feel of raw mud that never healed over. Mud puddles and dust alternate on the unpaved streets as the town dries out after last night’s rain. Unpainted wooden shops and crumbling concrete buildings all have a temporary look about them and already seem to be deteriorating. Any exposed piece of metal is rusting in the heavy humidity. A shocking variety of odors, each more malodorous than the last, assaults us. The smell of rotting vegetation, open-air markets, open butcher shops, industrial waste, mud and humidity is overwhelming. This is a pioneer town and has the same feel as a gold rush village. It is here today but may be gone tomorrow when the rush is over.
After an odiferous drive through town in an open truck, we reach the banks of the river, the Rio Napo. On the riverbank next to the town dock is the best hotel in town. We stop at the bar for our last chance at a cold Coca Cola and a toilet. Here, we are introduced to the Ecuadorian concept of a unisex restroom.
Off the bar is a room with an open door. One long wall is lined with sinks. Another has a number of partitioned cubicles. Men and women go into the large room together. Each enters a private cubicle and then comes back to the sinks to wash their hands en masse. It’s a bit of a shock the first time but it works.
Rest stop over, we walk down to the dock. Rivers are the main traffic arteries in the Amazon jungle, so the town dock is always a hubbub of activity. Men are unloading several different boats. The largest of these are the motorized canoes that are the primary transport here for both people and goods. Three to four feet wide and twenty or more feet long, these canoes draw less than a foot of water even when heavily loaded. The shallow draft is critical because of the numerous hidden sand bars and the constantly shifting riverbed.
Not everyone can afford a motorized canoe. Families who live along the Rio Napo are more likely to use a dugout. This is simply a tree trunk that is shaped into a canoe by a lengthy combination of axe, adze and fire. A well-made dugout is less than two feet wide and perhaps sixteen long. With an Indian family and a load of bananas aboard, the sides may only stand a couple inches above the water. The canoes have no motor. A person stands in the back and pushes the boat along with a long pole.
Today the dock has eight motorized canoes and half a dozen dugouts. Most are hauling bananas or sacks of coffee. Right now the floating dock is twenty feet below street level and we carefully slide down the mud bank towards the brown river. The Napo is always muddy with its tremendous load of silt. As large as this river is, it can rise or fall twenty feet overnight because of its large watershed. After a storm or during the rainy season, the river will rise almost to street level with floodwaters from the mountains. At Coca the outline of the Andes is usually visible as a hazy silhouette in the far distance.
Shirley always wanted us to go on a cruise ship but this is not what she had in mind. On this trip down the Napo there will be no sunbathing on the lido deck or ice sculptures on the buffet. We, our luggage and plenty of foodstuffs all go into an old motorized canoe. Luckily our canoe has a makeshift thatched roof to keep off the sun and perhaps the rain showers that we may encounter. But we keep our raincoats handy on the boat. They will get a lot of use in the next five weeks.
During the two-hour trip down the river, the canoe frequently shifts from one side of the meandering river to the other as we follow the main current and attempt to avoid the many sandbars and snags. Our native guide, Guillermo, sits on the bow of the canoe to warn the boat operator of hidden obstacles in the muddy water.
At Coca the Napo’s riverbed is a half-mile wide from bank to bank. While the river occupies only a fourth of that width today, by tomorrow or another day it may be bankfull or even overflowing. It is hard to imagine how large the Rio Napo becomes before it empties into the Amazon River downstream in Brazil. The Napo is one of ten large tributaries of the Amazon that are each larger than the Mississippi. The Amazon River itself is so large that ocean-going freighters travel over 2,000 miles upstream from the Atlantic Ocean to Iquitos, Peru. At its mouth the Amazon is so wide that a person on a ship cannot see either riverbank from the middle of the river.
But here on the Napo today we are not on that grand a scale. Numerous sandbars and river islands are close at hand along the twisting river and they provide good birdwatching opportunities. Terns, hawks and other riverbank birds find good perches on the snags of flood-ravaged trees washed up on the sandy islands. Shirley is excited by the parrots that fly across the river in front of us while I quickly get out the bird book to try to identify the five different kinds of swallows that are darting around catching insects. We both enjoy the herons and egrets that are fishing in the shallow backwaters.
After two hours, we dock at an oil company’s riverside facility near the oil pipeline that runs through the middle of the jungle. Here the bus is waiting for us. Our bus is really a flatbed truck with wooden benches in the back like church pews. A colorful wooden roof shields us from the sun. This is the traditional rural Ecuadorian bus and it’s built for the size of the diminutive Ecuadorian people. I’m only 5’ 8” but the benches are so close together that I have to sit sideways to fit my knees in. A two-hour dusty ride down the pipeline road brings us to a bridge over the Tiputini River.
Out of the bus we stagger, knees and legs cramped from tight quarters on the bus. It is a relief to stand up straight. Below us, the river looks cool in the heat of the day and Ms. Shirley is happy to finally get out of the road dust.
Down the steep riverbank and into two smaller canoes go luggage, foodstuffs and birders. Our two-hour trip down the Rio Tiputini is a very different experience from that on the Rio Napo. Instead of being on a broad river with distant riverbanks, we are on a forty-foot wide river with jungle right on either side of us. Squirrel Monkeys watch us as we travel downstream. Scarlet Macaws, Blue-and-yellow Macaws, parrots and toucans fly noisily across the narrow river giving us good views of these colorful birds. Two different kinds of caimans (alligators) laze on the riverbanks or quickly slide into the river if they think that we are too close for comfort. Most of these caimans are only a yard or so long but some are over six feet. For safety we keeps our hands out of the water. This small canoe has no roof and of course it rains for twenty minutes, but that is just part of the jungle experience. After all this is the RAINforest.
Let the rains come. Ms. Shirley is well prepared and looks dapper in her new, green two-piece rain suit with a wide-brimmed khaki hat cocked just so. Modern raincoat fabrics shed the rain yet breathe to wick away perspiration from the body. The old waterproof raincoats were worthless in the tropics. They kept the rain off but the wearer was drenched in her own sweat. Shirley’s hiking boots also breathe to keep her feet dry. Inside her boots she wears two pairs of socks. The thin inner socks draw moisture away from her feet and transfer it to the heavier outer socks where the moisture is held away from her skin until it dissipates through the leather boots. To keep water out while wading, the tongue of her hiking boot is sewn up both sides to the uppers so the boot can hold off any puddle up to six inches deep. No matter how hard it rains or how much water she walks through, Shirley will have no water inside her boots.
The rain ends quickly and most things in the boat are dry by the time we arrive at the homemade dock of our destination: the Tiputini Research Station. Jointly established by an Ecuadorian university and an American university, this facility serves as a base for scientists studying the Amazon jungle. Through many years of effort they are beginning to understand the ecology of this neotropical forest but there is still much work to be done. Throughout the tropics, researchers have found dozens of jungle plants that contain new chemical compounds to save human lives, yet there are still thousands of plants left unstudied. Work is centered here in the Amazon Basin because this is the most diverse spot on the planet in terms of plant and animal species. Within twenty miles of this station are almost as many species of nesting birds as there are in the entire continental United States. The number of species of trees far exceeds that of North America and it is estimated that the Amazon may contain over 100,000 insects not yet known to science.
This research station also functions as an outdoor classroom and resource for college students. Today a group of thirty graduate students from the University of Wisconsin anxiously awaits our arrival, or more specifically, the arrival of our canoe. The station has been without meat for the last three days and the students are eager for the load of food that accompanies us. Because of the ongoing ecological research, there is no hunting or gathering of foodstuffs here. Everything must be brought in on the same six-hour journey that we have just completed.
After unloading our gear, our first stop is lunch in the open-air dining hall, a large wooden structure built four feet above the ground on stilts. Keeping buildings off the damp ground is a necessity in this humid forest to prevent them from rotting back into jungle soil. The floor is wooden as are the half-high walls. The remainder of the building is open except for the thatched roof. More than a dozen bats hang upside down in a corner of the eaves, undisturbed in their daily sleep by the fifty students and staff who gather here for meals three times a day. Between meals, the building serves as a workspace and game room on rainy afternoons. There are two sofas in a corner where we relax and study our bird books during siesta. In the center six long dining tables hold a dozen people each when the station is full. Everyone is in his or her stocking feet. The rubber boots we all wear on the trails are left at the entrance to keep out the ever-present mud.
A library/administrative office is the only air-conditioned building at the station. The air conditioning is not for the students or staff, rather it functions to preserve the books, study materials and computers from mildew. Electricity from a diesel-powered generator, hidden out of hearing, provides the station with lights, ceiling fans, air conditioning for the books and the all-important hot box. The hot box, the size of a refrigerator, contains an ever-burning light bulb. Heat generated by the electric bulb lowers the humidity inside. This is the place to store cameras, film and sensitive scientific instruments that are affected by the never-ending humidity.
Humidity, which averages over 80%, is the most consistent feature of the rainforest. Rain showers are almost a daily occurrence. The ground is rarely dry. Leaves that drop from a tree rot within days and disappear. A large fallen tree may totally disappear in months. We gladly exchange our hiking boots for rubber Wellingtons because the hiking boots would never fully dry in this constant dampness and the leather would eventually crumble away. Because of the same dampness, we do not wear jeans—they seem to never dry. We wear light cotton trousers that will dry in a few hours in the hot sun, which is almost as predictable as the rain.
There is electricity and running water in our rooms as well as a private bathroom. We were warned that there is no hot water but that is not a problem for us. On this trip we have become used to cool showers. With a daytime temperature near ninety and nighttimes in the mid-seventies nothing ever seems too cold around here. A shower will feel good after a daylong journey from Quito.
“Yeeeowlllllllll!!!” comes the cry from two cabins away from us. One of our newly arrived companions just discovered one of the big surprises of Tiputini. Nothing is ever cold around here—except the showers! How, in the middle of all of this heat, they find water seemly cold enough to freeze flesh, I can never figure out. From the college students who have been here for three months we learn that students never shower except during the hottest part of the day. No one can face that icy water first thing in the morning.
Our sleeping quarters are similar to those occupied by the students. Our room is one of five linked end to end like a motel. We have two single beds, a small closet, a writing desk and chair for studying, a ceiling fan and a small bathroom with shower. A full-length porch stretches down one side. Our rubber boots are always left outside on the porch to keep mud out of the room. Each morning we shake the boots upside down to empty out anything that may have used them as a sleeping cave overnight. We have candles for when the electric generator shuts down at 9:00 p.m. There is no window glass, only screened openings. At night we can easily hear jungle sounds, including some heavy breathing just outside our door. This is our home for the next four days.
The rooms here are palatial compared to some jungle camps that we previously stayed in. We have indoor plumbing instead of a facility down the path, which means we can drink all the liquids we want before going to bed at night. We have lights, at least until 9:00, instead of only candles. And there are window screens. A previous camp had no screens so we were admonished to keep no food in the room. Our next-door companions forgot the advice and left two bananas on their bedside table. When they awoke the next morning, they found the bananas half eaten by something that left large tooth marks in the uneaten half. They will never know who visited their bedroom in the middle of the night.
Our mornings at Tiputini start before dawn. We have a predawn breakfast in order to be on the trail by the time the sun rises. Each day we hike in the forest seeking out some of the 500 kinds of birds found within a short distance of the station. Many are small, black, and skulking in the dense vegetation, so it takes skill to find them. Some birds we can only find by listening for their calls. Our guide can tape record the birdcall and then play it back. Oftentimes a bird will fly in to investigate the new “bird” that has invaded its territory. Some birds fly at us immediately when hearing a recording of their call. Others approach cautiously and may take 20 minutes to appear. Some birds we see and some we only hear but each is a new thrill.
The rooms here are palatial compared to some jungle camps that we previously stayed in. We have indoor plumbing instead of a facility down the path, which means we can drink all the liquids we want before going to bed at night. We have lights, at least until 9:00, instead of only candles. And there are window screens. A previous camp had no screens so we were admonished to keep no food in the room. Our next-door companions forgot the advice and left two bananas on their bedside table. When they awoke the next morning, they found the bananas half eaten by something that left large tooth marks in the uneaten half. They will never know who visited their bedroom in the middle of the night.
Our mornings at Tiputini start before dawn. We have a predawn breakfast in order to be on the trail by the time the sun rises. Each day we hike in the forest seeking out some of the 500 kinds of birds found within a short distance of the station. Many are small, black, and skulking in the dense vegetation, so it takes skill to find them. Some birds we can only find by listening for their calls. Our guide can tape record the birdcall and then play it back. Oftentimes a bird will fly in to investigate the new “bird” that has invaded its territory. Some birds fly at us immediately when hearing a recording of their call. Others approach cautiously and may take 20 minutes to appear. Some birds we see and some we only hear but each is a new thrill.
The Amazon forest is a canopy forest. This means that the top layer of the forest, the canopy, completely blocks the sky. Sunlight never reaches the ground except at a natural break in the forest like a river or a temporary break when a tree falls down.
When a temporary break occurs, the smaller younger trees in the undergrowth race each other to grow into the empty space and get the sunlight for themselves. Then the canopy is complete again. With no direct sunlight the forest floor where we walk is moderately dark. There is certainly undergrowth but it is not impenetrable. Many birds, insects and other jungle life live in the lower sections of the forest but even more live in the canopy.
At the top of the forest there is sunlight. Trees are blooming and fruiting and there is a high level of insect life. Seeking the insects, blossoms and fruit in the canopy are birds that never come down to the lower sections of the forest. And whereas many of the birds of the dim forest floor are black and dark themselves, the birds of the canopy are often colorful, sometimes wildly so. This is the realm of parrots, macaws and tanagers.
There are over 200 kinds of tanagers in South America and they are every birder’s favorites. A few are soft-green and inconspicuous but most are colorful, sometimes even to the point of being gaudy. Just the names of some of the tanagers give an idea of the palette than can be found in the tanager family: Grass-green Tanager, Scarlet-throated, White-capped, Gray-hooded, Orange-browed, Chestnut-headed, Rust-and-yellow, Black-and-yellow, Scarlet-and-white, Opal-crowned, Cherry-throated, Lemon-spectacled, Ochre-breasted, Flame-crested, Scarlet, Ruby-crowned, Silver-beaked, Flame-rumped, Blue-and-yellow, Moss-backed, Scarlet-bellied, Blue-winged, Fawn-breasted, Purple-throated, Golden, Orange-bellied, Yellow-collared, Turquoise, Gray-and-gold, Emerald, Silver-throated, Golden-eared, Saffron-crowned, Spotted, Speckled, Bay-headed, Rufous-winged, Burnished-buff, Golden-naped, Metallic-green, Beryl-spangled, Blue-and-black, Opal-rumped. The list goes on and on. The Seven-colored Tanager lives up to its name with a color combination that only a six-year old could come up with. My favorite is the Paradise Tanager, with an apple-green face, violet throat, bright turquoise-blue under parts, black back and wings and scarlet-red rump.
Even a family of birds like the jays is transformed in the tropics. The Blue Jay of North America is colorful but not brightly so. Its counterpart in the tropics is a riot of colors. The Inca Jay is bright green on the back and wings and incredibly bright yellow on the breast and belly. The top of the head is white while the throat and part of the face are black. The rest of the face is bright blue and the eye is a piercing yellow. The tail is half green and half yellow. This jay screams a bizarre and un-birdlike call as it flies conspicuously through the forest.
To stay on the floor of the jungle is to miss half the birds and much of the color that the jungle is famous for. Therefore one of the highlights, literally, of an Amazon journey is a trip to the top of the canopy. Most of the trees in the canopy are about the same height—about ninety feet off the ground. But every now and then, perhaps a quarter mile apart, there is a type of tree that is truly huge. Kapok trees grow to 130 feet and have a trunk more than fifteen feet in diameter. Buttress roots stretch out from the base to hold the tree firm. In the branches of one of these kapoks a platform is constructed high off the forest floor. A scary wooden stairway circles the tree as we climb up 110 feet to reach the wooden deck. After getting over the heart fluttering of the stair-climb, we find that the platform is the size of a small room, about twelve feet square. It has a railing all around and even a bench to sit on. Because the platform is next to the tree trunk (we can even lean on it), we feel more attached to the ground than wildly suspended in the air. There is even a little shade from the branches yet above us. From the platform we can see a couple miles over the forest canopy. Macaws fly by and to our delight they land in nearby trees.
In addition to our binoculars we bring a spotting scope to see birds further away. A spotting scope looks like a telescope but has a different purpose. Telescopes are for looking at stars and its optics give an inverted image. Spotting scopes have an upright image and are used for non-celestial viewing.
An Amazon Umbrellabird is perched on a tree not far away. It’s named for a tuft of feathers that hang over its face like an umbrella. On the next tree is a Blue-headed Parrot. I even spot a three-toed sloth, a tree-dwelling mammal that moves so slowly that algae and moss grow in its fur. Its diet is entirely tree leaves, a low-energy food source which accounts for its slow-moving ways. Ten feet per hour is a high speed for this animal that only changes trees every couple days and almost never goes to the ground except once a week to urinate and defecate. For this it delicately digs a small hole at the base of the tree and then immediately/slowly climbs the tree again.
To see most birds from our platform we don’t need the spotting scope. There are fruiting trees right next to our kapok tree and they attract many hungry birds including Beryl-spangled Tanagers, Purple-bibbed Whitetips, Plum-throated Cotingas, Purple-throated Fruitcrows and Orange-bellied Euphonias. There are even toucans and monkeys not forty feet away and a little below us. Some of the smaller birds come into the branches of our tree and are too close for our binoculars to focus on.
In the late afternoon the rest of the group goes back to camp without me and I stay on top of the platform to watch night descend onto the jungle. Near the equator, night comes quickly and twilight does not linger. Soon owls begin calling. With a recorder I entice two to come close. My powerful flashlight shows a pair of Black-banded Owls on a nearby branch. In the distance a potoo is calling. Its unmistakable sound is haunting, a series of loud wailing notes that gradually descend in pitch, much louder at first and then fading off, “u, wah, wah, woh, woh, wuh, wuh.”
Now I must go down those 110 feet of stairs in the dark. There is no moon yet and it is a mile back to camp on the narrow trail. “Don’t forget to take the left fork at the trail junction!” With a flashlight I have one eye on the trail watching for foot-tripping tree roots and one eye on the branches above for whatever may be there. I soon find a sleeping tinamou, a chicken-sized bird that is frequently heard in the daytime but is often hard to see. Most fun is a kinkajou, six feet over my head in the branches. This nocturnal relative of the raccoon is three feet long with a prehensile tail and large eyes that gleam in the beam of my flashlight. It watches me, seemingly curious, and then runs off making a loud squeaking noise.
While hiking in the forest in the daytime, I frequently see lines of moving leaves. Green leaves are marching down tree trunks and on well-defined highways on the ground. It is a strange sight. Upon closer look, it is not leaves that are marching but ants—and each is carrying a green leaf.
Ants are everywhere in the forest and the most easily recognizable are the leafcutter ants. It is impossible to walk in the jungle without seeing several colonies a day. Leafcutters go up into trees and bite off rounded pieces of leaves about the size of a dime. These they carry down the tree with the leaf always held vertical and parallel to the line of march. The leaf fragments are much larger than the ants so it looks like a line of marching leaves. The trail goes from the tree branches to the ants’ underground home.
One line of leaf-carrying ants marches down the tree trunk while a line of empty-handed ants marches up to get more leaves—always in a line. The ants are always going somewhere in a line. Even on the ground there are lines—highways in fact. The ants clear trails an inch or more wide throughout the forest. They move every leaf, every twig and every pebble out of the way to make a clearly defined highway. Every ant knows exactly where to go. Even on the tree trunks where the highways are not visible, the ants know where to go. These ants are not relying on sight. They lay down a chemical trail that each worker ant knows to follow. If I disrupt the chemical trail, such as by scuffing my shoe across a highway, the workers will mill about in confusion for a few minutes until someone finds the highway and lays down a new chemical scent. Quickly then, all the workers will get back in line and continue carrying the leaves to the colony.
The visible part of the colony is a low mound of dirt four to ten feet wide with several openings. The leafcutters march underground still carrying their leaves. But after all this work, leafcutters don’t eat leaves. They collect several hundred pounds of leaves per acre but still they don’t eat leaves. Underground the ants create a fungus garden. Fungus is the ants’ only food. Worker ants chew up the leaves into small pieces and add it to the fungus garden along with drops of fecal liquid secreted from their abdomen. The ants actually grow their own food supply. In an interesting piece of co-dependent evolution, the leafcutters cannot exist without this one type of fungus and the fungus cannot live without the garden created by the ants. This species of fungus is found nowhere else in nature except in the leafcutter colonies. One has to wonder how it all started. Which came first the ant or the fungus?
At home one of my most favorite pastimes is a good morning shower—lots of hot water at full pressure with steam rising. I luxuriate in it and let the water fill every pore. I stand there, seemingly forever, and just draw strength from the heat. Afterwards I revel in a brisk rubdown with a big fluffy towel and the whole experience leaves me feeling invigorated and ready to charge into the day.
At home one of my most favorite pastimes is a good morning shower—lots of hot water at full pressure with steam rising. I luxuriate in it and let the water fill every pore. I stand there, seemingly forever, and just draw strength from the heat. Afterwards I revel in a brisk rubdown with a big fluffy towel and the whole experience leaves me feeling invigorated and ready to charge into the day.
At home one of my second most favorite things is a warm evening shower. On days when I’ve had a vigorous outing, hiked up a mountain, taken a long bike ride, or just walked cross country, it feels good to have a slow warm shower to wash off the dust and sweat and let the muscles relax. A nice warm shower is one of the best ways to prepare for a long relaxing sleep.
But in South America, indeed in much of the world, such showers are only a dream. Hot water is impossible except in the larger towns and cities and then warm is often a better description than hot. Full pressure water is beyond hope except in the largest hotels. And big fluffy towels? I don’t think they’ve been invented yet in most of the world.
So when I travel, I knowingly leave these luxuries behind. Showers are now for the purpose of hygiene: wash off the dirt, wash off the perspiration of the tropics and wash off the microbes and bugs that may hitch a ride on me during the day. All my showers are afternoon or evening. I can’t face a pre-dawn cold shower. It doesn’t invigorate me or jumpstart my day; it just drowns my engine. So towards the end of each day, while the air is still warm, I grab a quick shower: lukewarm, cool or cold in a weak flow of water and dry off on a thin towel. I’m clean but not always refreshed.
Therefore I try to go swimming when the opportunity presents itself. Swimming in clean water works moisture into my pores and the exercise leaves me energized and ready for more adventures. But occasionally the swimming itself is part of the adventure. Yesterday I went swimming in a lake of iced tea, along with butchers with sharp knives, reptiles with sharp teeth and a curious water creature.
In the tropics, opportunities to swim in clean water are certainly not daily occurrences. All of the rivers and many of the lakes are muddy. The locals swim and bathe in them and so do I but I come out feeling the need for a cleansing shower to wash away the silt that sticks to me. My hope is always for a lake with clear water. Near the lodge is such a place.
The river has meandered through the jungle for eons. Every now and then one of the large rainy season floods will cause the river to change course leaving behind portions of the old riverbed, now cut off from the main channel. These old river segments fill with water and become lakes, called oxbow lakes from their generally curved shapes. If the oxbow lake is maintained by springs rather than muddy streams, the water will remain clear and drinkable—and swimable.
Down the path from the lodge is our oxbow lake. It’s large, maybe sixty acres. A fleet of dugout canoes sits on the shore to take hikers and birders to foot trails on the other side of the lake where Hoatzins and Zigzag Herons can be found along with the American Pygmy Kingfisher, a tiny bird whose name is almost longer than the bird itself. A floating wooden dock juts out into the lake for fishing and diving. In the middle of the afternoon when the birds are quiet and the sun is hottest, this is my favorite place to be. A swim here is truly wonderful.
The water actually does look like iced tea, clear with a rich brown color. I suppose that this lake is really one big tea bowl. Tea, after all, is nothing more than leaves of certain plants that are steeped in water to release chemicals that color and flavor the water. Trees surrounding this lake drop leaves on a daily basis. The leaves have a high degree of tannin that is released as the leaves decompose on the lake bottom. It is the tannin that gives a dark color to the lake.
Swimming here is fun. I can choose my own water temperature. Most of the lake is nice warm water, the brown lake warmed by the tropical sun. I do my lazy swimming there. But if I swim in certain spots, the water turns cold and invigorating. There are underwater springs here and the cold spring water wells up from the bottom. Each day I do my last swimming here to get charged up for the rest of the day.
Yesterday while I was diving and swimming near the dock, Carlos, one of the students, was fishing there. He was catching fish the size of my hand or a little larger. At first I thought they were sunfish until I saw their teeth. Long, sharp, butcher knife teeth identified these as piranhas. Their jaws opened wide to take big bites. This is what I was swimming with. I was swimming with piranhas!
I remember the scary movies of the 1950s. The villain falls into the river and a whole school of piranhas rushes at him, rips flesh from his body and eats him alive. The movie screams go on and on while the hero on the riverbank holds the heroine and protects her from this horrible sight. The movies certainly made my skin crawl.
Of course, this was also the same time there were scary movies about the forty-foot tarantula and about the giant army ants that took over hundreds of square miles of Central America. It required an entire air force to bomb them to oblivion while the movie audience cheered. Hollywood certainly takes license with the real world. Nowadays, movies show space aliens and terrifying mummies but the bad name given to army ants, tarantulas and piranhas lives on.
Yes, the piranhas I was swimming with do have big sharp teeth, incredibly sharp teeth. And yes, piranhas do eat meat but they really were not a threat to me. Piranhas are scavengers. They eat dead animals or badly wounded animals. Their sharp teeth are necessary to cut through animal hide and muscle. Piranhas are just not interested in a healthy swimming animal. Now maybe if I had a big gash on my leg and was spewing blood into the water, I might have trouble. Otherwise I can swim right next to Carlos catching piranhas off the dock and we can both enjoy the day.
But piranhas were not the only things sharing the lake with me yesterday. An animal face popped up out of the water about thirty feet away. It was swimming and watching me swim. It was an otter, one with an inquisitive face. The giant river otter of South America looks just like the North American otter but it is much larger, seven feet long from nose to tail. Like its northern cousin, it is quite curious and wanted to see who I was. Then it went back to fishing and enjoying the lake just as I was.
The big reptile teeth that I mentioned? I didn’t see those until dark. After dinner we took dugout canoes out onto the lake. With powerful flashlights we could see the eye shine of several caimans on the shore and swimming in the lake—my oxbow swimming lake. Cats’ eyes may shine yellow at night but caimans show bright red. I wonder how many of them were swimming underwater in the lake this afternoon while I was swimming on the surface?
Every day brings an adventure in the jungle. Even the simple act of an afternoon swim can include a lake of iced tea, meat butchers with sharp knives, reptiles with sharp teeth and curious water creatures.
Great snakes alive! Someone at the lodge reported seeing an anaconda this morning at a spot down by the river. I wish that I had been there. The anaconda is one of the jungle creatures that I would most like to see. This is the largest snake in the world. Some have been recorded at over thirty feet in length and more than 550 pounds. A snake this size would be larger around than my thigh.
Anacondas live in swamps and calm water waiting to ambush an unwary prey when it comes to drink. The snake grabs its prey with sharp teeth, pulls it into the water and drowns it. Anacondas are constrictors, which means they kill by coiling around an animal and suffocating it. Every time the animal exhales, the anaconda tightens the coil so the animal cannot breathe in again. They can easily take an animal the size of a deer. The largest anacondas can capture and eat a tapir, the largest animal in the jungle. An anaconda a foot in diameter can swallow prey much larger in size because its jaws will unhinge and its skin will stretch to accommodate a large meal. While eating, the powerful jaw muscles squeeze and crush the victim into a smaller size, which the snake swallows whole. After a large meal the anaconda may not eat again for weeks or even months.
There are reports of anaconda attacks on humans but these are rare and anacondas are not a real threat to people. Nonetheless the snake’s large size makes it something to respect. It is disconcerting to be paddling a dugout canoe and have an anaconda swimming alongside, especially when the snake is longer than the boat.
Although the anaconda is not a serious menace to a jungle-hiking birder, there are snakes about that are a deadly threat. The fer-de-lance is common and extremely dangerous. It has a long serpentine body and a large triangular head, hence its French name meaning “lance head.” It is cryptically colored and blends in with the dead leaves on the jungle floor while waiting to ambush its prey. Most adult fer-de-lance average four to six feet but some females are eight feet long. These snakes are pit vipers similar to rattlesnakes but the fer-de-lance gives no warning before striking.
The snake is exceptionally poisonous. Its venom is fast acting and quickly destroys blood cells and causes extensive decomposition of skin and tissue around the bite. The bite and its aftermath are quite painful. Without treatment about 10% of the people who are bitten will die. The rest may have permanent tissue damage.
One of my guides was bitten on the finger two years before by a fer-de-lance less than two feet long. This happened at night when he bent down to pick up something on the ground and happened to put his hand right on a coiled snake. He described the pain as extreme and immediate. Luckily he was near a lodge and had access to antivenin, which was administered in less than an hour. Nonetheless he still lost the end of his finger because of tissue decomposition and had to have a skin graft on his fingertip. Two years later the graft remains ugly, dark and ill shaped. And this is from a small fer-de-lance!
The most frightening snake experience I heard about involved another guide who was chased by a large fer-de-lance for several hundred yards down a jungle trail. The fer-de-lance can be extremely aggressive and very fast when it feels threatened. Of all things in the jungle this is the one that is the most dangerous.
This snake is common here at Tiputini. I saw two in one week. Who knows how many were there that I did not see? The chances of being bitten are low but the consequences of being bitten are high. A hiker should not be scared in the jungle but he should certainly be wary.
When thinking about the jungle, one of the first things that come to mind is parrots. Visitors to the Amazon expect to see plenty of parrots and macaws because they are large, colorful and very noisy. However, in the jungle parrots are often very hard to see. Certainly one can easily see parrots and macaws flying overhead. Their constant chattering and screeching makes them easy to spot. But identifying a flying parrot by sight is difficult. They are all large and mostly green. Learning the calls of the many species is usually necessary to separate the different kinds.
When parrots land in a tree they become almost instantly invisible because of their green color and because parrots invariably land in the tops of tall trees. It is easy to overlook a tree with twenty or more parrots because the green birds just blend in.
There is one place, however, where parrots can be easily seen as well as heard. Along river banks there are occasional deposits of clay that attract parrots and macaws. Parrots come here to eat clay as a dietary supplement, which aids in their digestion. The best way to see parrots out in the open and see their full colors in bright sunlight is to take a canoe to a clay lick. As I sit in the canoe, I sometimes see more than 200 parrots of eight different species as they fly in, land on the clay lick, eat, chatter and squabble with each other. It is one of the most memorable experiences in the forest with many flashing colors and lots of raucous squawking. The spectacle goes on for several hours with new parrots and macaws coming and going.
Every now and then something will spook the flock and all the birds will fly up at once and circle around several times before coming back to the surrounding trees. Soon one bird, braver than the rest, will alight on the clay bank to feed. Thus reassured, other parrots will fly down again to resume the feeding, chattering and squabbling. The noise never ceases.
Four days at Tiputini have passed all too quickly. I hate to leave. This jungle is one of my favorite places on Earth. Here at Tiputini I've seen over 200 kinds of birds, including 24 life birds. Three of those were difficult-to-find skulking antbirds, the dark shadows of the forest floor. Mornings and late afternoons I spent hiking and birding. Early afternoons were for swimming, siestas and lazing about.
On the last afternoon Shirley and I lie in hammocks enjoying the shade when we hear a familiar sound. At a great distance it sounds like a howling wind in the trees and at a closer distance it sounds more like a lion roaring. I’ve heard this sound before and I smile to remember the first time when I didn’t know what the sound meant.
I made my first trip to the tropics in 1983 and I didn’t plan to be in a jungle. It was another trip that started out to be a simple, single destination and ended up covering three countries on a whim.
Due to car problems, I was late entering Guatemala from Belize and ended up driving sixty miles through the Peten jungle in the dark on a dirt road. There were no other vehicles and no people about. A startled park guard at the entrance to Tikal National Park came out of his guard shack with an M-16 rifle to see who was driving into Tikal at 9:00 at night. I didn’t know until later that no one drove that road at night. After dark the guerillas owned the road. The Guatemalan army only owned it in the daytime. I should have checked this out with the border guards. I was lucky. I am comfortable dealing with most any kind of natural danger; it’s the man-made kind that scares me. One can occasionally get by with naiveté but ignorance should never play a part of any adventure.
I found a thatched roof cabin for the night and the next morning set off on foot to explore the park. Tikal has many square miles of Indian ruins, perhaps the best-preserved Mayan ruins anywhere. For many years it was an important Mayan ceremonial site. There are still six large pyramids standing nearly 200 feet high, much higher than the surrounding forest. The large settlement at Tikal was abandoned for unknown reasons shortly before the Spanish arrived in the 16th century and the jungle totally reclaimed the area until archaeologists arrived in the 20th.
The archaeologists cleared vegetation in the plazas and in small areas around the most important ruins but most of the area was still forested. To see the ruins, tourists came everyday from Flores, Guatemala, thirty miles away. Only a few of us actually stayed in the park then, possibly because guerillas burned down the visitor center only twelve months before. Now all the park rangers carried M-16s.
The main ruins were easily visited on a good dirt road and most of the tourists had guides. Two-track jeep roads made by the archaeologists reached the less important ruins and were great for birding. These roads led away from the other tourists.
That first morning I was hiking by myself on one of these jeep roads, a mile or two away from everyone else. I was following a Gray-headed Tanager when I suddenly heard a lion roaring and it sounded close—very close! Anyone who has ever been to an MGM movie has seen the lion roar in the opening credits of the film. That is just what this roaring sounded like. Now I know that lions are in Africa, not Guatemala, but the Central American jungle does have several species of cats. The largest of these is El Tigre, the jaguar. I had never seen a jaguar but I really wanted to.
There was a deer trail branching off the road right towards the roaring sound. “I’ll just go a little ways down this trail to see what I can see. I won’t go too close.”
The jaguar roared again. It was obvious that the animal was close but maybe not as close as I first thought. “I can still go a little farther in.”
Now the sound was definitely louder. I could not tell if the sound was coming from the ground or from a tree but it was definitely loud. Another roar—a loud roar! And the hair on the back of my neck stood up! That’s an old cliché, “the hair on the back of your neck stands up.” I had read it a hundred times but I had never experienced it. This time it happened to me. Because of tension, the skin on the back of the neck tightens causing the short hairs to stand straight out. The collar of my shirt brushed these stiff hairs and I could feel a distinct shock go through my body. All my senses were on high alert but I wanted to see a Tigre!
Suddenly, there were spider monkeys moving quickly through the trees—and they were moving away from the roaring, which was now continuous. That was not a good sign. I was now totally on edge but I wanted to see a Tigre!
There! I saw movement in the tree! Slowly I brought up my binoculars for a closer look in the dark shade. There were black shapes moving in the trees. It couldn’t be a jaguar, not six of them. It was a monkey, a BIG black monkey and some smaller black monkeys. And that was what was roaring. I laughed out loud and the tension melted away. I just had my first encounter with a howler monkey. I had forgotten that there was such a thing.
In my Tiputini hammock it is great to hear howlers again. The hair on the back of my neck won’t respond to them like the first time. There is no unknown this time. Adventures have to include an element of the unknown but simple pleasures don’t. Therefore an adventure can happen only once while pleasures can happen over and over again. For me, hearing the howler monkeys in the jungle is a pleasure every time.
April 13 Aero Gal #25 Coca to Quito, Ecuador
Back in Quito we are driving, headed west down towards the Pacific coast. From Quito we will drop 9,000 feet down to sea level after crossing the western rim of the Andes. These are young mountains having risen on the planet quite recently, geologically speaking. In fact, the Andes are still rising at a rate of a few inches a century. Being young means that the mountains are unstable; the slopes are still steep and are particularly prone to landslides. Heavy rains from the Pacific Ocean that fall on the Andes cause local mountain flooding, frequent erosion and more landslides.
April 13 Aero Gal #25 Coca to Quito, Ecuador
Back in Quito we are driving, headed west down towards the Pacific coast. From Quito we will drop 9,000 feet down to sea level after crossing the western rim of the Andes. These are young mountains having risen on the planet quite recently, geologically speaking. In fact, the Andes are still rising at a rate of a few inches a century. Being young means that the mountains are unstable; the slopes are still steep and are particularly prone to landslides. Heavy rains from the Pacific Ocean that fall on the Andes cause local mountain flooding, frequent erosion and more landslides.
These geologic forces come into play when we drive the major highway west of the capital. During the oil boom, Ecuador paved many mountain roads that had previously been gravel but did so in a rush and tried to do it on a shoestring budget. Even major highways like this one received only two inches of asphalt over a poorly prepared base. Five miles out of Quito we already see the result of unstable mountains and poor road construction.
We seldom go more than two miles without detouring around a washout or a landslide which buries part of the road. If the slide covers the entire road, workers will reopen it in a few hours or a few days but if the slide covers only part of the road, they do nothing and everyone just drives around it. Many stretches of road become one lane roads and traffic takes turns going through. Some stretches of paved roads have so many potholes that they look like Swiss cheese.
Mountain roads also mean slow trucks. So, between the steep mountains, poor roads and slow traffic, we hardly average more than 30 mph even though we are passing vehicles at every opportunity—even on blind curves. Many of the roads have no center stripe. It would be a waste of paint. Often one car is passing another when a vehicle is coming in the opposite direction. A two lane road is suddenly three cars wide! More than once there is a car passing us at the same time we are passing another car. Again three cars wide! If one drives by Ecuadorian rules, things seem to work out—most of the time. If one insists on driving by American rules, there will be chaos.
Yesterday while coming up the mountain, we rounded a curve and found a line of vehicles stopped in front of us. Another landslide, about 100 yards wide, covered the whole road. The line of trucks, buses and cars was already a half-mile long. I got out and walked to the head of the line. The road was buried over eight feet deep and it was obvious that no one was going to go anywhere. We would just have to wait. There was no other road back to Quito.
The landslide was still fresh. Some areas of mud were still inching forward. A few rocks were still rolling down. In the middle of the mud was a small stream of brown water, the remnant of the storm’s runoff that caused this small patch of mountainside to slip down onto the highway. While I watched the earth still creeping, other people were on the move. Dozens of people walked past me and over the mud.
Most people in Ecuador travel from city to city by bus and there were a number of buses stopped here by the landslide. But the passengers weren’t going to wait for road machinery to clear the highway. The passengers all got out and walked across the landslide carrying their luggage and bundles even while a few rocks still rolled down. After crossing over the mud, the passengers climbed into buses on the other side. The buses on each side of the landslide turned around and headed back to their original city but now with new passengers on board.
The bus passengers were able to go on their way but the rest of us were tied to our vehicles. We would just have to await rescue by the highway department. Would they come today? Soon a rescue of a different sort arrived. Vendors appeared out of nowhere selling gum, candy, soda pop and crackers. They had a captive audience on both sides of the landslide. Here miles from the nearest town, where do these vendors come from?
After an hour a front-end loader showed up from somewhere and began to move rocks and mud. Progress was made but slowly. The vendors would have their customers for some time yet. Later a second front-end loader appeared from the opposite direction and the pace of rubble removal picked up. After three hours, the machines cleared a single lane and traffic took turns going through. Yesterday was just a normal day driving in the Andes.
By mid-day today we are out of the mountains and onto the coastal plain. Landslides are a thing of the past. The road improves and so does our speed. We make San Lorenzo by late afternoon.
Did I say it was hot? San Lorenzo is on the Pacific coast just south of Colombia and almost right on the equator. The temperature is in the nineties with the humidity the same. Although we are on the coast, we cannot see the open ocean from the harbor. It is completely surrounded by mangrove-fringed islands, which block any hope of an ocean breeze. Dozens of herons and egrets sit in the trees and in the mid-afternoon heat nothing is moving about. With all the water around, San Lorenzo is unbearably humid. And yes, those are mosquitoes—clouds of mosquitoes.
We are sweaty from the heat but we had a good travel day and saw some good birds. Now a good shower would feel wonderful. The shower in the hotel room even has two faucet handles, hot and cold. Does this mean we will soon have hot water for our showers for a change? One should not jump to conclusions. Shirley gets a fair trickle of water and it is mostly warm if she doesn’t turn on any cold water. Five minutes later, I get half a trickle of water and there is nothing warm about it. But it is wet and it still feels good.
Never choose an air-conditioned room in a cheap hotel in a small town in the tropics. I think that I mentioned that it is hot. Only two rooms in the ten-room hotel are air-conditioned. Not knowing any better, we select one of those. When we enter our room, we see something strange. The room has a window with no glass, just a screen. The air conditioner will have to work that much harder. There is no intermediate setting. It is either on or off.
Because the locals do not use air conditioning, the bed has no covers, just a sheet. What feels cool in the evening feels cold at midnight, so it’s jump up and turn off the air conditioner because there is nothing to cover up with. At 1:00 a.m. it’s too warm, so jump up and turn on the air conditioner. At 1:30 …… well, you get the idea. Smarter people choose a non air-conditioned room with a ceiling fan and sleep well through the night.
Since these air-conditioned rooms are the best in the hotel (even if only ten feet square) they face the street. Did I mention that there is no glass in the window? We can hear all the sounds of the town. There is an election coming up in Ecuador but not soon enough to spare us. Day after day, night after night, loudspeaker trucks cruise the streets of almost every town blaring political messages and theme songs very loudly over very bad sound systems. In every town there must be at least six political parties vying for votes so there are a lot of loudspeaker trucks.
This Saturday night there is a political rally in San Lorenzo—two blocks from our hotel—with more loud speakers. Then the loudspeaker trucks from the other political parties try to drown out the rally. Now we have dueling loudspeakers. Did I mention that our hotel window has no window to close?
The loudspeakers quiet down about 10:00 and the dogs stop barking at midnight but then it is time to adjust the air conditioner. At 3:00 a.m. the roosters start; at 4:00 the dogs start; at 5:00 the loudspeakers start up again playing loud salsa music for the benefit of town residents who don’t own a radio. At 6:00 the birders are on the road again. I think we have cheese sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. You haven’t lived until you’ve been to San Lorenzo on a Saturday night.
An hour from San Lorenzo the road ends at a small river and another motorboat ride awaits us, a fast one this time. We dodge rocks and snags as we zip upstream through the hills just off the coastal plain. The breeze created by the fast movement feels great in this Caribbean-style heat and humidity. In little more than an hour we arrive at the village of Playa del Oro.
This village beside the small river is unlike any other we have visited in Ecuador so far. It is not the stone and concrete of Quito built to keep out the cold and withstand earthquakes. It is not the raw mud and crumbling buildings of Coca that were built in a hurry and hopefully will disappear just as quickly. There are no smoke-spewing diesel buses or loudspeaker trucks here—in fact, there are no vehicles and no roads at all.
Playa del Oro sits peacefully beside the swift river looking like it has always been here and looking like it will always be here unchanged. There are thirty houses made entirely of wood with thatched roofs. Each house sits four feet off the ground to permit breezes to blow underneath and to shelter the chickens when it rains. The typical house has two rooms that take up half the floor space and a porch that occupies the rest. The two rooms provide privacy but it is apparent that most living activities take place on the porch, where there is a breeze. Although there are no vehicles or roads, the houses are neatly aligned along three streets and each has a rock-bordered yard with a few flowers and a fence or a couple of bushes to put the laundry on to dry.
Foot trails go off into the forest to hand-tilled fields somewhere. An old motorboat and a dozen dugout canoes provide the village’s transportation needs. The only store is a 6’ x 8’ room built on the side of a house, where a woman offers a few tins of food, powdered milk, cigarettes, potato chips and Coca Cola without refrigeration. The people here don’t buy much. They farm and fish for their food needs.
The village school is the only building not up on stilts. It has a dirt floor and no desks. A few benches and some sort of a blackboard are its only furnishings. I can see no books.
The village has no electricity but there is running water in a hose to the houses so the kitchens can have a sink. On a short path downstream from the village four outhouses are built on stilts over the river to serve the resident’s needs.
Certainly the people here are poor—in a monetary sense. Bananas provide the only income and that doesn’t bring in much in a land where everyone grows bananas. Yet these people are not poor in spirit. Their clothes, though old, are clean. Children run around happily. The village is tidy, as much as can be where mud is a constant fact of life. There is a pride evident in Playa del Oro.
When our boat pulled into Playa del Oro, twenty or more people came to the riverbank to greet us and help unload. Each person wanted to shake our hands and say hello, “Buenos dias.” As we returned their greetings and looked into their faces, we found an unexpected surprise. These villagers are not Indian. Neither are they the brown-skinned mixture of Indian and European that is so common in Latin America and called Hispanic in the United States. The people of Playa del Oro are black, Africans or more correctly Afro-Ecuadorians. They are the descendents of slaves, moved south from northern Colombia where their ancestors toiled in sugar cane fields.
Just upstream from the village and separated from it by a footbridge over a small creek is our cabin. There are six cabins here, solid wooden structures, each with a newly thatched roof and a large porch with comfortable chairs. Inside are two sets of bunk beds with good mattresses, a bathroom with shower and electric lights, although the light bulbs are the size of a large bean. In the backyard a panel of photoelectric cells produce enough electricity to provide light in the rooms at night, about the equivalent of four candles—but that’s all we need. All in all, these cabins are nicer than anything in the village although not as large. A new kitchen and dining porch completes the camp.
Where has the money come from to build such a nice facility in a village that can’t even afford electricity? A sign announces that this tourist project was built with a grant from the Ecuadorian government and USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.
At first I feel uneasy staying in better quarters than the villagers right next door. I have a new bed, electricity, an indoor toilet and a shower and they do not. Wouldn’t it have been better to spend the money on needed improvements in the village itself? Then I realize, no, it’s better this way. If the money is spent on the village, it will make a short-term improvement but will not change anything in the long run. Building this small tourist facility is a down payment on the future. The community can make an income from renting cabins to tourists and villagers can make a salary cleaning rooms and cooking food for visitors. Children in the village may now see people from beyond their small world. These six cabins are not a guarantee of a better tomorrow but they do offer hope. I often wondered where some of the U.S. foreign aid money goes. Now I know where one small amount of it went. And I’m pleased.
As a conservationist and a citizen of the planet, I see another benefit in these new cabins. If the project succeeds and Playa del Oro makes money from birders and other tourists coming to enjoy the tropical rainforest, the villagers will see a financial benefit in preserving the forest and all its wild inhabitants.
After birding for two days in Playa del Oro, I have many new birds for my millennial goal. Sixteen of these are life birds, including such unusual ones as Tooth-billed Hummingbird, Five-colored Barbet, Stripe-throated Wren, Scarlet-thighed Dacnis, Long-billed Gnatwren and Stub-tailed Antbird.
But once again, I discover what I learned before: It is great fun to see new birds but it is even more rewarding to find new adventures up a jungle stream. Until now, I never heard of Afro-Ecuadorians and now some are my friends, even if just for a day. And I found a place where my tax dollars are helping someone and helping the planet. That is the real benefit of birding. It is a hobby that takes me to new places and into new experiences that I would otherwise miss if I had not been looking for a new bird to check off my list.
There is an army about. Six million feet are marching through the jungle but it is surprisingly quiet—only the soft rustling of leaves and an occasional snapping sound. If I were more than a hundred yards away, I wouldn’t be aware of it at all. As the army approaches there is considerable movement at the front as the local residents panic and attempt to flee. There is running and jumping around in all directions and the air force moves in to pick off stragglers.
Army ants are on the move. This is not a Hollywood horror flick but an interesting phenomenon of nature. These are not huge monsters; they’re ants less than a half-inch long. But there are over a million of them, all moving together through the forest. They’re not moving in a line as we are used to seeing most ants. They are moving in a big mass seventy feet wide and perhaps a hundred long. Ants are hunting food, hunting protein.
Army ants do not eat plants but will take any creature that does not run away. A caterpillar that doesn’t crawl fast enough, a grasshopper that does not hop of the way, or a small lizard that decides to freeze and hide rather than run will become food for this army. Even a baby bird in a nest hidden under a bush on the ground will become a meal for the hungry horde. Army ants sometimes forage in the canopy but often stay close to the ground while checking out every small twig and bush along their path.
This army does not move fast. It moves at ant speed, a very slow walk for me. These are not voracious hunters chasing down every living thing. They operate more like a living vacuum cleaner moving slowly through the forest collecting everything that does not get out of the way. They don’t chase things down but when they get hold of something they don’t let go. A hundred or more ants can quickly subdue a small lizard or young bird.
The leaves on the forest floor are generally damp and do not make a noise when an animal walks on them. But six million feet on a million ants combine to make a quiet rustle in the leaves. The snapping sounds I hear come from birds’ beaks.
Through hundreds of centuries, some birds learned to associate army ant swarms with food and they follow the ants. These birds don’t eat the ants. Very few birds or animals eat ants because they taste terrible due to the formic acid in their bodies. The birds that follow ant swarms learned that ants will scare up food for those who follow them. As the army moves forward, insects hop or fly out of the way. They escape the ants but expose themselves to the birds. As soon as a grasshopper jumps up, a quick-acting flycatcher will swoop in for a meal. There are several dozen species of birds that evolved to follow the ants to get food. One entire group of birds takes it name from these camp following activities, the antbirds.
Army ants are nomads but they sometimes settle down for a while. After three weeks of foraging and daily movement, they often find a suitable hole and stop for a day or a few weeks. The single queen among the million ants lays eggs and a new generation is hatched. Then the army goes on the move again.
Birdwatchers love to find an army ant swarm. It is the best place to find certain species of birds. Because the ants and the birds are so intent on collecting food, I can stand on a trail in front of the swarm and let the ants and birds come to me. If I stand still, the army will move all around me even climbing over my boots. I keep my trousers tucked into my socks so that the ants cannot get inside my pant legs. They do have a sharp bite. But by being still I am usually unbothered. It is a little unnerving though to be standing in the middle of a swarm of ants who are so numerous that they make all the ground around appear to be moving. The faint of heart will soon run out of the way.
Army ants are not a danger to me but of the hundreds of kinds of ants in the tropics there are a few that I keep an eye out for. I watch for certain trees that are “owned” by an ant colony which will vigorously fight off any trespasser, including me. These trees evolved to secrete nectars and oils in areas along their branches and leaves. These secretions feed ants. In turn the colony of ants protects the tree from harm. These ants will attack any insect that lands or climbs on the tree. They will attack any animal that tries to eat leaves from the tree or even just brushes against it. If I even touch the tree, the ants will come swarming at me. And they bite hard. When I hike through the jungle I learn to be very careful what tree I grab hold of.
The worst ant I come across is the solitary ant. It is large, over an inch long, and true to its name found one at a time. This ant is pugnacious; it seems to take very little to make this ant attack. Like a boxer with a one-two punch, the ant bites hard with its jaws and then when it has a good hold it twists its body around and delivers a very painful sting with its abdomen. The local natives tell me that the formic acid in the sting is quite debilitating and can lay them up for a day or two. Solitary ants can be found most anywhere, on the ground, on the tree trunks, or in the branches. They also have a nasty habit of dropping down from branches onto unwary hikers and stinging them. I definitely try to stay away from the solitary ant.
After three weeks in the Andes and jungles of northern Ecuador, Ms. Shirley and the ranger headed to the mountains of southern Ecuador. There were clean hotels and then there were forgettable holes. There were comfortable nights and there were horrible beds with three bed slats and a one-inch mattress. There were hot and sweaty days and there were sweater days and rainy days and always the sun breaking through during some part of the day. There were breakfasts in the dark at 4:00 a.m. to get somewhere for birding at dawn. And there were endless lunches and dinners of pollo y papas fritas, fried chicken and French fries.
There were butterflies of every size and color. Some as big as the palm of my hand, landed on my arm to lick the salt from the skin. There were monkeys, marmosets, agouties and tapirs along the forested trails. There was the hope of finding a spectacled bear that was never quite realized. Above us always were the Andes: Andes with snow, Andes in clouds, Andes in bright sunshine and Andean hill slopes covered with orchids—thousands of orchids.
Memories of people abound: friendly hotelkeepers, the smiling villagers of Playa del Oro, stoic native women herding animals high above tree line, a man and a guitar in a bar, an Andean band with drums and bamboo panpipes playing in a mountain village, the man with two teeth who wanted to show me the fish he caught, cruising teenagers in a small town square one evening. The girls walk arm-in-arm clockwise around the square and the boys walk arm-in-arm counterclockwise.
Everywhere there are surprises and contrasts. Quito is full of the latest cars but a day away donkeys are still useful. Television sets everywhere show the latest music videos from MTV and soap operas from Mexico, while Indian women are wearing the same costumes they have worn for 400 years. A small town in southern Ecuador is too small to have a gas station yet has two internet cafes. The small country of Ecuador is truly an amazing place.
I have always wanted to see the Andean Condor, the symbol of Ecuador and of all the Andes. With a fourteen-foot wingspan it is by far the largest bird in South America. We see the condor depicted throughout Ecuador in the same way that we see the Bald Eagle pictured in the United States. But the condor is now scarce in Ecuador due to human pressures. Condors may be fairly numerous in some remote areas of South America but in Ecuador there may be only fifty left. Throughout all our days in the high Andes we keep our eyes on the sky to look for hawks and eagles and, of course, hope for a glimpse of a mighty condor.
I have always wanted to see the Andean Condor, the symbol of Ecuador and of all the Andes. With a fourteen-foot wingspan it is by far the largest bird in South America. We see the condor depicted throughout Ecuador in the same way that we see the Bald Eagle pictured in the United States. But the condor is now scarce in Ecuador due to human pressures. Condors may be fairly numerous in some remote areas of South America but in Ecuador there may be only fifty left. Throughout all our days in the high Andes we keep our eyes on the sky to look for hawks and eagles and, of course, hope for a glimpse of a mighty condor.
We do find the eagles—Black Hawk-Eagles, Ornate Hawk-Eagles, Black-chested Buzzard-Eagles, Black-and-chestnut Eagles—and many kinds of hawks but the largest flying bird on the continent eludes us. Never mind; the Andes are beautiful. There are snow-covered volcanoes over 19,000 feet high. We enjoy high mountain lakes and colorful villages. Llamas graze along with cattle. Birds are everywhere. In five weeks we have found almost 700 species of birds, many bright and colorful.
Starting tomorrow, we will tour historic sites in Cuenca and Quito for two days before returning to the United States so this is our last day of birding in the Andes. We are at 11,000 feet in high grasslands looking for new flycatchers and tanagers with one eye out for hawks and eagles flying overhead. Then, there it is, right above us! Huge; black with a white head; fourteen-foot wings and white wing patches. An Andean Condor close and in full view! It circles overhead as we watch speechless. It is so large and stately that we can only stare. After circling for several minutes, El Condor lands on the cliff above us and stands there with both wings extended. Whenever I picture the Andes in my mind this is the scene that I will remember.
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