Jan 15--Meeting the Gang

Sunday, January 15, 2006

We were instructed to meet our team at 9 am in the hotel lobby, so I am up at 6 am to sort out my Galapagos things (which I leave at the Palace) and to have a hot shower and breakfast, which is part of my room fee.

When I walk into the dining room, I see a gray-haired near look-alike sitting by herself in the corner. I suspect she is Susan Wethington, the PI for our expedition, but she does not encourage me to sit with her so I take a place at another table. I am almost immediately joined by Marlene Coleman and then by Erica Keating, two other Team 6 volunteers. When I introduce myself, they at first think that I am the PI.

We enjoy a lively breakfast. Marlene, a triathlete,  speaks fairly fluent Spanish and has been staying with friends in Cuenca (Quenka) for the past week. She and Erica discover that they live within blocks of each other in NYC. Erica is a massage therapist and Marlene, a triathlete, works for HSBC bank. Turns out that she and Brazilian, Ricardo Gelasko, and Brit Donna Ore all work for this bank which has paid their contributions and travel to show their support for environmental endeavors. I am envious.

After breakfast, we meet the rest of the team. Yes, the woman in the restaurant was Susan Wethington, from Patagonia, AZ, and founder of the Hummingbird Monitoring Network. Other team members include Carlos Martinez-Rivera, a herpetologist from Costa Rica who is doing graduate work at the U. of Missouri, Columbia, and his girlfriend, Evelyng Astudillo, an Ecuadorian ornithologist. Chas Edwards and Dawn Woodroffe enter the lobby wearing huge backpacks. They are birders from the UK and live together. Cathy Hutcheson is also in the lobby. Cathy is from Illinois and is an expert birder and bander. We also meet Ricardo, who wonders aloud if birding is a little “unmanly.” Males are a decided minority on this trip . . . 3 males to 8 females.

Front: Erica, Ricardo, Cathy, Susan Wethington; Back: me, Chas, Dawn, Donna, Marlene, Evelyng, Carlos; behind us is the little shuttle that we will cram into for the three-hour drive to Valdivia and our Eco lodge 

Oniour way out of town, we pass a huge hillside cemetery sometimes called La Ciudad Blanca (The White City). It’s spread out over several hills, all of the graves above ground in ornate white crypts and cement coffins. Carlos explains that because the Ecuadorian people are predominately Catholic, they eschew cremation. But space is limited, so after the deceased occupies a gravesite for 10 years (plenty of time for the soul to reach heaven) the bones are removed, pulverized and presented to the family. It’s now someone else’s turn to occupy the gravesite for the next 10 years. 

When I return to Guayaquil after the Earthwatch expedition, I walk to this graveyard. The newer part of the cemetery  has grass and tree-lined boulevards fronting what seem like high rise white buildings but each is a mausoleum with  stacked drawers and drawers of the dead. In the old section of the cemetery, many of the graves are completely crumbling out of the hillside, covered with rubble from previous graves. Torn silk linings hang out from some. Trash and rubble litter the ground. The guidebook says, “The cemetery is considered one of the most beautiful in South America.” This statement may be true about the new part of the cemetery but certainly is not in regard to the old part of the cemetery. (See below)

Ill kept cemetery; the photo to the right might read "Buried Again"

We also pass a mass of colorful houses perched on the hillside. Leaving the city, we travel through a very dry, dusty, trashy countryside, dotted with tacked together, tin- or palm-leaf-roofed houses—most on stilts for the cooling breezes. The roadway is full of all sorts of vehicles from ritzy SUVs to the ubiquitous beat up pickup trucks, their wooden benches filled with farm workers, fishermen, or families. Also crazy colorful local buses, one of which we will experience tomorrow. Many mountain bicycles, too, their riders taking their lives in their hands amidst the notoriously reckless Ecuadorian drivers. Susan tells us that the most dangerous part of our expedition is not the venomous snakes and malarial mosquitoes of the Cloud Forest but the time we will spend in a vehicle getting to and from our hike-in/out point.

It takes us 3 hours to reach our destination for the evening, an Eco Lodge on a seaside cliff above the town of Valdivia and the ancient village of San Pedro. We are all stunned by the beauty and “luxury” of the Lodge, having expected to rough it from Day 1.

View of the ocean from the benched and thatched pavilion

I  share a thatch-roofed cabin with Susan (two Susans in one cabin). Our beds have mosquito net canopies. We have a bathroom with  hot running water and shower. We both wash up and then it’s time for a full big lunch served in the open dining room overlooking the ocean. This is an unexpected treat!

Carlos shows us the suction-cup feet of a gecko found in one of the cabins.

Susan's and my cabin on the right

Susan's and my bedroom

Carlos, Marlene, and Erica on the Eco lodge balcony casting their binoculars on the fishing scene in Valdivia far below. When the fishermen pull in their nets, all sorts of birds gather; right: Erica with purple towel and hat before the purple entrance to the Eco Lodge.

Birds gathered about returning fishermen--what we were seeing in Valdivia with our binoculars; the big black birds are  Magnificent Frigatebirds

Magnificent Frigate Birds, Brown Pelicans [1], and Black Vultures fly past at eye level, taking advantage of cliffside updrafts. Blue-and-white Swallows dart to the pool for a sip of fresh water; a Vermillion Flycatcher [3] catches insects from a perch in the courtyard, and a Tropical Gnatcatcher has built its nest directly over the entrance. Rusty colored Horneros(6) flit among the trees, some nesting in big mud balls [7] in the tree limbs. While we are studying one, a Pacific Pygmy Owl [2] flies out and we get a  good look at it. It is tiny. Susan says that it hunts during the daytime too. Long-tailed Mockingbirds [4] are everywhere, and when we pulled in, we saw a Yellow-tailed Oriole [5] and along the road a Peruvian Meadowlark [8].

 After lunch Susan wants to lead us on an informal birding outing along the beach and to a lagoon with a variety of species. The trail down the cliff to the beach is a literal cliffhanger, crumbly and dangerous, so we must hike along the roadside—a feat probably more dangerous than risking the trail to the beach. We all make it to the bottom in one piece, however, and then walk along the beach where fishermen and their families are relaxing before going out again for an evening catch. Their boats are colorful and crude. Black vultures are picking about the beach like gulls. Laughing gulls and great and cattle egrets are foraging on the beach also.

Fishing boats on the Valdivia beach

Black vulture scavenging on the beach

Black-necked Stilts

At the lagoon we have a great birding fest. We end the day having spotted the following birds: Little Tinamou (heard) [1], Magnificent Frigate Birds, Blue-footed Booby (flying in the distance), Neotropic Cormorant, Brown Pelican, Great egret, Snowy Egrets, Cattle Egret, Striated Heron [2], Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Black Vulture, Turkey Vulture,  Savanna Hawk [3], Barred Forest Falcon [4], Spotted Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Black-necked Stilt (many), Semipalmated Plover, Collared Plover, Wilson’s Plover, Kildeer, American Golden Plover, Laughing Gull, Rock Pigeon, Ecuadorian Ground Dove, Croaking Ground Dove [5], Pacific Parrotlet [6], Pacific Pygmy Owl, Pacific Hornero, Southern Beardless Tyrannulet [7], Vermillion Flycatcher, Masked Water Tyrant [8], Tropical Kingbird (9), Long-tailed Mockingbird, Blue-and-white Swallow [10], So. Rough-winged Swallow, House Wren, Tropical Gnatcatcher [11], Blue-gray Tanager [12],  Scrub Blackbird [13], Peruvian Meadowlark [14], and Yellow-tailed Oriole.

We return from the lagoon through San Pedro, a very old, poor community with the usual dirt streets, mangy dogs, pigs, chickens, mules, and kids. All along the lagoon and along the trails and dirt roads, we walk through trash. It seems to be okay to throw one’s trash and garbage anywhere. Some of it, as well as the landscape has been burned. Amidst this squalor, there often blooms a gorgeous hibiscus or an African flame tree, made more beautiful by the stark contrast to its surroundings. A man has a pig by its hind legs and is dragging it squealing to its slaughter. We all feel for the poor animal that seems to know its fate.

San Pedro's homes and main street; the flowering trees add an unexpected touch of beauty and color

Marlene greets some vendors selling melons and coconuts; one of the women has just had a baby and asks Marlene to be its godmother

When we get back to the Eco Lodge, we all have a swim in the pool and then enjoy a delicious evening meal on the shaded patio before packing our bags preparatory to an early start the next morning.

Dig the Inca-type concrete poolside bench

Joyous faces around the dinner table