Today was a day of birdwatching and relaxing. Since I don’t want to bore you to death with the bird stuff, suffice it to say that from yesterday’s and today’s morning and evening walks with the Buglas owner Fabricio, plus birds seen on the grounds of Buglas, I’ve seen more than 43 species, most of which were new to me (“lifers”). so it’s been a fantastic place to see birds. And Nathan has taken a lot of photos.
The day started at 6:45 with a walk to a platform overlooking a ravine where manakins and other forest-loving birds are. We didn’t see much there, but walking on the trail we saw lots of birds feeding on seeds high up in one tree, so we stayed there quite a while.
We returned for a great breakfast of scrambled eggs, fruit, bread, ham, cheese, blackberry juice and tea. While eating we talked with an English-speaking couple, who were the only other guests, about the changes in Ecuador, the power outages, and Nathan described his motorcycle trip around South America.
Then we just relaxed, Nathan in a hammock and me walking around looking at more birds. Since I’m no good at taking bird pictures, I’ll show you some of the birds via a “cheaters” method:
We ate another delicious meal at 2, consisting of cream of broccoli soup, plantains, grilled chicken breasts, potatoes and a little chocolate ice cream. About 4:30, Fabricio and I went for another walk down the trail and this time we saw blue-crowned trogons, one of the very colorful and treasured birds here. That was a treat. We returned at sunset at 6 pm. Nathan and I saw fireflies flashing after sunset from the deck outside our room, which was another treat.
The power outages today were for about 4 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon. There will likely be about 4 hours of outage overnight, like there was last night. Sometimes Fabricio runs his car and powers the place from the car battery. He doesn’t have a generator.
Lori's Travels 