Thursday was our day to travel from Yachana Lodge to Quito. The power had been out for 3 hours overnight plus there was a thunderstorm with rain overhead sometime in the very early morning. I didn’t get quite enough sleep. But we packed up and brought our backpacks to the dining area before our 7 a.m. breakfast, and spotted a few birds from the deck with Jefferson and Guillermo again. Breakfast was pancakes and fried eggs, toast, pineapple, watermelon and tamarindo juice, all very good.
At 8 a.m. we got into the Yachana truck for the last time and drove about 40 minutes to a river bridge that had collapsed a couple of months ago. It appeared like the steel had just given up and collapsed. The day’s driver, Luis, was waiting on the other side of the river. Nathan, Robert and I got into a canoe on our side and then Robert and another man used poles to push the boat to the other side. Voila, problem solved the Ecuadorian way! We said goodbye to Robert and loaded our backpacks into Luis’ Kia.
Luis is a birding guide who had been arranged by Mercedes, the owner of our Quito hotel. We set out on the road to Quito, stopping a few times along the way to look for birds. We also stopped for lunch at a restaurant in the city of Baeza. I had trout a la plancha and some fried plantains (patacones) for lunch. At the highest point of the drive, we saw the volcano Antisana which was snow-covered and beautiful.
We arrived at our hotel at 4:30. It’s in a wealthy-looking neighborhood of Quito and is called Puembo Birding Garden. It’s popular among birders arriving in Quito.
Our dinner at the hotel is scheduled for 7 p.m. and it will be interesting to see if it measures up to the good food we’ve had so far. I’ll be too tired afterwards to write more and we’ll be losing power later, so I’m signing off on this post early.
Lori's Travels 