We woke up this morning, Friday, at 5:30 during a power outage. But Mercedes had warned us last night so we were ready. I got dressed by the light of my headlamp. Today was the day for a birding tour of Antisana National Park. Mercedes put out breakfast food for us to serve ourselves, including croissants, granola, yogurt, juice and fresh fruit. The power returned at 6:00 and we ate breakfast outside, near the bird feeders. The weather was clear and the temperature was in the low 50s, very refreshing after the heat and humidity at Yachana. Driver and birding guide Luis, the same one who brought us to Quito yesterday, picked us up at 6:30.
We drove through a few towns on the way to the park, climbing all the time. The park is above the tree line, and is classified as páramo. There’s a dam reservoir named Mica Lake at the highest point you can drive to and that was our ultimate destination. But we stopped many times along the way to find various birds, climbing in altitude all the time.
At the lake, we walked along a path to a point where we overlooked the lake and had a good view of the birds in the water. There were several types of ducks. We could also see a mama and baby llama, several alpacas, many deer and several horses from that point. The lake is the source of some of Quito’s water.
After returning to the car, we drove back down out of the park, stopping to see more birds. Not far outside, we stopped at the Tambo Condor restaurant, famous among birders for its view of Andean Condors as they soar above a cliff on the other side of the valley. We ate a good lunch there among many other birding groups while looking out their large windows at a few condors and three or four species of hummingbirds at the restaurant’s feeders, including the aptly named Shining Sunbeam that’s mostly orange and has rainbow colors on its back.
It was a good day not only for birds and sightseeing, but also for my Spanish practice because Luis understood some English but didn’t really speak any, so I talked with him only in Spanish. The drive back to Puembo Birding Garden took about 90 minutes and we arrived about 3:30. We thanked and said goodbye to Luis. I’m still tallying up all the birds we saw, but it was a lot.
Lori's Travels 