Today, Saturday, is my final day in Ecuador. I start heading home very early tomorrow from the Quito airport. The power was out overnight from 12 to 3 a.m. again. It has been a relaxed day with breakfast at 6:30, then some time watching birds and talking with other guests at the breakfast table. Then at 9 a.m., just when the power was due to go out again, we left for a tour of a frog research center called Wikiri. Mercedes had arranged the tour for us and a taxi to take us there. It was a 45 minute ride to a smaller town outside Quito.
Our guide, Pedro, was a young Ecuadorian who spoke very good English. He took us on a 2-hour tour of the facility which was quite impressive. Most of the terrariums with frogs were housed in nice used shipping containers placed in a circuit around the campus. We learned lots about the native frogs of Ecuador, of which there are somewhere around 400 species, and the work being done to conserve and study them. we even ,earned about the food that’s grown for them, from little flies to cockroaches. And we sampled some baked meal worms, which were not bad at all, and flour made from crickets and spiced with various spices.
When the tour finished, the taxi driver who had brought us was waiting outside to pick us up. We also brought along some crickets that Mercedes had ordered from Wikiri to feed her 7 frogs.
We arrived back at Puembo Birding Garden hotel about 12:45 and the power was still out, even though it should have come on at 12. Mercedes and her daughter warmed up our lunch somehow, which the other guests had eaten a little earlier. It was chicken tamales and salad, with blueberry sherbet for dessert, all very good.
We spent the afternoon relaxing in the dining area, watching the birds and talking with a couple from Houston who were about to start a birding tour on Monday. It was about 75 degrees and sunny, and so much more comfortable than the heat and humidity of the Amazon. The power finally came back on about 2:45 p.m.
Tonight I’ll pack and try to get to sleep early after dinner at the hotel. A taxi is coming to take Nathan and I to the airport by 5 a.m. tomorrow morning for my 7 a.m. flight to Miami and then Dallas, then Seattle. Nathan will stay another night at an airport hotel and then return to Cuenca on Monday.
Lori's Travels 