Lori's Travels

Today we went with Andres, our Polylepsis Tours guide from yesterday’s El Cajas tour, south through the small city of Girón to the Yunguilla Valley and the Jocotoco Reserve. He picked us up at 5:30 a.m., before sunrise, for a great day of birdwatching. (All the photos in this post were taken by Nathan.)

Our first stop was about an hour later at the very rural pond that treats Girón’s sewage, adjoining some dairy cow pastures. Sewage treatment ponds are universally good birding places. Really. And we weren’t disappointed, seeing a couple of duck species, raptors, hummingbirds, and more. To do it, we waded through tall grass, past cow patties, over barbed-wire fences, down and uphill. After a while, we returned to the car parked on the side of the dirt track and enjoyed a breakfast Andres had packed: bread rolls, cheese, avocado, cherry tomatoes, little bananas, and some other Ecuadorian fruit, plus hot tea. It was very peaceful there: besides the bird sounds and a water sprinkler in the cow pasture, the only sounds we heard were a couple distant “booms” which Andres said were firecrackers used by the local Catholic church to call people to morning mass.

Next, we continued driving south to a small town called La Union where we picked up a guide named Angel who works for the Jocotoco Foundation in their nearest reserve, also called Jocotoco. For the next 3 hours, we followed a path around the Jocotoco Reserve to see many different birds. The most special were two uncommon endemic species of brush-finches. Angel has set up a feeding area where he regularly places bread crumbs and sliced oranges for the Grey-browed Brush-Finch and Pale -headed Brush-Finch plus the Chestnut-crowned Antpitta to come eat. We only had to wait a few minutes before they arrived and it was really fun to watch because they’re usually secretive birds. We saw many other species of birds later during our hike too.

After the Reserve, we drove into La Union again and stopped for lunch at a local restaurant where we had a traditional vegetable soup, golden rice with chicken and plantain, and fruit juice. All of it was delicious. We made two more stops on the way home, once to spot some birds in a different type of habitat and the final stop for refreshments at a small, family-owned cheese and yogurt shop. Andres, Nathan and I all had pieces of their cheesecake, and I also sampled their drinkable yogurt.

The tour ended about 3 p.m. when Andres dropped us off back at Nathan’s apartment. We were pretty tired and a little sweaty, since it had been warm at the lower elevation of Girón, La Union and Jocotoco. It was nice to return to the refreshing coolness of Cuenca, which was maybe around 68 degrees.

We rested for a couple hours and then walked to the SuperMaxi grocery store nearby to pick up food for a light dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast.

The weather this morning, Tuesday, started out somewhat cloudy and there was a little haze too, making the hills around Cuenca look a bit gray. I watched joggers and people walking their dogs in the early morning light along the path that parallels the Tomebamba River, below Nathan’s apartment. It’s a popular path and fun for me to watch the variety of dogs out for a walk.

Today we had scheduled a guide from Cuenca’s Polylepsis Tours to take us to El Cajas National Park, which is about 45 minutes away. We waited outside the apartment building and at 8:20 or so, Andres came to get us. He is a young man who speaks good English, grew up outside Quito, went to University of Cuenca and Central Florida University, and is now living in Cuenca. And he likes to talk! We learned so much about the national park, the flora and fauna (including the birds), Cuenca, and Ecuador in general during the 3-hour trip in his SUV, it was great!

We went to the park’s visitor center at Laguna Toreadora, which was at an elevation of about 12,000 feet. It was sunny but windy and cool there, maybe in the low 50s. While Andres registered our presence with the park rangers, we added a layer of clothes and prepared for a hike around the lake. The páramo is an alpine tundra ecosystem where the vegetation is very low-growing and limited by windy, cold conditions and poor soil. But it collects water and is the source of two of Cuenca’s rivers. The close proximity of the páramo to Cuenca is one reason the water is pure and drinkable from the tap here (which it isn’t in most other parts of the country).

The hike around the lake was mostly flat and Andres spotted several birds for us, plus he told us about the ecology, plants and history of the place. At 12,000 feet, even slight uphill slopes felt strenuous, but we didn’t have any other effects from the altitude. We finished the loop in about 2 hours, which Andres said was great because most tourists don’t make it the whole loop: they get too tired and he doubles back with them before getting halfway around. So I felt proud about being fit enough to make it the whole way.

The soil and carpet-like vegetation is very spongy, holding the water, so our feet got a little wet, but not bad. Hikes here are best in the morning because the weather in the afternoon is more likely to be bad, with thunder and rain showers. At the end of the hike, Andres drove us back into town and dropped us off at Nathan’s apartment building a little after 11:30 a.m.

For lunch, we walked a few blocks to a restaurant called Common Ground, which is a popular American ex-pat hangout, especially on Wednesdays when they play “Gringo Bingo” in the afternoon. But today, we were the only customers. We each ordered chicken taco salad from their American-oriented menu.

Nathan is thinking about buying a motorcycle after he gets his Ecuadorian driver’s license, so we stopped in a KTM motorcycle dealer on the walk back to the apartment. Two of the sales reps didn’t speak English well, but a third one came out and his English was very good. Nathan asked several questions about a certain bike he’s interested in, and the sales rep was ready with the answers. But before any motorcycle can be purchased, Nathan has to learn enough Spanish to pass the test. He has a goal of doing it this fall…we’ll see.

Monday started out very sunny and it promised to be a little warmer day than Sunday, maybe 70 degrees. We had decided to devote this day to visit Amaru Bioparque, a nonprofit zoo that rescues animals from bad situations like circuses, traffickers, or ones illegally kept as pets. It’s on the edge of Cuenca, high on a hill, providing a great view of the city but also very steep ups and downs on the one-way path that leads through the animal exhibits. We took the Tranvía and a taxi to get there, arriving about 9:30, not long after it opened. There was maybe only one other visitor there; we nearly had it to ourselves.

The park is large and has a very large collection of animals, mostly from Ecuador, although they also have a few African lions that weren’t visible today. Many birds, including two critically endangered Andean Condors, macaws, parakeets, guans, ducks, and others. There was a White-throated Toucan that was extremely tame, allowing Nathan to get very close for photos and even to pet it lightly.

They also had ocelots, jaguars, coatis, many snakes including the very venomous fer-de-lance (terciopelo) viper, Galapagos tortoises, llamas, deer, many amphibians, endangered Andean spectacled bears, two-toed sloths, and lots of other animals. We spent three hours seeing the park, visiting each exhibit and traveling the path between them. It was quite a strenuous walk but very interesting and well worth the $8 entrance fee (only $4 if you’re 65+).

When we finished, the parking area attendant called a taxi for us. It was a small pickup truck with a club cab for passengers, labeled “transporte mixto” in Spanish, which can transport both people and cargo. Nathan asked the driver to take us to the San Blas Church, where there is a nearby restaurant he had been to previously. On the way, we traveled on some of the Pan-American Highway which is a 6-lane divided highway in that location.

Lunch was incredibly inexpensive, costing just $7 for the two of us. I had noodles with a mushroom sauce, an excellent hominy, bean, lettuce and tomato salad, and watermelon juice. Nathan had vegetarian lasagna, salad and juice. It was a place filled by locals, very informal, cheap, and delicious.

After lunch, we walked through the historical part of the city back to the Tranvía line. I was pretty tired from the zoo hiking and my full stomach slowed me down even more, so I was happy to be heading back to the apartment. After relaxing during the afternoon, Nathan walked a couple blocks to the nearest small market to pick up some vegetables and then made a healthy chicken and vegetable stew for dinner.

Sunday is a good day to visit the historic heart of Cuenca because it’s quieter: not very many stores open nor so many cars. We decided to take a bus tour starting from the large cathedral square on this pretty morning. It had been a little cooler than normal overnight, about 48 degrees, and had warmed up to 55 around 9:30 a.m. when we departed for downtown. The year-round normals are about 50-55 degrees at night and 65-70 during the day, and it’s partly sunny pretty much every day. When you’re in the sun, it feels quite a bit warmer than 65 because the sun is so direct here.

We arrived in downtown Parque Calderón and bought tickets for the next bus tour to be given in English that would start at 10:30. Until the bus came, we sat on a bench in the park where there were many other people enjoying the morning. Three young people approached us and a young man introduced himself in English as a university student, saying his friend was learning English and could he interview us for his class assignment. We said sure and the second student asked Nathan a few questions about obesity, health, and opinions about health habits as the young woman recorded it on video. The interviewer’s English was much weaker than his friend who had made the introductions. Next, I was interviewed with the same questions. When he was done, I asked them when Ecuadorians start learning English in school, and learned that it’s 4th grade. The young man with really good English was majoring in it at the university, while the interviewer was taking an English class but majoring in accounting.

A few minutes later, Nathan and I got on the tour bus and took seats on the open-air upper deck. As the bus started, we heard the tour guide over the sound system narrating the tour in Spanish first, then in very poor English. I actually understood more of the Spanish descriptions than the English ones, her pronunciation was so bad. Despite that, we enjoyed the trip around the city, which culminated at a high viewpoint called the Mirador de Turi. From here it was easy to see all of Cuenca nestled in the basin between mountains. We could even see Nathan’s apartment building on the other side of the city. He reminded me that my camera could take video, so that’s what I did.

It was difficult to take photos from the bus as we were touring, so I’ve only posted one here: a typical electric pole with a huge mess of wires connected. It must be tough for power company workers to sort them all out!

After the bus tour, we ate lunch at a restaurant Nathan had visited several times when he first moved to Cuenca and stayed in the historical district. It served a mix of international dishes and I had a vegetarian panini sandwich. Then we walked to the hat museum, or Museo del Sombrero, which specialized in showing how the Ecuadorian “Panama” hat was made and had many for sale. I bought one as my trip souvenir. Then we headed back to his apartment, having had enough of being tourists for the day.

I woke up well before the 6:15 sunrise this morning, Saturday. There was little traffic and I could hear the river outside the apartment. We ate breakfast in the apartment before walking to one of the traditional markets in town, the Feria Libre, a 10-minute walk along the river park and then a few blocks more. It’s a huge market, the biggest in the city, and vendors were selling everything from eggs to clothes to pets. Nathan likes to buy fresh produce there because they have the best prices. It was a very interesting place to wander through.

We brought Nathan’s produce back to the apartment, then left again, this time to take the Tranvía to the center of Cuenca. There, we climbed a tower of the Municipal Cathedral of Immaculate Conception for a view of the city and walked inside the cathedral. We ate lunch in a small restaurant adjacent to the central Parque Calderón, and then walked by many stands selling sweets and some selling flowers. The traditional sweets were being sold in stand after stand around the cathedral as part of Cuenca’s Corpus Christi celebration.

After walking around and window shopping the small shops, we took the Tranvía back to Nathan’s apartment. Some clouds looked foreboding and it often rains in the afternoon, but not on this day. After a few hours of lounging in the apartment, we walked to a Chinese restaurant across the street. There was a large noisy group of Americans in there already. We ordered one of Nathan’s favorites, a hearty vegetable and shrimp soup (or vegetable and chicken), ate and then left rather quickly because we couldn’t hear ourselves think due to the large group. But it was good soup.