Lori's Travels

Although red-eye flights are tough in general, ours to Edinburgh was better than most. That’s because Gary had used his United frequent flier miles to get us premium economy seats, and we also got lucky. Our flight was due to leave Dulles at 10:35 p.m. About an hour beforehand, we were messaged that our plane was going to be delayed 10 minutes due to some type of technical problem. Then we learned we would be moved to another gate, presumably for a new plane. At the new gate, we heard an announcement that a São Paulo-bound flight was delayed until the next morning and our flight would be using that jet instead. That was the lucky part: it wasn’t our flight that would be delayed until the next day.

We got on the plane and found ourselves in nearly luxurious conditions in premium economy: just 2 seats in our part of the row, one on the window and the next on the aisle. And footrests, free headphones, a blanket and pillow, plus a little packet we could keep that contained an eye mask, socks, hand lotion, ear plugs, toothbrush…many things to make the night more comfortable. Dinner with real silverware was brought soon after we took off, with our rows being served first. Free movies and TV shows in the seat backs kept us entertained when we weren’t sleeping. A hot breakfast was served 90 minutes from the end of the 6.5 hour flight. I even managed to sleep a little. It was a darn good red-eye.

We arrived on time at Edinburgh and quickly went through immigration. But then we and all the others passengers on our flight had to wait an hour at baggage claim for our luggage. Don’t know what the problem was there. After finally picking up our bags about noon, we went outside into the overcast, windy, 60-degree Sunday and got an Uber ride to our hotel, the downtown Hilton Edinburgh Carlton. Two very nice rooms were waiting for us there.

We dropped off the bags and went out to walk up the Royal Mile a bit with lots of other tourists, and to find a place to eat lunch. That place was the Deacon Brodie House Cafe, where we had quiches, “toastie” sandwiches, and tomato soup. I enjoyed a ginger beer while the others had coffee. We spent the afternoon after lunch napping and then in the bar and executive lounge of the Hilton for evening drinks and snacks. That’s all we could manage after the flight.

I’m visiting my brother in Chesapeake Beach and it’s steamy hot here. Days in the mid to high 80s and high humidity. The first few moments you step outside, adjectives run through your head like “warm blanket”, “tropical” and “steam bath” but then if you spend more time outside the thoughts change to “sweaty” and “darn hot” and “I really want to go back to air conditioning.” I don’t know if I could live here. But yet it’s really nice to spend time with family.

I arrived Tuesday afternoon at Dulles and spent a couple hours in beltway traffic during rush hour in my rental car. I was happy to finally arrive at my brother Gary’s house and enjoy the dinner that was cooked by my nephew Matt. Yesterday, my niece Emma visited us with her cute 2-year-old son Graham. Today niece Caroline and I did some birding in the morning’s steamy heat along a boardwalk behind the town of Chesapeake Beach. We saw quite a few birds in the marsh, including nesting ospreys and a secretive green heron. Around Gary’s house, I saw and heard downy and pileated woodpeckers, cardinals, Carolina chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches and red-eyed vireos. This evening we all enjoyed a nice dinner with Emma and her husband Matt and their son Graham in an Italian restaurant in nearby Prince Frederick.

This coming Saturday night, Gary, Caroline, Matt and I will catch a red-eye flight from Dulles to Edinburgh, Scotland, and we’re preparing now for the trip. Not too much to write about until we’re overseas, so there probably won’t be another blog post until then. But I’ll share a few shots from my brother’s house for now.

Today it dawned cloudy in Cuenca, reflecting my mood a little bit. I’m sad to be leaving already. I’ve been very impressed with how pretty and livable Cuenca is, and the friendliness of the Ecuadorians I’ve met. Nathan chose a nice place to live in retirement.

It was my day to begin the trip home with a 1:30 p.m. flight to Quito. I had some repacking to do first! I didn’t want to carry 3 luggage items, with the third one being my new “Panama” hat in a cardboard hat box. I managed to fit the hat box inside my suitcase and then stuff my clothes all around it. The soft-sided suitcase had to expand to it’s max depth, but didn’t get any heavier because the hat and box weigh very little. Whew, glad it all fit!

Nathan came with me to the Cuenca airport. On the Tranvía I sat next to an older man who started talking to me in Spanish. I told him where I was from and that it was the end of my vacation. He said he lived in the country with 2 dogs, 25 minutes outside of Cuenca by bus. Even though my Spanish was weak, I mostly understood and we could have a conversation, so that was rewarding. We arrived at the airport early, around 10:45, so I had to wait a while before dropping off my bag with LATAM Airlines. But everything went well and they even upgraded me to a premium seat in the first row of the airplane for some unknown reason.

After landing in Quito, I got my luggage then walked across the street to the restaurants in the Airport Center and ate lunch about 2:30. Next I found a taxi for the 10-minute ride to my hotel. It’s a small hotel called Quinta San Felipe, in a residential neighborhood near the airport. The taxi driver knew just where to go, but I didn’t see any sign indicating it was a hotel from outside the gated drive. I have a small but modern room overlooking the pool. It’s $59 total, including dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow, although I’ll need to leave before breakfast is served.

I was the only hotel guest eating dinner here tonight, served at 7 p.m. in a beautifully decorated large event room. The owner prepared a cream of mushroom soup, small green salad, French fries and chicken breast for me. As I ate, he set the other large tables with place settings for a party to be held here tomorrow. The meal really hit the spot and I happily finished it off.

My trip will be over soon. I leave for the airport around 6 a.m. tomorrow. The hotel owner said he’ll call a taxi for me when I stop at the office in the morning. My AeroMexico flights will take me to Mexico City again, then to Seattle, but the layover is much shorter this time so I should be back at SeaTac before 9 p.m. tomorrow. Visiting Ecuador has been so enjoyable and I hope to come back someday. This is my last blog post for the trip. Thanks for following along!

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.