Day 11 - Mindo

Another 6am start this morning.  I overheard Carole saying "my friend said 'ave a nice 'oliday, I said it isn't an 'oliday, it's photography boot camp."

She isn't wrong.  I'm taking advantage of a 45 minute break before lunch to try and get ahead on the blog.  I'm doing it all on my phone, it's much simpler to upload photos this way, but it is a bit slower.

This morning we headed to another bird watching place, in the hope of seeing a toucan and a few other elusive birds.  It was fairly quiet initially bird-wise but we were lucky enough to see a toucan, a Motmot, a male and female barbet (they are very different colours) as well as two Tayra and and a family of Agouti.

The light was lovely, and despite Jeremy moaning about the contrast, I thought it was a lovely spot for photos.

The agouti is a rodent about the size of a cat. I didn't get the chance to snap the Tayra on my phone, they are quite lovely looking mammals.  About the size of a small dog and they have a long fluffy tail.

Agouti

There was also a couple of squirrels scaring off the birds and eating all the banana.

We went back to the lodge for a 45 min break while Frank, Paulo and Guy set up the milti-flash for our afternoon's photo session.  This was a real treat. Again, another "blind" with a feeding space and various perches for lots of very colorful birds.  But down below that was the humming bird setup, and man these little guys were humming.  

Since the first day at Sumaco Lodge, I wanted an ass-whupping photo of a racket tailed humming bird.  We'll today, I got quite a few, as well as the sylph humming bird, my 2nd favourite, which also has an amazing tail.  The setup I was parked in front of had a busy line of birds happy to position themselves in front of my camera.  Happy days 😊  Ali Tantrum was not quite so successful, oh dear how sad never mind.  On our 2nd rotation we swapped setups and both of us got some good shots.

We were visited by another toucan, a whole bunch of very colorful birds and MASSES of humming birds that were all around us, all over us and one even landed on my earlobe, and then dared to stick it's beak up my nose, to much hilarity from the group who saw it all happen. 

I skipped the night walk tonight, I need some sleep and we have a 5.45am departure tomorrow.  We are hoping to catch a sunrise over the cloud forest.  Then there is the chance of seeing the plate-billed mountain toucan. Woop woop!

There are a few things I keep meaning to mention but either forget, or there just isn't the right flow in the daily regurgitation, so I'm going to do a random brain dump of that stuff now. Skip or bare with me, I'll never know.

Animals.  Based purely on my layman's assessment of animal welfare, all the animals I've seen, be it cows, chickens, horses, donkeys, alpacas, dogs on the side of the road, all look healthy and well fed.  The dogs are dirty, but that's probably understandable given the amount of rain/mud around.

Food. The food we gave been served has been great with lots of fruit, fruit juices (including banana passionfruit!!!) vegetables and good use of herbs and whatever is available.  The meat has been well cooked, to the point of dryness on quite a few occasions, but as I said to Carole who was moaning about it, better overcooked than under cooked.

Water. I haven't been sick at all, but have been careful to not drink the "local" water. Initially I was paranoid and steri-penned even the bottled water provided, but everyone else was drinking it with no issues, so started to trust it and was fine.  However the steri-pen was handy when I dropped my toothbrush in the basin with running tap water.

Toilets.  

In our first stay at Sumaco Lodge, there was a sign on the back of the toilet door saying no paper in the loo.  They just mean EXCESS paper right?  No tampons/paper towels, tissues, right?  Nope.  There is a bin, and you put your used loo paper in the bin, not in the loo.  Ugh. I was horrified at first, and used miniscule quantities of paper that I guiltily flushed, but now I'm used to it, disgusting though that may seem. It gets emptied daily and I haven't yet noticed the smell, except for the "public" loos at the service stations we've stopped at 🤮 which have no clean paper to use, yet masses of used paper in the bin.

Coffee.  The coffee here is generally very good, but I am now used to drinking it black, because that's how it's served by default. Asking for milk is a bit of a hassle so I have tended not to bother, and haven't died as a result. 

Fellow trip-mates and photographers.

You've already heard a bit about Ali, but I'll just add some snippets that I haven't yet covered about my fellow would-be photographers. 

Ali and her husband Mike bought 5 years worth of tickets to Wimbledon, a seat at every game, for £125k.  Imagine having enough money that you can afford that outlay of cash for a game of tennis.  She did say that if they on-sold the seats they didn't use, they would almost make all that ££ back.  Kenny overheard this conversation and made a point of mentioning this to me as we got on the bus the next day. He was as shocked as I was that anyone would spend £125k on tennis tickets.

She also talked about her girls doing the Duke of Edinburgh awards, and they went in some ballot to decide where they would go for some kind of do-good exercise. The eldest daughter was sent to Mongolia, and Ali was a little jealous because she had not yet been there. Their 2nd daughter came home with the news that her ballot meant she would be going to Machu Picchu AGAIN.  Hard to move past what spoiled brats they are, I can't imagine being given similar opportunities as a kid.

Rhona.  We are EXTREMELY lucky to have Rhona this trip, as she not only knows everything, she also has a mystifying approach to money. For example, she, like everyone else onto he trip except slum-class Deb, flew business-class to Quito.  Yet at breakfast on our last day at Cotopaxi, voiced her puzzlement as to why our National Park guide would join us for the meal, when surely we wouldn't need her any more as we were leaving that day 🤔 .  Generally the whole group has meals together, including our bus driver Irwin, Frank and Paulo. Why she would quibble about whether the guide would eat with us or not left me gobsmacked.  We've paid our ticket price for the trip, so niff naff detail about a breakfast meal for occasional guides is completely immaterial to us.

I also foolishly voiced my observation that most of the jobs such as cleaning rooms, serving food at the dining table, is almost exclusively done by men here in Ecuador.  In NZ at least, I would say on balance, these jobs are more often done by women.  I then got a lecture about how most African countries also do this, as it is the man's role to be the breadwinner.  And as countries lift themselves out of poverty, the balance shifts, so more women are employed in these roles.  I'm so thankful for that insight 🙄

This is the same Rhona that flew business class that asked our driver to turn off the idling bus to save the planet.  Sigh.

She insisted on buying everyone drinks before dinner last night, except for me as I had already got my own before she arrived.  If she is feeling so generous, why not tip the staff that money, rather than buying drinks for wealthy people who can afford to buy their own anyway.  

Jeremy.  Jeremy is as round as he is tall and we are at risk of being shot by a button leaving his shirt at pace, as it seems to be straining more each day.  

Jeremy, with industrial strength cotton holding those buttons attached.

He sits across the aisle from me on the bus, but thankfully limits his comments to one-liners that don't generally need a reply.  He's nice enough, but like the rest of the whinging bunch, he is very happy to tell us when something isn't quite up to standard. 

They all consider themselves coffee officianados, Starbucks, Costa and Pret are considered good coffee by their standards 🙄  They rate the coffee at each place, on a scale of 1 to 5.  I keep my mouth firmly shut but my inside voice is calling them all a bunch of pretentious tossers.  I'm from New Zealand, and no-one understands good coffee like Kiwis.  We invented the flat white!

Carole.  Carole is miserable.  Too much food, can't eat all the food, doesn't like the dressing on the salad.  Eat something woman, put some food in your miserable mouth and enjoy life.  I honestly don't know why she bothers wasting her money on these trips, she could stay at home and be less miserable.  She has a whiney voice that I wish I could convey in writing, but can't really.  She has a miserable face as well, droopy eyes, downturned mouth, huge ears, and skanky died hair that looks totally unnatural, especially with two weeks regrowth now showing.  She didn't wash it for days because there was no hair dryer at Cotopaxi 🙄. I will try and sneak a photo when she's not looking.

Kenny.  I think I may have mentioned already, Kenny is "the one".  But he is a genial guy, used to work for Chevron for 27 years on the North Sea oil rigs as a quality control/ safety process guy.  He eventually had to quit because of his hearing. He was trying to find a gas leak and couldn't hear it, walked right through the flammable gas without realizing. Decided it was time to retire.  He and his wife (who used to manage all the scottish whisky distillery batches and movement, have spent more time traveling than at home this year.   I think Kenny misses a lot due to his impaired hearing, but everyone is very patient and makes sure he knows what's going on.   

To everyone's credit, no-one is ever late and we've left on time every day.