Day 7 Guango Lodge

This morning we met at 6am for a short walk to a nearby bird hide, where there is a sheet set up with a light to attract moths, which in turn attract the birds, which in turn attracts crazy bird photographers.

Moth buffet

It was a bit of a bust, there were not many moths, as it had rained all night.  A couple of blue jays showed up, and some wood creepers, but that's about all.

Breakfast was at 7.30am, a nice spread of fruit salad, with a buffet of cereals and toast.  Then they brought out scrambled egg, and some tortillas with ham, cheese and basil, folded into quarter and toasted.  Delicious. 

The next activity for the day was to see a mountain toucan.  This was just a short walk from the lodge, up a very muddy and steep climb, which then flattened out when we eventually came to the hide.  They feed the toucans to attract them, some nice big juicy fat grapes were tied to a tall pole with a perch on top.

This is what we saw for about 2 1/2 hours.

Mountain toucan feeding station, without the toucan

We actually had two toucan land on the perch and eat a couple of grapes, and then they flew off again.  I'd guess they were there for about a minute or two all up.  

We waited AGES for them to come back, the guide could see them in the trees, but they never returned to the feeding post, and eventually they flew off. The woman who owns the lodge said that grapes are very expensive as they are imported from Chile. She tried feeding them with the cheaper local ones, but they wouldn't eat them.

We trudged back to the lodge, happy that we had at least seen the toucan, and got some photos.

The rest of the morning was spent photographing humming birds, I did manage to catch the sylph in flight, not a brilliant photo but I'll take it. It kept getting chased away by some of the other birds.

Lunch was another feast, with white carrot soup (who knew) with potato and quinoa.  Followed by chicken stuffed with mushroom, asparagus and some kind of cheese sauce. Dessert was banana cake with passionfruit garnish.

More time with the humming birds in the afternoon, this time we moved to a different hide that has less trees close by and more light.  Paulo set up some real flowers with sugar water and it did seem to attract some of the birds.

A few of us "toucaneers" decided to have another go at spotting the mountain toucan, but came away muddy with no sign of it at all. Thankfully the lodge has gumboots that we have borrowed, and an outside tap to wash off the worst of the mud.

Time for another staged photo shoot. Last night on our night walk, after several hours of searching, Frank was able to find a particular tree frog for us to photograph tonight.  The guys set it all up, the frog was totally chilled out and behaved perfectly.  Here's a terrible phone shot, the lighting and colour is crappy but you get the idea.

The actual camera photo looks amazing.

Dinner tonight was lasagne with beetroot salad, and frozen coffee mousse for dessert. 

No night walk tonight, I think we could all use the break.

Here's some shots from last night's walk.

Ali in her yellow Wellies

Jeremy and Guy

Have to admit, this is not my favourite activity, very much out of my comfort zone. I never thought I would ever be walking through a tropical rainforest in the dark, but it's actually not nearly as creepy as I expected.  I don't really like bugs at the best of times, but mostly they are just sitting there chilling out, not trying to kill you. Obviously some are poisonous and we never touch anything, especially hairy caterpillars. 

We are supposed to hold an off-camera flash with one hand and direct the light as we think best suits the location and subject to photograph it.  This means holding the camera with only one hand, and I find all this really difficult. Sometimes there's not enough light for the camera to focus, my head torch gets all tangled up with the flash controller on top of the camera, I can't hold the camera steady enough to get a sharp image, I bump the wheel on the flash that controls how much light is put out and my images are way too dark ...... all very frustrating.  So I don't think I'll be taking this up as a career and time soon.  The results are sometimes quite cool though, particularly the hairy caterpillars.

Tomorrow we are leaving Guango Lodge and going to Cotapaxi Lodge.  This is in Cotapaxi National Park and is another thousand metres higher than we are now.  It will be similar temperature wise  but not as humid.

It's averaged around 13-15 degrees here, which actually gets quite cold when you are standing around.  They give us hot water bottles for our bed, and I slept toasty last night.