Quito

Onwards to Quito, capital of Ecuador, high in the Andes, complete with a stunning historic center and reputation  for pick pocketing and mugging.  We´d been in  for the day to organise our Galapagos tour last week, but heading in with all our possessions was a different story.

Luckily for us we managed to get a ride right to where we were going with Daniel, a Costa Rican who is working in Quito and happened to be visiting the hacienda the morning we wanted to leave.  We stored our bags for the day and headed out to see the sights.

The historical center of Quito truly is beautiful.  Gorgeous churches, plazas, streets lined with balconies . . . We only went into one church: Iglesia de La Compania de Jesus.  This is also known as ´The Gold Church´ because inside it is impossibly ornate and covered in 22 carat gold leaf.  Ben was bitterly disappointed that he wasn´t allowed to take photographs inside it . . .

From the historic centre at 2,800m we took a taxi to the base of the Teleferiqo - an amazing cable car that takes you up to 4,100m above the city.  It is an incredible panorama with the volcanoes all around.  The altitude difference was quite noticeable with a bit more breathlessness and a definite drop in temperature.

Back to the centre of town to pick up our bags, then to the north of the city to stay with Gabriela.  In Baños we´d met a French couple who highly recommended an organisation called Couchsurfing.  The idea is that you stay with local people, or host other travellers if you´re at home and that it´s supposed to be a bit of a cultural exchange.  It felt little odd, contacting someone out of the blue to ask if we could stay the night, but Gabriela had some great recommendations.


I´m glad we did.  Not only is Gabriela incredibly kind, welcoming and fun, she has two gorgeous cats.  That night we were up late repacking our bags and it took considerably longer than it should have as we kept being ambushed by the kitten.  Far too cute! 

Last days at Hacienda La Alegria

The four weeks at the hacienda have flown past and while it has been a great place to stay it´s now time to move on and see some more of Ecuador.  We have decided to go to the Galapagos Islands - not a cheap addition to the trip, but we are so close here . . .

I had a great last ride on Sunday with Ramon and Bob from the US embassy in Quito.  Both were good riders so we moved quickly, cantering at every opportunity.  Up to the base of Corazon, to see stunning views of many of the volcanoes, then a traverse across it and finally back to the hacienda.

Not only was it great riding but we saw an eagle gliding very close to us and best of all an Andean Fox.  He was running in the field next to us, only 30m or so away.  He was much larger than I expected, about the size of a border collie.  Beautiful reddish coat, Gabriel said he must be relatively young, as they darken as they get older.

Here are some more of Ben´s photos, including the obligatory Cotopaxi shot

Hummingbirds in the garden

Some of the other local birds

Rodrigo trying some llama racing.  He was having much more fun than the llama . . .

Now on to Quito for a night, then Mindo before we fly to Galapagos on Friday.

Pasochoa

We have spent a lot of time looking across the valley to Pasochoa and wanting to make a trip there and Saturday was the day.  Nadine from Australia came with us as she's a mad keen photographer and we hoped to see plenty of birds.

The decision was made that we needed to leave the hacienda at 7am to be there early enough to see some birds.  In a straight line Pasochoa is very close, but it's a surprisingly long way by car - the last 6km are incredibly rough.

Pasochoa means "Lonely Widower" and is an extinct volcano with a collapsed crater in a long semi circular shape.  There is a track all the way to the top but apparently the last part is very steep and involves a lot of scrambling - plus we didn't have that long as we wanted to ride the horses in the afternoon.

The crater itself is a wildlife refuge and due to it's inaccessiblity has some of the last original high mountain forest  in the area.  Unfortunately there is a lot of introduced bamboo in the park.

As we set off we could hear a huge number of birds, but seeing them proved to be more of a challenge.  The path climbed part way up the crater wall, so you can look into the tops of trees lower down.  We had seen some small, fast moving birds and were sure there would be more when Ben spotted something in a tree top.

It was a gorgeous hawk, who obligingly sat there for a very long time before soaring off to find some breakfast.  Even with a 300mm zoom he was right on the edge of range, and very hard to focus on with all the branches.

We walked for about three hours, saw plenty of birds - but many weren't so obliging for photographs.

A slight diversion into a little grassy clearing produced some nice shots:

Some kind of tanager:

Scarlet Bellied Mountain Tanager:

                                                 
And of course there were hummingbirds, but they proved to be quite ellusive to photograph.  The Saphire-vented Puffleg below obliged us by sitting on a low branch just above the trail and allowing us to get very close.  He was very pretty, with blue feathers above his beak, nicely complimenting his lovely irredescent green plummage.

                                 
Ecuador has an enormous amount of biodiversity, due in part to it's geographical diversity - everything from the remote Galapagos Islands to the coast, the cloud forest, the temperate forests, the Andes and the rainforest .  An astonishing 18% of the world's total bird species live in Ecuador!  There are 1800 species of birds - even though we're not really bird enthusiasts it's not hard to be impressed - especially when there are so many gorgeous kinds.

Horses

The horses enjoying the evening