Monday
Reserva churute mangrove forest, bird watching with Anna. A good drive away from the city.
http://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manglares_Churute
Anna is a field biologist that specializes in birds and aquatic birds. There are 1600 species of birds in Ecuador, hummers being the largest group.
Motor boat ride in the reserve pretty but few birds, nothing like Costa Rica. Excellent spoonbills.
The walk in the forest was hot hot hot buggy and hot and buggy. The netting works but adds to the temperature that it already got and muggy. The vegetation was too dense to see many birds. Very many could be heard and identified. Some real birders were with us. One had three cameras, one on a heavy tripod with a lens that extended almost three feet. He knew all the birds and stopped to photograph and track many. Held us up for at least an hour and a half.
Visit, via some of the worst roads we have been driven on, worst anywhere, to a very interesting cocoa farm. Also raised dragon fruit, guava, passion, and more. Full tour through the growing and processing up to export. Trading at each stage of fruit production, then freshly made hot chocolate, made in a small home pot with added cane sugar, fresh, and cinnamon. Excellent and different.
Dragon fruit very profitable,300 fruits per year per plant at 1 dollar each. Why don't you grow more dragon fruit I asked. Ah…. Our heart is in the cocoa.
Then a long trip to see the rare horned screamer, in the duck genera,one three species of these ducks. The horn is really a front facing feather. We saw it through a spotting scope, the screamer being a few hundred meters away but nicely perched for viewing.
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