Our final foreign trip, in September and October, covered six states (or provinces) in two countries. Our target destinations were southern Ecuador and northern Peru.  Although we have journeyed to Ecuador many times and to central and Amazonian Peru, this trip was specially designed to target the biogeographical areas where we had not traveled previously.   These included the arid deserts of southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Peru, the diverse regimes of the Marañón River (the largest in Peru and one of the main tributaries of the Amazon River), the high Andean slopes of Peru, the western foothills of the Amazon and the valleys and hills of the Cordillera del Condor in southeast Ecuador.   For this excursion we retained expert Ecuadorian guide Marcelo Quipo.   It’s such a small world that Marcelo  was someone we’d used over 10 years ago at a lodge in a different part of the country!    He did an excellent job of getting us to the spots where rare birds are found. He shared his extensive knowledge of birds, was resilient and cheerful in the face of the many things that go wrong when traveling in areas like these, and was an enjoyable companion as well!

To begin the trip, we spent the night at a hotel near DFW Airport and then caught an early morning flight out. Unfortunately, there are not any direct flights between Dallas and Quito, so we had to fly through Miami (a dysfunctional airport) to reach Quito. There is now a very nice Wyndham Hotel right at the Quito Airport, so it was a perfect place to relax on arrival.

On our first day, we took a side trip up into the Andes to revisit Papallacta Pass, where we’ve been several times before. At nearly 12,300 feet elevation, you have to conserve your breath and energy as you hike and bird. Our guide for the day, Milton, took us to several stops in the Cayambe-Coca National Park for birding. These high-elevation mountain areas are so gorgeous! They’re cold though, so we were glad to have all our layers to keep warm. The birding was slower than on some previous trips, but it was still a really enjoyable day.  An unexpected treat was an Andean Pygmy Owl that tooted at us for a couple of minutes before we headed back to Quito.

Early the next morning, we took a short flight south to Loja. Marcelo met us at the airport, and we headed south to Jorupe, one of the reserves owned by the Jocotoco Foundation, which does fantastic work to preserve critical habitat and species. We’d stayed at this Urraca Lodge on a tour in 2014, but this was a different season and we were the only guests at the lodge this time. It was a great base for exploring nearby reserves, trails and bird feeder stations. Among the unique birds of this area were Gray-headed Antbird (a real skulker), White-tailed Jay and Savanna Nightjar.  We also had a full display of a much less desirable activity – illegal gold mining that is polluting and completely rerouting the Savango River.

We left Jorupe and went to Macará, where we changed money (Ecuador uses US dollars, but Peru uses its own currency, the sol). Crossing the border involved many hours of delay but we eventually made it.

This part of Peru and adjacent Ecuador is a very dry desert and forest (known as the Tumbes region) so unique plants, birds and other animals have adapted to those conditions and thrive here. A highlight was the Quebrada Frejolillo reserve for White-winged Guans, an endangered bird that lives only in this small part of Peru. We left our hotel in Olmos early so we could be at the reserve at dawn. We were rewarded by seeing a flock of these rare birds flying between trees and feeding on fruit.  Then there was the endearing Gray-and-White Tyrannulet, another Tumbes highlight.

Our route south took us from Olmos through Jaén, across the wide Marañón river valley and through a smaller steep valley before climbing to the Andean highlands. An earthquake and massive landslides had destroyed most of the road several years ago so we had a long, slow drive through a construction zone with steep and spectacular cliffs along the Rio Utcubamba.

We reached an area of cloud forest, where we spent several nights at the beautiful Huembo and Owlet lodges. On one day at Huembo, we took the Troche Cresta de San Lorenzo, a very steep, narrow trail that was a challenging hike. Finally, at about 10,100 feet elevation, we found the bird we were after – the Pale-billed Antpitta. He was very charming and we got photos, videos and audio recordings.

At Owlet Lodge, we were lucky to see more rare birds that live in these forests, including several Antpittas (“eggs with legs”) and the Long-whiskered Owlet, a unique little owl that required two long and steep hikes in the dark to find.

After the cloud forest we continued east until reaching the Amazon foothills, staying in Moyobamba and Tarapoto, the largest cities in the region, and birding at various spots in the Rio Mayo and Rio Huallaga valleys. Throughout these areas, there are small nature reserves, sometimes owned by a family operating an ecotourism lodge and other times owned and managed by Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN), the Peruvian conservation group, in partnership with organizations like the American Bird Conservancy. Outside the reserves, very little natural habitat remains except in places that are too steep to farm.  This is due to the colonization of the foothills by people from large central cities, such as Cajamarca, who are attracted by the cheaper land prices here.

We retraced our steps as far as Pedro Ruiz, and then went steeply uphill to Leymebamba, a community that’s existed since the pre-Incan Chachapoyas civilization.  The small hotel where we stayed served delicious home-cooked food, and Karen managed to convince the owner (a woman named ‘Rosario’) to share a few recipes. The first day we birded in the high reaches of the mountains, capped by the Abra Barro Negro (“Abra” means “pass” in Peruvian Spanish) and up to the summit – ‘Calla Calla’ at 11,791 feet! The mountains and views are spectacular.   The many birds at the summit – who seem undaunted by the harsh climate – included a couple of antpittas, tapaculos, brilliant tanagers and a Yungas Pygmy Owl, who couldn’t get enough of us (the feeling was mutual).  The second day we returned to the pass and took the breath-taking dirt track down, down and down some more to the Rio Marañón and the small town of Balsas on its banks.  The slope down got increasingly dry, eventually becoming arid desert scrub.  And as you might have guessed, the area provides habitat for birds found only in this remote location, such as the Yellow-faced Parrotlet and the Black-necked Woodpecker. 

From Leymebamba we had a long drive (including car trouble) and ended up back in Jaén for one night. Then it was on to the tiny border settlement of La Balsa and across the Rio Chinchipe back into Ecuador. The checks and inspections to leave Peru were easy (after waiting for the inspector to finish his lunch). The vehicle inspection entering Ecuador was also easy. But the country is experiencing power outages every day due to a prolonged drought and its dependence on hydropower, and customs and immigration isn’t considered an urgent service. So we had to wait a few hours for the electricity to come back on so the immigration agent could enter our information into her computer!

Before leaving the subject of Peru, we note that on such an expansive trip as ours, one encounters knowledge of people and customs that may escape notice when visiting principal cities or even taking organized nature tours.   For example, vehicle transportation is much different in southern Ecuador than it is in northern Peru.  In Ecuador, personal transportation is mainly by private automobile.  In contrast, small 3-wheeled vehicles colloquially referred to as “toritos” (little bulls) are the main form of transportation in northern Peru and private autos are much less common.  These small vehicles (built atop a motorcycle base) most often are equipped with a passenger carriage to provide taxi service or with a truck bed to haul cargo.   The experience of driving or riding in an automobile amidst three lanes of noisy and fast-charging toritos in a major city like Jaén (about 100,000 residents) can be nerve-racking.

We spent the next night in Zamora, the “City of Birds and Waterfalls” and enjoyed their lovely Maleçon (riverwalk) along the Rio Zamora. Our final stops in Ecuador were at Cabañas Yankuam and Cabañas Ecologicas Copalinga, both famous ecotourism destinations and both in the shadows of the remote Cordillera del Condor bordering Peru. Again we saw lovely birds of the rainforest, including renowned skulkers (also new to us), such as Chestnut-headed Rail and Hairy-crested Antbird, an obligate ant swarm follower.

To our dismay, however, gold miners had altered the course of the Nangaritza River around Yankuam and poisoned it with debris and chemicals. The mining operations (potentially funded by cartels) employed large backhoes and tractors, perhaps one hundred of them, to excavate 30-foot holes in the former riverbed to extract the gold ore. The practice is to pay locals to operate heavy equipment or to purchase mining easements over their property in an amount that far exceeds what they can earn any other way.  The result is the utter destruction of the river as a source or drinking water and fishing, followed after a few years of mining by abandonment without reparations. Local communities attribute this phenomenon to corruption at all levels of government, notwithstanding these flagrant violation of the environmental laws Ecuador has enacted.  It’s a conflict we see in many places with few solutions in sight.

We returned to Loja and caught a short flight back to Quito and the airport Wyndham Hotel. The 3:00 a.m. wake-up call came very early! But the rest of the day, from Quito to Miami to Dallas, went smoothly. Peru and Ecuador are both fascinating countries! We enjoyed this trip and look forward to others in the future.