January 16 – Weird to hear English

We had a fairly decent night’s sleep at Hotel Sachatamia near Mindo, Ecuador. A group of four showed up shortly after Kathleen and I did yesterday morning and immediately began knockin’ back liter bottles of Pilsener beer and smoking like Chinese steel mills. Plus, they let their little dog run amuck chasing the birds from the feeders. Fortunately, the hotel staff had the gang of four put the dog in a pet carrier. However, come midnight they moved to the porch of their cabaña, which . . . yup . . . was just above ours. Luckily, their raucous behavior lasted a little less than half an hour.Kathleen and I took a leisurely morning where we had a late breakfast. As we finished, two buses disgorged a horde of people who crowed about the hummingbird feeders to snap images. They were speaking English. To Kathleen and I this seemed weird to hear English spoken by so many people. They trooped off along one of the trails into the forest.

We sat and watched birds come into the feeders to dine on bananas and suger-water. The Toucan Barbets and Pale-billed Aracari’s were great to see up close. Normally, these species are in the tree tops 60-feet above your head. Kathleen took some good photos.Kathleen and I went back to our cabaña to do some packing as we were leaving for Quito in the afternoon. As we approached our cabaña, we saw this Acouchi (Ah-coe-oo-chee). Turns out to be a Green Acouchi, I know, the rodent looks brown, and are related to Agouti’s (Ah-goe-oo-tee) . . . really, I’m not makin’ this up. Kathleen got a few photos before the delicacy bounded off into the forest. When you’re on the menu for quite a host of predators, you don’t hang-out in the open long.

After packing, we hiked a trail that made a loop through the hotel grounds, into the forest, and back by our cabaña. As we did this mid-day, the birding and critter finding was minimal. We found a few flocks of birds high up in the tree canopy, however, they were small objects darting about with wings.

Kathleen and I returned to our cabaña and gathered up our stuff. We wanted lunch and found the hotel staff busy with setting tables for lots of people. The horde of English speakers. As we finished up our lunch the horde began trickling in from the forest. We found out they were from a model United Nations convention in Quito and this was one of the post convention activities. Turns out a number of them were from San Diego area including one from San Marcos. Small world.

After settling up our bill and checking out, we went to the bus-stop along the highway near the hotel. < As the rain began to fall, we caught a bus for Quito. We had to stand for a little while as did a few other people. Like the guy peering over Kathleen’s arm.We pulled into the northern part of Quite and the bus terminal. We caught a taxi for Hotel Sebastian where we had stayed earlier. We figured to stay again and have them store some items that we didn’t want to haul to the Galapagos Islands.

We got to our 7th floor room. Later that evening a band started up in the building across from our room. Oh, no. The hotel staff gave us a room on the opposite side of the building. What are the odds of this kind of thing happening!? Kathleen marveled at the frequency that we keep having to say: “What are the odds . . .”