By 7:15am the hostal was coming alive and the foyer was opened where the internet computer was kept. Internet here at Hostal El Paisano was through a cell-phone modem that I simply plugged into a USB port on our laptop. The transfer speed was not the fastest, however, I took a deep breath and forged ahead with up-loads.
By 8-ish I heard what sounded like wind moving through trees. Nope, rain squall. Within minutes the street out front as covered with hundreds of puddles. Kathleen and I had breakfast and did some final packing. Today, we were moving to Cabañas San Isidro, or sometime referred to as San Isidro Lodge. Cabañas San Isidro is in the cloud forests on the east slope of the Andes, so, we may as well get used to the rain.
We checked out of Hostal El Paisano with a bill of $45 for two nights, laundry and internet service, two breakfasts, and hot water. A little better than Jatun (Hot-toon) Sacha (Sah-chah) Biological Reserve where we were nearly camping and shelled out $120 for two nights. I know. Some of you are saying: “Wanna little cheese with that whine”.The rain let up long enough for us to walk over to the plaza in Misahualli to catch the bus to Tena (Ten-ah). We boarded and the coach rolled out of town. Kathleen noticed the plaza had no cathedral or church. Place must have been founded by heathens.
The rain fell all the way to Tena where we went straight to the long-distance bus terminal. We bought a $6/both ticket to Cosanga (Coe-sahng-gah) where we were to be picked up by the lodge.
Kathleen was suffering from the on-set of a cold, so while I stood guard over our belongings in the terminal, Kathleen went to the market across the street for any kind of drugs to help battle whatever was trying to gain a hold on her. She arrived back and had found nothing except some snacks.
As we boarded the bus and pulled from the terminal I saw a pharmacy just across the street from the market. Kathleen didn’t see the business because she was focused on negotiating streets, people, and traffic under an umbrella shielding her from the down-pour.
The bus driver meandered through the streets of Tena for nearly 45-minutes trying to load as many people aboard as possible. Kathleen and I strongly suspect this is where the driver and his assistant make that little extra as no record of people boarding or disembarking is kept after the terminal. Additionally, quite a bit of haggling can occur between the assistant and people picked up along the way.
For two hours the bus followed a nice twisty road which slowly gained in elevation. Kathleen and I longed to take this road on our motorcycles some day. By 1:30pm we arrived in Cosanga. A young woman came up to us and directed us to a waiting truck. We hopped in and in less than 10-minutes we pulled into Cabañas San Isidro. Here we met Carmen Bustamante.
Over forty years ago, the Ecuadoran government doled out huge tracks of government land to people in hopes they would clear off the property for developments and agriculture – land improvements don’t ya know? Simón Bustamante had explored much of the eastern slopes of the Ecuadoran Andes and saw the need to protect the forests and associated wildlife. Rather than lunarscape the nearly 2,900 acres he had, he created a nature preserve instead. Not a popular move back in the 50’s and 60’s.
For roughly the last 20-years, Simon’s daughter, Carmen, has worked to take a few cabañas and created and maintains a number of elegantly rustic duplex accommodations and associated facilities in as natural a setting as possible. Carmen herself is wholly down to Earth, however, she’s quite the business woman, and, as we began to find out with each meal, quite the chef!
We settled into our room which had a porch looking out into cloud forest.
Cloud . . . forest . . . Simply, a zone of habitats which are nearly always damp from foggy or drizzly precipitation. Not much unlike the Pacific Northwest. Down in the tropics, the conditions occur at altitudes of around 5-6,000 foot elevation.We had a simple lunch and hit the trails emanating from the lodge grounds. The area had received some rain in the morning, so we found the trails slippery. 
Again, you know as well, too, wildlife viewing in the afternoon can be a struggle as the critters are either skulking about, or sitting around preening. Either which way, they’re also quite mum. By around 5pm Kathleen and I were at a Cock-of-the-Rock lek. Andean Cock-of-the-Rock males are these crimson and black crow-sized birds that have specific locations where they strut their stuff for the females – the lek. The leks are used by generations of males for several decades. No one really knows how they’re chosen, or what goes into making a Cock-of-the-Rock lek over any other chunk of forest. Cock-of-the-Rock males know.
For the next half hour Kathleen and I caught glimpses of the males bobbing and posturing while they made bill-clicks and their characteristic growling grunt of a call. The dark-colored females would dart about assessing the spectacle from all angles. They are a choosy lot.
Dinner was at 7pm so Kathleen and I meandered back to the lodge in time to enjoy fish and shrimp curry. After dinner we used the communal bird book to key out what we did manage to see in the afternoon. At this time, we met Carmen’s husband Mitch Lysinger who leads birding tours for Field Guides. We spent the next couple hours chatting about birding with groups of people and the personality management that can be challenging. Mitch has a reputation for being better at this than most.Kathleen and I hauled ourselves to our room a little before 10pm. We had told Carmen of our experiences with load music at previous out-of-the-way places we had stayed. She assured us we wouldn’t hear any such activities.
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