The Cloud Forests of Mindo, Ecuador on the 26, 27, 28 y 29 de Mayo 2011

Quito, Ecuador is at about 9,000 ft. elevation and if you travel West from there it's all downhill to the Pacific. So, at around 4,500 ft. you start getting into a region know as the Cloud Forests which are very different from the Andean mountains and quite special in many ways.

It is GREEN everywhere you look with lots of water, cable cars instead of roads

and all kinds of surprises like no place for your bus to turn around
and motel rooms surrounded by orchids and hummingbirds.

There are lawns that have never been cut, fiddler ferns as big as trees and pretty recycling bins.

There are lots of rivers to ford when the cable cars aren't available, so you just scamper across.

Not being a botanist, all I can do is show you the flowers I could never describe adequately.

I think they kind of liked me though

because I was wearing green and wasn't picking them.

The colors and shapes were so unique my little camera didn't know what to do with them

The closest I can come to decribing it would be to ask you to imagine your hotel room was inside a commercial greenhouse where exotic birds were spoonfed bananas every morning to wake you.

Some of the plants were hardy while others seemed more delicate than tissue paper.

It's difficult to explain why I felt a kinship to this region, but I just seemed to fit right in.

Joella took to it, as well! She was a regular little monkey doing things she never would have tried before in earlier lives and I was very proud of her accomplishments for that reason especially.

Not everyone can say they've rappelled down waterfalls.

Like I said, there was water everywhere; so at the end of our jungle trek

it seemed like a good idea to get soaked.

If you're a birder, the guides guarantee hundreds of new ones for your book or it's free.

Not that you guys asked...Denny Q. and Bill W.

Mindo is worth visiting for more reasons than I can list and 4 days wasn't enough.

Ships of the Desert

I think it's Saturday December 17th, 2011. I know it's 5:30 in the morning. We're on a bus line called Movil cruising South along the desolate Peruvian coast between Chiclayo and Trujillo. Most of the pasenjeros are still asleep as I watch the sun rise and slowly change from the deep black of no city lights to the light blue gray that comes on just before the day's giant heat lamp.

The light that has long since killed every form of vegetation in all directions to every horizon. There's plenty of traffic on the black top runway for our horn happy chauffer to vent his frustrations against and play chicken with. Normally, one might try not pay attention to his game of vehicular Russian roullette, but when you're in Seats #1 for the extra leg room it's hard to ignore. #1, #2, #3 and #4 are on top of the double decker bus, in front and above our driver with the death wish.

The towns and cities are usually on rivers headed to the Pacific, so green of plant life begins to appear as you approach each desert settlement (zona urbana). Small dirty towns with clean little central parks and their obligatory statue of a native son hero. Although, now in mid-Decemeber, all the diferent flowering trees in these parks are decorated with colored foil, snow-like tinsel and twinkling lights to herald Christmas. The donkeys, sheep, sheppards and baby of the life-sized nativity scenes of each pueblo keeping silent watch in the front of its church named for their native daughter saint.

Then, the bushes, trees and grass begin to thin and "Whhoooosshh!" we're back out adrift in the ocean of white rocky sand. Only this time, it's a little hotter than last time because the night's coolness has run away to hide in whatever shade she can find.