When we said our goodbyes at the end of our trip to Ecuador in 2018, Pablo, our guide, said ‘You need to come back. There are more places I want to show you, including Jorupe.’ During the summer, Dave and I were out birding in Kittitas, as usual, and reminisced about that trip. We got to thinking, what about a trip with a known guide, to a place with which we had a little familiarity, and doing it with a small group? I got in touch with Pablo, who we knew from past experience was not the most reliable communicator, and asked him the same question. Amazingly, within days, he responded saying yes he would enjoy that and had some time between other trips in November, which, he promised, would be a drier window than the trip we did in February. Not only that, a few days later he had a draft itinerary set up which would involve 2 weeks with just the two of us, himself, and a driver, at a cost that was very attractive. How could we refuse?!
Pablo lives in Loja, the third largest city in Ecuador, located in the south. He knows southern Ecuador very well and was able to create an itinerary that would cover a variety of habitats to maximize our exposure to as many different birds as possible. Plus, having been in the business for over 20 years, he knows economical places to stay and has good connections with the lodges that cater to international birder groups. With his proposed itinerary and the comfort in knowing that Pablo would arrange all the in-country logistics, we set about getting air reservations. Interestingly, the best airfare took us through LA, then San Salvador before heading to Quito. Interesting, because the layover in San Salvador was stated to be only 38 minutes! Granted, this is a small airport, but such a short layover seemed like tempting fate. Nevertheless, we pursued this plan, but found a hiccup when trying to make reservations out of Quito to Loja, where we would meet Pablo: the local airline, TAME, would not accept reservations from abroad. We asked Pablo if he could intervene and before we knew it, he had our reservations set: our arrival in Quito would be at midnight and the flight to Loja at 0500, meaning a quick start to birding in the Loja area became part of the plan.
Of course, plans are never final until finished. We got a surprise when Pablo wrote to tell us that TAME had cancelled our early morning flight from Quito. The next available option was in late afternoon. Which meant spending most of a day in Quito. Once again, Pablo stepped in to help: he arranged with a friend of his to guide us to the Antisana, a desirable birding hotspot an hour or so outside of Quito. So, now this new plan seemed as firm as it would get and we needed only to set up our personal logistics.
For resources, Dave still had his copy of The Birds of Ecuador, by Ridgely and Greenfield, the plates from which we consulted almost constantly. And I still had the smartphone app, All Birds Ecuador, to complement Dave’s hardcopy tool. In addition, the Merlin app just added an Ecuador pack with photos and sounds gleaned from the MaCaulay media library used by eBird.
Although Pablo had shared with us a chronological itinerary, it is helpful to visualize where we would go with a map. From an overview of a map with all hotspots, it is easier to comprehend that we would be taking transects, emanating from the Loja area, into 5 different regions and habitats:
- SW – to a ‘dry forest’, a disappearing habitat
- S – to an area near the Peruvian border which offers endemics found nowhere else in the country
- E – to the eastside Andean foothills and low-lying habitats
- N – to Acacana and Arcos, high elevation and páramo habitats
- NW – to the westside Andean foothills and rainforest habitat
In the posts that follow, I will summarize what we experienced in each of these regions, plus the Antisana trip that begins the adventure.
Our previous trip to Ecuador was quite productive, with over 400 species observed. Although we would be visiting some of the same areas again on this trip, it would be in a different season. And, in the new areas identified in Pablo’s itinerary, there would be chances for many new birds. We felt that 400 species was an achievable target once again. We were off by a fair amount — we observed close to 450 species! Adding in a good number of birds that only Pablo saw, or more commonly, heard, our trip list was well above that. My life list grew by almost 120 birds. This is getting addictive!
Nature Views of the Pacific NW 