Before we travel together into the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest I have to inform you about an important Travel Alert. When you look at the web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Ecuador, you get lots of warnings concerning your health or safety.
- Wear light cloths and use repellants to avoid Mosquito bites. Because of Malaria, Yellow and Dengue Fever.
- Only eat pealed or cooked food (Cholera)
- Do not walk at night thru the city, because of robbers and other bad guys
- Only use official taxis to avoid abductions
- How to handle and avoid altitude sickness (Chew Coca leaves)
The robber problem seems to be solved, because Ecuadorians have signs, which tell robbers not to go into special areas.
But probably the most important travel warning is missing on the official web site. What could it be? This is your riddle for today. It has to do with the following pictures and is related to the last warning mentioned in the list above.
Did you find out? Here is the answer.
The Andes Mountains are up to 7000 meters high. You travel with an airplane, bus or car from sea level to the mountains. Exhausted from travelling you want to take a shower and open your shampoo bottle.
Exactly – because of the low air pressure the whole content of the shampoo bottle squirts in your face. You can have major injuries in your eyes plus you do not have any more shampoo left. For this reason you have to run around with greasy hair for days. When you now run into a robber, he thinks you are one of them, and you are in real trouble because he thinks you are robbing in his territory.
Thanks to this blog you now know about this security alert and we can continue with the cloud forest.
From the highlands we travelled to the cloud forest, which is about 1500 meters lower in elevation and closer to the coast. (No problems with shampoos). What is a cloud forest or fog forest like Germans call it? It is a forest with lots of cloudy weather. If you are in the cloud, you could also call it fog. Germans are more pessimistic then Americans. I couldn’t find out, what the difference to a rain forest is, because it also rained a lot.
Our lodge was part of the Maquipucuna Cloud Forest Reserve. It is a natural reserve on the western slope of the Andes to protect the biodiversity of the cloud forest. There are even 40 of the endangered spectacled bears on the 6000 hectares area which ranges from 900 meters to 2700 meters. The lodge was an excellent place in the lower part next to a river, which we reached after driving 45 minutes on a dirt road.
What to do in cloud forest? First we walked to a nice waterfall, which was close to our lodge.
From the lodge balcony we could watch the colorful hummingbirds.
What else do you do in an Eco lodge of a natural reserve which harbors 4% of the world's bird biodiversity? Exactly – you get up a 6 am in the morning and go bird watching.
It feels a little bit like hunting. There are many birds, but there are more trees to hide. If you find a pretty bird, you watch it and afterwards you can look in the book, what kind of bird you just saw. We also had excellent guides, who knew all the names of the pretty birds (Carlos and Arsenio).
We saw lots of colorful birds in different sizes like Toucans, Fly Catchers or even the very rare “Cock on the Rock”. We did not take pictures, because we were busy watching. Why are birds in the jungle more colorful? Because there are so many trees and leaves. The tourists would not find a single bird, if they were green. Additionally, besides being tourist friendly, the bright colors are also helpful for them to find a partner and not stay single their whole life.
Here is nice picture of a Cock on the rock.
The name might sound a little dirty, especially for Americans. But it has nothing to do with sexual organs. It is his real name.
Beside the bird watching we walked a lot thru the forests and saw many orchids, plants, mammals (for example a nice, big mountain guinea pig) and butterflies. We also saw thousands of small animals which are not very popular with humans. Mosquitos. Before every walk we sprayed repellent like crazy. This stuff helps, but don’t forget the top of your small finger. Otherwise you’ll get a nice bite.
Ecuador has currently a Condor in its flag as a national animal. But people should seriously consider to change this to a Mosquito. It is just the most common animal.
I also found out how hard it is to take picture of a butterfly. These guys fly around like crazy. Can they not decide on one spot or blossom? And whenever you take a shot, they close their wings. But finally I got one. And even the transparent one.
What do bird, plant and animal watchers do at night, when the birds are sleeping and it rains like crazy?
They sit at the bar and play Dominos with the bartender Luis. He won. :-(
Luis was a great guy and very helpful in many ways. On the first night, the electricity went out, because they were fixing the dirt road and took out the power line. Luis made Michelle a hand mixed Pina colada, in the dark with only moon shine, which tasted excellent.
We thought we would not have any electricity for days. But the Ecuadorian electricity guys came in the evening and one hour later we had electricity again. I wonder how long this would have taken in Germany or in the USA, if you are out in the middle of nowhere.
There was also a class of young kids with their teachers from Wales. They do an Animal Management program and went for a trip to Ecuador. How cool is that? We went to local forest when we were kids in school. We were impressed because all of the kids got up at 5:30 am to go birding or see the sunrise.
What is the difference to the rain forest in Ecuador? Both have poisonous snakes, both have rain, both have birds. The rain forest has Caimans (small crocodiles) swimming in the river, the cloud forest has gray haired Indians swimming in the river.
The cloud forest or Nebelwald was a new great experience, especially all the great impressions of the fog and the clouds.
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