Soaring Raptors

The highlight for today was visiting Parque Condor, a rehabilitation centre for birds of prey (Raptors).
We arrived in time to meet the park creator/manager and chief falconer before the aerial show.  A snowy owl was sitting on a ledge beside him and a small falcon was perched on his gloved hand.  He explained that the centre focused on rehabilitating injured birds and releasing them back into the wild.  Those that were in the flying display were too habituated to people to be able to return to the wild.

We made our way past two huge condors that were unable to fly and several large eagles to the stone arena on the windward side of the ridge where a steady breeze blew up the hill.  Over the next hour a wide variety of ever larger raptors were flown, soaring out over the ridge and almost disappearing in  the distance before returning for the next morsel of chicken from the glove of the falconer.
Sometimes the birds would swoop very low over the crowd almost touching heads, at other times they would dive almost vertically into the arena to land on the falconers wrist.
Throughout the show the manager kept up a steady commentary in Spanish that was completely focussed on teaching conservation values to the locals.  So many of the birds came in with  shotgun wounds and had been poorly tendered to for several days before being dropped off.

The highlight of the show was flying a pair of Bald Eagles.  These birds are severely endangered due to DDT and other pesticide usage in the US but their numbers are now recovering. The  pair called Gringo and Yankee weighed about 3kg (memory and translation errors possible) with a wingspan of about 2m were amazing as they swooped and dived.

The show finished with a pair of small birds brought out that the kids (and then grown up kids were allowed to hold on a falconers leather glove.

Check the photos at Parque Condor website.

But that was only part of the day.  Many of the group had explored the Otavalo food and handicraft markets before breakfast.  We then visited the Peguche Waterfall which was crowded with numerous boy scouts camping over the Easter break but well worth the short walk.

In the afternoon we decided to abandon plans for a  tour of high lakes as the Easter traffic and poor roads would have added 3 hours diving.  Instead we headed back stopping to admire Totara reed handicrafts and shop for marzipan.  I had expected to have an eat treat, but instead the marzipan is carved and dried into small, delicate and colourful figurines - more stuff I had not meant to buy but did.

There is much more to tell about today, like the amazing road construction between Quito and Otavalo and the connection between Horniman Tea and Margaritas. Yesterday's stories of visiting a crater, the Inti Nan museum at the crater and exploring the markets.  Hopefully someone else will take a turn writing.

We head into the Amazon tomorrow so may be 5 days before the next blog,

Ross with Len's Photos

First Day In Ecuador

Our first full day here was Easter Friday, famous for the Cucurucho parades.  I had attended a very colourful and bright Easter Festival in Cusco, but Cucurucho means Penance, and these were very penitent parades with many carrying heavy crosses to atone for previous sins or flagellating themselves with stinging nettle. Many were dressed in ku klux can like outfits as part of their penance.

The crowds were huge but most of the locals are shorter than most of us so we could often see over the top.

But while the Parades lasted almost all day we were busy visiting the main museum for a sense of history of the cultures of Ecuador and strolling the streets.  

Late in the afternoon we visited the Presidential Palace.  Sadly we weren't greeted by the President (he still lives in the Palace, but obviously something more important came up. We needed formal photo ID and three of the group didn't have theirs so we we loaned them NZ drivers licences and with 3 duplicate names and poor photo matches bluffed our way through security.  I suspect there was a bit of sweat lost as we had our IDs checked three times.  The last roll call style with an awful lot of duplicate names.

Hazel added to her handstand collection with a pose on the Presidential balcony.

The day was not without other challenges as we all felt the altitude and had O2 saturation levels from 88 to 94%.  Andrew  N and Mike G both had their pockets slashed by teenage groups of pickpockets.  Mike noticed and the guys backed off immediately.  Andrew lost $5 and a bit of time cancelling cards after 3 girls jostled him but no one was hurt.