Ecuador, Imagined and Real.

On July 20, I traveled with my colleague Rachel Warden and George Poitras, from the Indigenous community of Fort Chipewyan, to Ecuador, a country that I have wanted to visit for a long time.


A recent issue of Birdwatcher's Digest pointed to thousands of hummingbirds within easy reach of the capital city of Quito. Rachel's tale of walking through the jungle to an Indigenous community the year before promised butterfly upon butterfly without any effort (other than walking through jungle). An uncle's photos of a trip to the Galapagos showed hundreds of unusual birds and reptiles that required a bit more effort and money.

But I wanted my own memories of Ecuador. What would I see?

One morning, I saw monkeys leap through the trees above our heads as we ate breakfast (fried eggs on fried corn and potato mush) at the Accion Ecologica monitoring station in Lago Agrio, Ecuador's petroleum heartland. The next day, another family of monkeys threw nuts and twigs down at us as we paused too long under their tree at an organic farm carved out of clean jungle along the Aguarico River by a family whose previous farm had been poisoned by oil extraction.


They grow coffee, a cruel joke on Rachel and me, coffee addicts forced to subsist on instant for two weeks:


And cocoa, the flesh of which tastes lemony and sweet:


I saw the sky through the huge fronds of jungle grass and got some idea of what an ant or other insect might feel when it looks up at the blue through the grass and plants in our Northern gardens.



I saw my own butterflies -- in brilliant orange:


in lilac and black:


in dusky browns:



and one in unimaginable green.


We traveled from Quito through the petroleum-soaked Amazonian region to the border with Peru. Part of the journey was by boat along the Napo river. I saw this.


Later, I saw trees reaching down to touch the water of the glass-like Yasuni River:


and grew so confused by the reflections that I could not see where life ended and reflection began.


While on the river, I saw night fall in an instant.

What had been a 20 minute ride down the river in daylight was a laborious and sobering hour and a half trip back as we inched ahead in total blackness, the pilot looking for dangers below the surface in this twisting river, signaling back to the tiller-man which way to steer.

I saw birds. Two toucans, a crimson-crested woodpecker, and yellow-rumped caciques. Light blue hummingbirds, dark blue and white hummingbirds. No pictures of these birds, but this might be a Napo Sabrewing.


Dozens of little blue and white parakeets that led our boat forward down the Yasuni river. A gorgeous wild green parakeet, who hung out of his own accord near a store where we stopped for water.


Swallows and magpie tanagers come in classic black and white.



Crows with long yellow flashes along their tails, that live in colonies of pendulous nests:



Courting crows with bright orange beaks.


Yellow- and blue - flashed birds that are everywhere.



A black bird with a red head and and an orange chest. A little grey bird with a red throat.


Something blue that looked like a cross between a warbler and a dove.


My notebook is full of scribbled notes of what I saw, and my camera is full of these distant but, to me, evocative pictures. And yet I am, unaccountably, not seized with a desire to figure it all out. Instead, I remember the flash of colour in that moment of first sight, the laughter that welled up as as the small parakeets danced in the air currents stirred up by our boat, the enormous coloured bill peeking out of the woods before the toucan took off.

The enthusiasm of the Argentinian park rangers in our group who struggled to explain things to me, them speaking only Spanish, me only English, but all of us delighted in finding each other. Here I am with one of them, Jorge. Even side-on, you get a hint of his big loopy grin.

(Take note of the mud --Amazonian mud-- on my butt. More on this in a later post.)

We traveled back through Amazonia and up and down the Andes to the city of Tena. And from there, higher still, back to Quito. Along the way, I saw highlands and cloud forest, snapping pictures as best I could out a bus that cut corners, crossed narrow bridges, and dodged a landslide or two.





With a shock, this view reminded me of Gros Morne:


Back in Quito for a day before heading home, I saw the gorgeous products of traditional Indigenous arts and crafts in the market:


And the gorgeous legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Old City:



I saw and talked with, in fractured Spanish and the language of digital cameras, children, like this young girl eating an ice cream near Lago Agrio:


And these young boys in a Cofan (a local Indigenous group) village:


What I saw in Ecuador remains with me. But really, this isn't even the half of it. Stay tuned.