Ecuador butterfly trip Nov-Dec 2017
Day 1 Nov 9 – fly to Quito
Day 2 Nov 10 – Hotel Zaysant & El Chaquinan rails to trails walk
Day 3 Nov 11 – to Loreto, Baeza meadow 1900m lunch
Day 4-8 Nov 12-16 – hike into Rio Bigal 4 nights, 930m
Day 9 Nov 16 – hike out from Rio Bigal, drive to Baeza, Rio Quijos Ecolodge 3 nights
Day 10 Nov 17 – explore trails around Rio Quijos, 1550m
Day 11 Nov 18 – drive across the river to Borja Valley, 1600-1700m
Day 12 Nov 19 – move to Tena for 4 nights, walk road at San Isidro 2000m
Day 13 Nov 20 – Apuya ridge, 600m, rainy start
Day 14 Nov 21 – Pimpilata swimming hole, 600m
Day 15 Nov 22 – back to Apuya ridge, hot sunny day
Day 16 Nov 23 – depart Tena for WildSumaco for 3 nights
Day 17/18 Nov 24-25 – trails at WildSumaco, 1450m
Day 19 Nov 26 – drive to Papallacta for 2 nights, 3150m
Day 20 Nov 27 – Antisana, 3800m
Day 21 Nov 28 – drop folks at airport, end of trip 1, start trip 2, on to Tandayapa near Mindo for 3 nights
Day 22 Nov 29 – explore trails around Tandayapa, 1650m
Day 23 Nov 30 – drive above Bellavista, 2200m, walk the road
Day 24 Dec 1 – move to Septimo Paraiso for 3 nights, above Mindo
Day 25/26 Dec 2/3 – walk trails at Septimo Paraiso, 1450m
Day 27 Dec 4 – morning at Silanche reserve, then to the Cliff house for 3 nights, 1050m, San Jorge de Milpas
Day 28/29 Dec 5/6 – trails at the Cliff house
Day 30 Dec 7 – back to Quito, end of leg 2, start leg 3, fly to Loja, drive to Vilcabamba 1500m, 6 nights at Madre Tierra Resort & Spa
Day 31 Dec 8 – short drive east of Vilcabamba to the union of Rio Yambala & Rio Capamaco, 1550-1600m, lots of clearwings
Day 32 Dec 9 – old road to Catamayo, wind turbines on ridge
Day 33 Dec 10 – Tapichalaca/Casa Simpson, Jocotoco Lodge
Day 34 Dec 11 – Cajanuma National Park, 2700-2800m
Day 35 Dec 12 – Cajanuma National Park, 2600-2700m
Day 36 Dec 13 – drive to Zamora for 3 nights at Copalinga Lodge, 1100m
Day 37 Dec 14 – work the road from the lodge to Podocarpus NP, Bombuscara entrance
Day 38 Dec 15 – more road, and the orange trail
Day 39 Dec 16 – leave Copalinga, drive to Cabanas Yakuam for 3 nights, 1000m
Day 40/41 Dec 17/18 – Reserva Natural Maycu, walk the road
Day 42 Dec 19 – drive back to Copalinga for 2 nights
Day 43 Dec 20 – the Bombuscara road and the trails
Day 44 Dec 21 – back to Loja, old road to Catamayo, fly to Quito
Day 45 Dec 22 – 1:30am flight to Houston
Day 1 Thur Nov 9 – fly from Houston, where I meet up with Chris Tenney, to Quito on United, arrive about 1am on the 10th. Transfer to Hotel Zaysant for 2 nights, about a 20 minute taxi from the airport. This is the new airport south of Quito, so you don’t have to go into town. Very fast through customs, piece of cake. Get to bed about 2am.
Day 2 Fri Nov 10 – Chris and I meet David Geale, our guide from Canada (http://www.mariposabutterflytours.com) for breakfast, then head out about 10:30 for the Ruta Ecologica El Chaquinan, about a 10 minute taxi ride from the hotel.
The hotel has recommended this as a nice trail to walk, and they’re right. It goes down 4 km or so to the river at the bottom of the ravine. It’s an old railroad that has been turned into a hiking/bike path. We see a number of bicyclists, and nice flowers and bushes, but not too many butterflies. We do photograph and see some species, but the numbers are low, but it is a very nice walking path, not very steep. People tell us it is safe, and we certainly don’t see any shady characters, just a few folks out enjoying their walk.
I first met David back in 2011, he was a bird guide out of Cusco that I hired, and he immediately was seduced into butterflies. He’s become an excellent butterfly guide/photographer, and if you’re interested in doing a butterfly trip to South America, he’s the way to go. And he id’s all your photos for you every night.
Day 3 Sat Nov 11 – leave Quito for the eastern transact, over the Papallacta Pass and down to Loreto for a night before our walk in to Rio Bigal for 4 nights. We stop at the Baeza meadow, a few kms past the town of Baeza on the right side of the highway. Gps 0.28.34 S, 77.52.16 W. It sort of looks like an abandoned quarry, a small meadow with a creek on the right side and forest all around. We spend about 3 hours photographing bugs here, and everyone is happy. It’s drizzly and overcast, with the sun breaking through now and then, so not great butterfly weather, but we see a good selection anyway.
Then we drive on down to Loreto for the night to meet Thierry Garcia, the owner of Rio Bigal Biological Reserve. Boy, has this town grown since I was here in 2011. We’re staying in some nice bungalows outside of town. There is a park w/music, it is Saturday after all, but hopefully that will stop soon, as it seems to be a family affair. They have 2 hectares, so the others drop their stuff in the nice big rooms and charge out. I’m lazy, take a shower and work on getting ready for our hike in tomorrow.
Days 4-8 Sun Nov 12 to Thur Nov 16 – at Rio Bigal Biological Reserve with Thierry Garcia (http://bigalriverbiologicalreserve.org). I was last here 6 years ago, and Thierry has upgraded it quite a bit. Then his structure was just a dirt floor, now it’s nice and covered with wood planks, plus they have added a 2 room cabin below. I stay here with Sally and Dean in the other room, in a nice, screened in cabin with our own toilet. We have challenges with the toilet (a composting outhouse) where the seat breaks, but Thierry keeps ‘fixing’ it. The path down to our cabin is muddy and slippery, but we survive.
Rio Bigal is right in the forest, a very wet forest, but when the sun comes out there are lots of butterflies. We have 2 days of sun and clouds, 1 day of mostly rain, and 1 great morning with several hours of sun. This is a private preserve of about 500 hectares, we only explore the areas near by. You could easily spend a week or more here wandering the trails. The one downside is that you’re totally off the grid without any power, so not much work on computers. Thierry did have a generator, but it wasn’t working, so people couldn’t charge up their electronics.
But we had plenty of butterflies when the sun came out. One of my personal favorites is Anteros renaldus, with the pink legs, and Ancyluris formosissima, a stunning riodinid that I’ve only seen in southeast Peru.
We do night walks several times, looking for frogs and snakes. We find a number of frogs but no snakes, but we see lots of other insects. Amazing how different the forest looks at night. Thierry also has trail cams set up, and he sees lots of mammals, including jaguar, puma, bush dog, and lots of peccaries.
The last morning we hike out through the mud. Fortunately Thierry has provided rubber boots for all of us, and they are definitely needed. I’ll be glad to get away from the boots. At times we are mid calf deep in the gooey mud, the kind that makes you think you’re going to leave your boot in it, and be lucky to escape. The mud gets easier as we get down the hill and back to where the taxis will pick us up. It starts raining as we’re waiting for the taxis, but just lightly. We’re lucky that it didn’t pour for our hike out.
Day 9 Nov 16 – we make it to the taxis, then back to Loreto to get our big bags, then 3 hours to Baeza where Thierry takes us to a great pizza place, Karlo’s pizzeria and cabinas. Tasty pizza in a lovely wooden building. Then 12 km down the road from Baeza to Rio Quijos Ecolodge. They do a lot of rafting trips here, and know how to cook good food, and lots of it. I can’t eat half of what they serve, the portions are too large. It’s a nice place to stay, with gardens and lots of flowers, and some small forest with lots of short trails wandering around.
Day 10 Nov 17 – we spend the tail exploring the trails and get lots of butterflies. And the beach is good for different species all day long. We start the morning with a sunbittern wandering around the pools.
Day 11 Nov 18 – we drive 20-30 minutes back towards Baeza, across the river and up into the hills for the day, walking the road and finding a nice trail back into the woods. Much of the same butterflies as yesterday, but some new ones too. Another good day.
Day 12 Nov 19 – leave Baeza and head back towards Tena, stopping at San Isidro to work the road there, about 1900m. We walk the road for a km or so past the entrance to Cabanas de San Isidro, seeing mostly satyrs and a couple of species of clearwings, then David baits a small trail through the forest to the right by the sign of the magic circuit. This turns out to be a major score, as he finds a small tree with blooming white flowers on stalks that the big clearwings are coming to. We all get good shots of the beautiful clear orange Veladryis pardalis and another mystery black and orange one.
After our skimpy sandwiches, we drive on south to Tena, a little over an hour away, and come to our hotel for the next 4 nights, Casa del Abuelo. This is a pretty white building with a bunch of different rooms, quite nice. My a/c doesn’t work very well, and it’s only 550m, so fairly toasty, but I sleep with the windows wide open and it cools off. There is a great lightning and thunder storm after dinner while we’re working on photos, and it pours heavily.
Day 13 Nov 20 – It has rained most of the night and we wake to overcast. We piddle around the hotel for an hour or so, then head out to the Apuya ridge anyway, south of Tena about 15 km past the Apuya bridge. The bus slithers its way up a muddy track, past the bridge that was out last year when David was here, up the hill until we have to walk the last few hundred feet. At least it makes it most of the way up the hill.
David baits the road, as it is still quite dark and damp, and we slowly start seeing flying things, mostly a different blue/grey Junonia, a new color for me. As it gradually gets a bit clearer and warmer more shows up, and by the middle of the day we’re seeing a good number of riodinids and others coming out to the bait.
Day 14 Nov 21 – we try a different location southwest of Tena that David found on a previous trip. This is a swimming place, balneario, and very simple rooms and a nice garden with trails that run along a creek. We pay $2 apiece and spend the day, and see a nice variety. Using our new rubber boots, bought that morning in Tena in the market for $11, we splash across the creek and get stunning shots of Agrias (now Prepona) claudina that is very cooperative, and my first Clito zelotes, a black and white spreadwing skipper, plus a number of other forest goodies.
We also find lots of riodinids on the trails by the creek. After lunch Menander menander are fighting and displaying right by the old pool, a beautiful purple/blue shining metalmark, and they provide the best shots I’ve ever gotten of this gorgeous species. Lots of Calycopis burphonia, one of the few Calycopis I can easily id, and lots of other little goodies, so it’s a good day.
Day 15 Nov 22 – back to the Apura ridge, a well known collecting location, and today we luck out and have a bright, sunny morning. And we have lots of bugs all day along the forest track up to the ridge. Everybody takes a ton of photos and sees a steady stream of new species. Pizza for dinner at restaurant, heavy rain during dinner.
Day 16 Nov 23 – drive to WildSumaco Lodge for 3 nights. Go past turn off for lodge to check out Rio Pinguillo, km 47, about 15 minutes past the turn off. Poor weather, but we hang around hopefully waiting for sun. It never really gets good, but we see a few things. Drive to the lodge and arrive mid afternoon.
Day 17/18, Nov 24/25 – explore trails, spend most of our time a km or so below the lodge on the Piha trail around the hummingbird feeders and the little loop trails. Mostly overcast, with some rain, but we find lots of stuff. Many satyrs, some new species, but overall we get more rain than sun.
One afternoon some of us go to the antpitta feeding at 3pm and get great looks at plain-backed and spot-breasted antpittas in the pouring rain. We get wet going down into the valley, but they have a nice bench and a shelter to wait in, and the rain lets up for the walk back up the hill. I always like seeing the antpittas.
Day 19 Nov 26 – drive from WildSumaco to the Termas (hot springs) at Papallacta Pass, which is a fancy, resort-type hotel. We have a circle of little cabanas around 3 hot pools of varying temperatures. So it’s important to get into the middle pool, not the hottest one. It’s about 103-105, so it feels quite warm getting in, but perfect once you’re in it, very relaxing.
We stopped at Guango on our way up the mountain, about 20 minutes before Papallacta, and watched hummingbirds for a while for $5 each, well worth it.
It was raining that morning when we woke up at WildSumaco, but it stopped but was still dripping. We decided to pass on going back to Rio Pinguillo, as it was still wet and dark. We stopped at the Comida Suisana to see lots of 88′s, and paid $1 each to walk in the garden there and down the steps to the river and the beautiful waterfall, but didn’t see too many different butterflies.
David walked a bit up the road and checked out the Jocotoco Foundation’s Narupa reserve, and the track into it was great. There was even a place to park the bus there, maybe a km or so up from the restaurant, so we had lunch there and walked up and down the km or so track. Nice and wide, some old road cut into the hillside, and good bugs coming to the bait. Lots of new species for our list, Lycorea, more satyrs of course, and finally some Callicore.
Day 20 Nov 27 – some of us drive 2 hours to Antisana, a trip I’ve wanted to do for a while. Great views of andean condor, sometimes flying below us, and andean lapwing with chicks, and the buff-necked ibis, but no butterflies. We get up to 3800m and it gets windy, so it’s pretty chilly, but we get good views of the mountain and the glaciers. However it sure feels good to get back to the hot pools at Papallacta.
Day 21 Nov 28 – depart Papallacta, back to the hotel Zaysant near the airport at Quito to drop off some people from leg 1 and pick up 4 new folks for leg 2. We have lunch at the hotel, after walking the same rail to trail hike we did the day we arrived. Same results, almost no butterflies but a new walk down into the ravine. This time we’re cleverer and have the bus pick us up 4 km down the trail across the river. It’s a steep road, and we’re all impressed that the bus makes it down, and back up.
After lunch the 2nd group of us drive through Quito and over to the west for the 2nd part of our trip. We go to Tandayapa Birding Lodge for the next 3 nights, at about 1650m. It’s drizzly when we arrive late in the afternoon about 4pm, so we only have time for a quick scout of the nearby trails.
Day 22 Nov 29 – walk trails around the lodge. This is where I had my fabulous clearwing lek years ago. We see plenty of clearwings, but so far only the two common species, Ithomia terra and Greta andromica, mostly I.terra. The day starts out bright and sunny, but by 10am it’s totally clouded over and cool, and the butterflies all disappear under leaves.
We get a few new ones, Epiphile epimenes, the beautiful blue dorsal banner, and some Adelpha and as always, more satyrs.
Day 23 Nov 30 – Our 2nd day at Tandayapa starts out brilliantly sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and everybody is excited at breakfast. We leave about 8, driving up the dirt road to Bellavista, the other well known birding lodge, about 2100m, and a bit beyond, to the intersection that’s good for tanager finch at 2200m. Another bus of birders is there, how dare they. We work up the road, but it suddenly clouds up by 9am, bummer. It just gets cooler and darker as the morning goes on, so not too many butterflies.
We walk back down the road, as it’s only 8 km to the turnoff to our lodge. Chris and Roger make it almost all the way back, while the rest of us get on and off the bus as it comes down the road. There is a good patch by a small house of yellow flowers that has lots of Parphorus skippers and Vettius coryna, which we have seen almost everywhere. David catches a small centipede-snake and brings it back to the lodge to show everyone. Chris and Roger found a snail-eating snake last night, walking around the lodge. Two snakes in two days, pretty good.
Day 24 Dec 1 – leave Tandayapa, which has been cool and dark most of the time. The weather has been poor, clouding up very early and staying cool and overcast, not much rain but not many butterflies. Usually when it gets dark and cloudy, it rains, then clears up, but not this trip. The people are tired of the lack of bugs, and the cool and wet. Hopefully it will be better as we go a bit lower.
We go to Mindo and take a right through an arch and down a road out of town past nice fincas, a road that Vladimer the driver recommends. He and David came here last year in Feb and it was good. We park by a metal bridge and a stream that we can hop across. David baits up the road and also across the bridge. Here we have a different subspecies of Heliconius erato and melpomene, a beautiful blue with pink bands and white fringe. We see them flying around the lantana, but they don’t pose for photos.
We spend several hours here, it’s sunny and bugs are flying, so everyone takes lots of photos. A number of new species for our list, we’re about 1020-1100m, so we have lowland species. A fresh kite-swallowtail poses nicely by the stream, P.glaucolaus, one that Chris really wanted. There’s a nice clearwing lek along the dark bank of the road, right by the bus, and we shoot several different species. Looking at our photos that night, there are more species than we thought.
I walk down the road past the stream, where David has baited quite a ways. Much of it is through pasture, a dirt road lined with white trunk trees, which should be perfect for crackers. In Mexico this would be cracker paradise, but I don’t see a single cracker. It is really odd how low our numbers are on this trip. We have had poor weather, but even on sunny days the numbers seem very low to me and David. Maybe we’re in between flight times?
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Day 25/26 Dec 2/3 – we’re out on the trails early, even though it is misty and overcast. The sun burns off the mist and comes and goes all day. When the sun is out so are the butterflies, and we see lots of stuff. One of the new stunners is the beautiful blue and white metalmark, Mesosemia mancia, a west slope speciality. I chase a couple perching out over dark ravines, then finally get good shots of one posing obligingly on the entrance road of about a km. He’s used to traffic, and a motorcycle zipping by puts him up, but he comes back down and lands on a leaf right in front of me, and doesn’t mind my taking 30-40 photos.
We work the snake trail, up and down the valley, back and forth over the small stream, and the entrance road. David has the hotel manager ask him not to put more bait out along the entrance road, she got complaints about the smell. Oh well. Tomorrow we’ll work up the toucan trail, which climbs to some overlooks.
Another foggy cool day, we’re cursed. I walk up the Toucan trail, putting out spitwads, but see very little in the way of butterflies. A beautiful trail, too bad we can’t seem to get any sun. That afternoon we go into Mindo and visit the Mariposarium on the other side of Mindo, where I stayed 14 years ago. It now cost $7.50/person, and they warn us that because it’s so cloudy the butterflies aren’t flying, but that’s fine with us, better for photography. We spend an hour or so shooting all sorts of mixed up Heliconius that are breeding indiscriminately inside the butterfly house, and lots of two species of Caligo.
Day 27 Dec 4 – we leave Septimo Paraiso and go further west, about 45 minutes on the pavement to a dirt road, then 20 minutes more to Rio Silanche Preserve at 400m, owned by MindoCloudForest.org. This has a nice 2km loop trail that they keep swept, so it fairly easy walking, except for the tree roots. However, they pile up the debris on the sides, so they have built up 2-3′ piles of dead leaves and forest droppings. So it is difficult if you want to get off the trail and follow a butterfly into the forest.
We stay here for lunch, which we brought with us from the hotel, and of course it gradually get brighter by 1 or 1:30, when we have to leave. The road has proved to be the best, more open, and we have had 3 species of Sarota. Most of us have walked down the road to the bridge by the river, and that’s where we’ve found the most species. Some interesting western subspecies, and species that fly in Central America, some all the way to Mexico. The people don’t want to leave, as they’re finally seeing some bugs flying. Lots of Dynamine postverta, and we finally have our first starry night cracker, Hamadryas laodamia. I’ve been surprised at the complete lack of crackers.
We drive back towards Mindo and turn off on another dirt road to San Jorge de Milpas lodges. We come to the Forest Lodge, where we can leave luggage, then walk through the woods 10-15 minutes, down stairs) to the Cliff Lodge, our home for the next 3 nights. Most of our big luggage stays in the bus, to be driven to Loja by Vladimer, our faithful driver, and we carry small packs of our stuff for the next 3 nights.
The Cliff Lodge has 24 hour power and hot water, at least some hot water, as the last 2 people to take showers don’t have any (poor Rodger and David!). We’re perched on a cliff over a fabulous valley, we can hear the river down below but can’t see it. This would be a spectacular place to blacklight for moths, as we don’t see any other lights. We leave the porch lights on when we go to dinner, and when we come back the porch has lots of great moths. Best place we’ve been for moths on this trip, as we haven’t seen many.
The meals are served in a fancy setting, but we have to tromp through mud and wet to get there, as the walk is uncoverd and just on another trail. We have to take our shoes off at the lodge, so we don’t track mud all over the hard shiny floor, so it’s a pain to have to put shoes back on for every meal. It’s foggy and raining constantly, so it is very wet, muddy and lots of good sized puddles, not a good walk for sandals or flipflops.
This place is odd, as they try to be artificially pretentious, even though it is a rustic, wooden place in the wet jungle. We find our towels twisted into fancy swans, like a snazzy resort, and the service at dinner is very slow and formal. The one waiter carefully served us one at a fime, starting with the oldest woman, then the next, then the next, and finally the poor men. He has to walk around the 9 of us in a bizarre order to accomplish this, rather than just serve from one end and work his way down. It would be even better if they just served the food family style, plates and bowls on the table, and let us serve ourselves. We waste a lot of food, as most of the women leave some, and the guys don’t get enough. We pass our left overs to David and Roger, who always want more, Then the waiter clears our dishes the same sequence, bit by bit, and brings out the next course. We each have a huge place setting of a bunch of silverware, 2 knives, several forks, a bunch of cutlery we don’t need. They must like doing dishes.
And another whine, they never have enough hooks. My wall has a fake artistic disply of little heads with a piece of cloth draped across them, while I would much rather have a row of hooks to hang clothes and stuff. In this wet clammy habitat everything always feels damp, and it is much nicer to be able to hang stuff. No closet of course, so a row of nails in the wall would be very useful. But then I’m more practical than fancy. Hopefully the sun will come out, we’ll see lots of butterflies, and then all these little annoyances won’t matter.
The second day we have rain and fog almost all day, so the whining continues. I fall on the steep, muddy trail and jam my wrist badly. My hand swells up and I can’t hold my camera, let alone do basic body maintenance like hair or teeth brushing. What a pain. I also maybe cracked a rib, as I landed on my right side on top of my camera. The camera’s fine, but it hurts when I breathe. Getting old sucks.
But the next day we have more sun, or at least less fog, and we start seeing more bugs. By the end of our 3 days here, most people like it a lot. The general consensus is that this is probably the best forest we’ve been in. If we could only get a few days of sun, it would be great. Lots of trails and lots to explore. The guys do some night walks and get crested owl near the lodge, and lots of insects. We’ve had some good riodinids, lots of Sarota neglecta, and some uncommon species like Thisbe urania.
One day the owner invites us to have lunch at the other lodge, the Forest Lodge, which is much nicer. It’s sort of on the north side of the trail system, and our Cliff Lodge is on the south, about 15 minutes apart, so the trails are easily accessible from either lodge. The Forest Lodge has internet, a big plus, and much nicer accommodations, and a nice dining hall and 3 levels of tower to sit in. If I came back, I would definitely stay here instead of our more rustic place. BUT, and it’s a big but, if you want moths the Cliff Lodge is the place to be. We leave the porch lights on when we go to dinner, and when we return each night the porch is covered with lots of moths. If you were a collector and hung a black light and a sheet you would have a great time.
Day 30, Dec 7 – Of course it is sunny the morning we walk out to leave, but we have a flight to catch from Quito. We head back to Hotel Zaysant near the airport, leave Joan and Roger and pick up Adam and Louise, another couple from Taiwan. We meet Dominik at the airport for our short flight to Loja. Now we have 5 Taiwanese, 1 Swiss, and 3 North Americans.
We are met at the airport in Loja by Vladimer, our faithful bus driver, who has spent the last 2 days driving from Quito. We continue for about 2 hours to Vilcabamba, arriving about 6:30pm, just at dark, at the fancy Madre Tierra Resort and Spa. I get a beautiful room on the end, windows on 2 sides that open, with screens! The temperatures are lovely here about 1500m, and I keep the windows open all day and night. This is a snazzy, upscale, healthy place with ‘good vibes’, and lots of attractive young people from the US running around being helpful, most of whom don’t speak much spanish. Quite a change from San Jorge de Milpe. We feel indulged.
Day 31 Dec 8 – they don’t serve breakfast until 8:30, which is way too late for us, so we get a to go breakfast. This turns out to be 2 hard boiled eggs and a smallish muffin, not very satisfying. But it won’t hurt us to go light on a meal. After much whining David convinces them to do breakfast tomorrow at 7am. I think he threatened to go find another place in town for our meals. We’re a big group, 11 of us.
We just drive about 15-20 minutes up a dirt road east of town, to the union of the two rivers, Rio Yambala and Rio Capamaco. The bus has to ford one of the rivers, as the bridge is too small for us, which causes excitement, but Vlad drives across without a hitch. We get there early, about 7:30am, and not much is flying until 9 or so. We end up with lots of clearwings, probably 10 species or more. The speciality is Elzunia pavonii, a big, black/yellow/red one that looks more like an Heliconius. This is the only area I’ve seen this species.
We spend the morning going up to the right, over another small wooden bridge, and the road quickly turns into a trail up the ravine, with tall canyon walls on our left as we climb maybe 50-100m in elevation. The further you go, the better the habitat gets, as usual. We have a number of dry habitat species, like Strymon michelle, and a skipper, Oarisma boeta, that I’ve only seen at Gocta, north western Peru, another dry location. It’s much dryer here than where we’ve been.
Day 32 Dec 9 – we try the Cajanuma entrance to Podocarpus National Park, about an hour from the hotel. Today is Saturday, and they’re staging a big bike race and trail run, so the park is closed. Oh well, another day. We drive towards Loja and try the old road to Catamayo, which winds up into the hills and along a ridge with lots of wind turbines. The sign says Villonaco, about 2500m. While the mountainside below us is mostly farmland and pasture, there is a band of native moist habitat along the ridge, and we get several good things. The road is lined with trash in several places, but we see Parapedaliodes parepa, with orange along both wings, posing in the road several times. We find a small trail to the left which leads up to a hilltop, and several species are zipping around up there, including some clearwings which never stop and seem to hover in the wind.
Day 33 Dec 10 – we drive south to Yanguna, looking for a reserve, but can’t find anyone who knows much about it. The day is bright and sunny, and we’re at the turnoff to Casa Simpson, Jocotoco’s flagship lodge at Tapichalaca, so we head up the mountain on the dirt road. It gets very foggy, but then we make the crest and pop out of the fog into a beautiful day, to cheers on the bus. We drive on and stumble across a small creek running across the road at about 2700m. We stop, put out bait, and have a great morning. This is Quebrada Honda, right at the border of the Tapichalaca reserve and Podocarpus National Park.
All sorts of high elevation goodies are coming to the water. Both Apexacuta orsedice and Proboscis probylea, and Junea dorinda, plus lots of satyrs and Dallas. We finally drive on up the road to the lodge, where we pay $15/person to walk the trails and eat our lunch there. They charge an additional $15 if you want to see the antpitta.
David baits the trail and we walk it for a mile or so, but see very little. No interest in the bait at all. Some Pedaliodes flying around, but not stopping. We get a fresh Fountainea centaurus and a few things, but overall it is surprising, as it stays sunny and nice, best weather I’ve ever had at this place, which is usually cold and foggy.
Day 34 Dec 11 – we make it to Podocarpus Parque Nacional, sign the forms at the checkpoint right off the highway, and trundle the 8km up the dirt road to the ranger station at the top. The park doesn’t start until about 5km up the road, but then it gets forested and pretty good. It is a dense fog, cold and wet, at the top, but the entrance up there is full of fabulous moths. The light is off when we arrive, but it must have been on last night, as we spend an hour or more shooting the spectacular moths all over the walls. A huge sphinx, Adhemarius sexoculata, and many colorful Chrysocale regulas (thanks to Dominik for the id’s), mostly green but one bright pink one, and many more.
We slowly walk down the hill, as there’s no point in doing the trails in this fog. It gradually lightens up, and by 11 it gets sort of sunny, and we see some butterflies. And they like the bait, hooray. Interesting that yesterday at Tapichalaca, almost the same elevation and not very far away, the bait drew nothing but flies. Here, however, the satyrs go for it, as well as tons of flies. Too bad we’re not doing a fly study, these high elevation flies are amazing.
Wendy scores with the only Junea whitelyi so far of the trip. We see J.dorinda also, at several other places, but this is the only whitelyi seen by anybody. Two new Lasiophila, and several dark Pedaliodes, which turn out to be P.dracula, great name. We get good photos of Lasiophila phalaesia, a beautiful dark orange and black bug, that poses repeatedly for all of us. Two days ago, on the wind turbine ridge, we saw them sail by but never even slow down, let alone stop for photos, so it is very satisfying to get good shots of such a beautiful creature. Another example of you just never know about the weather.
David and Wendy also get a gorgeous new skipper, Enosis dognini, I’m jealous. We look hard for it the next day, put out lots of spitwads, but no sign of it.
Day 35 Dec 12 – Back to Podocarpus NP, the day is bright and sunny at breakfast in Vilcabamba. But when we get to the park, about an hour drive, it gets overcast. The butterflies turn out to be much less common than the day before, though we do find a few new species for our list. But mostly we wander up and down the road looking in bushes and not finding too much. And there are absolutely zero moths on top at the ranger station. Who knows why, was the light not on? Clear instead of foggy? This would be a wonderful place to spend a few nights if you wanted to blacklight for moths. Basic accommodations, and you would have to supply your own food, but you would see some spectacular moths.
Day 36 Dec 13 – drive to Zamora for 3 nights at Copalinga Lodge. Stop and butterfly at the top of the old Loja-Zamora road. It’s bright and sunny, unusual for this elevation of 2700-2800m. The bus drives a bit down the old road, until it gets too bad, then we walk another km or so down the road. There are lots of the bright blue Lymanopoda samius, and people finally get some photos. I don’t get very good ones, but hopefully the others will share. The butterflies are displaying and landing on top of the bamboo, wings open. One comes to a piece of blue plastic in the dirt. They don’t seem to be interested in the bait, as compared to L.obsoleta, which are all over it.
Day 37 Dec 14 – drive 3km up the dirt road to the Bombescara entrance of Podocarpus NP, about 1100m. David starts spraying bait on the walk in, but when at 8:30 the park guard shows up on his motorcycle, he tells David he needs a special permit to that. Ah, power. So we mostly work the 3km road between the park entrance and the lodge.
I walk into the park, 30 minutes up to the administration center (further and steeper than I remember it from 6 years ago), then past it to the camping area and down the Rio Bombuscaro trail, #2, to the river. Last time I was here this was a good beach for butterflies, but of course the river has changed. Now it is large boulders right to the water, no beach at all, no sand or gravel bar. Difficult to scramble over the boulders, and there’s no edge, just large rock straight into the water.
From above I see a firetip zipping around, the way they love to do along the rivers. I watch it, and it lands on a dead body of another species of firetip. I think the one flying is Mimardaris minthe, the orange and black one that doesn’t have any apical spots. I take a 20′ away zoom shot, and would love to get a close up, but not from here.
The road is filled with scads of Doxocopa, 3 gaudy species, and lot of 88′s and other Nymphalids. The people are happy, lots of gorgeous bugs to chase. We get some Anteros and some Eunica and others.
I walk out from the park center and spend quite a bit of time below the admin center at a cement bridge they may have recently repaired, as the butterflies are coming to the ramp and the support column. After standing around patiently I get good shots of the Callicore (2 species) and the large Eunica caralis, with its smooth brown V. I also score with a fresh Heliconius congener, big and shiny blue, that comes to the river edge under the bridge. It’s nice to be by myself, as they are very flighty and they jump if you move at all. Impossible to shoot with a group in a situation like this.
Day 38 Dec 15 – I work the orange trail, after David has baited it, while others work the road and go to the swimming hole, a short trail down on the left to the river. Wendy and Dominik nail the Mimardaris minthe. When I get to the beach late in the morning, there’s not much there except lots of P.lorena and one lone Myscelus. But I get some good things in the forest.
The day before David found a lek of the huge clearwing Athesis acrisione, and gets great shots. I find it today, in a dark, wet ravine, but today is cloudy and they are staying up high, 4-5m overhead. I take photos, but they aren’t anything to write home about. Good thing David shares his photos with me.
After lunch Chris comes with me up the road, and we catch 4-5 of the 88′s, trying to sort them out in the hand. However, it appears that most of what we catch are the same, though one has a blue band on the DHW and green on the DFW. Later Andrew Neild has emailed me a detailed way to separate 3 species that we have in Copalinga. It turns out we have mostly neglecta, with some clymena and a few euclides lidwina, with the bright blue flush on the D. Of course Chris and I haven’t caught any lidwina, but Andrew’s notes are a huge help.
Day 39 Dec 16 – we depart Copalinga for a 3 hour drive to Cabanas Yankuam, down a long dirt road off the main highway at Zumbi. We get about half way and find out the road is closed for construction until 12 or 1pm, and it’s only about 9:30. But all is not lost, the man there tells us there is a barge (a ferry) that we can take to get across the river. So off we go on our detour.
We stop at a forested bit of road, David puts out bait, the sun pops out (after leaving Copalinga in a pouring rain), and all of a sudden we have butterflies. We’re at about 1,000m, and even though the habitat is pretty trashed, people living all along the road, we still get plenty to keep us busy for an hour or two. Several new species for our list, Panacea prola dashing about and frustrating everyone, a very dark Amarynthis meneria, some interesting stuff.
We drive on, and on, asking directions several times. The last guy says, only 20km more, and we finally come to the ferry. Our timing is good, as he’s just loading a pickup truck on our side of the river, and the bus just fits on the ferry with the small truck. Most of us walk across the long, wooden, flimsy foot bridge and take lots of photos of the bus going across on the ferry, floating on big 55 gallon drums. It works fine, we load up, and continue on our way.
After stopping for lunch at the side of the road, we make it past the small town of Orquideas to Cabanas Yankuam, our home for the next 3 nights. It starts pouring just as we arrive, so we dash from the bus into their large comedor (dining room), which is very nice, open and spacious with huge wooden tables and heavy wooden chairs. The woman makes us herbal tea and coffee, while we wait for the rain to let up.
Day 40/41 Dec 17/18 – We drive a few km up the road, over the bridge with an amazing statue of an indian riding a toucan. We have to stop and take photos, plus they have a long story, in 3 languages, of the coming of the spaniards and how their leader dealt with it, very interesting. We continue on up the road to the Reserva Natural Maycu, which covers one side of the road for quite a ways. David baits, and we spend the next 2 days wandering up and down the road.
This is the famous orange-throated tanager reserve, and I’m hoping to see it. I’ve been told that you used to have to do a death march in the mud to find the bird, but we see it both days just along the road. David knows the call, sort of a chunky clunk noise, not at all like most tanagers, and once he points it out to me you can track them easily. He find a pair and calls me up the road, and we watch them exploring the crotch of a cecropia maybe for a nest. We get excellent views of both birds sitting in the tree, hopping around and showing their bright orange throats well. The next day I hear them again, and point them out to others in our group.
The sun comes and goes, and when it’s sunny we have butterflies. When it is overcast or drizzly, we don’t have much. But it is surprising at the end of the day how many species we see. It all depends on where you are on the road when the sun pops out.
Both afternoons it rains heavily, just as we get back for a late lunch at 1:30. Then it lets up, and the 2nd day we go for a boat ride up the Rio Nangaritza, which goes through a couple of beautiful narrow gorges, the rocks all covered with thick moss. It looks like a fake movie set, pretty spectacular, no sign of people. We go up river for more than an hour, then head back and get wet, of course, before we get home. But we have raingear, and we’ll dry. I just had an umbrella, but the nice lodge manager lent me a poncho, which was very useful.
Some of our group didn’t go on the boat ride, and they spend the afternoon up the short trail right across from the lodge, maybe a couple of hundred meters. David had baited it right before lunch, and we had seen a new Ancyluris for us, A.miniola. They find several new species for our list that afternoon, it would have been more productive to stay and do the trail. But the problem is because it’s such a short trail, you can’t have more than 2 or 3 people on it taking photos. It is very wet and dark, so there are different species that don’t come to the open road. There is a 2nd trail a bit further down the road, to the waterfall, but David says it is steep and very muddy, so we don’t do that one.
Day 42 Dec 19 – back to Copalinga for our last 2 days. For the morning we leave Yankuam at our normal 8am and drive about 30 minutes, past the small town of Orquideas, to another patch of forest owned by the Reserva Natural Maycu. For a small fee we walk past the caretaker’s place and across a large wooden suspension bridge, following the young woman who lives there. It is mossy and slippery and wet, so we have to hang on and be careful. No problem for her, of course.
We stumble around in the forest for an hour or so, not much is happening, but then around 10am out pops the sun, and things get crazy really fast. Suddenly there are a ton of clearwings, and lots of butterflies hitting the baited leaves. The trail runs along parallel to the river and goes for a long way. We only work maybe a km or so, plus the short trail to the left of the bottom of the big suspension bridge goes to the beach. The water is high, so there’s not much beach.
We plan to leave around 11am, as we have to get through the limited open time of the big construction project from noon to 1pm. So we only have an hour or so of good butterflies. It is difficult to round everybody up and get them back on the bus, they don’t want to leave. You could easily work this forest patch from Cabanas Yankuan, which would be a good idea in the future.
I’m on my way back to the bus just before 11 when I come to the last small footbridge in the forest and find not 1, but 2 of the gorgeous black and red Haemactris sanguinalis, a killer skipper that’s always a crowd pleaser. I go back on the trail looking for somebody, anybody, to show it to, but no luck. So I continue on towards the bus and run into Michelle. I tell her about it, and she says she’s too busy shooting butterflies to go look. But then I show her my photo, and she changes her mind quickly and charges back up the trail. As I continue on towards the bus I see 2 more, then run into David on the big bridge. He says there’s some at the beach, and some at the end of the trail. We have at least 6 or 7, which is amazing, as I’ve never seen more than 1 at a time before.
We finally get off about 11:15, and it takes an hour and more to get to the construction site. We make it through, then hunt for a place to stop to eat our lunch from Yankuam. David picks a nice pullout that has an old dirt road on the other side, so we can eat, then spend an hour or so chasing bugs. We hear howlers the entire time, which is weird as we’re not in good forest. Maybe they’re upset by the massive road construction. We get lots of crescents, 2 species of Panacea, a good selection for a short stop in not very great habitat.
Day 43 Dec 20 – we spend the day working the road to Podocarpus, going down the short trail to the balnearia (the swimming spot) or walking the orange trail. It is dark and overcast, so not many butterflies. But the sun comes out about 11, and things start flying. I check out the beach about noon, and it is about half the size as 3 days ago, the water is much higher. You can see they’ve had a lot of rain, the ditches are running with water, while before it actually dried out over the 3 days we were here before,
Fortunately David gets excellent photos of the Mimardaris minthe, he was sulking having missed it before. We also have a huge, fresh swallowtail, Heraclides thoas cinyras, a different ssp from the one we’re used to, posing flat out for quite a while.
Day 44 Dec 21 – we drive back to Loja for our 5pm flight to Quito, then hang out at the airport until our 1:30am international flight back to Houston early on Dec 22nd. It’s raining all the way to Loja, so we head back over to the dry side of the valley and go up to the wind turbine park, Villonaco. It is still drizzling, so we slowly drive down the winding dirt road that is the old road to Catamayo. There is a marked turnoff for this road from the new main highway between Loja and Vilcabamba.
As we drop down in elevation the rain stops, and we get out and walk quite a bit of the road. We keep heading down and have lunch next to a small bridge with coffee growing around us, and we find clearwings. It’s about 1800m, and again we have Elzunia pavonii and lots of Scada kusa, plus we get several new hairstreaks for the trip list, like the huge Pseudolycaenia marysas, coming to a flowering vine.
We end up with over 1,100 species seen and mostly photographed, with more to add as I go through the photos. We had a lot of poor weather, and both David and I felt the numbers of bugs flying was low for where we were, but we ended up with a lot of species. It just goes to show that you never know about the weather, it can change from bright sun to rain and overcast, then back to sun within hours. I don’t know if a different time of the year would be more productive, we’ll just have to keep going back and find out.