Back to Schiphol

Ecuador: Birds of the high Andes 1

As the observant amongst you will have noticed, I've not posted on blip for just over a week.  That's because I've been away to the cloud forests of Ecuador and the combination of lack of connections, power cuts and sheer lack of time has meant that I've been writing and storing my blip entries as I went but have not been able to upload them.  Now that I'm back, I'm going to be busily filling in the missing backblips.

I left Bristol on the 6am flight to Amsterdam, which meant a 2:30am start to the day. As one might expect the traffic was almost non existent and I had a smooth journey until my KLM flight touched down at Schiphol.  At that stage, we waited for 20 minutes before the ground crew brought the steps to the plane so that we could disembark.  It later turned out that there had been a major computer failure which had caused this, and which was to have some further repercussions later on in the day.

Once safely in the terminal I met up with the other 5 members of the little team going to Ecuador with me.  All committed birders with very long lists (if you are a birder you will understand the reference), I was the only one more interested in photographing the birds rather than merely seeing and recording them.

The flight  proceeded with a small delay while they fuelled the plane with the additional fuel required for the high Andes landing (a consequence of the computer problems apparently). Otherwise things went without a hitch, and we touched down 10 hours later in Quito.  At this point it became clear that some bags had not made it from Amsterdam to Quito and two of our little team were affected, including myself.  

I was told that the case would follow on tomorrow's flight and they would deliver it to me.  This was complicated by the fact that I was due to be staying in a lodge at the far end of a mountain track that the KLM people would struggle to reach, but my travel agents confirmed that the lodge would arrange for the baggage to be met in the main square a Mindo for me. 

Fortunately(!) I had prepared for this possibility and had the essentials in my hand luggage. 

Then it was off to Puembo for the first night, before the trip proper starts tomorrow.  I had stayed in the Puembo accommodation on my last trip and Mercedes the owner, and a number of the other staff, recognised me and welcomed me back.  

With an early start due  in the morning I took the opportunity to grab an early night ....