Colepato

I woke up at dawn this morning for one last bird walk. I´m almost up to my goal of 100 species and the forests along the nearby river, the Tamimanga are full of species. Walking alone slowly through the predawn forests I caught glimpes of wrens, warblers, finches, vireos, and jays. All sorts of bright colors and sublet movements flitting through the boughs of the forest still dripping with morning dew. A magical world. The highlight was surely when I finally reached the Tamimanga river. I found fresh puma tracks, hours old lying wet in the mud and glimpsed an Andean pygmy owl! I startled him from a dark tunnel of mossy trees and watched him watch me with baleful yellow owl eyes, like cat eyes in the gloom before he flew deeper into the forest. Owls are some of my favorites, and I count them as omens of luck and fortune. I can only hope.

After hiking back I made a giant breakfast of hueveos rancheros washed down with coffee before sitting in with the students for our last lecture. I finished early feeling tired from the early morning rising, but rallied in the afternoon to drive everyone over with Seth to Colepato for an afternoon bout of futbol. You should have seen it, such a funny pairing of young gringo-as and local boys coursing back and forth in hot pursuit over the worn muddy field in the middle of the village.Seth and I jumped in too and I even scored two goals, though at a cost. I felt so sore and exhuasted after only an hour of play I had to sit down for the rest of the day. Seth and I both, feeling like old men, but maybe its just the altitude. After all I don´t know if I´ve ever played soccer at 11,000 some odd feet before. Your breath gets sucked away and leaves you gasping.

After the game the students said farewell to new BFF little sisters and surrogate grandmothers while Seth and I met the village president and chatted with the elders a bit. Wash it all down with dinner around a bonfire in the pasture with shots of Zhumir and it couldn´t be a more solid day.