Teasing on the images...

upload is way too slow to fiddle with here - hopefully quicker back in Quito - or for sure it will be back home - was going to upload a fluke of a fluke, a swallowtail hummer, an adean lady our fellow travellers say looks like Marilyn, tortises, motmots, geocaching smilers... etc.  Stay tuned. :) :)

Midday Saturday October 30th (siesta)

Saturday October 30^th

Last full day on the MS Islander and we got to sleep in until 0700 this morning!  We’ve just returned from an excellent lunch with chicken, chips, grated beets and carrots with salad greens – homemade ice cream with seriously excellent mudslide chocolate chip cookies!  The calories from omelettes, fruit and breakfast fixings were burnt off with deep water snorkelling followed by a walk upon a sea lion inhabited white sand beach.  Today we met the Espanola Mockingbird – exists on this island only – and we observed many, many more beautiful sea turtles, a pair of Galapagos Hawks playing off the edge of the black lava cliff, and Frigate birds fighting in flight, over a dead fish one of them had picked off the top of the absolutely gorgeous green/blue emerald ocean.

This afternoon we are landing at Punta Suarez where we will enjoy a dry landing from the ponga.  We will manoeuvre our way across a lava boulders and rocks to meet…. The Wavy Albatross!  Chances of meeting one on the golf course are rare to none but we are here at the opportune time to see that they do indeed exist!

Posting a minute portion of images…

October 27th - Midway

Days begin between 0530 and 0600 and end anytime from 2000 to 2100.  Every day so far we have done more by noon than we usually do on a weekend… kind of like a day at work for Marilyn!  (ha ha)

This morning we were up at 0545 to whale watch.  We didn’t have any luck but weren’t bothered as we saw a humpback and calf the other day.  Then we had the usual incredible breakfast which we couldn’t hardly eat (but did) as we had consumed immense amount of coffee and banana bread while whale watching.  At 0900 we boarded pongas to tour the shore line where we saw: sea turtles, Galapagos penguins, nesting boobies (not nestling – though there were a few trying…), sea lions, flightless cormorants, sunfish, Marine iguanas, various petrels, masked boobies, and more.  At 1030 we came back to the ship grabbed our snorkel gear and headed back into the water to snorkel with the sea turtles and penguins.  Fortunately this time no sea lions charged past looking to play – one did on an outing the other day and the sound Marilyn made out the snorkel tube sounded like that of an elephant!   We haven’t seen any elephants!  One of the giant sea turtles did swim within inches of us as we floated in the bay and a small shark (Kari??? Where are you??) idled past.  We say floated as we are getting much better at that as the week goes on – not a day has gone past without two desserts!  We get our just desserts!  The only problem this has caused was shower curtain encounter (the old lady and the lost puppy far side cartoon.)  Digression.  This morning’s activities were followed by lunch with 2 desserts as has been the case for the entire trip, except for the one day when we provided our own lunch.  …..back again… there is no time to write – the bazillion photos we have taken will have to provide the “stories” to follow.

Since the wee bit above there was a presentation/lesson about digital photography, we rode the pongas over to an island/volcano to walk on a 200 year old lava flow, see a nesting oystercatcher, two Galapagos hawks (first time!) a bazillion land iguanas, Sally Lightfoot crabs (cool name, hey?), more boobies and we learned how the last eruption of Espinoza boiled the sea causing bazillions of very small sea creatures to cook and for their shells to eventually wind up on the “beach” to become white sand – in a couple hundred more years.  Each day is like being in National Geographic 3D programming!  The ship is the MS Islander and the company is partnered with National Geographic.  In a couple of minutes we will be topside on the ship for a star guide presentation (after the gorgeous sunset) and then there will be dinner at 2000 and a recap of today’s events!  Oh yeah, on the way to the lava flow walk we were surrounded by a herd of dolphins!  They were the welcoming committee!

PS a clown and his crew sang Happy Birthday to the birthday boy and he had some awesome cake – and then dessert!

Happy Birthday Aiden! October 28^th. 

Sorry LYNDA your name was misspelled in the last blog!

Hard to believe we are only half done – there are still bazillions of things to see and do!

Friday One Spare Hour

Tried to blog last night to say Happy Birthday Lynda - but the internet is very slow here and the blog froze and then it was time to go meet the rest of our group.... Days are flying by.  The second part of this trip is just as busy so far and looks that way until Galapagos.  We've seen the real equator the fake equator (geocache) 4 Andean Condors, 1 Spectal Bear (all tour guides are blown away by our luck in both of these sightings) the bird tally came in at 129 species with 35 hummingbirds, the cock of the rock, toucans, motmots.... and many more amazing animals.  Thank you Linda for inspiring us to check out the SA avain life with your trip!
PS Pat ate the guinea pig! (not sure if the grandkids will want to know that! :(

Near Mindo

Lots to write about if we get any free time - it's all good we had a long day yesterday landing in Quito after midnight last night and getting up at six this morning to connect with the other couple and our guide.  We are at a lodge near Mindo tonight and again tomorrow night so will likely upload some photos and write more then.  Today we drove on wagon trail roads at 3700 meters saw birds only ever dreamed of, farms and homes of the local people - we even saw 18 different species of hummingbirds!  Night night - we are up at 4 tomorrow to see the cock of the rock - apparently he only shows off in the morning!

Calgary

Marilyn spent the morning packing and getting organized while Randy spent some quality time with his guitar interupted with observations at the feeder as we enjoyed visits from
a pair of nuthatches who appeared to be stocking up on sunflower seeds for an upcoming event -winter perhaps!
Thanks Rene & Murray for the airport limo service - we owe you! :) :)
Checked out the local caches here in cow town and saw a cool puzzle right at the airport - did the work which involved some cool facts about the displays around the luggage carousels and the rushed excitedly outside to find the log book. Once the gps powered up we were sad to see that the cache was over 2 kms away. :( :( Never ones to admit defeat however we made our way to the nearby nano that had just been replaced today. The cache owner must have known we were coming to town! Tftc
Now it is nite nite to all as we have a wakeup call for 5! Tomorrow we will have the first first class flight of our lives so getting up won't be too bad.

Getting organized

Lots of things to think about and organize as we are on the final countdown.  Woke up last night in a cold sweat (you'll love this, Rene) realizing that we hadn't booked reservations in Calgary or Houston yet!  Finished sending some of the travel documents this afternoon, a few more tomorrow and those ducks should all be in a row.  Haven't started packing at all - need to do a wee bit more shopping and get some low denomination US funds... and here is one of us playing around with this blog. :)
However, our itinerary is posted so those who may be interested in vicarious travel may partake as desired. Now I really must go finish that chickadee drawing I have been playing with - oops... I mean clean up the mess I made on the counter... :)

Black Capped Chickadee - Our Good Luck Omens

Why the heck are we doing this?

When we moved to Beaverlodge close to ten years ago, we were encouraged to join in the Christmas Bird Count, by bird advocate Joan Kerr.  As postmaster in the community of Beaverlodge Marilyn had plenty of opportunity to interact with people and it wasn't long before Joan and her determined that they shared this common "interest" and when Randy learned of this "game" we were both sold.
As a pair of procrastinators and this bird counting thing looked like another great means of escapism - our kids weren't coming home for Christmas anyway... and now the bird count has become a Christmas tradition for us empty nesters.  The precount coffee meeting with stories of this year's possibilities followed by the adventure and search of the count and the hunt for that elusive species.  Our digital camera has been a godsend for us as there are times when we are unsure of the species observed and these photos have removed all doubt on accuracy.  We still revel in the mystical encounter we had with a Snowy Owl on the north perimeter of "our area west of the Boe's place.
But why all this chatter about the Christmas Bird Count when this blog is about our journey to Middle Earth and the bird life that knows not of winter?
Well, participants of the bird count receive mailings and sometimes these mailings have advertisements in them.  Early this summer when the publication arrived out flew an interesting notice about a tour.  A tour to Ecuador and Galapagos.  A birding tour with plenty of sight seeing intertwined and even better we had been discussing how to celebrate those 40 years, those 14,600 days of togetherness besides, weird or not - our wedding cake topper is/was a pair of white doves...