We took a taxi to Curi Cancha reserve, asked for a map for a 3 or 4 hour long walk, and off we went. To begin with there were a few people around, a Chinese family with some of those really immense cameras all pointing up into a tree. We tried to see what they were photographing but without binoculars could spot nothing. At lsat one of them took pity showed us the screen on her camera – it was a fine raptor, but was gone.
Then there was a little hummingbird feeding station, not as well populated as the one yesterday, but very pretty nonetheless and there was a species we hadn’t seen before.
For the rest of the walk we were entirely on our own: a long loop through changing forest landscapes, dry and cloud. There were some monumental strangler figs, hollow trunked and some wide enough that one could easilty stand inside and look up through the woven trunk to the sky far above. The path was dirt, a pleasant change after yesterday, and very easy. At one point it looked out over the continental divide, a sharp line dividing the hydrological systems of the Pacific and the Atlantic.
We walked back to Santa Elena, a couple of kilometres on a path along a road overlooking green hills and, in the distance, the sea. Along the way we stopped at a surprisingly good shop with excellent produce so decided to make our own dinner tonight.
The big news of the day has, of course, been the proroguing of parliament. Profoundly upsetting and I can’t believe there are people, presumably with brain cells, who don’t find this a large step in a very ugly direction.
An interesting comment on this in Britain has along the lines of ‘how could [choose your enemy] put the queen in this position?’ The queen clearly seems to stand in for a certain way of doing things, it’s not her person that people are concerned about, but that is how it is put. Fascinating.
There are some people in the UK I would like to set a jumping pit viper on.